Cookbooks - Physical vs Electronic

tkleager

My wife recently finished her MBA and we are "selling" back a few of the books she needed through Amazon and they are going to be doing a Gift Card credit for the books.

There have been a few cookbooks I have been wanting to read after seeing them mentioned here, as well a few other places that I check in on now and then.  The list includes:

Smoking Meat - Jeff Phillips
Slow Fire: The Beginner's Guide to Barbecue - Ray "DR BBQ" Lampe
BBQ25 - Adam Perry Lang
Fire and Smoke: A Pitmaster's Secrets - Chris Lilly
Charred & Scruffed - Adam Perry Lang
The Meat Hook Meat Book: Buy, Butcher, And Cook Your Way To Better Meat -  Tom Mylan, Michael Harlan Turkell
Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing (Revised and Updated) - by Michael Ruhlman, Brian Polcyn and Yevgenity Solovyev

I have looked at my local Library, and they don't have much in the way of a cookbook section, so checking them out is out of the question.

So the question is, would you rather have a physical copy of the book (ie. hardcover, bound...), or would you rather have it on your Kindel/iPad?  Why would you rather have it one way versus the other?

TheShaytoon

Man, I tell you what, I rather have the electronic version of "practically" anything in the world.

EXCEPT cookbooks.

There is just something about cookbooks, maybe because on the "paper" kindles the pictures are not of quality.  I want an old school book that I can jot notes onto, and make rabbit ears.

Also, kitchens and non waterproof electronic devices are a bad combination.  

I say go for the real thing...

nolaegghead

I prefer digital for cooking, analog paper for reading.  SWMBO collects cookbooks.  I don't use recipe's like most people.  I read up on a few and make it up from there based on how I'd like it to taste. Digital lets me hop around, search and destroy.

fljoemon

I have no space in my home for any more physical books .. SWMBO is already mad at me for my huge collection .. so now I only get the electronic versions for my iPad.

Carolina Q

Hardcopy for any book. I don't have a kindle or iPad but I have read books on my iPhone. Not for me.

Chubbs

I like physical cookbooks. Everything else digital. I have a bookshelf dedicated to my cookbooks and like to think my sons would want one day to accompany my eggs

NPHuskerFL

All of mine are handwritten, paperback books and hardback books & the majority are very old family recipes. I pick up some here and there off the internet but, I don't have any electronic recipe books.

Jeepster47

+1 for physical books.

My wife has a cook book (Better Homes and Gardens ... red and white checkered cover) that she acquired when we were married.  Lots of memories associated with that book that you can't get with the electronic cookbooks. 

stemc33

Digital for all. Since I'm a guy with little sense, I like the look up feature that an electronic device has to offer. I have a stand for my iPad mini, which makes it easy to use in the kitchen. The other thing that's nice about using my iPad is that I can search several similar recipes without having to look through five paper books.

fishlessman

problem with most cooking books for me is that i can read thru them and find only a couple recipes i like. theres a few that i like because of the adventure, like ruhlmans curing book or a bread baking book, or breath of the wok but for anything i have and understanding of i just google search and adapt the recipe to my needs. for the electronic books, i dont think i could ever get into that

Ladeback69

Most of my cook books are books, except for The BGE cook book I downloaded. It's convenient, but I prefer the real book, but the digital copy is usually cheeper. I use them more for ideas, I only follow baking recipes to a tee. Go with what works for you.

gdenby

Digital media is incredibly convenient, assuming you have the electricity to use it. . I suppose I will eventually get some sort of device to use in the kitchen so I can rummage thru the 6000 recipes  I've clipped from the web over the past 20 years. Great to have search and retrieve, and they all can sit on the edge of a counter, not loading up bookshelves.

The problem is that so far digital doesn't have even a small portion of the durability of paper. I still have a drawer full of unreadable floppies in digital encoding that is no longer compatible w. any OS currently on the market. So far I have not found a digital format that is as pleasant to read as paper. If the cookbook is more than just a collection of recipes, and has lots of subsidiary info on the how and whys of cooking various dishes, I want to sit and pour over it for hours. Paper is better for that.

Skiddymarker

NPHuskerFL said:

All of mine are handwritten, paperback books and hardback books & the majority are very old family recipes. I pick up some here and there off the internet but, I don't have any electronic recipe books.

I like electronic, seeing 'husker's comment made me think of all my Dad's recipes, now electronic, both scanned and transcribed, allows me to share with my friends, kids and grandkids. Family recipes are treasures and should be shared. 

Electronic makes search and find so easy. 

Fireman_Joe

Digital for me

texaswig

@tkleager some public library's have loaner programs from other library's. You just go on a data base a look it up. 

Zmokin

I prefer my cookbooks to be physical, for many of the reasons already noted.  I have a cookbook stand that holds the book open to the page you are on.  I do however like to use the internet to search for new recipes, but I usually then blend 3 to 4 recipes into one, save it as a word document, and print it to use in the kitchen.  I also will write recipes on 3x5 cards that I keep in a recipe box, for quick & easy reference.

