Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Partners with Culinate to Launch How to Cook Everything® Cooking Basics App for iPad®


When people want to cook wonderful yet unpretentious meals, they turn to Mark Bittman, author of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s best-selling How to Cook Everything®  series.  Now they can learn the Cooking Basics and more in an exciting new app that brings a cooking school into the kitchen; it’s like having Mark Bittman standing right there.  

Much more than just a cookbook on the iPad® or a collection of recipes, the app allows people to learn as they go with innovative navigation tools that turn each recipe into a fun, interactive lesson. Users will master both basic techniques like chopping and more advanced skills like building flavor. After spending time with the app, “you will be cooking great food for life,” as Mark says in the introductory video.

Simple, beautiful, and intuitive, Cooking Basics (www.CookingBasicsApp.com) is the perfect app for those who want to cook but feel intimidated, as well as those who want to refine their skills, build confidence, and expand their repertoire. With recipe features like built-in timers, bookmarks, pull-up photo demonstrations, and customizable shopping lists, even beginner cooks will feel guided every step of the way. For the ultimate learning experience, users can guide themselves through such classes as “Cooking in a Nutshell” and “Love Your Skillet,” each introduced with a short video. 

The result is a fun and totally engrossing tutorial, making cooking simple and enjoyable, the way Mark always says it should be. 

With Mark Bittman’s no-nonsense, straightforward approach, Cooking Basics features:

• Practical advice for setting up a pantry and stocking kitchen equipment.
• A clear overview of basic preparation and cooking techniques.
• Instant access to Basics topics that simplify broad subjects like meat, seafood, poultry, vegetables, grains, beans, eggs, and other main ingredients.
• An index of Skills—hundreds of photo demonstrations of core techniques like “Preparing Chiles,” “Grinding Meat,” and “Crimping the Pie Shut.” 
Self-directed classes—annotated, recipe-driven lessons introduced with videos by Mark—designed to teach basic techniques in a fun way so you can eat while you learn.
• The ability to make your own recipe notes and take and add photos of what you cook.
• A cooking-friendly, one-touch Constant On setting to prevent the screen from dimming.
Built-in timers to keep you on track and recipe bookmarks so you can find your place.
• A Favorites folder to store recipes; and customizable Shopping Lists to organize groceries. 
• Seamless connections—Beyond the Basics—recommend and link to related recipes in other How to Cook Everything apps.
• A fully downloadable app (like the entire How to Cook Everything family) to use anywhere, anytime, online or offline. 

Better than anyone, Mark Bittman teaches cooking in a casual, unfussy way that makes meals as enjoyable to prepare as they are to eat. With lots of intuitive app-only features, Cooking Basics (www.CookingBasicsApp.com) is the next best thing to having Mark Bittman next to you at the stove.

Cooking Basics is available now from the App Store, priced $7.99.


About Mark Bittman 
Mark Bittman is one of America’s best-known and most widely respected food writers. He covers food policy, cooking, and eating as an Opinion columnist and blogger for the New York Times and the paper’s Sunday Magazine. He produced “The Minimalist” column for 13 years and has starred in several popular Public Television cooking series. Now a frequent public speaker, he appears regularly on the Today Show and is a guest on a wide range of television and radio shows. Bittman has authored more than a dozen cookbooks, including How to Cook Everything® The Basics, How to Cook Everything®, How to Cook Everything® Vegetarian (all available as apps), Food Matters and the Food Matters Cookbook, and the new VB6™: Eat Vegan Before 6:00. For more information, go to markbittman.com.

About Culinate
Publisher of the online food site Culinate.com, Culinate also works with publishers, authors, and cooks to digitally enhance recipes and cookbook content for mobile devices and the web. Founded in 2005, Culinate is based in Portland, Oregon. 

About Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade Publishing
For nearly two centuries, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Trade division has published some of the world’s most renowned novels, non-fiction, children’s books and reference works in hardcover, trade paperback, and eBook formats.  Its distinguished author list includes eight Nobel Prize winners, forty-seven Pulitzer Prize winners, thirteen National Book Award winners, and more than one hundred Caldecott, Newbery, Printz, and Sibert Medal and Honor recipients. HMH publishes such distinguished authors as Philip Roth, Temple Grandin, Tim O'Brien, and Umberto Eco, and a celebrated roster of children’s authors and illustrators including Lois Lowry, Chris Van Allsburg and David Wiesner.  HMH is also home to The Best American series®; The American Heritage® and Webster’s New World™ dictionaries; Betty Crocker®, Better Homes and Gardens®, How to Cook Everything®, The Gourmet Cookbook, and other leading culinary properties; the Peterson Field Guides®; CliffsNotes; books by J.R.R. Tolkien; and many iconic children’s books and characters including Curious George®, The Little Prince and The Polar Express. For more information, visit www.hmhco.com