101 Asian Dishes You Need to Cook Before You Die: Discover a New World of Flavors in Authentic Recipes

*I've updated my review since I originally published it. I first wrote the review 3 days after I received the book and had only made a few recipes. Now I've cooked my way 1/3 of the way through! My glowing 5-star review remains the same.* I’m a major Asian food snob (or at least I like to think I am) – I used to live in South Korea and spent a year travelling Asia. I also own so many cookbooks that I have to hide Amazon packages from my boyfriend so he won’t see I bought another cookbook. :) I pre-ordered this book because I just love Jet Tila! I watch him on Cutthroat Kitchen, I follow him on Instagram, and I watch his AWESOME Facebook Live cooking demos. This book basically covers most of Asia (Thai food, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, India, etc) – and Jet is one of the few chefs I trust to be able to pull off a whole continent. I did not need another cookbook (especially Asian food.. I own every Korean cookbook written in the last 15 years & about 25 other Asian cookbooks..), but this book is just stellar & we’ve had Jet’s recipes for dinner 3 nights in a row now! The typical cookbook has only a couple recipes that sound good & I may make 1 or 2 things out of the entire book. Looking through this book, EVERY SINGLE recipe sounds delicious! “Oh, I should make that! Oh, I bet we have the ingredients for that. Ohhh, maybe I’ll make that! Oh, that looks good!!” I’ve read the book cover-to-cover, and I just love Jet’s comments and pointers on each recipe & the abundance of pictures. So far, I’ve made Korean spicy grilled chicken, Pad Thai, and panang chicken curry. All 3 recipes turned out spectacularly! The Korean chicken was perfectly balanced sweet & spicy, just as I remember from Korea. I’ve made pad thai twice in the past, and it’s SUCH a hassle & mine always has turned out a little mushy and oddly thick. This recipe is written in a far more approachable way vs. the unnecessarily complicated recipes I’ve attempted to follow in the past. Jet’s tips on when you the noodles are done with their soak, when they’re done being stir-fried, and when you add the sauce to finish were all key for making the perfect dish. I was so impressed! Neat to read Jet’s family was one of the first to bring Pad Thai to America 40 years ago. I received this book in the mail on a work day, so I’m looking forward grocery shopping this weekend to stock my pantry, so I can make things other than just the chicken recipes. I love that there are no wacky, impossible-to-find ingredients in this book. No special trips to Asia required to find some sauce they only make it a little village in the middle of nowhere.. I live in the boonies of Northern California & every ingredient is wildly available in our grocery store or the little Asian market. I’m obsessed with Thai sticky rice, so I’m excited about the straight-forward instructions on how to make it! I’ve looked online in the past & it always seemed too complicated. Can’t wait to make the sticky rice & then to Jet’s mango sticky rice. YUM. The coconut chicken soup sounds delicious, Jet’s famous drunken noodles, as well as miso roasted cod – I always buy cod and never know what to do with it. I could go on & on about which recipes I'm excited to make, but then I will have listed everything in the book... This is a very non-intimidating, yet wonderfully authentic cookbook everyone should own. I’m going to see how many nights in a row I can make dinner out of this book, but I don’t think I’ll have a problem trying every recipe. 3 nights down, maybe 60 more to go! Go buy this book, it’s awesome!

I bought this after watching Jet Tila do one of these recipes on TV. Though he did change it from what is shown here. In the book it says to use three pound of shrimp in his Kung Pao shrimp. On tv he used one pound. One is right. With 21-25 size shrimp, three lbs would be almost 70 big shrimp!

For the last few weeks, anytime I would walk in to my kitchen to make dinner, I always felt like I was being watched. Then I noticed Chef Tila giving me the evil eye from the cover of his new cookbook. I'd say, ‘not today Chef’ as I'd sheepishly grab hamburgers to grill instead. Then one day I finally said enough….it's time to put this book to good use. So I flipped through the pages and pages of mouth watering recipes looking for the one I wanted to start with. Something simple, that I had most of the ingredients for, or could easily get from my local mega mart. I finally landed on something called Korean Grilled Spicy Chicken, I looked over the recipe, and all I needed was chicken and something called gochujang, so of to the store I went. Twenty minutes later I returned with two pounds of chicken thighs, and a bottle of this gochujang stuff. The marinade was simple and easy to make, but boy does it pack in the flavor! It's sweet and savory and that gochujang stuff packs in some nice heat! In went the chicken with the marinade and in to the fridge. I'll come back for you soon. Four hours later, in to the oven, thirty minutes after that, on to the grill for a quick finish. Very simple, of course I couldn't just eat the chicken all by itself (well I could but my mom convinced me I always needed a side) so out comes the jasmine rice! Served over a streaming bed of jasmine rice, this Korean spicy grilled chicken was very satisfying. From the sweetness of the brown sugar, to the saltiness of the soy, and the heat from the gochujang this meal was firing on all cylinders. An excellent and simple way to dive in to Chef Tila’s book, 101 Asian Dishes You Need To Cook Before You Die….And now I've only got 100 left!

What I like is that the recipes are clearly explained, I appreciate the photos and they are simple to make. As long as you have a lot of the basics like my specialized soy sauces fish sauce oyster sauce rice vinegar and a few other items you can make most of the dishes in this cookbook! My favorite recipe of his is not in here so I wrote it down and stuck it in the book which is the Hong Kong styled fried noodle chow mein. And I got this on sale recommended it to friends that have also purchased it. I made the Mongolian beef which is how I rate a Chinese restaurant. This was a different type of sauce, I believe the local ones maybe is a little bit thinner and maybe add sugar to the sauce? But this was very savory and yummy. I've marked all the pages of what I for sure want to make and it's probably 3/4 of the book! Great book to have on hand if you like Chinese food!

