Customer Reviews

The Cook's Bible: The Best of American Home Cooking

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a book that just doesn't deliver. It reads well and gives the impression that everything will work - well everything doesn't. Things that do work are mediocre and things that don't work, really don't work, just try the pie crust and you'll see what I mean. A good concept, interesting to read, just don't cook from it.

I have the version of "The Cook's Bible" that came as one book together with "The Dessert Bible." If you are at all familiar with Cook's Illustrated Magazine, the format and style will be familiar to you. As for recipes, you will find it all in here -- product tests, exhaustively researched recipes for the food your mom and grandma used to make, etc. Some of the product testing is a little dated, but frankly, I don't base my purchases on Christopher Kimball's opinions anyway. I rely on an amalgam of information from many different sources to determine the best kitchen equipment, ingredients etc.

It's a great kitchen resource, but be warned -- if you own this, there's no need for you to buy "The Best Recipe," "The America's Test Kitchen Cookbook," or basically anything else Cook's Illustrated puts out, because the recipes are the same. This book is basically an expanded version of the non-dessert recipes in "The Best Recipe," which I also own. Cook's Illustrated is famous for recycling their recipes over and over and just putting new titles and covers on the cookbooks. If you buy this, don't buy another CI book until you're absolutely positive (through side-by-side comparison) that you need both.

The only other criticism I have of this book -- and all the Cook's Illustrated books, really -- is there's not a lot of diversity of cuisines involved. The magazine and cookbooks stick to tried-and-true staples of American (actually Northeastern American) food, and occasionally step a just a little over into ethnic cuisine. But if you're looking for explosive new tastes, interesting fusions of different cuisines, daring flavor combinations, new twists on old standards etc., these are not the cookbooks you're looking for. This would be a great gift for nervous new cook who's interested in learning the fundamentals and needs the reassurance of extensively tested recipes, but there's not a lot of excitement or intrigue here for a cook who's more or less mastered the basics of American cuisine and is now branching out into cooking the food of other parts of the world. A very nice basic "resource" cookbook to have, but definitely not the be-all end-all "bible" of cooking Kimball purports it to be.

... If you suscribe to either Cook's Illustrated magazine or receive the hardbound annual editions, you may want to think twice about buying this book.
I couldn't pass up the combined Cook's Bible and Dessert Bible at Sam's Club today (which, I might add, doesn't accept book returns). When I arrived home and began to peruse my purchase I realized that I had many similar articles in hardbound Cook's annuals, sitting on my kitchen bookshelf. Fortunately, I only spent [money] for the three inch thick, hardback tome (Sam's Club Members, alert!).
It may sit under a bed until next Christmas and transform itself into the perfect gift for a culinarily-challenged family member.
I must also concur with Norman OK's assesment of dated comments and advice. Frankly, I've never found Christopher Kimball dull. With so much haphazard cookbook writing and editing out there, I appreciate his painstaking prose. No, he's not Jamie Oliver, but not all of us like the off-the-cuff approach.
If one is looking for a good culinary textbook, instead of a recipe book, this is certainly a strong contender.

Subtitled "The Best of American Home Cooking", this volume presents a series of master recipes within the context of recipe analysis, equipment recommendations and illustrated techniques. Chris Kimball & Co. define what they consider the perfect dish, talk to experts, test dozens of recipe variations and then report back. Like a Consumer Reports for cooking, they name names and tell you what brand or supplier of ingredients and utensils is superior -- and why. And like Harold McGee's classic 'On Food and Cooking', they explain the history, the chemistry, the physics .... whatever interesting facts help explain what goes on in your kitchen. It really enables you to experiment more intelligently. One caveat: if you are a curious cook, give yourself some extra time to read the always informative and entertaining chapters leading up to the recipes.

I own about 60 food and cookbooks. Many are useful for a few recipes and a few are regularly useful, but I would rank The Cook's Bible as one of the top three I own. Recipes are consistently, and authoritatively, first rate -- and delicious.

Subjects include equipment for the kitchen, using a microwave oven, how to use knives, potatoes, steaming vegetables, roasting vegetables, how to build a salad, dried beans, shellfish, pasta, fish and shellfish, frying or roasting a chicken, turkey, stews, stocks and sauces, barbecue, pizza, stir-fry, yeast breads, eggs, cakes, pies, cookies, brownies, souffle, and baked and poached fruits.

Line illustrations and charts augment the text, and there is a comprehensive index.