Legume

Cookbooks are mostly reference for me, meaning I don't prop them up to be followed in the kitchen.  when I need to, I'll end up writing up what I need in a word doc and printing - could be pulled from internet, or typed/edited myself from a book or elsewhere.  I like researching on the internet, but if I was to purchase a cookbook, I'd prefer a real book.  I'd rather cook from a printed 8.5x11 that I can spill on and then go modify the recipe later on my computer to be printed again another day.

nolaegghead

I consult recipes (the data) in whatever form, I don't care if it's digital, word of mouth or paper, then I just wing it armed with that information.  Bread is a different story, I use a recipe and scale most of the time, but I'll wing that too.

I don't get too worked up about what form information is in.  Information is information regardless of the media it's stored on.

GrannyX4

Skiddymarker said

I like electronic, seeing 'husker's comment made me think of all my Dad's recipes, now electronic, both scanned and transcribed, allows me to share with my friends, kids and grandkids. Family recipes are treasures and should be shared. 

Electronic makes search and find so easy. 

The recipes that are family treasures make the best gifts.  For Christmas my daughter copied my mothers fudge recipe in mom's handwriting on to a flour sack cloth.  Now I have mom hanging in the kitchen with me.  A very special gift that cost very little but in my heart was priceless.  

ryantt

Go with the real thing.  My wife takes the recipes she likes from the books and uploads them into her own little database which is searchable from any of our iOS devices. This gives you the best of both worlds.  

Cookbook_Chip

I love both.  My biz is printed cookbooks from a digital recipe box and cookbook software app.  I try to use the online version if it's newer than my printed copy, but hate having to keep touching the iPad screen to wake it up with my greasy fingers.  The paper book or printed recipe is always right there to check.

mgd_egg

I like to have the actual cookbook.  I photocopy things I want to make and file them in a binder for easy access.  I also don't like to wake up my ipad or computer for every step of the recipe.  

jtcBoynton

I have printed cookbooks and a digital recipe collection. When I decide to use a recipe in one of the books, I enter it into my digital recipe database. 

tkleager

Totally forgot about this thread till I got the notifications today.

I did try the "Kindle" version of a cookbook from our local public library.  I found it really hard to follow on the iPad, as I felt most of the recipes were over several pages and I would have to flip back to see how much salt to add in a specific spot because it wasn't written in that part of the directions.  I will admit that this is probably more of a complaint about how the book was written vs the technology.

I will say that being able to copy and past the text into my Evernote recipe collection was nice, compared to having to scan, copy, retype errors, or retype the whole recipes.

After the cookbook from the library I have decided that for cookbooks, I want a physical book in my hands.  I placed a pre-order for Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto.  The rest, I'm going to keep electronic.  Stuff I find on here, or other sites, I CCP into my Evernote.  If I really want it electronic, I can always scan it, or search for it.  Surprised to see how many of APL's recipes are out there online in some form.

I really like using Evernote and Evernote food apps.  The food app allows me to access all my Evernote recipes, and it stays open until I leave the app.  Plus with Evernote on my phone, my iPad, laptop and work computer, I always have access to my stuff.

DoubleEgger

I prefer the books. My best cookbooks are old school church/community cookbooks that were popular during the mid 1900's in the South. 

SGH

I cast my vote for real books as well. Just old and stuck I'm my ways. I don't use electronic pit controllers nor electronic books. 

bluebird66

Hardcopy

Zmokin

With oh so many people addicted to their ipods, ipads, iphones, or droid or windows equivalents, etc.  What will happen to them when the infrastructure is destroyed via man-made or mother nature made catastrophe? 

"How do I cook, if Sirius doesn't tell me what to do?"

"How do I talk to people in person, I only know how to carry-on conversations with my two thumbs?"

thegooddocta

I just built an under-cabinet mount for my iPad that has me using online recipes quite a bit. But I still love flipping through a good cookbook!

jtcBoynton

Zmokin said:

With oh so many people addicted to their ipods, ipads, iphones, or droid or windows equivalents, etc.  What will happen to them when the infrastructure is destroyed via man-made or mother nature made catastrophe? 

"How do I cook, if Sirius doesn't tell me what to do?"

"How do I talk to people in person, I only know how to carry-on conversations with my two thumbs?"

When my house is destroyed by fire or hurricane, the hard copy books will all be gone. The electronic one on the computer will also be gone, but can be replaced by the backup copy stored offsite. 

NCEggSmoker

Most of my cookbooks are physical copies. I generally buy books that I plan to read cover to cover and learn techniques from (Harold McGee, Alton Brown...etc). For the most part I use the Internet for actual recipes and like others have said here generally adapt 2 or 3 together to suit our tastes and what's in our cabinet/fridge.