Unelaborated Products Cookbook Review

Unelaborated Products: Definition and Classification

Is with great excitement that we are back with the newest cookbook from elBullifoundation - Unelaborated Products.

This fascinating and encyclopedic volume, compiled by the globally influential chef, Ferran Adrià’s elBullifoundation, is a deep dive into unprocessed and raw culinary ingredients and explores why identifying, classifying, and categorizing food is essential to refining every chef’s culinary skills.

Drawing on disciplines such as biology, botany, zoology, and chemistry, and guided by the unique ‘Sapiens’ methodology, which employs a holistic, research-based approach, it is packed with compelling infographics, diagrams, and illustrations that make this fascinating subject easy to comprehend for culinary professionals and enthusiasts. Following in the footsteps of What is Cooking and The Origins of Cooking, this valuable reference will redefine the way we look at what we eat.

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The Foundation of All Cuisine

Unelaborated Products is the latest title from global culinary authority and legendary former head chef of elBulli, Ferran Adrià. This rigorous encyclopedic volume,  is a deep dive into the unelaborated – meaning unprocessed and uncooked – culinary products that form the foundation of all cuisine.

Unelaborated Products is the first-ever survey of the ingredients found in nature that are used as the building blocks of all cuisine, revealing the research and working method of the legendary elBulli restaurant, where creativity was applied to the preparation, transformation and combination of produce following the study of each ingredient.

In this book, Ferran Adrià’s elBullifoundation did not aim to cover everything there is to know about products but to condense the key concepts to offer basic knowledge of products and impart it in an understandable, orderly, and engaging way. This book came about as a result of the research and analysis conducted in 2012 and 2013 by Oriol Castro, Eduard Xatruch, and Mateu Casañas, chefs at elBullirestaurante during its last years.

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Redefining Food

Unelaborated Products redefine the way we look at - and how we prepare - what we eat. What is the difference between a plant and a herb? Is rice a cereal or a seed? Are all cereals seeds? What is a fresh product, and what is a raw one? All these questions are addressed and more in this book.

Like in What is Cooking and The Origins of Cooking, all the information in this volume is very well organized. The 4 chapters: ‘Questions about unelaborated products’, ‘Understanding products according to classifications’, ‘Product classifications and categories’ and ‘Applying the classifications’, give structure to the more than 500 pages, making this book easy to navigate.

Although we are used to Ferran Adrià’s elBullifoundation books, we were still surprised by the quality and quantity of information present in this last volume. Thanks to its easy reading, compelling infographics, diagrams, and illustrations, and countless photographs, Unelaborated Products is an addictive encyclopedia for anyone interested to know more about the food we eat.

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Final Thoughts

Like its predecessors, Unelaborated Products is a must-have for professional chefs and cooks, and particularly in this volume, for those fascinated by the complexity of the food we eat, ingredients, and their combinations. For us, this volume is the perfect addition to Phaidon’s Ferran Adrià library alongside Coffee Sapiens, What is Cooking, and Origins of Cooking.