Highest recommendation for curious cooks.

I'm an experienced cook, but still learned a thing or 3 when I read this book. While Christopher Kimball's food preferences don't always match my own (taste is subjective & personal; no one can come up with THE perfect recipe for everything, because there's bound to be at least one person that won't like it), I enjoy reading about his experiments in the kitchen--what worked & what didn't. Of particular interest to me was the bread section. It was indeed a revelation, for example, to read that yeast doesn't have to be proofed. This information alone, IMO, was worth the price I paid for the book.

Having been cooking simple and complex meals for some years now, reading a wide range of cookbooks both anthologized and specialized, and learning about culinary theory in food preparation, I am skeptical about any author who attempts to present The Best of anything. Ordinarily I would dismiss "The Best Of" subtitles as the hype of publishers wanting to attract a reader's eye; in Kimball's case, though, I think he means it. His "Cook's Illustrated" and cottage industry of cookbooks has no lesser goal than providing the last word on home culinary technique.

As a more or less complete cookbook, the pretentiously named "Cook's Bible" fares adequately. I have read it carefully and tried a number of its selections.... As has been noted, Kimball's recipes are not always reliable, some of his writing is dated, and his insistence that he knows best obscures the fact that culinary tastes vary and preferences are wide ranging. I admire the use of test kitchens and trial cooks, but there are many of them in existence, and each has developed a cookbook or series of books. They all provide variations on the themes, suggesting that in many cases, taste is in the mouth of the beholder.

Kimball brings an overly somber, compulsive, almost joyless attitude to cooking. I find his writing to be pompous, absent of the glee and zest other food writers display. He rarely admits to variety in cuisine and assumes that his is the only worthwhile opinion, seeming to need to be correct and authoritative. He is systematic, and he offers advise about technique that can be helpful, especially to beginning cooks. I'm not sure I would be able to recommend just one cookbook for all needs;....

I'm an avid cook and, while I no longer subscribe to "Cooks Illustrated" magazine, I respect Chris Kimball and his expert kitchen team and have had good luck, more or less, with their recipes which, if followed EXACTLY, are virtually foolproof. I also never fail to learn something from their informative kitchen commentary, including kitchenware recommendations. All in all, his recipes and advice are beneficial to both novice and experienced cooks.

That having been I have to point out that taste is, of course, subjective. For instance, I've found, from trying a number of Kimball's recipes, that he is a salt-a-holic. I prefer to cook with little or no salt, as I find the taste harsh and unpleasant, and if I followed Kimbell's recipes exactly I'd be drowning in the stuff. I prefer pepper and tend to double or triple the often meager amounts Kimbell calls for in his recipes (usually he calls for four or fives times more salt than pepper, and I tend to reverse those ratios).

The recommendations too, are, of course, all one man's opinion. He speaks harshly of Le Creuset, which is my favorite cookware, despite the expense (don't listen to Kimball: the enamel service is as good or better than non-stick), and frequently raves about plain cast iron which, while I'm sure can be great, takes a great deal of patience to properly season (I've NEVER had any luck doing so), can't be washed in a dishwasher (big downfall, in my opinion) and can easily destroy an induction cooktop (something Kimball fails to even mention). He also highly recommends an electric rice cooker which is, perhaps, the least useful tool in my kitchen and is quite scornful of breadmakers, an appliance I use several times a week quite happily.

All of Kimball's cookbooks follow the same basic format: a long-winded, but often interesting, discourse on how Kimball views the "perfect" version of whatever it is he's showing you how to cook, including a lengthy explanation of variations he has tried, followed by his "Master Recipe" for the food. I recommend carefully reading the introduction, focusing on what Kimball considers "perfection," before attempting the recipe. For instance, he prefers very hard, extremely crusty bread (one of the main reasons he despises breadmakers, by the way) with a light, "air-filled" interior, while I like a soft, almost blonde, crust and am quite fond of the "cakelike" bread consistency Kimball is so disdainful of. So, in terms of bread, Kimball's "master" recipe is obviously not going to suit me.

In short, if your taste is the same as Kimball's when it comes to a particular food his well-researched and thoroughly-tested recipes will be amazing. If you don't feel the same way about, say, chicken (he likes it quite salty and greasy--though he uses the terms like "savory," "succulent" and "moist" to describe what I think of as "salty" and "greasy") as the author, his recipe for roasting a chicken will leave you cold.

