Customer Reviews

The Best Recipe

5 star:		(183)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been buying cookbooks for decades. I'll buy cookbooks for just one recipe I'm dying to learn. The funny thing is, I'm really not that good of a cook, but I love working in the kitchen.

This cookbook just blows me away. Just like the Cooks International PBS television series, it explains the why of cooking. Lasagne without ricotta? Beef marinade without acid? How could that be? The explanations are there, and they make total sense.

I sit in my bedroom reading this book at night. I read about the things I already know how to make, looking for the subtle ideas to make them perfect. It's really not a cookbook even though it's got hundreds of recipes. It's more a book about cooking, and it's got me more inspired than all of the scores of books I've bought before.

I'll give these guys the best compliment I can think of: I wish I had written it.

This book makes substantial claims in its title. But the authors have a reason for their claims. This is not a book of recipes from one person's (subjective) viewpoint. Almost all the recipes were "arrived at" by a common process. 1. Collect various, diverse and classic recipes for a given dish. 2. Prepare the various recipes. 3. Test the results (usually results are tested by a substantial panel) 4. If applicable, consult food scientists regarding certain chemical or physical reactions or properties. 5. Produce a recipe which combines everything learned from the process. The result is a recipe which tastes best to most people.

What also results are several benefits to the cook: 1) The recipes are often steamlined (if a traditional or classic technique does not produce flavor it is jettisoned). 2) The recipes usually revolve around a core technique that can be applied to other dishes in a cook's repertoire. 3) If the cook takes time to read all the work done by the editors he will be able to avoid many "mistakes" in his own experimenting.

As to the reviewer's comment about so many meat+salt+pepper recipes, I believe he missed 2 things: 1) nearly all the recipes of that nature have significant seasoning/ingredient variations after the basic recipe, 2) the point of these recipes was the TECHNIQUE. When I was a neophyte "gourmet" I liked long recipes with complex techniques. Now that I'm older (and wiser) I can ALSO appreciate plain chicken or beef which truly have been well-cooked. But this book also gives you variety as well--there are Italian, Mexican, French, Asian, etc. flavors here along with the American standards.

Having tried very many of these recipes I agree that they are usually "best". My family and friends also agree. The chicken brining technique and the hard-boiled egg recipe have become absolute in my own cooking. In the short time I have owned it, this book has seen more use than many of my old favorites because the results are so reliably "the best."

I'm an avid reader of Cooks Illustrated and several other cooking magazines. The Best Recipe now sits on my kitchen counter as the main cookbook and resource for most of our home cooked meals. Much of the research has been featured in past issues of the magazine, and deliver all the answers to why so many other recipes fail - and why this one, the "best" one, will succeed. I've cooked a lot of these recipes in the last couple of weeks and many throughout the years as a subscriber to Cooks Illustrated Magazine. Some people say there's no such thing as a "sure thing" but if there is, I think you'll find it in this book.

After you've been cooking for a while, you start to ask yourself questions like, "Do I really need to add oil to my pasta water?" or, "What exactly is cream of tartar?" If you are interested in ingredients and combinations of cooking, this is the book for you. A year ago a friend turned me onto the magazine Cook's Illustrated which is fantastic. This book collects 700+ of their classics from the last several years in one place. More than the recipes themselves, I like the narrative of how they start with all the classic recipes and then do exhaustic scientific experiments (often consulting food scientists) until they have everything just right. Since I often do minor experiments myself and find that I've messed up an entire meal, it's nice to let the test kitchen take on this role. Even more gratifying, sometimes it turns out that the fancy complicated recipe does not produce better tasting results than a more streamlined one. I've cooked lots of these recipes and ever single one has come out perfectly.

On top of the recipes, you will find answers to questions you just don't have time to figure out: which supermarket olive oil tastes best? Which tuna fish is the tastiest? What's the difference between rib eye, London Broil and Flank steak? I've never been so interested in a cookbook. I read the whole thing through over a long week of reading and can't wait to experiment by trying more of their recipes. If you like this book, subscribe to the magazine!

