Customer Reviews

America's Test Kitchen: Season 8

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

 

 

Season 8 is one of the very best seasons of ATK. You will never make a bad dinner or get a useless recipe from ATK. Some of my favorite Season 8 recipes include: Kansas City BBQ (a lot of work but it's well worth it), Asian Take-Out at Home (this includes 2 easy recipes) and Pepperoni Pizza (this is also a lot of work, but very well worth it). You can find all of these recipes on their Site as well. Often what I do is print up the recipe and read it as I watch the DVD and then pause it for extra time (they're so fast). The only recipes I wasn't crazy about were the Indian dishes, but that's more because of personal preference. Everything else was as usual excellent. I recommend this set to anyone who is either expanding their kitchen library or to anyone who is starting to get acclimated in domestic culinary arts for the first time.

If you like the show you will like this DVD. The menu lets you pick the receipe or reveiw you want without having to fast forward through the show (an improvment from previous DVD's). Why not 5 stars? The DVD package is cheap compared to the previous DVD's.

Lots to like here in a cooking show that is highly instructive and blends its entertainment value thru the food and the cooking technique process. There are no catch phrases or in-your-face personalities; rather the food takes center stage with second billing going to the efforts to design and create the recipes. Even if the recipe itself is not to your tastes, there is always some very good instruction and some interesting techniques that may very well find themselves into your repertoire.

It's not perfect. I feel like many of the ethnic foods tend to be watered down, in particular, the Mexican/Tex-mex tend to be pretty blase.

By biggest gripe about this DVD set (and not the TV show) is that it is not anamorphic. So on an HD TV, this dvd shows up with bars on the top as well as the sides unless you mess with the zoom (in which case you get a muddy image). Shame on PBS for releasing a DVD like this. I haven't seen a non-anamorphic DVD in about 10 years, I think.

America's Test Kitchen Season Eight is a DVD collection of all twenty-six episodes of the popular, public television cooking extravaganza show. Host Christopher Kimball and his fellow cast members walk the viewer through the basics of quality home cooking and great recipes. Episodes include Rainy Day BBQ Pork Chops to French Classics, Asian Take-Out at Home, Pasta and Tomatoes Reimagined, Fish on the Grill, Easy Skillit Suppers, Favorite Slow-Cooker Classics, and much more. Rounding out the step-by-step recipe instructions include no-nonsense taste tests of supermarket ingredients, ratings of the most important pieces of kitchen equipment, and useful kitchen science tips. In today's era of rising prices, inexpensive and healthful cooking at home has become a more attractive option than ever before; to that end, the America's Test Kitchen series is highly recommended both for private use and public library collections. 4 DVDs, 26 episodes.

The shows are excellent. I found the quality of the production to be very good. The recipes are great, the episodes are fun to watch and they are often humorous. I personally would prefer more cooking and less equipment and product taste testing, but that is just a personal preference.


[Note: There are no recipes included on these DVD's - of any season - until Season 9. Season 9 does have recipes. Presumably they will be included in future editions, as well. Clearly they wanted to sell the recipes either in the companion book or online, so it is to their credit they have started including the recipes on the DVD's. Also, there seem to be parts of episodes missing from the DVD's that were part of the actual season. The web site has all the episodes listed with each and every recipe they did.]

I have copies of all seasons and I would recommend them in spite of these issues because they are very helpful, instructive, and fun to watch.

You can get all old seasons on their web site for 50% off and with quite reasonable shipping costs.

We love this series. It is very helpful to not just have a recipe, but to watch someone cooking it. We have the companion book but love the dvd more