- Hardcover: 575 pages
- Publisher: Hushion House (January 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0936184388
- ISBN-13: 978-0936184388
- Product Dimensions: 32.8 x 21.8 x 3.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 1.6 Kg
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (193 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #374,706 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"Consider this a companion to 'The Joy of Cooking,' with recipes that run from the basic to creatively unusual. Sidebars on storage and equipment, step-by-step illustrations on more difficult techniques and taste-test results done in the Cook's Illustrated kitchen--it's all here. The information is exact and even scientific, but reader-friendly. For those who want good recipes that work and also want to expand their knowledge of how and why things work, this is a fascinating book. (The Black and White Chocolate Chip Cookies with Pecans tested in The Times kitchen may actually be the best chocolate-chip cookies ever.)" -- The Seattle Times, December 8, 1999
"The folks at Cook's Illustrated magazine have compiled a fine collection of recipes that have been tested not once, not twice, but many more times, to find the absolutely best version....This is a great choice for cooks who want to know the 'whys' of cooking: why you should roast beef at a low temperature, why you should use high heat for eggs, and so forth." -- The New York Daily News, December 8, 1999
"This gastronomic classic belongs on every serious cook's shelf." -- The Christian Science Monitor, December 8, 1999
"This is the perfectionist's 'Joy of Cooking.'" -- The Amherst Bulletin, November 26, 1999
"[T]he more than 700 recipes compiled within The Best Recipe represent a range of culinary strains from a Southern Baked Country Ham to Italian Shrimp Scampi to a Middle Eastern Tabbouleh and French inspired Chilled Lemon Souffle. You'll find basic staples as well as more esoteric ones, dishes that regardless of their pedigree represent how we eat today or better yet the foods we crave these days. The Best Recipe is without question one of the best cookery books published this year and is the book I'll be giving to my foodie friends this holiday season." -- The Houston Chronicle, November 2, 1999
"The folks at Cook's Illustrated magazine have compiled a fine collection of recipes that have been tested not once, not twice, but many more times, to find the absolutely best version....This is a great choice for cooks who want to know the 'whys' of cooking: why you should roast beef at a low temperature, why you should use high heat for eggs, and so forth." -- The New York Daily News, December 8, 1999
"This gastronomic classic belongs on every serious cook's shelf." -- The Christian Science Monitor, December 8, 1999
"This is the perfectionist's 'Joy of Cooking.'" -- The Amherst Bulletin, November 26, 1999
"[T]he more than 700 recipes compiled within The Best Recipe represent a range of culinary strains from a Southern Baked Country Ham to Italian Shrimp Scampi to a Middle Eastern Tabbouleh and French inspired Chilled Lemon Souffle. You'll find basic staples as well as more esoteric ones, dishes that regardless of their pedigree represent how we eat today or better yet the foods we crave these days. The Best Recipe is without question one of the best cookery books published this year and is the book I'll be giving to my foodie friends this holiday season." -- The Houston Chronicle, November 2, 1999
Book Description
Founded in 1980, Cook's Illustrated (formerly Cook's Magazine) has emerged as "America's Test Kitchen," renowned for its near-obsessive dedication to finding the best methods of American home cooking. Over the years, we've tested 80 recipes for chocolate chip cookies, more than 70 recipes for gumbo, 40 versions of the peanut butter cookie, and more than 20 versions of such simple recipes as coleslaw, roast chicken, and hash brown potatoes. The Best Recipe is a collection of the editors' picks from the pages of Cook's Illustrated. The recipes have been edited, organized, and annotated with in-depth descriptions of how we developed the "best" recipe. And they appear alongside dozens of equipment ratings and taste tests of supermarket foods, as well as more than 200 illustrations demonstrating the most efficient food preparation methods.
In The Best Recipe, we invite you into our test kitchen, where you will stand at our elbow as we try to develop the best macaroni and cheese or the best split pea soup. You'll discover how to make a foolproof yellow cake, a perfectly cooked prime rib roast, and homemade bread in under two hours. You'll find out how to solve the problem of watery coleslaw, overcooked turkey breast, acidic salad dressing, dull tomato sauce, sticky white rice, dry turkey burgers, tough scrambled eggs, and sunken birthday cakes. You will also find the secret to bakery-style high-rise muffins and the way to make that restaurant favorite, warm, fallen chocolate cake, at home, with only a few minutes of preparation.
The Best Recipe also gives you useful tips on purchasing cookware (based on extensive test kitchen evaluations), including pie plates, food processors, standing mixers, chef's knives, skillets, vegetable peelers, and Dutch ovens. We also explain the science of cooking (how to cream butter and why, how baking powder works, the difference between semisweet and bittersweet chocolate) and offer tips on purchasing canned chicken stock, canned tomatoes, flour, butter, and dried pasta.
