Customer Reviews

The Complete America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook

5 star:		(95)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I love the show, the recipes are great and this book has many. However, it does not contain all of the recipes from the TV show, and the index is poor.

The first thing I looked for in the book was Pepperoni Pan Pizza, Season Eight, Disk three, first show, if you own the DVDs, as I do. It's not in there. Yes, there are pizzas, but not the recipe I wanted to make. The dough for the others is different, as is the sauce. Other than that, I'm all set. For a book which promises every recipe from every show, being 0 for 1 was not a pleasant surprise.

It's conceivable that the Pizza Dish is in there, please flame me in the comments, so long as you specify the page (it's not under Pizza, and it's not in the Italian dish section where the other pizzas are). I say that because the second recipe I wanted, from the same DVD, was a kuchen I plan to make tomorrow. Look up kuchen in the index, no go, look in the table of contents instead and, ah, there it is! They called it New York Style Crumb Cake in the show, so ... you find it under "N" in the index. How convenient!

This is a common flaw with ATk books (e.g. the season 9 recipe book I also have). They give an ordinary recipe a spiced up name, which by itself is all well and good. But then they list the thing only under the fancy name. They'd call an apple pie "xanadu" then list it under "x". The one thing I'd have expected is an episode list with a page reference for each recipe. It would have added 5-10 pages to a very large book. They list only the recipes for season ten. This would have helped find episodes as well, if you locate a recipe you'd like to make. I found Breaded Chicken Cutlets, and cannot find online which season it's from, so although I probably own the DVD, I can't watch it without starting up many disks and plowing through til I see it.

If you plan to flip through recipes, or when you can find what you're looking for, the book is fantastic, and the recipes are wonderful. They certainly didn't leave out many, the book is huge and heavy, with many nice photographs, equipment lists, and grocery lists. But, it does not do what they say it does - include every recipe - and the index is best described as jesuitical.

While I generally enjoy everything about America's Test Kitchen and its related publications, this book came up short. This book is billed as containing "every recipe from 10 years" of the ATK TV show. Unfortunately, that is not true.

The recipe for my favorite "Triple Chocolate Cookie" (which feature melted bittersweet chocolate chips) is not included. Ironically, these cookies were featured in the ATK episode entitled "Cookie Jar Favorites"--the title of the cookie chapter of this book. The previous poster mentioned a pan pizza recipe featured in Season 8 which was also not included. That's at least two recipes missing--who knows how many others?

One of the other flaws of this book is that it is missing an index of all of the recipes for each show by season. However, if the publishers were leaving out recipes, then I can understand why they would leave out such a list. Including an episode-by-episode list would surely draw attention to the fact that this book is not nearly as complete as promised.

This book does not contain every recipe from every show. If that's what you are looking for, as I was, then you will be sorely disappointed.

If you like America's Test kitchen, you might like this book. It is, as usual a great resource, but after looking through the pages of this book, I can see many repetitions of recipes from other books of the Test Kitchen. I do notice that despite the claim of having all of its' recipes, 650 from 10 years of the show, some seem to be missing.
What you can love about this is how America's Test Kitchen covers almost any question you might have on how to cook their recipes and their advice on types of kitchen equipment and helpful hints just can't be beat; as are their explanations on how they come up with their versions of their recipes
This volume covers: soups and salads, skillet suppers and one pot dinners to chicken, turkey, specific meats and fish, diner dinners, pasta, tex mex, French, take out, grill, sides, brunch, bread, cookies, cake, desserts are all included. There is also a kitchen shopping guide, conversions and equivalents, a 2010 TV episode guide as well as the adequately done index with recipe names and main ingredients. There are colour pictures for about every 3rd or 4th recipe and why the recipe works. There are not as many of the small diagrams in this book as in previous ones that show how to roll and cut cinnamon rolls for example.
The print is good and easy to read. It would make a good basic cookbook or an addition to a collection, as long as you know there will be some duplications from other Test Kitchen books
Also just know if you will be making pies or biscuits, they will be made from scratch, this is not a book for you to expect them to tell you to pop open a can of refrigerated biscuits. The bread section is mostly quick dough, if you are looking for long rising bread recipes, they are not here.
I also wish that the Test Kitchen would give charts for cooking times of different sizes of meats and roasts, after all some of us need to cook a 20 pound turkey for Thanksgiving, a 12 pound bird will just not cut it. However their grill instructions are some of the best around. It's a good book, but I wish it was the comprehensive one that I thought was coming.

I almost didn't get this book. I subscribe to the ATK magazines and have many of the cookbooks, which often repeat the recipes from the magazines, so the last thing I needed was a book that had all the recipes again. But I'm glad I got it. Up til now I'd kept a database I made from the magazines, or I had to remember which cookbook a particular recipe was in. But now it's very easy -- I just head to this (relatively) comprehensive tome. At 646 pages it's hefty, but it's great to find things organized and in place whenever I want.

