Michael Symon's 5 in 5: 5 Fresh Ingredients + 5 Minutes = 120 Fantastic Dinners: A Cookbook

The recipes are quick and easy. My family has enjoyed all the recipes I have made out of thus book.

I have never heard of Michael Symon before, I purchased both books in this series because it seemed well suited to someone like me. I am a graduate student on a budget. I cook most of my meals at home. I want meals that are fast, healthy and edible. Like most people in my situation: I know how to fry an egg, make/pasta and rice cook a couple of basic from scratch meals, make packaged dinner (insert box dinner kit of choice) and order take out. I purchased this book because I wanted to improve my own cooking, and it was a good time to do so. I was moving to a new apartment and needed to restock my kitchen’s pantry.The concept is that a properly stocked pantry, everything listed in the book can be made with five fresh ingredients and will cook in five minutes medium-high heat. This does not include prep time, but vast majority of prep work will not take more than ten minutes. I have spent two weeks cooking with this book and my experience is this has been mostly true. Most of the meals do in-fact cook in 5 minutes, presuming the reader follows certain practices: pre-heat pans, pasta water to boil, and use decent cookware. I highly recommend purchasing a good grill pan as the reader will find it useful for half of the recipes in the book especially if it can double as a skillet. I personally purchased a calaphon unison.Because most of the meals do cook in a few minutes the variation is limited to sandwiches, pasta and boneless meats with fruit/vegetable (bone in takes longer than five). If you have been cooking for yourself this is probably close to what you cook. What Michael Symon does is teach you how to pair the right ingredients together and shows that making these dishes entirely from scratch is easy using common ingredients. Before I purchased this book, I had never thought to pasta with a home-made sauce or my own salad dressing.Most of the ingredients used in this book are easy to find and most any exotic ingredient is usually a european vegetable or cheese. Trader Joes, Earthfare, Whole Foods, Fresh Market will probably stock anything used in this book. A good publix, Kroger, winn-dixie or wal-mart will carry most of the ingredients. Most of the ‘fresh’ ingredients the author relies on are things many cooks will keep in the kitchen such as fruits : oranges, lemons, limes, peaches and apples or refrigerated items such as milk, sour-cream, greek yogurt, eggs and bacon. The other fresh ingredient recipes are often common fresh herbs like oregano, basil, rosemary, cilantro, ginger, parsely, garlic.Most of the recipes in the book are relatively healthy, but this definitely isn’t a healthy eater’s cook book. The author calls for liberal amounts of healthy fats olive oil, unsalted butter and nuts. Most of the author’s choices of meats are leaner cuts, but excess fat is rarely trimmed away. Chicken is usually skin on, steaks are relatively lean cuts, pork is loin. Occasionally a recipe will call for high fat cuts of meat like sausage, pancetta or bacon.I think its excessive to purchase the entire recommended pantry. I did purchase it and it cost a bit over a hundred dollars it wasn’t a waste for me because I had to setup a kitchen pantry from scratch. However, a reader is better served by purchasing most of the pantry items as you go along. The only ones I’d recommend purchasing are Kosher Salt, Black Peppercorn, Olive Oil , flour all the suggested vinegars, dijon mustard and canned tomatoes. These are used in many recipes. Most of the other pantry items can be purchased as you go along.

As one of the cohosts of The Chew, Michael Symon does a regular segment called 5 in 5 where he takes 5 ingredients and is challenged to make a delicious meal in just 5 minutes. Thus the concept of this new cookbook was born.I've made a couple meals from this cookbook and while they always take longer than 5 minutes (I mean, who is lucky enough to have prep cooks to get all your mise en place ready for you?), Symon even cops to that in the book saying, "The key is to relax, have fun, and cook more. If it takes you 6, 7, or even - gasp! - 8 minutes, so be it. In the end, you will still end up with a delicious, made-from-scratch meal that costs less than fast food, tastes a million times better, and is healthier for you and your family."You'll also notice in the cookbook that sometimes recipes go beyond 5 ingredients. Again, 5 in 5 is more of a guideline than a rigid rule.The recipes in this cookbook are all mouth-watering and full of flavor. Probably my favorite dish I've made so far is the breaded pork loin with apple salad because, as with almost all of Symon's recipes, the key is to create a balance of flavors and textures. Instead of pairing the meat with a heavy, starchy root veg as most Americans tend to do, Symon always prepares his sides with something bright, acidic, and/or crunchy.The draw of 5 in 5 is certainly the idea of making dinner with little time and few ingredients, but Symon has gone beyond making dinner work, he also makes it delicious.

It was funny because this book came on as a recommended book after I bought America's Test Kitchen's 5 Ingredient book. When I saw this I immediately recognized Chef Simon from Top Chef Master's and Iron Chef America and really liked his approach so I bought and downloaded...gotta love the Kindle app and IPads. The intro says that this book stems from his work on The Chew (never saw it) when he is challenged to make quick and easy good food. Well, this book is chock full of exactly that and I especially like how his overall approach to cooking is applied in this way. He also says these are many of his normal "go to's" at his own house so you know these are good. Most important, these are foods that my husband and two tween boys will love too. Ooh, and just got my tickets for SOBE Food and Wine Festival and he is one of the featured chefs (I will have to get the hard copy too so I can get it signed .. This cookbook will definitely be going on my favorite cookbook shelves for years to come. .BTW, when I finally got to the ATK 5 Ingredient Book, it did not compare to Symon's and I typically love all their books. Looks good but many are complex and have ingredients that i would not typically have on hand and most look anything but fast and easy. Well, on to making more recipes from this book...

Symon’s 5 in 5 books are down to earth and his recipes never get intimidating! Being and living in the same city (Cleveland) I happen to have met Symon many times over the years! He’s a first class person and an awesome chef!!! A great addition to any cook’s library

Love this book. Very easy to follow with clear instructions and pictures to boot! I have made several recipes and they have turned out really good.

Love this cookbook. I have been trying out the recipes. They are easy to follow and delicious.

Highly recommend this book. First glance thru, I already have 25 recipes I am looking forward to trying. Some are everyday type recipes and others are really unique & classy! I'm thoroughly looking forward to the ease of the delicious recipes during the week, as after a day of work I don't have a lot of energy to cook! These recipes make it so easy, fast, fresh, and HOMEMADE healthy!

I love Michael Symon but this book is more for beginner cooks or people that don't know the basics of putting a simple meal together. I love the idea of the book but found the recipes to be a bit too basic. May be a good gift for a college student just starting to live on their own.

I liked Michael Symon already from the Food Network. On first view there looks like quite a few recipes that I would like to try.