The Taste of Home Cookbook [Ring-bound]

Taste of Home Editors (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 2006

Your purchase of The Taste of Home Cookbook also includes a one-year subscription to Taste of Home magazine!

The 1,000 home cooks who help create the #1 cooking magazine in the world bring you the most comprehensive cookbook yet, The Taste of Home Cookbook! This brand-new cookbook has over 1,200 home-style, kitchen-tested recipes with over 700 full-color photographs. The five-ring binder-style collection is organized into 25 different chapters, so it is easy to use. There are 2 handy pockets to store your own recipe clippings or cards. For quick look-up, you can flip to any one of five separate indexes, including major ingredient, food category, alphabetical, cooking method, and tip/reference. Plus, easy-to-follow reference charts are located on the inside front and back covers.

Best of all, The Taste of Home Cookbook includes all of the homemade classics you would expect - from beef brisket to dinner rolls, pot roast to apple pie - plus dozens of fresh taste-twists soon to become new family favorites. Scattered throughout are entertaining anecdotal stories from contributing home cooks that will demonstrate why these treasured recipes earn rave reviews at every meal or special occasion. Each recipe also features a quick-read ingredient list and clear, simple-to-follow instructions.

New and experienced cooks alike will appreciate the basic techniques sections, followed by more than 300 additional time-saving tips, handy tricks and helpful how-to's with step-by-step instructions and photos to make cooking easier.

Every recipe hand-selected for The Taste of Home Cookbook has been tested by cooks like you and again in the Taste of Home Test Kitchens, and each includes nutrition information. There's even a chapter on light recipes and an information section on the latest FDA food label information, including trans fats. With hundreds of photos inside, you can know what the food will look like on your own table. You can make any recipe in this book with confidence and enjoy guaranteed success.

The Taste of Home Cookbook is a must-have resource for every home cook! It is the ideal year-round gift, perfect for holidays, bridal showers, birthdays, Mother's Day and more.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the tradition of the church or community cookbook, this comprehensive collection of convenient, everyday recipes comes from real American kitchens. An enormous five-ring binder encompasses 1,125 recipes with color photos, blank recipe cards, and handy pockets for notes and shopping lists. Also included is complete nutritional information for each recipe. While some of the dishes seem dated, such as creamy casseroles, cheese balls, and New England Boiled Dinner, there are some fresh takes on classic combinations, and even some global surprises. A reader from Oregon offers a recipe for Mongolian fondue, for instance, while another from Binghamton, N.Y., contributes a recipe for spiedis, or Italian kabobs. Shortcuts abound with readymade supermarket ingredients simplifying Sun-Dried Tomato Hummus and Crab Lasagna Roll-Ups. A section devoted to light offerings is a welcome counterpoint to the heartier foodstuffs that make up the bulk of this book.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Ring-bound: 676 pages
• Publisher: Readers Digest (September 12, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898214971
• ISBN-13: 978-0898214970
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 8.4 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (67 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #39,993 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Real food, for real people packed w/ info extras., September 21, 2006

By 

D. Matlack "Guidedog" (in Wild Wyoming) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Taste of Home Cookbook (Ring-bound)

I have long been a fan of the Taste of Home magazine & would collect their annual "Yearbooks" of recipes. Naturally I had to add this to my collection and was pleasantly surpised by the addition of a conversion and substitution chart on the inside cover. The lay out of the book itself is orderly and in each section includes a wealth of information on everything from different cheeses, meat preparation, utensils, what goes well with what etc.

Taste of Home recipes have always been a plus in that they were always good food made from readily availble ingredients, yet the addition of easy to read charts and photos provide crucial how-to information that makes this an excellent book for a novice cook while the variety in recipes will offer plenty of new options to try out for an advanced cook.

I also liked that the book is sturdy and very well made, it is designed for endurance and extensive use.

As usual Taste of Home does not disapoint & this book is Highly recomended!

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars With this Book, Who Needs Betty?, March 25, 2007

By 

Scarlet Harlot "Scarlet Harlot" (New Hampshire) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Taste of Home Cookbook (Ring-bound)

I grew up with "Taste of Home" magazine, and some of the best recipes I've found came from one of the Country Cooking series, either in magazines or their spiral-bound cookbooks. I've had many a 4-H Food Show blue ribbons courtesy of the Country Cooking series. When I saw this cookbook at BJs, I bought 1 copy for me, 1 for my sister, and one for my mother, without even flipping through it first. I was confident that anything these guys had to offer was fantastic.

Well, it's been several months now, and this book exceeds my expectations on all counts. It has replaced my old, worn Betty Crocker "Red Bible" as the new "go to" cookbook, because everything that Betty delivers, this book delivers, and better.

