Customer Reviews

The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook: Featuring More Than 1,200 Kitchen-Tested Recipes

5 star:		(60)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Let me say right off that I love Cook's Illustrated and its sister publication, Cook's Country. They are one of the prime reasons for my reputation as a fine cook and baker. When I heard that this book would soon be published, I got very excited. I have waited for years for them to publish a general-purpose cookbook. I will treasure this book, but it's not without its faults--faults that came from taking the cheap way out.

Unlike other books put out by Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen, this book contains many new recipes developed over years expessly for this book. It may seem a little dishonest to review a cookbook without trying many of its recipes, but I can say after many years of using their magazines and books that their recipes are the most foolproof out there. My only quibbles usually just come down to differences in taste. Their recipes work and they are usually a cut above the rest. This book has over 1,200 recipes and is loaded with photographs and tips. Like all their publications, you'll find the book fascinating and you'll learn a lot that will improve your cooking results. Unlike many of the recipes in their other publications, this book's focus is on everyday cooking from the basic stuff on up. Think of it as a better-researched Betty Crocker or Better Homes and Gardens, but with higher standards.

I really hate to see excellence compromised, and that's what Cook's and their publisher have done. The design, layout (except for the dividers), thought, contents, etc. are all excellent and you can tell that years of preparation and work went into this book. If it had just been printed on thicker, glossier paper this book would be an instant classic. As it is, the paper is so thin (not as thin as Bible paper, but in waving distance) that it can be hard to turn a page without messing it up. And since the paper doesn't have a glossy finish, the photographs didn't reproduce well enough to show all the detail they were designed to do. Now, they don't look as bad as the crummy reproduction you see in, say, Better Homes and Gardens Magazine, but this lousy choice of paper has definitely COMPROMISED the overall quality of this book--and it's a shame. Also, the many dividers--although of thicker stock--aren't sturdy enough to really use their tabs to open to a section. Plus, they are not in alphabetical order--something that Betty Crocker learned long ago is necessary to make a cookbook handy--and with as many extra divisions as Cook's has put in this book, it just makes it that much harder to find what you're looking for. I realize that the choice of paper was almost certainly made to keep down the cost and bulk of the book (it's approximately 850 pages), BUT they made the wrong choice. I sincerely hope that Cook's gets enough complaints that this book is soon reprinted properly.

`The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook' is a production of the editors of `America's Test Kitchen', lead by Founder, Christopher Kimball and Editor in Chief, Jack Bishop. This organization is best known as the editors and publishers of the magazine, `Cooks Illustrated' and the PBS television show based on articles in the magazine and hosted by Kimball.

In short, this is simply a wonderfully comprehensive source for cooking at home, comparable in size and range to classics such as `Joy of Cooking' and `James Beard's American Cookery' and modern do-it-all titles such as Mark Bittman's `How to Cook Everything'. It could easily be the only cookbook you own. Aside from it's size and range, one very good thing about this book is that it does NOT follow the same style of other `Cooks Illustrated' cookbooks, most distinctively represented by `The Best Recipe'. While the theme here is that we are being given good recipes, all of which have passed muster with `America's Test Kitchen', we do not get the long narrative describing how the editors and recipe testers came up with this recipe. This means that virtually all of the 848 pages (to the end of the index) are chocked full of the recipes and not much more than the recipes. This compares well to `Joy's 914 pages and Bittman's 944 pages, although it does suggest that `Joy of Cooking' with it's two column, small print style does have a higher recipe count at, according to the cover, 4,500 recipes compared to American Test Kitchen's advertised 1200.

The book designers have done us the great favor of putting the pages in a loose leafed notebook, similar to big cookbooks from `Better Homes and Gardens' magazine. The four immediate advantages of this binding are that all pages lay flat, individual pages can be removed and easily photocopied even on a small home machine, the chapters can be tabbed with subject dividers with chapter titles on the tabs, and one can add hand written or typed material of your own on stack three hole punched paper. A potential advantage is that this allows additions or corrections to be easily added. Unfortunately, I see nothing in the package that makes any promise to provide such material.

