I like to think I can make most things without looking up a recipe. I can’t. More than a few first attempts end up in the garbage or down the drain. I don’t think it’s a waste though whenever you try something new and learn from it one way or another. Cooking’s an art, right? Mistakes are meant to be made.

I tried to make caramel sauce with what I had on hand(butter and 1%). That was a mistake. I didn’t really know what I was doing but I figured Ina Garten did and I tried again with her recipe which called for heavy cream and just a few other ingredients.

I’m sure Ina used pure Costa Rican sugar, organic grass-fed cream and homemade Madagascar vanilla bean extract—none of which I had on hand—but this came out pretty good even with store brand ingredients. It didn’t have as thick a body as store-bought caramel sauce because it doesn’t have any thickeners or stabilizers, but it tastes very simple and fresh.

I added a 1/4 teaspoon of sea salt after it had cooled which made the flavor pop a lot more. Caramel sauce should always be a little salty so you can taste how sweet it really is. Besides that I followed Ina’s original recipe. Oh and when she says “a warm chestnut brown” she just means a light brown for all of us who haven’t toasted fresh chestnuts over a log fire in Vermont. Silly Ina.

Here’s an Instagram video of the different stages:

This week #confessyourunpopularopinion was trending on Twitter and here’s mine: On the whole, I hate cookbooks.

For starters they’re clumsier and more limited than looking up recipes online, but that isn’t the real problem. What’s worse is that most don’t actually teach you how to cook. If a cookbook just gives you a long ingredient list followed by an equally long process of steps that keep your nose buried in the book, it’s no good. That’s because you aren’t actually learning how to cook; you’re learning how to follow directions.

A good cookbook shouldn’t just tell you what to make, but also how to make it and why to make it that way. If you start understanding how different ingredients work together in recipes and why to treat them how you do, you can learn to cook just about anything without ever picking up a book over time.

So while I said, “I hate cookbooks,” there are a few I’ve read and swear by that do things the right way. Here are a few of my favorites.

How To Boil Water is the first cookbook I can remember buying. If you were starting your freshman year of college, this would be Cooking 101. The recipes this book gives are more like tests to make sure you’re reading the words in between and understand  your way around a fully stocked kitchen. It’s a great introduction.

If How To Boil Water is Cooking 101, Cooking For Geeks is the senior honors seminar. It teaches you what to do in the kitchen and explains everything scientifically. There are plenty of recipes but the book’s more about what makes a mousse rather than how to make a mousse so you can go on and feel comfortable creating any recipe you can dream up. It’s a lengthy read, though’; this one’s definitely not for the faint of heart.

Flour Too is a recent favorite. It’s more like your standard cookbook with long ingredient lists and instructions but it does it the right way. In the front you’ll find a lengthy section breaking down cooking vocabulary and ingredients with descriptions and reasons for their use. Having something like that in any cookbook is a great step to learning the hows and whys of the recipes.

So those are my favorites. If you’re interested in cooking facts, techniques, and tips, be sure to follow @Kitchen 101 on Twitter for some 140-character lessons from Russell and myself.