Customer Reviews

All Recipes Dinner Tonight

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I just LOVE this cookbook. I spent about an hour at a local bookstore browsing, looking for the right cookbook that would contain family-friendly menus and that one would utilize ingredients that you probably have on hand, that were quick and easy and delicious. Many cookbooks required very specialized gourmet items or would take just too darn long. I tried one of the chocolate cake recipes (Chocolate cavity maker cake) and it was so easy and out of this world! My 10 year old's favorite recipe is the lemon scampi chicken.

These recipes are written by actual people who may not be professional cooks, but I don't have time to be Julia Child on a Monday night when I'm trying to get my kids out to baseball practice, Boy Scouts, etc! The "Cavity Maker" recipe uses a regular cake mix as a base, which cuts down on a lot of time and effort, but still delivered that homemade bakery taste.

Many of the recipes aren't necessarily low fat or heart-healthy, but you can make adjustments. For example, I usually cut the amount of butter a recipe requires, using light butter or less olive oil, substituting light sour cream for regular...just use common sense.

I'm buying this for my mother in law!

Usually the last thing on my mind is making dinner. This cookbook has everything I'm looking for; plus the recipes are quick, and really easy to make. I will definitely use this on a weekly basis. Thank you Allrecipes!

I have used many of the recipes in this cookbook. They are delicious and not terribly difficult. This book is great for cooks with day jobs.

This is a wonderful cookbook!!!! One that has lots of

recipes with ingredients that you usually have in the

kitchen. Would even make a nice gift for a busy mom,

or anyone who loves to cook.

I love this cookbook! It has everything in it. Stuff that's easy, fancy, quick, breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc. It's organized very well. I've found few recipes in here that did not turn out well. This book is a real crowd pleaser! A must have for cooks (and not so good cooks) alike!

I already own one allrecipes cookbook and absolutely love it, so I purchased this one. The best thing about these cookbooks is that you can go to the allrecipes site and see how the recipe you are planning on cooking is rated now. You just look up the name of the recipe in the search field and you can check it out. I have already made the Anniversary Chicken from pg. 133, the Chocolate Cavity Maker Cake from pg. 305 and the Coconut Poke Cake from pg. 309. They were all delicious as expected. The one thing about the Allrecipes cookbooks that I love is that these recipes are tested and rated by normal people, like us, not some chef. I hope this review helps=) Once you get one of the allrecipes cookbooks, you're hooked.

Great book. Be sure to get this author's book and not the other with the SAME TITLE. Very confusing. I made that mistake and ordered again. This version is the one to get!

I have a very hard time evaluating this book objectively, as it represents the kind of Middle American cooking I try to avoid. Its style of cooking reminds me of the famous comparison of Elvis to the Beatles as being like Campbell's soup to an Andy Wharhol silk screen of Campbell's soup. The one is utilitarian, the other is making art out of something utilitarian. This is not a criticism of Elvis or Campbell's soup or even of these recipes. It is simply a characterization that is meant to bring out its role in the world of recipes in a concise and illuminating way.

The book is a collection of recipes reprinted from the allrecipes.com web site that touts itself as the world's number one cooking site. As this is a review of the book and not the web site, I will not dwell on this claim except to point out that this means the book which may serve as a close parallel to this volume is the Food Network cookbook published about 9 months ago.

To begin my evaluation, I read all of the twenty (20) recipes listed in the `Recipe Hall of Fame' and I found all of the reasons I avoid this genre of recipe writing in my own cooking. The primary reasons I look elsewhere for recipes is:

Heavy use of packaged products such as soups, gravy mixes, cake mixes, and spice mixes.
References to packaged preparations are generic. No preferred brands or characterizations are cited.
Vague instructions. Interesting and important details such as best potato type to use are often left out.

Wrong instructions, such as directions to frequently move sautéed meats before achieving a good sear.
Where I know of a similar recipe published elsewhere, alternate recipe is always superior.
Recipes tend to be high on empty calories relative to culinary value delivered.
Ironically, the packaged products and the unsophisticated methods lead to results that are not simple on the mouth. By simple, I mean what Richard Olney means by simple. Characteristics of the basic ingredients are enhanced rather than obscured by the recipe.

These are all my own reactions to this style of recipe. I should clearly say that if one cooks often, but has no patience with browsing a large number of cookbooks, this book may offer an important source of inspiration. The book may be especially welcome if you are a devotee of the allrecipe.com web site.

In comparing this book to the Food Network cookbook, it is clear that the two are in a completely different class. The allrecipe.com authors are all amateur home cooks and the Food Network authors are all professional cooks. The Food Network offerings have been tested in a professional kitchen and they have been offered to other food professionals. This does mean the Food Network recipes are, on average, more difficult and more time consuming to realize, but the results are a lot closer to the art of Andy Wharhol than they are to something which has come out of a can from New Jersey.

This book is a great outlet for creative amateur home chefs. Their efforts are not unlike what I do as an amateur writer churning out reviews for free on Amazon.com because it provides the fun without the agony of locating a professional venue in a magazine, newspaper, or even a culinary web site.

My best suggestion to the fine people who search out books of this type are to consider some professionally written sources which may fit their culinary objectives. If you are in need of fast cooking, check out Rachael Ray's books. If you need diversity with an international cachet, try Patricia Wells' books on Provencal cooking. If you need variety and general guidance, try James Beard's American Cookery, Mark Bittman's `How to Cook Everything', or `The Joy of Cooking'. If you like these books because you contribute to allrecipes.com, then I say all the more power to you.

Average, easy, tasty recipes for the person who needs to cook.