The New Best Recipe [Hardcover]

Cook's Illustrated Magazine (Author), John Burgoyne (Illustrator), Carl Tremblay (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 2004

Flagship book of award-winning series with more than 1000 pages and 800 illustrations. Would you make 38 versions of creme caramel to find the absolute best version? The editors of Cook's Illustrated did. Along with 20 versions of simple recipes such as coleslaw. Now fully revised and expanded this new edition offers more than 1000 recipes for all your favourite dishes from roast chicken and macaroni cheese to creme caramel and chocolate chip cookies. There are also expanded tutorials on grilling, baking, stir frying and much more. This is the ultimate cooking resource for novice and experienced cooks alike.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A literal encyclopedia of recipes (culled from the magazine), this revision to Cook's Illustrated's popular The Best Recipe is almost double in size and includes more than 1,000 recipes. Cook's Illustrated is known for careful (some would say compulsive) testing of recipes with a focus on foolproof technique; detailed line drawings that take readers step-by-step through recipes; and opinionated guides that assert that their way is the best way. This methodology appeals particularly to a specific kind of cook, one with a primarily scientific rather than artistic or intuitive approach to cooking. Though there are a few photographs, readers who buy cookbooks for full-color photographs and personal anecdotes aren't likely to be drawn to this work. Twenty-two chapters cover appetizers to desserts. Even the simplest tasks, such as blanching vegetables or peeling an egg, are explained and illustrated in detail. More involved techniques include brining poultry and roasting a turkey. Pad Thai gets a full-page description with photographs to help home cooks learn how to properly soak the noodles. Well organized and extremely clear, the book has only one drawback: its heft may make it tough to hoist onto kitchen counters.
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Review

". . . .will please those who groove to the cooking geek sensibility of CI editor Christopher Kimball." -- People Magazine, Novembe 12, 2004

"Its charm is its over-the-top thoroughness." -- Newsweek Magazine, Decmeber 6, 2004

"This new edition (The New Best Recipe) means business." -- The New York Times Book Review, November 5, 2004

"the book's recipes...you don't need to be a gourmet to pull them off." -- San Francisco Bay Guardian, October 13, 2004

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1028 pages
• Publisher: America’s Test Kitchen; 2nd edition (October 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0936184744
• ISBN-13: 978-0936184746
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 8.6 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (339 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,121 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #14 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Special Occasions
  • #15 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Reference
  • #17 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Culinary Arts & Techniques

More About the Author

America's Test Kitchen is a 2,500 square foot kitchen located outside of Boston. It is the home of Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country magazines and is the workday destination for over 3 dozen test cooks, editors and cookware specialists. Our mission is to test recipes until we understand how and why they work and arrive at the best version. We also test kitchen equipment and supermarket ingredients in search of brands that offer the best value and performance. You can watch us work by tuning in to our public television show, America's Test Kitchen.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1,184 of 1,216 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Cook and the Baker (who hates to cook) both love it, November 5, 2004

By 

Kathy Grace (Austin, TX, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The New Best Recipe (Hardcover)

I'm the Baker. When my husband-to-be first came to my house to cook me a dinner, he rummaged through my cabinets and said "Where are your pots and pans?"; then he looked through the pantry and fridge and said "Where is your FOOD?" I had to explain that, in my vocabulary, "cook" is a verb meaning "to put into a microwave on high for 4 to 5 minutes." Food? Small boxes in the freezer, of course.

I tell you this so you'll understand how improbable it is that the first thing I tackled from "The New Best Recipe" was chicken stock. A real-deal chicken stock, I'm talking here--the kind that turns to a jelly when cooled, is deep gold, and can improve nearly any dish you add it to--the kind that takes eight or ten hours to make, the classic way.

See, I had picked up this massive (1028-page) book in the bookstore and idly opened to the Soup chapter, where I read a three-page explanation of how to make real chicken stock in one hour. They detailed all the blind alleys they'd explored in trying to come up with the perfect recipe for stock--the different cooking techniques, times, ingredients--until they'd found a way to make rich golden stock in an hour. The technique was, er, unorthodox to say the least, but it all seemed to make perfect sense, so I bought the book and decided to try to make a stock to present to the Cook as a fait accompli.

Holy smoke, it worked! And I gotta tell you, if I can make a couple quarts of chicken stock between the time my daughter gets home from school and the time my husband gets home from work, then you can too.

