Help me find a cookbook with classic British recipes

[minniemummy0]

I’d like a cookbook that is simple and easy to follow that has normal British recipes. I’m thinking of things like Lancashire hotpot, Shephards pie, a roast dinner, simple normal things.

I’m a terrible cook (or maybe I’m a great cook? The truth is... I’m not a cook at all).

I would like good solid basic recipes, NOT “twists” on the classics. I figure if I get a good handle on common basic recipes, I can spread my wings afterwards.

I know I could get the recipes online but I want a book I can refer to in the kitchen, I don’t want to have to worry about my battery running down or getting ingredients on my phone!!

Do you need pictures? If not, try an older book. Prue Leith or Jane Grigson?

Get a Delia. The Complete Cookery Course is still my go to cook book for classics.

Good housekeeping new step by step.cookbook and Delia Smith how to cook. Both old but brilliant for proper meals.

Good housekeeping? Was my 'you are getting married' book from my mum, she's not into feminism much I guess

Delia Smiths original cookery course has a lot of traditional recipese as well as stuff like Bolognese and 70s/80s dp stuff. I learnt to cook from mine as a teenager.

Google

You can't beat Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course. Good Housekeeping is also very good and I have my Mum's copy of their book from the 1940s.

Hairy bikers have a British cook book

Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food

The J Salmon "Favourite" series?

Another vote for Delia, we have the How to Cook books. Lots of pretty failsafe recipes for everyday classics (British and otherwise).

Another vote for the Good Housekeeping step by step cook book. Never had a recipe fail yet.

This is the edition I have, it’s about 30 years old now. www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/books/edited-by-gill-edden/the-good-housekeeping-step-by-step-cook-book/GOR000685642?keyword=&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI5bGx6dOJ3wIVDrftCh0ozwisEAQYCCABEgLMi_D_BwE

Delia is very trustworthy, as long as you don’t leave a bottle of sherry out

Jane Grigson's English Food.
However it is a standard paperback without illustrations so won't sit open in the way a hardback recipe book would.
I learnt most things like this though from Nigella books and then adapting them.
Printing out online recipes and putting them in a folder may be easier these days. You can annotate them without worrying about writing in a book someone else may later use, and replace pages if they get too badly splashed.

Another vote for Jamie's Ministry of Food. Loads of photos and all the recipes work. Nothing cheffy or fiddly.

I know lots of people are going to suggest Delia but I personally have never got on with her recipes (with the exception of one of her earliest ones called Frugal Food which has a lot of frankly weird but wonderful recipes).

Leiths cookery bible!

Another vote for Delia's Complete Cookery Course, the GH book and for Jamie's Ministry of Food.

Delia ! Mary Berry!

Felicity cloake from the guardian
How to...
every recipe is failsafe, tried and tested.
No recipe ever fails and it’s always the classics

You want the Reader's Digest "The Cookery Year". It's from 1974, so skip all the bits about grilled grapefruit and suchlike, but it can teach you to prepare absolutely anything, largely focuses on simple British dishes, and there are a bunch of cheap copies on eBay right now.

Favourite British Recipes: Traditional Dishes from Around the British Isles... www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1846401070/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_9CecCbF0C9BF6?tag=mumsnetforum-21

Mary Barry's Complete Cookbook has all those, I think. It's the one cookbook I use again and again

Jane Grigson. Sophie Grigson's mum. Gave me the definitive recipe for Yorkshire Pudding (although her own favourite version was actually a variation from a Chinese cook...) Also the perfect temperatures and timings for roasting. And two pages about how to make your own pork pie. And lots of fascinating sideways digressions about food from the past. Six of those recipes are now bog standard repeats at Apocalypse Towers. Particularly the Poor Maids of Windsor/Gypsy Toast/Calories On A Stick one.

Thank you so much for all your suggestions so far! I have been going through Amazon looking at them all. So far I really like the look of Mary Berry, Jane Grigson and Felicity Cloake, but I haven’t looked at everything yet. I knew I could count on Mumsnet

Mary Berry Complete Cook Book. here