The recipes are fabulous and the commentaries informative. I have made many recipes from here and 95% turn out brilliantly. The apple pie and pie dough are real keepers, the strawberry cream cake is a gorgeous crowd pleaser, and almost every poultry recipe is superb; sauces are wonderful and the buttermilk waffle recipe is delicious. ATK also does a great job of making ethnic recipes do-able, with ingredient lists that most cooks should be able to fill without too much trouble. The commentaries tell you how the ingredients work together, and what variations work (or don't) and why. Chapters cover: soup. salads, skillet suppers, one pot dinners, chicken, turkey and trimmings, steak, pork, roasts & loafs, fish, diner food, pasta, Italian favorites, French food, Tex-Mex cooking, takeout (Chinese, Thai and Indian food), grilling, side dishes, brunch, breads, cookies, cake, puddings & souffles, fruit desserts, and pie.

The negatives: not ALL the recipes are here. There're at least two I looked for after watching the show but couldn't find, and other reviewers seem to have had the same problem. Also, as usual with ATK books, the index is bad. MANY times I can't find something in there but after leafing and browsing, there it is! There is also a shopping guide which shows all the winners of the shows' equipment testings (from knives and bakeware to pans, utensils and appliances) as well as winners from taste testings (such as cheese, meats, spices , pantry items etc). There is a rudimentary index to the 2010 tv shows, also, but none for the other seasons.

Despite the index and incompleteness flaws, I love this book.

I'm missing a couple of the annual editions and despaired not having a complete set until this book came along. I bought it immediately and love what's there. I happily transferred my Post-It bookmarks from my annual editions to this book, and seeing the variations and other ideas gathered around my favorites got me to thinking I may give them a try too. In that sense - many years of recipes reorganized in a more-or-less sensible fashion - this is a rather complete cookbook. But I miss what's not there - the things that would make this a complete America's Test Kitchen cookbook. The equipment ratings are almost an afterthought, and the tasting panel results aren't much better. I need to know if a particular piece of equipment that catches my eye at the store should be snapped up or shunned, and this book doesn't tell me that while the annual editions did. The candid photos are, as far as I can tell, all of the current staff; not one, for example, of "Doc" Willoughby who reported from the Science Desk in early years. And how much trouble would it have been to add a line to each recipe title, stating the year and episode it came from? The Index could have had references to a recipe's year (Consumer Reports style) so we hardcore fans could crack open our annual editions to read more about them. I like this book a lot but would have loved it if it was complete. It has earned a permanent place on my kitchen bookshelf, but I think maybe I'll resume searching for my missing annual editions, because I'll still be needing them close by.

I just got this, I hate buying anything that isn't a 'compendium' type of cookbook. I have none of the America's Test Kitchen books, so this is my only one, though I do have a number of other CI cookbooks and I am a member of the CI websites. I was offered this book and season 10 of the show on DVD for $29.99 directly from CI. Since I watch the shows rarely, I can't comment on any missing recipes, but I know that on the CI Bulletin Board, people are asking if such and such a recipe is in there and people have reported that there are a number left out. One of these is the Pepperoni Pan Pizza. I suggest that you take a trial membership to the website (30 days) and find and print what is missing (can't be much) and print it out. I know that the Pepperoni Pan Pizza is there and we can assume all the others that are missing are too.

Generally speaking, there is little to critique in a CI cookbook. CI is results oriented, and they have certainly found 'definitive' recipes that overcome the issues that many standard, traditional recipes have by updating them with a modern taste profile, and finding ways to correct generally flavorless commercial supermarket meats. Technique is often the key, rethinking the basics is also a favorite. So, when they tell you not to add water to beaten eggs for a coating like your mother did (add a bit of oil instead) it's to keep the breading on the meat without it puffing up like your mother's cutlets did. Vodka in your pie dough? It works. If they say that you should wipe the pan out in the middle of cooking those cutlets in batches, do so (oven gloves on, please). One word of caution, anything they call 'oven fried' is a dangerous methodology, that requires excellent quality baking sheets that don't buckle, high temperature oven mitts that don't absorb oil or liquids, a predestined landing space for the tray with trivets , and no children around.

Personally, I think all CI's recipes are a touch salty, and often way too spicy, but that may be the current fashion, you can always cut or add salt and spice. My main complaint for this particular book is that the recipes have no summarized cooking time at the top along with the 'serves x to x' this is a obvious mistake, as many recipes take a while with CI's standard brining methodology for meats. Sometimes for good reasons, they are also overly complicated or very unusual. A classic example of their overwrought recipes is Mexican Pulled Pork Carnitas. I have made this a couple times when it was originally published, the book recipe is the same. Braised/boiled pork butt is cooked in the oven, then chunked while the cooking broth is reduced. Mixed back in and then broiled on a wire rack in the oven and even have to be turned over while broiled. Let me tell you, this takes several HOURS to make, and you might not like the results since CI feels that it should be lightly browned, and my family felt that the only good pieces were the heavily browned ones. Doing it to the recipe, after investing all that time and effort to a general response of 'it's okay' is not a happy one for the cook. I made it again a couple months later, to better reviews after just browning it more, and checking the weight of the meat prior to putting it into the pot. When they say 3-4 lbs they don't mean 5lbs.