So, enough anecdote; now for details.

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1. The book is a compilations of recipes from Cooks' Illustrated magazine and the America's Test Kitchen TV show (which I've never yet seen). The title seems presumptuous: "best" according to whom? Isn't "best" a matter of taste? Well, yes, but they are at pains to describe for nearly every recipe just what they MEAN by "best." Here's an example, for pound cake:

"...the main difficulty with pound cakes of the classic type is textural. Cakes might be said to have five 'texture points': moist/dry, soft/hard, dense/porous, light/heavy, rich/plain. To contemporary tastes, cakes must be relatively moist and soft; the three remaining texture points are negotiable.
"The problem with pound cake is that we ask it to be moist and soft on the one hand but also dense, light, and rich on the other. This is an extremely difficult texture to achieve unless one resorts to baking powder, with its potent chemical magic. Air-leavened cakes that are light and soft also tend to be porous and plain, as in sponge or angel cakes; moist and dense cakes inevitably also turn out heavy, as in the various syrup-soaked Bundt cakes that are so popular. From pound cake, we ask all things."

Or for broiled salmon:

"We set out to find the best way of cooking a whole side of salmon, enough to feed eight or more guests, in the oven. We wanted fish that was moist but not soggy, firm but not chalky, and nicely crusted, with golden, flavorful caramelization over its flesh. If we would work some interesting flavors and contrasting textures into the bargain, all the better."

Or for roasted potatoes:

"The perfect roasted potato is crisp and deep golden brown on the outside, with moist, velvety, dense interior flesh. The potato's slightly bitter skin is intact, providing a contrast to the sweet, caramelized flavor that the flesh develops during the roasting process. It is rich but never greasy, and it is accompanied by the heady taste of garlic and herbs."

In other words, before telling you how to make X, Y, or Z, they tell you what you're shooting for. I appreciate this. Mostly my goals and theirs coincide, but if they don't I'm aware of it BEFORE I start to cook.

2. After they describe the goal, they tell you the variations they tried to achieve it. This might include fiddling with cooking temperatures and times, number or type of ingredients, cooking techniques, tools, containers, phase of the moon... whatever! The folks in those test kitchens apparently have an infinite supply of time and money, not to mention patience.

So, for the chicken stock, they tried blanching, roasting, and sauteing the chicken; backs, wings, legs, or the whole chicken; carrots, celery, onion: yes or no? A sidebar details issues like what kind of chicken to buy, how to cut it up, and tips for storing the stock once you've made it.

You find out what works, and why, but also what didn't work, and why not. Knowledge really is power. Time after time in the past I've followed a recipe (or so I thought) and messed it up--with no idea of where I went wrong or how to fix it. Most cookbooks assume that cooks just don't make mistakes. This one tells you just about everything you could do wrong, so you won't.

By the way, I LOVE it that they attribute techniques and recipes found in other sources (including, in the case of pound cake, recipes from 1772, 1824, and 1985).

3. Is there some science about your ingredients or techniques or equipment? You'll learn about it. Why is is that butter and eggs for a cake should be at room temperature? Some cake recipes say combine everything at once ("quick mix" technique) and others say to cream suger with butter, then add the eggs and flour. Why do they both work? What's the difference in the end result? And what about those dark non-stick cake pans? Will they change anything? You'll find out.

4. After you understand the issues around your recipe, they give you the recipe itself. Many have three or four variations given after the main recipe. Each step is spelled out clearly, with both visual and time cues (e.g., "until the pork is in small, well-browned bits, about 5 minutes"), often accompanied by clear B&W illustrations and useful sidebars.

5. There are separate mini-essays on ingredients and equipment, comparing them a la Consumer Reports. We learn which are the best brands of chocolate chips for cookies (with different recommendations for thick/chewy vs. thin/crispy, no less!) and which paring knives were rated best.

I found a chart that lists the volume of medium, large, extra-large, and jumbo eggs. For that alone, I'd have bought the book, since the Cook (who's also the shopper) buys XLs, but the Baker's recipes all assume Ls. Now I actually know by how much they differ (8:9 is the ratio, in case you wondered).