I'm an avid cook and, while I no longer subscribe to "Cooks Illustrated" magazine, I respect Chris Kimball and his expert kitchen team and have had good luck, more or less, with their recipes which, if followed EXACTLY, are virtually foolproof. I also never fail to learn something from their informative kitchen commentary. All in all, his recipes and advice are beneficial to both novice and experienced cooks.

That having been I have to point out that taste is, of course, subjective. For instance, I've found, from trying a number of Kimball's recipes, that he is a salt-a-holic. I prefer to cook with little or no salt, as I find the taste harsh and unpleasant, and if I followed Kimbell's recipes exactly I'd be drowning in the stuff. I prefer pepper and tend to double or triple the often meager amounts Kimbell calls for in his recipes (usually he calls for four or fives times more salt than pepper, and I tend to reverse those ratios).

The recommendations too, are, of course, all one man's opinion. He speaks harshly of Le Creuset, which is my favorite cookware, despite the expense (don't listen to Kimball: the enamel service is as good or better than non-stick), and frequently raves about plain cast iron which, while I'm sure can be great, takes a great deal of patience to properly season (I've NEVER had any luck doing so), can't be washed in a dishwasher (big downfall, in my opinion) and can easily destroy an induction cooktop (something Kimball fails to even mention). He also highly recommends an electric rice cooker which is, perhaps, the least useful tool in my kitchen and is quite scornful of breadmakers, an appliance I use several times a week quite happily.

All of Kimball's cookbooks follow the same basic format: a long-winded, but often interesting, discourse on how Kimball views the "perfect" version of whatever it is he's showing you how to cook, including a lengthy explanation of variations he has tried, followed by his "Master Recipe" for the food. I recommend carefully reading the introduction, focusing on what Kimball considers "perfection," before attempting the recipe. For instance, he prefers very hard, extremely crusty bread (one of the main reasons he despises breadmakers, by the way) with a light, "air-filled" interior, while I like a soft, almost blonde, crust and am quite fond of the "cakelike" bread consistency Kimball is so disdainful of. So, in terms of bread, Kimball's "master" recipe is obviously not going to suit me.

In short, if your taste is the same as Kimball's when it comes to a particular food his well-researched and thoroughly-tested recipes will be amazing. If you don't feel the same way about, say, chicken (he likes it quite salty and greasy--though he uses the terms like "savory," "succulent" and "moist" to describe what I think of as "salty" and "greasy") as the author, his recipe for roasting a chicken will leave you cold.

But my biggest problem with Kimbell cookbooks is this: If you have one, you have them all. He lifts whole passages and recipes and uses them in multiple books. "The Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook," and the "Cook's Bible," for instance, have at least 50 identical recipes, not to mention verbatim introductions to each section and cookware recommendations repeated word-for-word. "The Best Recipe" features ALL of the recipes (as far as I can tell) from the "Cook's Bible," with the same commentary, which is, in turn, lifted in whole chunks from past issues of "Cooks Illustrated." I'm sure this saves Mr. Kimbell a great deal of time when compiling his cookbooks but it leaves little reason to own more than one edition of his work. Exceptions to this rule are his specialty cookbooks, such as his "Complete Pasta and Noodle" or "Complete Poultry," which again contain exact repeats from other books but also add a wealth of new recipes and information.

If you're going to buy a Kimbell cookbook, and I do think it's a worthy investment for any semi-serious cook, buy "The Best Recipe" which is the most complete and contains a minimum of what I feel are Mr. Kimball's fairly useless opinions on cookware and appliances. On the other hand, if you already own, say, "The Cook's Bible," don't bother with "The Best Recipe." In addition, as mentioned earlier, Kimbell's specialty cookbooks, focusing on one particular item, are also worth the purchase price, but only if you're interested in that particular food type.

This cookbook is AWESOME! It has every recipe that you could possibly want or need. The cool part is that they explain everything, including how to cut an onion and not cry and why it works. And to top it off, they not only tested recipes over and over, but tested different kinds of cooking equipment over and over and then give reviews. I liked it sooo much that I'm back buying one for a friend for Christmas. Happy Holidays!