His sauces are delicious, the ingredients readily available, and his instructions simple to follow with tips along the way. This large book includes photos and descriptions of spices used in several Asian countries. The first three dishes I made were as good as the local restaurant, including General Tso's chicken, Mongolian Beef, and Kung Pao chicken. Highly recommend!

I enjoy Asian food, and have cooked various dishes over the years, but I always felt most of what I made was missing something. It never tasted quite "right"... the seasoning, the sauce. Good enough for myself on a weeknight, but I'd never serve it to company. This cookbook has changed that. My family has made several recipes from this book, but my favorites are the "Mongolian Beef" and "My Famous Drunken Noodles". Both turned out amazing the first time, and we have made them several times since. In both of these recipes, for my tastes, the sauces are what distinguish these dishes. The Mongolian Beef recipe involves very simple ingredients (all of which I can purchase from my local Kroger). The drunken noodles call for fresh rice noodles and Thai basil, which are bit tougher to find but still available locally. So many cookbooks I own call for impossible-to-find/expensive ingredients, or prep time I don't always have. We haven't made everything in this book, but at least we know there is a great range for all skills and budgets (mine is moderate/inexpensive). This book has so much great information, and everything is easy for me to understand. More importantly, the food we've cooked has been incredible. If all I ever make from this book is the Mongolian Beef recipe, it was well-worth every penny. I would highly recommend this book to anyone!

The perfect book for Asian cooking! Covers most eastern cultures.

MUST HAVE COOKBOOK! I didn't even know who Jet Tila was, i was scrolling thru amazon for a good cookbook. When i seen his title "101 Asian Dishes You Need to Cook before you Die" I stopped and read a little about it, that totally caught my attention cause I usually tell my friends you need to try this before you die LOL so I had a feeling his recipes had to be good with that kind of statement. I own a lot of Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Taiwanese cookbooks.. All of my cookbook collection has nothing on this Jet Tila's cookbook. For example all the cookbooks I have I only want to make maybe a handful of the recipes in the cookbook, and from Jet Tilas cookbook I want to make all 101 recipes! I've never felt that way about any cookbook. So far I've owned it for a week, ive read it front to back, I learned the differences in Thai Sriracha and I finally understand that when cooking Thai food when it calls for "Soy Sauce" I need to use "Thai Soy Sauce" aka Golden Mountain Sauce or Maggi not Kikoman soy sauce thats only for Japanese dishes.. So far i have made two of his recipes, Pineapple fried rice and the Drunken Noodles. I had most of the seasonings on hand, just needed to buy a few things, fresh noodles and for the first time ive purchased Chinese sausage for the rice recipe and its delicious. As I was prepping and cooking the smell throughout the house felt like i was at a Thai restaurant. Smelled so good and I got compliments from my girlfriend and mom that it smelled amazing with the garlic, Thai chile's, onions etc.. I sampled the rice and the noodles while cooking and I honestlyhave never been so excited before the taste of the food was perfect. The recipe is 100% on point and taste like an experienced Thai Chef made it but it was me in the kitchen following Jet Tilas recipe step by step. Im so thankful and so happy to have this cookbook, I honestly dont even care about any of my other cookbooks. This is my go to for the next 99 recipes Im seriously going to make all of them. I stocked my spice pantry up for each recipe. Jet Tila I LOVE YOU! I wish I could quit work and be in my kitchen all day making all his recipes. Tonight im trying the Char Sui recipe. :) Also just a tip for the Thai Sriracha sauce I personally asked Jet Tila what brand to buy and he said Shark Brand. I went to my local Asian market which mostly sells Vietnamese stuff but to my surprise they had tons of Thai products and they had Thai Sriracha Shark Brand.

Very good sauces throughout the dishes!!! Very well written, especially the order of ingredients and the procedure. A great chef who can simplify amazing recipes in his manner of writing them, so that they can be easily performed. Great for practical use. I have already cooked some recipes, they came out perfect. The only drawback for me, which is not a drawback anyway, is that the cover being very thin paperback, gets destroyed very easily, personally if I had the choice, I wouldn't mind as a customer to pay a little extra on the overall price of the book in order to have a hardcover edition because as I would use this a lot, I would like to maintain this book in good condition as much as possible. Thank you for this amazing book.

Tutte le ricette sono molto semplici e ben spiegate. Tantissime foto aiutano a creare piatti veramente fantastici! Non c'è una ricetta che non mi piaccia, e gli ingredienti sono tutti reperibili o in supermercato o nei negozietti di prodotti asiatici. Consigliato!

Love Jet Tila and all of the dishes he creates. It’s a no fuss cookbook which will surely become a household favourite. He covers it all.

This is my go to book for Asian food. Easy and very tasty recipes. Everything I have tried was excellent. Definitely recommend.

Buen contenido de variadas recetas asiáticas. Con este libro es suficiente para disfrutar en casa del gusto por restaurantes de Asia. Doy 4 estrellas porque la letra de las instrucciones de cada receta debería ser más grande y hay sitio para ello. El problema del tamaño de la letra es común en casi todos los libros de cocina y esto no facilita el seguimiento de la receta. Hay veces que no compro libros por esta razón. También en todos los libros deberían poner reproducciones del índice y de algunas páginas, esto animaría a comprar más libros online.