Of course, the editors simply could not resist putting in sidebars on evaluations on many different types of kitchen equipment and staple. You will not go wrong respecting these opinions but I really believe you should feel no reservations about not following the advice in these evaluations. `Cooks illustrated' evaluations give a lot of weight to cost of equipment and ease of preparation for recipes, and these may not be your criteria. On equipment, for example, I firmly agree with their general recommendation to buy inexpensive Teflon coated non-stick pans; however, I strongly disagree with their choice for a 10 inch saute pan from Wolfgang Puck's line. The 10 inch nonstick pan I bought from Calphalon (as part of a special) was about half the price of Puck's model and it had lower, more broadly flared sides than Puck's virtually vertical pan sides. The more traditional flair to the Calphalon saute is much better specifically for sliding finished egg dishes out of the pan and on to the plate. Similarly, they recommend a midpriced die pressed chef's knife instead of the much more expensive forged knives from Wustof or Henkels. Having just done a marathon vegetable prep job for a church dinner with a thin stamped knife, I took my sore fingers home, double time, to get my expensive German chef's knife, and both me and my fingers were very happy with the change. The bottom line is that I suggest you take the recommendations in this book with a grain of salt and ignore them if you have a strong, contrary preference.

While this is a great `only cookbook', it should not be viewed dimly by the foodies among us. We all need at least one book that will give us straightforward recipes for common dishes. We cannot go to Julia Child, Paula Wolfert, or even Martha Stewart every day. On many days, we just need a quick reminder on how to make good gravy.

As usual, my first stop, if available, is the egg recipes (combined in this book with other breakfast dishes). Here, I find a recipe for just about every standard American breakfast dish such as fried eggs, poached eggs, scrambled eggs, omelets, quiches, crepes, pancakes, waffles, French toast, home fries, hash browns, corned beef hash, fried bacon, homemade sausage, oatmeal, and granola. This includes a fair number of clever tips on difficult subjects such as doing poached eggs for four at the same time and avoiding French toast with soggy centers. It also includes some less common but impressive breakfast dishes such as souffles, frittatas, stratas, and German apple pancakes. On the minus side, I was just a little surprised to find that the recipes for those most important dishes, scrambled eggs and omelets were just a bit light on some of the finer points. They did a whole lot better than the CIA's breakfast book which just lumped these two dishes together as variations on the same technique, but I expected just a bit more on these dishes. Then again, this really shows us the difference between this book and a scholarly treatment of French cooking technique that would have gone into double boilers and fancy wrist acrobatics and the three different styles of French omelet.

Just a bit more surprising is the fact that there is no court bouillon recipe for poaching fish. This shows up the fact that while this book is BIG, it simply cannot and does not cover everything. If this is your first cookbook, then, your second should probably be a good book on Fish cookery such as the excellent `Fish' by Mark Bittman.

With it's tips, pictures, and nice format, this is on a par with Bittman's `How to Cook Everything'.

Recommended.

My Mom's kitchen was her exclusive domain. So, most of my adult life has been diminished in quality by my cooking skills. For a person like me---someone in the cheapest of the cheap seats---this book is glorious. It's a blessing. It's wonderful beyond words. It does everything I need done, and it does it well. It explains clearly what equipment I need in the kitchen, and it helps me identify good equipment as opposed to rubbish. So, I can get what I need---and not more than I need. I can acquire high quality items, knowing they will serve and last. More importantly, perhaps, it explains how to cook each recipe in a very competent way, and it does that without being vague or relying on some deep cooking knowledge or professional jargon that leaves me cold. It says what I need to do. It says it in English I can understand clearly. When I do what it says, I get good food. For a person whose cooking skills are totally a wreck, this is a wonderful help. One reviewer complained that the production quality of the book is not so good. Yes, the paper is thin and a bit fragile. However, it is my opinion that the content offers me access to a whole new standard of quality in my cooking and my eating. It would be ungrateful of me to gripe about the paper it's printed on. Strangely, someone complains because the book is worth so much more than the paper it is printed on. Wouldn't you rather have that situation than the reverse?

