Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsQuantity over Quality?
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 4, 2022
I’m usually a pretty big HBH fan, but was a bit disappointed by the latest book.
Reason 1: I actually find this cookbook to be less healthy than the others. A decent amount of it is breaded or oven fried, which is also hard to re-heat and seems to be more for a special occasion than something you’d eat every day.
Reason 2: I have both other cookbooks and like them a lot, but I’ve found that Every Day has a lot of very similar recipes to the others. These similar recipes are technically different but they’re the same concept and not unique. I’m kind of surprised that more readers haven’t mentioned it in their reviews. I listed just a few examples below:
- Dark Mocha Lava Cakes (Every Day) vs. Molten Chocolate Cakes with Whipped Vanilla Mascarpone (original)
- Sheet Pan Meatball Pitas with Garlic Fries, Tzatziki, and the Works (Every Day) vs. Gyros with Roasted Garlic Tzatziki and Feta Fries (original)
- Red Wine-Braised Short Ribs with Whipped Provolone Cauliflower (Every Day) vs. Roasted Garlic and Tomato-Braised Lamb Shanks with Parmesan Mashers (original). The ingredient list for the meats is almost identical
- Paprika-Rubbed Rotisserie Chicken (Super Simple) vs. Slow Roasted Sunday Chicken (every day)
I understand that there are only so many ways to prepare chicken, beef, etc., so it’s totally understandable that every once in a while you’ll have similar recipes, but I think the crossover here is a little too much. I notice a lot of crossover on the blog as well. I think this is largely because it’s difficult to produce so much content for the blog, as well as three cookbooks in five-ish years. This book feels rushed compared to books by other authors who spend a ton of time perfecting every single recipe as its own. I think they just need to be spread out a lot more.
