[asquabventured]

The food lab by j Kenji Lopez alt is another cooking book (with lots of recipes) that really helps you understand why and what you are doing rather than just telling you a process to follow.

Highly recommend anything Kenji does (previously he was the main force behind seriouseats.com) and also does a lot of first person point of view cooking videos on YouTube where he explains why he is doing things while he is doing them.

[niklasd]

Second that! He has a very scientific approach, sampling various ways (cooking dishes in six different ways, comparing them), which makes it far easier to understand why something is done that way.