I was a bit leary of buying another cookbook. I already had "Better Homes and Gardens" and "Betty Crooker" and wasn't too impressed with either book. However I saw someone write a review that said "America's Test Kitchen" was better than the "Better Homes and Garden". They were definitely correct. They have excellent tasting recipes that appeal to our more modern tastes unlike the old fasion cook books that unsuccesfully try to imitate grandmas cooking. I 100% recommend this cookbook and wish I had found it as a single guy earlier. It has top notch recipes that make me hungry even as I write this. This is the only book I've taken the time to recommend and thats only because I love the food and want everybody else to enjoy it as much as me. I sound like an promo person. Sorry.

After 35 years of cooking, I don't buy cookbooks anymore. I bought this one for my daughter because a friend recommended it. Before I had a chance to give it to her, I looked through it, and the more I looked, the more I was fascinated with this book. It gives detailed information about cooking methods, commom mistakes to avoid, test results for many everyday kitchen products, and much much more. I tried a few of the recipes and they really tasted good. Whether you are just learning how to cook or have been cooking for a long time, this is a great book to have. I will buy this one for myself as well.

I opened the shrink wrap today and inserted the pages and dividers. Then, I began to read my new cookbook. I like to read cookbooks and if they are a good read and teach me something new, add even one excellent recipe to my repetoire, I am satisfied. I am a subcriber to Cooks Illustrated and appreciate the high quality of the magazine.

As mentioned by others, the paper is of poor quality and the ring binder isn't much better. With the turn of nearly every page, the paper gets caught on the rings at the point of closure. It is necessary to carefully manipulate each page over one or more of the rings in order to avoid tearing the paper. I have been extremely careful and have torn five pages by the time I was to page 157.

I paid over $30 for my copy so I feel ripped off. Christopher Kimball, America's Test Kitchen and Publishers Weekly should be embarrassed to put out such a shoddy product. What good is a beautiful new car loaded with options if you can only drive it under perfect conditions and never more than ten miles per hour?

I agree with previous review-fabulous recipes, very complete-actually gave away/took back my old "Test Kitchen" cookbooks and bought this one-very complete and leaves out all the rambling discussion found in previous test kitchen cookbooks. (I liked it, but this book is all recipes, baby!) How many more times can this man get away with pumping out cookbooks with different titles? Alright,I buy them up. Great recipes and tons of pictures unlike previous cookbooks. EASILY would have been five stars if the paper quality was better. Nice try.

Wow, I cannot believe the effusive praise this book garners in other reviews. Has anyone actually tried cooking these recipes? How about the inaccuracy of the cooking times? I nearly burnt my Extra-Crunchy Fried Chicken (p. 354) after 3 minutes in 375 deg. F oil. It was so bland because they thought a measly 1 1/2 tsp dried thyme and 1/2 tsp garlic powder would provide substantial flavor in 5 humungous cups of flour! And what about the suggestion of putting Grilled Sausages, Peppers, and Onions (p. 475) on a hot dog bun? Any hot dog bun would fall apart with so much food in it. And using red onions and red peppers for this recipe is un-American and makes an overly sweet meal. The Chicken Teriyaki (p. 348) was too salty by the time I reduced it to the "thick and glossy" texture they recommended. The Puttanesca Sauce (p. 216) had to be boiled vigorously rather than simmered to reduce all the tomato juice they recommended that I should dump into the saucepan. I love Cook's Illustrated and I think they publish the best cookbooks but I have to say that they oversimplified recipes from previous cookbooks (they watered-down a few recipes from their Best Recipe cookbook). I guess they did this because the normal American family would be annoyed following the lengthy recipes they published in their better cookbooks. But in the process they left out some crucial information.

What really gets under my skin is that they haven't thought about the economics of cooking in publishing their first family cookbook. A family cookbook should be marketed to all kinds of families, especially families who are living paycheck to paycheck. That means they shouldn't have sandwich recipes that have all types of fancy cheeses in them like Boursin or goat cheese. C'mon, cheeses are expensive these days. And what about their preference for pancetta or proscuitto. These meats are great but they are hard to find in the average supermarket. I think the editors of this cookbook are so removed from reality because they seem to think people have the time and money to cook their recipes and buy the ingredients and supplies they recommend, which are usually on the pricey side. It really annoys me when they say that a certain ingredient is available at most supermarkets. I live in a big city in California and I frequent two of the largest supermarkets in the nation, Albertsons and Safeway, and I can tell you from experience that thick cut pancetta and fresh nutmeg are never available. Furthermore, it is laughable that they recommend asking your butcher to cut something for you. I have gotten some mean looks from the butchers at supermarkets!

