The Epicurious Cookbook: More Than 250 of Our Best-Loved Four-Fork Recipes for Weeknights, Weekends & Special Occasions [Paperback]

Tanya Steel (Author), The Editors of Epicurious.com (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 30, 2012

For home cooks hungry for make-again recipes, here is an impeccably curated collection from Epicurious with more than 250 of their "4-fork" recipes, conveniently compiled in a book with new photography, new headnotes, and informative user tips. 
 
Epicurious is, undisputedly, the most respected website for people who like to cook. In their first-ever cookbook, the Epicurious editors have culled their extraordinary database of 180,000 recipes and selected their most popular recipes.

Organized seasonally and by meal type, The Epicurious Cookbook offers everything from 30-minute weeknight dinners to weekend warrior show-stoppers. Also included are comfort food favorites, small dishes perfect for parties and plenty of repertoire-building mains and sides, plus breakfasts, breads, and desserts. All new stunning four-color photography shows Epicurious at its most irresistible. Throughout are Epicurious member suggestions for tweaking recipes, ideas for menu planning, smart substitutions, and homespun recipes from dozens of Epicurious members newly tested for this cookbook. Recipes include: 
 
Easy comfort foods: Chicken and Fall Vegetable Pot Pie, Beef Short Ribs Tagine, Spicy Mac and Cheese with Pancetta, Deviled Fried Chicken, Chili con Carne with Chili Cheddar Shortcakes
 
Fast Weeknight Dinners: Quick Paella, Wild Rice with Pecans, Raisin, and Orange Essence, Brussels Sprouts Hash with Caramelized Shallots, Rosemary Lamb Chops with Swiss Chard and Balsamic Syrup, Pan-Fried Spicy Orange Tilapia 
 
Please-Everyone Vegetarian and Vegan Dishes: Chilled Soba with Tofu and Sugar Snap Peas, Spiced Lentil Tacos with Chipotle Sour Cream, Roasted Eggplant Salad
 
Special occasion show-stoppers: Tom Colicchio’s Herb-Butter Turkey, Beef Brisket with Merlot and Prunes, Wine-Braised Duck Legs
 
American Classics Updated—Burgers, Pizzas, Salads, Pastas, and Grilled Cheese: Coffee-Rubbed Cheeseburger with Texas Barbeque Sauce; Hearty Asparagus, Fingerling Potato, and Goat Cheese Pizza; Lobster Pasta in a Roasted Corn Sweet Bacon Cream; Grilled Cheese with Onion Jam, Taleggio, and Escarole
 
Breakfast and Brunch Stars: Extreme Granola with Dried Fruit, Kitchen Sink Frittata, Crème Brulee French Toast, and Ultimate Sticky Buns
 
Decadent Desserts: Double Layer Chocolate Cake, Apple Tart with Caramel Sauce, Frozen Lemon Ginger Snap Pie, Peanut Butter and Fudge Brownies with Salted Peanuts
 
Destined to be that classic you’ll turn to daily, The Epicurious Cookbook enhances the very best online content in a gorgeous cookbook.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A Letter from Tanya Steel to Amazon Cooks

Download the recipe for Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes

Who would have thought that the millions worldwide that view Epicurious as their sous chef, who return daily to their digital recipe boxes seeking their favorites, would crave a printed product?

Epicurious was founded on the principle that good food should be enjoyed by, and accessible to, everyone; that our global village of home cooks can provide invaluable expertise; that the world's great culinary minds should be showcased in recipe, video, article. But being a purely digital product—albeit one available via computer, smartphone, tablet, printer, and refrigerator—left some of our passionate community desiring one thing more—a printed cookbook. Some wanted it so they could read the book in bed, salivating over the food photography and delicious recipe titles. Others asked from a more practical point of view, saying they still liked to cook from an actual book, pages collecting flour and absorbing grease as the tangible proof of a delicious memory. And then a vocal minority just wanted to know what recipes we editors liked most, asking us to act as curators.

