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The America's Test Kitchen Cookbook
 
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The America's Test Kitchen Cookbook (Hardcover)

~ Editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine (Editor)
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)

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Frequently Bought Together

The America's Test Kitchen Cookbook + Here In America's Test Kitchen: All New Recipes, Quick Tips, Equipment Ratings, Food Tastings, and Science Experiments from the Hit Public Television Show + America's Test Kitchen Live!: The All-New Companion to America's Favorite Public Television  Cooking Series
Price For All Three: $63.50

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Based on the popular PBS TV series, Cook's Illustrated's America's Test Kitchen Cookbook presents more than 200 recipes in short, essay-like investigations that reflect exhaustive ingredient, equipment, and method testing. Over the years, Cook's Illustrated magazine has set itself to the task of finding the best versions of favorite dishes. The result has been often-definitive reports on how to achieve fare like thin-crust pizza, oven-fried chicken, and blueberry muffins. Readers who look to the magazine for the last word on dish preparation, and others seeking reliable, enlightening cooking counsel, will welcome this book.

Each recipe includes a What We Wanted statement (in the case of french fries, for example, "Golden brown fries with a nice crunch on the outside and an earthy potato taste"); explores various dish approaches (the perfect fat for fries is investigated and determined, among other cooking issues); What We Learned ("Use russet potatoes, soak them in ice water, and fry in peanut oil twice); the recipe itself; and other features such as Testing Lab (a detailed view of the dish's perfecting process). A full range of dishes are explored, from puréed soups, sandwiches, and barbecue fare to holiday dinners, seafood classics, and sweets such as apple pie, bar cookies, and chocolate desserts. Fully photo illustrated, and with useful step-by-step technique drawings, the book is a valuable kitchen resource that will help readers cook better. --Arthur Boehm



From Publishers Weekly

This impressive compendium of basic recipes follows the format of Cook's Illustrated magazine and the television series America's Test Kitchen. Accordingly, it presents painstakingly tested standard recipes for American classics like Grilled Hamburgers and Brownies. Chapters are thematic: a Thanksgiving chapter includes Crisp-Skin High-Roast Turkey and Turkey Gravy; another on Steak Frites provides recipes for Pan-Seared Steaks, various sauces and, certainly, French Fries. Recipes have been tested with all possible variables e.g., the editors cooked both commercial and specialty bacons in a microwave, a skillet and an oven before settling on oven-roasting. Also included are the results of numerous blind taste tests of everything from canned tomatoes to lemon oils and extracts, and equipment evaluations. After being subject to this kind of scrutiny, these recipes are guaranteed to work perfectly, and all the "Science Desk" reports are a boon to kitchen nerds who may wonder about such things as "Why Potatoes Turn Brown." Sometimes, however, this attention to the minutest detail and the constant quest for "the best" can seem misplaced. For example, it's nice to know that challah makes top-quality French Toast, but this dish is often a last-minute whim made with whatever's in the house, making the four pages of instructions, analysis of griddles, two recipes (one for challah and the other for day-old European-style bread, with a few caveats) feel overblown. Nonetheless, culinary geeks everywhere will love this book. Photos and illus. (Jan.) Forecast: The magazine's popularity promises steady sales.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


Product Details

  • Hardcover: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Boston Common Press (October 2001)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 093618454X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0936184548
  • Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 8.7 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #172,804 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

