The Imported Kitchen: The Complete Takeout Kit Cookbook

By Rachael Lake — Founder of Takeout Kit (Forbes, TechCrunch, BuzzFeed)

The question I get more than any other — more than “what’s your favorite dish,” more than “where should I eat in Bangkok” — is this one:

“Can I still get the recipes?”

For six years, Takeout Kit shipped the world’s great dishes to home cooks all over the country. Tonkotsu ramen. Butter chicken. Khao soi. Paella. Birria. Boxes went out, dinners happened, and people wrote to tell me about them. Then the kits retired, and the recipes went with them.

They’re back now. All of them, in one book.

What actually made the kits work

Here is the thing nobody tells you about cooking another country’s food at home: the recipe is rarely the problem. You can find a green curry recipe anywhere, free, in about four seconds. What you cannot find — standing in an American grocery aisle at 6pm, holding your phone — is which of the eleven jars in front of you is the one a cook in Chiang Mai actually reaches for.

That gap is the whole reason Takeout Kit existed. We never just sent instructions. We sent the specific curry paste, the specific fish sauce, the specific chili. The box did the sourcing so your kitchen didn’t have to, and that is why the food tasted like the restaurant instead of like a polite imitation of it.

So when I built this book, I refused to strip that part out. Every recipe in The Imported Kitchen comes with a Stock Your Pantry panel: the exact imported brands we packed in the kits, and a line on why each one earns its place. Not “soy sauce.” The soy sauce.

What’s inside

• All 16 Takeout Kit classics — Tonkotsu Ramen, Spicy Miso Ramen, Pho, Butter Chicken, Pad Thai, Khao Soi, Spanish Paella, Sundubu Jjigae, Mapo Tofu, Ethiopian Misir Wat, Moroccan Shakshuka, German Spaetzle, Peruvian Chicken, Thai Crab Curry, Truffle Risotto and Argentine Empanadas.
• 6 new dishes I’ve picked up traveling since — Korean Bibimbap, Gado Gado, Thai Green Curry, Dal Makhani, Hungarian Goulash and Birria Tacos.
• A Stock Your Pantry panel with every single recipe — the brands, and the reason for each one.
• The Twelve Workhorses — the short list of imported staples that, once they’re on your shelf, unlock a hundred dinners beyond the ones in this book.
• 62 full-color pages. Most dishes on the table in 30–45 minutes.

Why it’s a PDF

Two reasons. It’s instant — you buy it and you can cook from it tonight, no shipping window, no waiting. And it’s alive: every time I improve a recipe or add a new one, you re-download the latest version for free, forever. There is no second edition to buy.

(A print edition is coming later this year, for the people who want something they can spill curry on. This one comes first.)

If you ever cooked with one of our boxes — this is the whole kitchen, and it’s yours. Thank you for all those dinners.

— Rachael