So, we took up the charge, selecting from amongst the top-rated recipes voted by users. The process was, well, lengthy. Try going through a database that numbers 200,000, choosing from amongst the best of the best, created by the likes of Gourmet and Bon Appétit magazines, top cookbook authors like Edna Lewis, Dorie Greenspan, and Bruce Aidell, renowned chefs like David Chang, Tom Colicchio, and Jonathon Waxman. It was hard! Arguments ensued. Knives were drawn at dawn—umm . . . kitchen knives . . .

We decided to structure the book the way we all eat and cook—by season—then by meal course or type. Because we love and value our community, we also chose to feature some of our most talented home cook recipes, and gave them the royal treatment—testing, cross-testing, and then editing and photographing their family recipes. We strove to find the perfect member comment to add editorial insight into each recipe and wrote headnotes that supplied menu ideas, cooking tips, and substitutions. We created menus so that any reader could just flip to the back and get a preplanned meal. And, finally, we convinced legendary food photographer Ellen Silverman, who had just come off shooting Gwyneth Paltrow's cookbook, to render shots of the dishes just as they would look in any of our kitchens—rustic, fresh, tasty.

And so here we are, about to give birth to Epicurious' first-ever cookbook. We couldn't have done it without the support and encouragement of our vocal global cooking club, and we couldn't be more proud of the results.

We hope it will become one of your all-time favorite classics.

Warmly,

Tanya Steel
Editor-in-Chief
Epicurious, Gourmet Live, Gourmet.com, and coauthor of Real Food for Healthy Kids

Molly O'Neill Interviews Tanya Steel, Author of The Epicurious Cookbook

Molly O'Neill is the author of One Big Table as well as New York Cookbook, A Well-Seasoned Appetite, The Pleasure of Your Company, and Mostly True. A former reporter for the New York Times and the food columnist for its Sunday magazine, she hosted the PBS series Great Food. She has won the Julia Child/IACP Award, three James Beard citations for books, journalism, and television, as well as the foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award. She has twice been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Tanya Steel is that rare breed of food-loving editors who came of age in print journalism and moved seamlessly into the online world. Packing a decade’s worth of old-media discipline and tradition, she turned Epicurious.com into the premier site for people who cook. Ms. Steel is all of what her name implies. She is also a serious superstar.

Launched by Condé Nast in 1995, Epicurious was initially imagined as a digital repository for Gourmet and Bon Appétit, the company's two food magazines. In 2005, when Steel took the helm, she began commissioning more and more original work, minding dining and cooking trends and serving up feasts of words and recipes for all the demographic groups that comprise a Big Time readership.

Since then, Epicurious has collected almost 200,000 recipes, and every month 9 million unique users log on to answer the question of the day: What the heck am I going to cook for dinner (or for Thanksgiving, or for my shiny new boyfriend, or my in-laws, or the eight people I impulsively invited to dinner on Saturday night)? The Epicurious Cookbook is a finely curated volume—250 recipes drawn from the sea of online possibilities—all of which have been test-driven with the savvy and determination generally associated with Detroit's crash-car experts.

Out of my 15,000 cookbooks, it feels like one of the handful that I will actually keep in the kitchen, a book that captures this moment in American appetite. I called Tanya Steel to ask how she did it—and why.

Continue reading the complete interview [PDF]

About the Author

TANYA STEEL is the Editor-in-Chief of EPICURIOUS.COM. Winner of a James Beard award for restaurant reviewing, and a member of the Digital Hall of Fame, Steel was previously an editor at Bon Appetit, Diversion, Food & Wine, and Mademoiselle. She is the co-author of the award-winning Real Food for Healthy Kids.

Launched in 1995, EPICURIOUS is the most award-winning food site on the web, which has received 64 awards, including two James Beards, an Emmy, eighteen Webbys, and three from the American Society of Magazine Editors.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Clarkson Potter (October 30, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307984850
• ISBN-13: 978-0307984852
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 1.2 x 10 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #20 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Special Occasions > Seasonal
  • #29 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Entertaining
  • #94 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > U.S. Regional

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 50 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Long Time in the Making October 31, 2012

By bakerbronte

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I'm a huge fan of the Epicurious website. I've been using it since 2004 when I first married, and I've often wondered why Epicurious had not compiled a cookbook showcasing their best recipes. Epicurious was originally a database of recipes from Bon Appetit magazine and Gourmet magazine but has expanded to include a lot of other culinary talent. The recipes are ranked by users from 1 to 4 forks, based on the percentage of users who would make the recipe again. This little book is a compilation of more than 250 of their 4 fork (read: highest ranked) recipes.