This cook book tells you why the recipes work the way they do-- it really teaches you the science of cooking. Very well written and organized. Its in-depth instructions were simple to understand, instructive and entertaining. The results were mouth-watering.

I am always tinkering with recipes to improve them in some way or another. The great thing about this book is that they have already done the tinkering and found, as the title suggests, the best recipe.

In addition to the superb recipes the research is fun to read as well...like chef-detectives solving the mysteries of bland cookies or overcooked chicken.

This book does not include recipes for everything under the sun. It specializes in basic recipes which you can customize as desired (suggestions included).

Another thing I appreciate is the authors do not assume you have unlimited time or money to spend on cooking. They evaluate various shortcuts (canned stock, microwaving) and recommend them where appropriate. Furthermore, the recipes do not make use of weird or impossible to find equipment or ingredients. A reasonably stocked kitchen is all you need to make most everything in the book.

Thanks to Cooks Illustrated!

I used to manage the cookbook section of an independent bookstore and as such have read through and sampled over a hundred cookbooks. If I could only have one, this would be it.

The criticisms about the indexing and redundancy with their other books/magazine are well-founded. I went through the index and wrote in dictionary-style page headers at the top, which helped a LOT. I highly recommend that. Otherwise it's almost useless--one of the main categories is "entrees," the subcategories for which go on for pages. Subcategories are barely indented and main categories are not bolded, so it's impossible to tell where you are in the index. A column of beef listings would make you suspect you're in the B's, but you may be in E for entree.

As far as redundancy, I subscribe to the magazine but want the book format for the convenience. Look closely before buying more than one of their books, though. I did looked through a number or theirs and selected this one because I found it to be the most inclusive.

As far as complaints about pictures, all those nice glossy shots don't really help you cook any better and they add immensely to the cost of the book. I'm glad they decided to go with the practical, affordable book.

So much for the negatives. As for the positives: the recipes and techniques really are outstanding! They tell you what they were trying to achieve, the methods they tried, and why things did and didn't work. They don't say something is the best recipe because they're arrogant, it's because they made thirty different variations and printed the best one. Since so much information in my cookbooks completely conflicts with info in others, this has been fantastic.

The recipes have in fact been the best I've tried for various things. In particular I found the perfect rice pudding recipe that I have sought after for years. My husband has the key lime pie of his dreams (which, it turns out, is made without key limes). The book is not an all-inclusive reference, but it has amazing breadth. Almost everything I've needed has turned out to be in there.

As for the person who complained that the recipes for, say, roasting meat called for meat and salt and pepper to taste... what were you expecting, guava? The point is the technique: do you start or finish with high heat, or low and slow all along, and why? The book provides the basic technique, such as how to saute chicken breasts, then follows with several different pan sauces to finish it. Or different rubs for grilling, etc.

This is just a great cookbook, and a great reference book. If you like the magazine (and check it out if you haven't) you will love this. If you read On Food and Cooking for fun, you'll appreciate this. If you think you cook better than anything they came up with... well, then why were you looking at this cookbook in the first place?

I suppose, as has been suggested, some very new cooks could possibly be intimidated by the detail, but if I had gotten this as my first cookbook I probably could have saved a bunch of money on others!

I used to work in the editorial department of The New England Journal of Medicine, which I think explains my keen fascination with the controlled experiment-like precision of this book. Anyone who is drawn to a more analytical, methods approach to cooking (rather than a more touchy-feely approach) will love The Best Recipe. I've given it as a gift to numerous friends and we're keeping an ongoing tally of the hits and misses. To date, there has been only one miss: the broiled eggplant. The cookies, in particular, are spectacular, as are the cream cheese brownies. This book, if you're using its recipes to cook for friends, will give you a huge ego trip--people actually think you're some kind of culinary genius! I have A LOT of cookbooks and, along with Julia Child's The Way To Cook, this is one I'd save if a grease fire were burning down my house.