The other caveat to keep in mind when purchasing Kimball's books is that many, most notably the "Cook's Bible," are extremely outdated (far more so than they should be, judging by the publication date), particularly when it comes to appliance and cookware recommendations. (Often the products he has tested either no longer are made or have been radically changed, and the ones he panned are now considerably better.) For instance, Kimball frequently talks about the "rarity" of a kitchen which contains both a food processor and a stand mixer while I'd say at least half the wives I know have both, and quotes bread machines as costing "upwards of $300." (There's also a rather long and ludicrious section where he goes into great deal about how "most" people who own a stand mixer "only have a whip attachment" when KitchenAid, and other popular models, have been including dough hooks and paddles, as well as whips, as standard equipment for at least the last 15 years.) Kimball also terms ceramic cooktops "experimental" though they are actually quite common now. (Off the top of my head I can think of a dozen people I know who cook on induction or ceramic ranges.) In addition, he completely ignores the Internet when giving out reccomendations of where to purchase certain items. (Most of the things he says you need can be easily found online.) In addition, he says you can buy a top-of-the-line Wusthof Trident chef's knife for "around $85," when in fact the knife he reccomends now costs well over $100. I could go on, but I think you get the point: Listen to Kimball's advice, but don't always take it as hard fact.

But my biggest problem with Kimbell cookbooks is this: If you have one, you have them all. He lifts whole passages and recipes and uses them in multiple books. "The Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook," and the "Cook's Bible," for instance, have at least 50 identical recipes, not to mention verbatim introductions to each section and cookware reccomendations repeated word-for-word. "The Best Recipe" features ALL of the recipes (as far as I can tell) from the "Cook's Bible," with the same commentary, which is, in turn, lifted in whole chunks from past issues of "Cooks Illustrated." I'm sure this saves Mr. Kimbell a great deal of time when compiling his cookbooks but it leaves little reason to own more than one edition of his work. Exceptions to this rule are his specality cookbooks, such as his "Complete Pasta and Noodle" or "Complete Poultry," which again contain exact repeats from other books but also add a wealth of new recipes and information.

If you're going to buy a Kimbell cookbook, and I do think it's a worthy investment for any semi-serious cook, buy his latest (for example, "The Best Recipe," in lieu of "The Cook's Bible"), whatever that may be. That way, you're sure to get 90% of what's contained in earlier versions, without paying for "repeats." On the other hand, if you already own, say, "The Cook's Bible," don't bother with "The Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook" or the "The Best Recipe." In addition, as mentioned earlier, Kimbell's speciality cookbooks, focusing on one particular item, are also worth the purchase price, but only if you're interested in that particular food type.

This cookbook is truly a bible to me. I keep a copy in the kitchen and another copy on my nightstand; it's both recipe book and reference book, all in one. I find myself consulting it at least once a day, not just for meal-planning and specific recipes -- and all the recipes I have tried are utterly delectable and fool-proof like all of Christopher Kimball's well-tested and well-reasoned recipes -- but also to help me in devising my own recipes or modifying recipes to my taste. That's the beauty of Kimball's reasoned approach: once you understand how ingredients and techniques work, you are able to amazing things! With what I have learned, I have "perfected" my chocolate-chunk cookies to make them denser and chewier as I like them; my baking powder biscuits by using tenderizing buttermilk and the right proportion of lard to butter; my pizza dough to make it more crispy and chewy by putting the olive oil on, not in, it; etc. Also, my meats are cooked perfectly every time, using Kimball's cooking temperatures and cooking times, for he has tested all the possibilities for you and set forth the results in useful charts. Now my roast loin of pork is always meltingly moist and tender. In short, I couldn't get by without this bible and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to cook better!

I own a lot of cookbooks, most of which I never open. After I began reading The Cook's Bible, I thought about all the money I wasted on other books. After all, I want to learn how to cook, not how to read a recipe. I also consult Mr. Kimball when I am thinking of purchasing a piece of equipment, to make sure I am buying the right item for the job and getting a good value. You can't believe how much information is in this book. Money well spent.

Not only do I keep a copy near my bed, I've given it to my beloved niece. If I had read this book as a bride my family would have had good scrambled eggs all these years. Top notch advice for novice and for skilled cooks. I'll never be without it!

I consult it at least once a week and learn from every page. I'd trade all the rest of my collection for it. If you can only afford one cookbook, let this be the one!