Mark Bittman Profile

About me

I'm not a chef, and I never have been. And though I've cooked with some of the best-known chefs in the world, I've never had formal training, and I've never worked in a restaurant. None of which has gotten in the way of my mission to get people cooking simply, comfortably, and well.
I've been an avid home cook since 1968, a journalist for nearly as long (longer if you count my high school yearbook!) and a professional food writer since 1980. In 1987 I became the senior writer (later editor) of Cook's (the predecessor of Cook's Illustrated), and in 1990 I began writing for The New York Times. Within the next few years I'd written How to Cook Everything and begun to write my weekly column, "The Minimalist."
Since then the books have come steadily, and How to Cook Everything has been completely revised for its tenth birthday. The companion volume, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian (inspired by my realization that the world will inevitably move in the lessmeatarian direction, and why not?), led me to write the just-published (and happily well-received) Food Matters, a look at the links among eating too much meat, obesity, global warming, and other nasty features of modern life. (It has good recipes, too.)
I'm not only in print: We've been making weekly videos of "The Minimalist" for a few years now, you can catch me on the Today Show every couple of weeks, and I hosted a public television series based on How to Cook Everything and another of my bigger books, The Best Recipes in the World. This past year I traveled to Spain with a couple of well-known cronies and taped Spain: On the Road Again, another series for public television.