The editors of Cook's Illustrated have performed thousands of hours of kitchen testing to bring you a cookbook that not only provides the best recipes but also tells you how they came to be that way. Let The Best Recipe become your one-stop cooking school and your favorite kitchen reference.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't stir the risotto?,
By
This review is from: The Best Recipe (Hardcover)
The Best Recipe offers new insights to common dishes. The emphasis is on technique as much as ingredients. Ever wondered how to get crispy skin on your roast chicken? Rub the skin once with butter and never, ever baste. How do you make the ultimate Bolognese sauce? Two reductions of milk and wine followed by long, slow cooking. How do you get extra-tender ribs? Wrap them in tin-foil and let them rest in a paper bag for a full hour after cooking. This practical guide to cooking tries to debunk common myths and reduce work in the kitchen, and usually succeeds. The recipes are simple where they can be and complex only where they need to be. The recipe for risotto is pure heresy: add most of the liquid at once, and stir only a little at the end. I've tried the traditional method (a little liquid at a time, constant stirring) and The Best Recipe method, and there's not much difference. Still, I enjoy stirring my risottos and think they're just a little creamier because of the extra effort. But the point of this book isn't to make cooking easier. The only shortcuts offered are those that don't reduce the quality of the final product. The recipe for chili asks you to roast your own chilies and grind your own chili powder. Why? Chili made with homemade chili powder is "fuller and warmer" than chili made with commercial chili powder. And making your own chili powder is fun, provided you have a respirator handy. The recipes here are standard classics. You won't find esoteric dishes or beautiful photos showing off elaborate presentations. What you will find is an instruction manual for making better food. It's the science of getting food right that counts here. If you enjoy cooking but sometimes find yourself wondering why you're endlessly stirring the risotto, get this book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Warning! Warning!,
This review is from: The Best Recipe (Hardcover)
This book has a tendency to throw out tradition for "revisionist" recipes. For example, their lasagne doesn't include ricotta/cottage cheese because it doesn't "look right." As a result, it doesn't "TASTE right"! Sacrificing taste for looks isn't the good sign of a cookbook to me. (Presentation doesn't hurt, but, please, get your priorities straight!). The Beef Stew has a wine & chicken broth-based sauce (like a good portion of the recipes) instead of the more traditional & hearty, gravy-like sauce. The meatloaf is more traditional, but it's not above average. As far as the clam chowder, I've had better with Campbell's Home Cooking canned chowder. It doesn't have much of a clam taste--the potatoes & bacon come through with stronger flavor. It's not that the recipes are bad, I mean, I thought the Beef Goulash was great, but they're not the "best recipes", which in my opinion would have the best tasting traditional recipes. The book also mentions how they tried 70 recipes for gumbo on the inside sleeve, but, guess what?-- no recipe for gumbo in the book! On the plus side, this book is fascinating for it's explanations of how & why things work the way they do when cooking. Overall, this is just another cookbook with a gimmick to get you to buy it, by saying they've tried 70 times to "get it right." But in the end, they don't "get it right." Like I said before, the recipes aren't bad, but what's lasagne without ricotta cheese?
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Seminal Work,
By
This review is from: The Best Recipe (Hardcover)
If ever there was a book that deserved six stars, this is the one. "The Best Recipe" is for people who love cooking enough to want to do it well. Readers of "Cooks Illustrated" magazine will recognize the method. Each recipe is the result of an extensive comparison of various versions, an investigation into the component ingredients to determine those most fundamental to the final result, and the careful assembly of a final version that is optimized for both flavor and ease of preparation. Along the way lessons are learned (and myths dispelled) about food science, cooking tools, techniques, and ingredients. Be advised, however, that the book is directed at the middle American palate. Though there are versions of more exotic dishes, they have been 'Americanized' to take advantage of ingredients most likely to be found at the local supermarket. An occasional trip to the spice boutique might be desired, but it won't be required. Nor will the stocking of 17 different types of flour or any other staple. The editors frequently compare products and end up recommending one that has been on the shelf, right next to the one you've been using for a long time. I really can offer only one criticism, but it's an important one -- flour measures are expressed in terms of volume, not weight. There is a big difference between one person's version of a cup of flour and another's, but an ounce is an ounce in anybody's hands. There really is no excuse for a book that attempts to find the best way to do things not to express flour in ounces or grams. Admittedly, there are casual text references to their version of a cup of bread flour being "about" 130 grams and a cup of cake flour being "about" three ounces. But, if these are the true equivalents used throughout the book, they are much less than the values quoted by others, and the difference would greatly affect the outcome of a recipe.
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