Customer Reviews

The Cook's Illustrated How-to-Cook Library: An illustrated step-by-step guide to Foolproof Cooking

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Why would you not add a cook book to your Kindle??

This book has more than just the basics, for example when you get a pizza recipe, you don't just get the standard oven pizza recipe, you also get explicit instructions and hints for making a grilled pizza.

I am very pleasantly surprised by the number of illustrations that make this book even doubly helpful.

I just made the Shepherd's Pie from this book last night and it was a huge hit.

I made the cream scones for Sunday breakfast and they were heavenly.

The really great thing is that you can bring this cook book with you and offer to make a meal as a weekend guest and all you have to do is throw in your Kindle not a big bulky book.

As a bit of a cookbook addict, I couldn't resist a freebie from Cook's Illustrated. While it doesn't cover a lot of new ground for me, it does provide plenty of explanation of cooking basics, good knowledge to have if you want to come up with culinary creations of your own. I was pleasantly surprised with the illustrations. I wouldn't have expected them to work this well in the Kindle format. Nicely done. Hope to see more like this.

This is a book that's great for the basics in a number of cooking categories, and like recipes from Cook's Illustrated magazine, the recipes are well described and will work well for most anyone.

The thing of note is that the book is organized with an inverted-tree sort of menu such that it's easy to go to where one wants to go without much fuss (and to "go back"). It's organized to be easy to use in a Kindle -- not just a converted paper book with perhaps a table of contents or index.

It's a good book and very professionally tailored for the Kindle.

Yes, I got it for free as well in that I ordered it long long before publication when perhaps the publisher was gauging to see if there was interest in a Kindle cookbook product. But having seen it, I think it's easily worth the current $10 price. The freebie offer was stated as a short-term "order now" offer prior to publication. Had it still been free now, I'd have been upset at the previous deception.

P.S. - The head honcho of Cook's Illustrated himself has a Kindle and undoubtedly is the driving force for this book coming out (IMO). I think he's done a really good job in this first product and look forward to other Kindle designed cookbooks from his organization -- even if not free.

This cookbook is amazing. Rather than thumb through, we started by typing in random foods, and were rewarded with many recipes we didn't expect. We made the Blackberry Cobbler right away and discovered it was the very one we had been dreaming about. Next will be the Key Lime Pie with the interesting differences from every one I have made before.

Perfectly laid out, easy to navigate and great index for the Kindle. Thank you Cook's Illustrated for your generosity making it available free to Kindlers.

This book was free when the Kindle 2 first came out, but I think that it's still worth it even now that they're charging for it.

This book is not, however, a cookbook. It's very light on actual recipes. This book is actually a how-to-cook book. It tells you how to select good produce and what "blanching" is, and how to do it, and what happens if you blanch too quickly or slowly. It tells you the different kinds of potatoes and what kinds are best for baking or mashing or stewing. This book doesn't only tell you what to do, it describes the various things that commonly go wrong in a lot of recipes.

If you're a total noob in the kitchen, a regular recipe is only going to confuse and daunt you, but this book will help you on the way to relieving yourself of your dependence on delivery boys for food.

I am a Certified Chef, Culinary Teacher, Science Geek, and avid home cook. Cook's Illustrated Magazines and Cookbooks are by far my favorite reads both for pleasure reading (yes pleasure!) and for recipes. The recipes always work and the tips for performing them are educational. I always learn something when I read through the book. I use them for my students in class and for supplemental reading for enrichment. Kindle made my beaten up copy portable and easy to reference. The index is easy to use and organized. I can take a great variety of recipes with me when I travel now. Now - only if I can get a copy of Baking Illustrated for my Kindle - That would be perfect!!!

I have no idea why this cookbook is free, because it is a really decent cookbook. Even the images are useful. Obviously, they are not the same quality as the full color prints in a paper book, but I didn't really expect any pictures as all. And these are pretty decent.

I especially enjoyed reading the introductory sections where the rationale for the base methods and recipes were described. It is also neat that they debunk some of the commonly dispersed methods in other sources. It appears that their decisions are based on real experiments, which is the right way to figure stuff out.

I have only tried one recipe, the basic beef stew. And of course, I modified it. I used boneless beef ribs for the meat. I added some celery. I doubled the potatoes and chicken broth. And I doubled the amount of salt and pepper. With those changes, it was the best beef stew I have ever made, and I have made some pretty darned good beef stew before.

For what this book is, it could probably rate 5 stars. But I withhold that rating for near perfection. But even with a 4 star rating, I still recommend it highly.

I downloaded this ebook for my Kindle for free. I will be using this book as a reference guide so I can't comment on the entirety of this work. However, I read most of the grilling section and I am thrilled. I enjoy the fact that the authors discuss different methods of grilling they tested and explained why they settled on a particular methodology. Very informative and Highly Recommended!

The Kindle and cooking are a perfect combination, since its portability makes it more convenient in the kitchen than most basic cooking books (which tend to be large and unwieldly.)

This is more than a recipe book, however, including basic information about the more common foodstuffs. As a relatively novice cook, I found the information invaluable.

Since there are so many web sites with freely available recipes, let's hope for more free (or cheap) cook books for the Kindle.