The book is organized seasonally into 4 chapters: spring, summer, fall, and winter. Each season is then subdivided into the following sections: breakfast; starters; mains; sides; sandwiches and breads; desserts. I like the seasonal organization but I think I would have preferred the book organized exclusively by the listed subdivisions. I find it easier to navigate a cookbook when all breakfasts are categorized together, all cakes are categorized together, etc., instead of cakes being organized into sping or fall menus. The recipes have a special tag on them to indicate when a reader submitted recipes is being featured.

The book is around four hundred pages and is a flat spined paperback. It needs a cookbook stand or some other aid to stay open on its own. The photography in the book is certainly eye-catching and pretty much guarentees that you will give in to a nine pm random urge to run to the market and purchase the ingredients for double chocolate layer cake (page 385). There is not a photograph for each finished recipe but there is a very generous number of photographs.

In case I wasn't clear, this is a compilation of greatest recipes--not new material. I love having a volume of their finest four fork recipes at my fingertips. I don't think I've ever had a four fork recipe from Epicurious fail me. This volume includes everything from Tom Colicchio's thanksgiving turkey to Vermont maple bread pudding with walnut praline. Some of my favorite recipes from the Epicurious website that have been featured include salmon cakes with lemon yogurt sauce,cinnamon crumble apple pie, and mahogany chicken.

Each recipes has a small headnote to introduce the recipe or make a note about the authorship. There are frequent sidebars helpfully telling you when it is appropriate to make the recipe ahead (a real time saver during the holiday season!). Many recipes have a small blurb with an Epicurious user quote describing their success with the recipe (I could personally do without this).

I think this book is long overdue. I was ready for a huge hardcover twice this size and will happily purchase it when it is released as I have a feeling Epicurious will find other opportunities to publish cookbooks after this one. I would actually give this book 4.5 stars if given the option. It is a terrific book with just a few flaws. I am going to put this book on my shortlist as a possible present for newlyweds this holiday season.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Well Organized and Curated Best Of November 1, 2012

By Margaret Thompson

Format:Paperback

I'm a big fan of epicurious and internet recipes isites n general. But there are times when you just want to reach for a book and have the permanence and elegance of your favorite recipes in one spot. I suppose I could print out various epicurious recipes I've enjoyed and put them in a binder and make notes in the margin, but that wouldn't look as good (this is a handsome and tastefully designed book), nor would I benefit from the brain trust of epicurious that created this. Plus I like the idea of supporting the site, which has provided me with so many lovely meals.

This is a big book with tons of recipes. Most appealing to me so far are pea salad with radishes and feta, asparagus and hearts of palm salad, and grilled caesar salad.

In addition to being organized by season, you can also look up recipes by occasion (ex. fast meal on a weekday, something to wow guests, and holiday occasions). This is clearly a well thought out and carefully curated collection. I'll try to update as I try more recipes. Bon apetit!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Uncomplicated, yet polished December 2, 2012

By Sally-Ann Frederick

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have used the epicurious website for many years, and I use it a lot. I am a simple cook, and would not venture into any recipes that looked sophisticated in the slightest. When this cook book showed up in my sister's mailbox in NY, I realised that somehow I had ordered it by mistake. Especially as I usually order from the Amazon UK website, living in Scotland as we do. However, it was a happy mistake because reading through it, and now having tried a few of the recipes, I really love it. The recipes that have been chosen are not really difficult, they don't require me to buy some kitchen tool I don't already have, and I don't have to travel to London to get some specifically required ingredient. Although there are a few of those recipes too, the majority look familiar and greatly improve the meals I make, and I am not a natural cook. I feel happy that I can prepare most of these recipes when we're having guests, and just as happy to make them for just the family. I think that epicurious, having finally made the jump to print, have made a pragmatic and functional kitchen resource. Well done! ~ Mrs.Frederick-Hoyne, Sanquhar, Scotland