The layout is nice, small color photo on most of the pages of the finished recipe. The "Notes from the Test Kitchen' for the prep steps have the even smaller b&w photos. It's easy to read (I have bifocals). Recipes have a summarized couple of paragraphs, similar to whatever Chris says on the show at the end of the segment on "Why this recipe works." Again, there is no prep time or cooking time summary listed for each recipe.

The arrangement of recipes is interesting. There's a soup section, but French onion soup isn't in there, it's in a special section called "Flair of the French." There are several ethnic sections with interesting names, "Tex-Mex Tonight," "Bringing Home Italian Favorites," "Let's Do Takeout" is 'Asian' food in that it is a mix of Chinese, Thai, Japanese and Indian (India = Asian subcontinent). Again, as a comment, soups are in all of these sections, too. Anything done on a grill (except Grilled Pizza - one of my family and friends favorites) is in the "It's Grill Time!" segment. This is both good and bad, as there is a whole "Come for Brunch" section but the Onion and Bacon Tart is in the French segment 200 pages away. While there is a Italian Favorites chapter, there is also a "Who wants Pasta?" segment with the Pasta Puttanesca and Shrimp Fra Diavolo and Hearty Italian Meat Sauce -- aren't they also Italian favorites? The Cincinnati Chili (over spaghetti) is in a special section called "Dinner at the Diner." Its interesting choices for which recipe ended in which chapter. "French" fries are in the diner section, not the French one - that has Pommes Anna.

Generally it's a fine collection, however, it appears to be mostly a cut-and-paste of the website. We are used to some things that work particularly well on the web which are not possible in a book. The glaring one is the referral to 'see note' and there IS NO NOTE, adjoining the recipe and other times the note is in the recipe's opening paragraphs when on some of CI's web sites, the notes have been at the end of the recipe. Some recipes have special note sections, but not many. Recipe technique notes are at the end or sidebar as usual for CI.

There is a 'listing chapter' with photos of each product they recommend at the end of the book. The intro chapter gives chapter and verse on every person and company that supplied work, background material and food purveyors for the TV series. Also, the flyleaf has their major sponsor logos.

I also note, that there seems at first glance (even in the grilling section) that every reference to salt is 'table salt' which I find surprising. I guess that you can't get kosher salt in the Midwest or something. You should probably sub kosher anyway, since it has less salt than table salt in the same measure. When did this trend start, that is, moving away from kosher salt?

The America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook features the best recipes from the past 10 years of the show. America's Test Kitchen is great because they not only cook but they test each recipe and fix it dozens and dozens of ways to find the best way to prepare a dish. I love it because it's not just another chicken dish, etc. but it's the best way to fix the kind of dish that they are preparing. I always to go to them to find the best recipe to prepare dishes.

The book highlights their best and favorite recipes from the show. You can go on their website and get recipes too but you can only access the ones from the current season, this book features recipes since 1999.

Highly recommend.

I was given this book as a gift this past Xmas. I've been cooking for several decades...mostly out of neccessity. I consider myself a basic level cook with a good sense for flavoring and experimentation but lacking in technique, timing and process. I can follow a recipe easily enough without understanding the underlying principle behind each step in the recipe.

But this book is taking me to the next level. I have never watched the show or read the magazine before, so if recipes are missing; I wouldn't know. I LOVE reading the "Why this recipe works" prefaces to each recipe...Wow! I felt this book was written just for me. I now know how to shop for a medium onion...the redipe tells me how much of a yield to expect upon chopping it. The illustrations are clean and clear and very easy to grasp. I think this book will boost the confidence of any novice or basic cook. I'd guess that this book might be somewhat elementary for a more advanced or experienced cook, but I would highly recommend it for anyone leaving the nest or striking out on their own. I wish I had this book when I got my first apartment.

The writing is not presumptious, intimidatting or boring. I find this book inspiring and fun. The recipes are accessible (many familiar dishes), straightforward, achievable and (so far) foolproof. The book is quite educational. I love this book so much, I'm giving it as a gift to my culinary-challenged and kitchen-phobic friends.

The reviewer who gave this book only 2 stars did so because she says that the recipes for triple-chocolate cookies was not included. First, I hardly think that's a reason to give such a low score and second, the recipe she is looking for is actually located on page 465.

This cookbook is fantastic...and the videos are amazing too, though quite pricey!

If you want recipes that work, then buy this book.

As I have said in many, MANY reviews, I'm a beginner cook. I hope to improve that status eventually. Life in the Corps just doesn't allow for that...yet.

This book is extremely complete. If they are missing any recipes, it can't be many. I would expect a book this large to have a few mistakes. That is what the website and user feedback is for.

I'm working my way through this book. It is not designed to simply sit down and read. It is more of a reference book. It definitely gives me plenty of options as to what to do and how.

I like it alot. I will be using it more in the future. Especially with the holidays coming up.

The only drawback from a beginner cook's point of view is that there are very few pictures. The ones that are included are drawings done in black and white. I would like to see more picutres.