6. Have I mentioned that everything I've made so far has rocked?

----

Downside? The Table of Contents and the Index both stink like the stinkiest of stinking fish. Does 22 lines ("Pork... 385", "Cakes... 823") seem to you like enough detail for the contents of a thousand-page cookbook? Me neither, especially as the individual sections don't have their own ToCs. This is ridiculous. But the index is even worse. Tiny print, uniform font sizes for all three levels of indent, no indicator letters at the top of the page to remind you where you are, and a distinct lack of cross-indexing make it a near-total waste of time. Someone could make a lot of people happy by preparing sectional ToCs and a decent index for this massive tome.

We don't accept every single bit of information in this book (the Cook has a serious bone to pick with them vis-a-vis their unflattering assessment of bluefin tuna, for instance), but for each item we disagree with, there are ten that have us nodding in agreement.

It could be described as a scientific cookbook, but that might leave you with the impression that it's dry and colorless. Quite the contrary--I find it fascinating reading, especially the parts about how they screwed up.

The prose is not lyrical or charming, as The Joy of Cooking frequently is, but it's truly engaging in its eagerness to give you all the tools you need to succeed. I doubt there's a cook in America who couldn't learn something from this book. I think it's that rare cookbook that is equally suitable for beginners, experienced cooks, and everyone in between; as much fun to read like a book as it is to use as a manual. Get it!

152 of 152 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars These Recipes Consistently Deliver, January 6, 2005

By 

J. E. Thorne (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The New Best Recipe (Hardcover)

I consider myself an experienced cook but I have had frustrating experiences with cookbooks and recipes I'd find in magazines and newspapers. Something would sound wonderful, I'd buy ingredients, spend hours cooking and the results would be...OK. Not terrible, not inedible, but a disappointment none the less. Even cookbooks that I love and contain recipes I think are wonderful would also have recipes that I found pretty so-so. In fact, in many cookbooks the ratio of successes to non-successes is pretty small. Finding The Best Recipe (the edition that preceded this one) was a revelation for me. Each recipe I tried was a success. When The New Best Recipe was published, I bought one immediately and was thrilled to find so many new recipes.

This is now my go-to cookbook, the first place I look when I want to find a recipe, and a book I check other recipes against when considering recipes from other sources. I use this book in the way my mother used the Joy of Cooking when I was growing up in the late 60s and early 70s. And just as Joy was the book she used when she needed a recipe for a classic like beef stew or a then fashionable food such as quiche or cheese fondue, The New Best Recipe has recipes for classics (spaghetti and meatballs, pot roast, coq au vin, shrimp scampi) and also has recipes for foods that have hit the American culinary radar more recently such as pad thai, beef fajitas, and pozole. In fact the huge range of foods is one of the things that makes this cookbook so wonderful; for instance, the pasta section includes recipes for lo mein, tuna noodle casserole and ravioli.

This is a great book for beginners because of the detailed explanations of how the ultimate recipe was achieved which include discussions of different techniques that were considered or used and why they were rejected, as well as the many sidebars which give information on technique and equipment. Plus there is nothing that teaches you to cook like cooking, and nothing that keeps you cooking as much as having success. But it is a book that an experienced cook will find just an interesting and useful. I have been cooking for years and I have learned from this book.

This is not (and does not represent itself to be) a low-fat cookbook. The recipes are about achieving maximum flavor and taste. It is also not (and does not represent itself to be) a cookbook full of fast recipes. However, this book contains so many recipes that low fat and fast recipes can be found among them. The recipes are always clear and easy to follow, and the results will speak for themselves.

I love cookbooks and have many but if I were forced to have only one cookbook, this would be the one

213 of 223 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolute best cookbook, November 16, 2004

By 

Mary S (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The New Best Recipe (Hardcover)

I've been cooking for over 40 years, but I still consider myself a very bad cook. I almost always use a recipe, but if I don't have something, or don't want to bother with some technique, I try to substitute. Not a good idea for me. Or often the recipes don't include little details that they assume cooks will know, but I don't. I look through numerous recipe books and think I've found the best one for something, but it often doesn't come out perfectly. But that's all changed now! This book is amazing at not only giving you terrific recipes, but it explains why the cook made the choices she did in creating the recipe. It is so fun to read the background of how they created the perfect recipe for something and they discuss all the other things I would have done and why those things don't lead to a good product. I've tried one recipe from each chapter and had so much fun because they all came out terrific.