This book is a Betty-style, hard cover, 5-ring binder book, with the thin, magazine-style pages, and divided up with 25 tabs. I love that, instead of the general, catch-all "meat" section that most cookbooks have, this one actually divides out "Beef and Veal," "Pork," "Lamb," and "Poultry" into it's own, very complete, sections. Instead of the ubiquitous "desserts" section, this has the "Cookies and Bars," "Cakes," "Pies and Tarts," "Candies," and the "Desserts" section (filled with ice cream, sorbet, and cobblers... The things that just don't fit anywhere else). Some might find this to be organized to the point of tediousness, but I think it's phenomenal to have that kind of hyper-categorization. Being somebody who cooks with a "I kind of know what I want, but not really" attitude, it's nice to be able to flip to the specific section that caters to my culinary whim.

Then there are the "bells and whistles" that this cookbook has that knocks it up that one notch further. The "food equivalents" measuring chart, the "ingredient substitutions" chart, the helpful hints, cooking tips, carving tips, temperature guidelines, and other little gems you find in each section are so complete, I don't need to do the "cookbook multi-task" with the recipe I want on one counter and the cooking/roasting tips in the Betty book on another. The index section is equally informative, with 3 indexes, one for the "food category," one for the "major ingredient," and the last for "references and tips." There's also a chart for recommended food storage times (freezer and fridge), the herbs and spices guide, and a cuts of meat guide (awesome). With all of this stuff, I am willing to forgive that this cookbook is pretty big and bulky... It requires lots of space, but lays flat, which is good enough for me.

The recipes are complete, easy-to-read and easy-to-use, and while all of the recipes tend to be "beginner" recipes, suited for people of all skills, there are quite a few that are more complicated, and required a little bit more skill. Pretty much all of them, though, are recipes that anybody can use, without fancy or expensive ingredients, making it the perfect dinnertime cookbook. As an added bonus, each recipe has nutrition information, so when I'm doing Weight Watchers, I can still stay in my diet and use this cookbook (for us who have love affairs with food that's gone straight to our thighs, the "Light and Tasty" section is a Godsend).

Really, I think this is the only cookbook you need. Perfect for newlyweds, people who like to or are learning to cook, or just anybody who wants a simple, down-home recipe book with recipes submitted by people who know what they're talking about. My only hope is, when this book expands into the newest additions (as I know it will), the folks at Taste of Home will be smart enough to sell the expansion packs (packages that only have the newly-included recipes/pages so people with the older editions can simply add the new pages and stay up-to-date) like Betty Used to, so I won't have to buy new cookbooks every other year.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for novice cooks, March 25, 2007

By 

kimberjs (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Taste of Home Cookbook (Ring-bound)

If you're looking for a great gift for a first time cook, this is it. The recipes are reliable, making the chances for success much higher--thus, the cooking experience more satisfying for a novice. While accomplished cooks may find the illustrated, step-by-step basics a little tedious, for people just starting out in the kitchen these sections provide a fantastic approach to lessen fears and boost confidence. The photos help reinforce the plain language text descriptions, providing workable approaches for people who are visual or verbal learners.

Yes, the binder is cumbersome (one reason I was put off from purchasing a copy sooner) and the paper stock is thin, but this design facilitates easy access to recipes by allowing the book to lay open flat and the pages (in what would otherwise be a very thick and heavy bound book) to be removed for use and then be replaced without having to wrestle with the entire volume. Hint: To keep the pages clean, simply slip them into a clear poly photo page during use.

I particularly like the binder dividers which categorize recipes in typical groupings--poultry, pork, seafood--but also provide an index for each section so search time for a recipe is reduced. For purists, indeed, a good share of recipes in this binder appear in other Taste of Home publications but from my perspective, the editors have chosen well, selecting some of the most reliable recipes I've found across nearly a dozen of their annual and special issue cookbooks.

I like having the nutritional information included for each recipe. For experienced cooks, the nutritional information helps in figuring out ways to reduce fat and sodium content. For a new cook, the nutrition facts will help raise awareness of preparing balanced meals. Information detailing a variety of vegetables, safe cooking, serving, and storage methods is another great feature the book offers. This book also includes the basics on how to set a table and information about entertaining including, among other things, what variety of and how many appetizers to plan for each guest and how much food to plan on preparing per person for a dinner party.

The Taste of Home Cookbook is very well thought out and executed and the editors are to be congratulated. It certainly holds its own against the Betty Crocker and Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks and, as far as I'm concerned, deserves a place next to The Joy of Cooking as an approachable, user-friendly, instructional cookbook with a low learning curve.