Finally, I don't think I have to mention the utter stupidity in the design of this book. Even the binder is starting to bend! The pages are so thin that they will inevitably tear with use. Some of the pictures are dull and need more contrast. The pages have to be lifted along the ring with utmost gentleness everytime the book is closed. The editor of the book expressed hope that families would pass on this book for generations to come. Well, I suppose that dream is possible if grandma gets each page laminated before she dumps it on her grandchildren!

I've been getting Cook's Illustrated's magazine and subscribing to their website for a few years, and they have taken me from being a decent cook to an excellent one. Cook's Illustrated's highly-tested recipes very often turn out meals that have my family and guests swooning. Out of the many dozens of their recipes I've tried, I can count on one hand the number of recipes we haven't adored, and only two of those have been real duds. Even the simple recipes for foods I used to make without a recipe, such as hummus, are so much better when Cook's Illustrated gets through them. (Their hummus recipe is in this book, and while it uses the usual ingredients, something about the proportions brings it over the top.)


I'd been wanting to get one of their cookbooks for a while, but hadn't been able to decide on which one. I don't have the money to buy several, especially since they tend to be big, beautiful, and not inexpensive. When the ATK Family Cookbook came out, I checked it out of the library, and immediately knew that if I was going to own one Cook's Illustrated cookbook, it had to be this one. This one has so many recipes, and they cover such a wide variety of foods, from appetizers through desserts. This is a family cookbook, and the recipes are very appealing to my family (my children are 7 and 9). Being a busy mother, I like that a number of them are labeled "fast," that there is a chapter of crockpot and pressure cooker recipes, and that many of them include instructions on how to make them ahead and on how long they keep. For the most part, the ingredients in the recipes are not difficult to find or very expensive.

I took the book out of the library two months ago and bought it for myself a month ago. Since I first opened it, I have hardly cooked from any other book (and I own quite a few!). I have also rarely run to the internet for new and interesting recipes from my favorite websites (Cook's Illustrated and Epicurious), as there are so many intriguing recipes in this book, and once I make a dish once, I almost always want to make it over and over again.

The quality of the book itself isn't the best. The paper is thin, and I feel like the D-rings make it even easier to rip pages than circular rings would. The library copy I had was already a little beat up, and I was only the second or third person who'd taken it out. I've been careful with my copy, though, and it's not showing any signs of wear or tear. I do have a box of paper reinforcers handy, just in case. Personally, the quality of the book is such a minor quibble for me next to the content, and I think I'll get many years out of the book if I am careful with it. The d-rings DO help the recipes to stay flat, and that's quite nice.

Overall, I must give this cookbook a thumbs up. The recipes are very good and the results are splendid. I've read other reviews on this site and agree with most of the comments. However, when I read about problems with cooking times, I can not help but believe these reviewers have a problem with their oven thermostats.

I speak with experience on this and purchased an oven thermometer some years ago when I finally noticed my food either cooking way too fast, or being over cooked on the outside and underdone on the inside. I rent and move fairly often and I've seldom found an oven that is spot on to the numbers on the dial. This includes "good" ovens in houses.

Back to the book. I and my wife have made several items so far and have not had a bad meal yet. The Yellow Cake and Devil's Food Cake recipes are better than any previous recipe or mix I have tried yet. Most home-made cakes are a little dry. Not these ones. And the taste is bakery quality in my opinion.

It is true that the pages are thin and fragile and it is indeed surprising that such a meticulous group of people would make such a poor choice. Perhaps they will correct this problem with the next edition.

I reduced the problem by pain stakingly adding clear hole reinforcers to each and every hole as I put them into the binder. It took many hours and the reinforcements added so much thickness to the pages that I am thinking of purchasing a used copy of the book in order to split the pages into two binders.

That said, I don't have any ripped pages at all and am at peace with this issue.