15 Reviews
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 (8)
4 star:
 (4)
3 star:    (0)
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 (3)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.9 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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61 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Helps understand WHY things taste soooo good!, December 7, 2001
By G. Reed "parent" (Alexandria, Virginia USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This cookbook, and the associated magazine "Cook's Illustrated," try hard to discover the best methods, equipment and ingredients for cooking in the home. And they do so by exhaustive (at least it would be for me!) comparisons. They then explain the results and why they were achieved. If you have a scientific bent at all the explanations will suck you into trying the recipes. Then the tastes will hook you forever. For example, brining almost all poultry is now a staple technique in their repertoire, and after reading why (and going through the drawing of what happens to protein molecules during brining) it's now a staple in my home as well. Some discoveries that they share were serendipitous, too, such as leaving a brined turkey uncovered overnight in the fridge, cooking it anyway, and discovering that the resulting bird had both crisp skin (from drying out in the fridge) and juicy meat (from the brining). If understanding why something does what it does, if being shown why one thing is considered better than another, if comparisons are important to you -- then this cookbook is one you should have.
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73 of 78 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Shop carefully, August 9, 2003
By A Customer
These books are great! I love my Cooks' Illustrated Books and use them all the time. My one and only complaint is that they have now published the Best Recipe series and now the Test Kitchen books and they don't have enough recipes to fill them each one with enough unique recipes to distinguish one book from another.

A few repetitions is understandable, but they have gone way over the top. If you buy more than two of these books, the third is bound to be composed of a third the recipes from each of the first two. Same test info, everything. This only leaves 1/3 of the recipes as original.

Because of this, I say look carefully before deciding which one from this series you purchase unless you want multiple copies of the same testing articles and recipes.

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141 of 156 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars A cottage industry run amok, May 28, 2002
By A Customer
I fell in love with Cook's Illustrated magazine -- I've subscribed since the charter issue ten years ago. So I bought Chris Kimball's COOK'S BIBLE when it appeared. It included many of the same recipes lifted from the magazine, but that was okay, because it made searching for a particular dish easier. Shortly after that came his YELLOW FARMHOUSE COOKBOOK. More of the same. Meanwhile, the magazine is issuing individual-theme "booklets" for... It's up to a couple dozen by now, and all of them simply riffs on previously published material in the magazine. Then came Pam Anderson's (she was former exec ed and her absence is sorely missed) THE PERFECT RECIPE, which contained 30 of her COOK'S magazine articles. More repeats of the same information. A year later Cook's puts out THE BEST RECIPE, virtually identical to Pam's. More repeats of the same classic American fare. Now we have the BEST RECIPE SERIES, up to four at last count, the most recent being, AMERICAN CLASSICS, yet ANOTHER spin redux on mac-cheese and lemon meringue pie. What sets AMERICA'S TEST KITCHEN apart is that at least it's based on something other than magazine articles -- in this case, the TV series, which in itself, however, is incestuously bound to many of the same tried-and-true recipes from the magazine (and all those previous books). All of this is perfectly legal of course. You can't be arrested for plaigirizing your own recipes. But is it ethical? How many more printed versions of the same roast chicken recipe do we need? You can find nearly the same one in all of the COOK's books. Furthermore, I've begun to notice that there are odd discrepancies creeping into their recommendations. A recent chocolate dessert recipe, for instance, advocated using one of two different brands of chocolate -- these two brands, in fact, being the only two "not recommended" of the dozen taste-tested in an issue the previous year. For me, this wholly undercuts the credibility of the magazine, making me doubt the judgment of Cook's staff, which is really the main thing going for it since their shtick is testing and then declaring the best, whether it's an ingredient or technique. It's no wonder that so many recipes are simply dragged and dropped from one book to another -- there's no way that the relatively small staff of the magazine could produce this amazing and tireless flood of COOK'S products. It's a shame because, for me, all this marketing and mercenary publishing have made me mistrust an old friend.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Great, But Pages Don't Hold Up
I love this cookbook. Maybe it is a ripoff of their magazines and other books, I don't know. However, the pages are weak and rip out easily. Treat it gently.
Published on February 3, 2006 by D. B. Lewellen

5.0 out of 5 stars Combination cookbook & textbook!
I've always wondered why sometimes you use baking powder and sometimes you use baking soda, and sometimes both. Now I know! Read more
Published on September 20, 2003 by Pat D. Langille

4.0 out of 5 stars More than just recipes
If you are interested in the chemistry of cooking, you'll love this book. The recipes are good but the reasons behind why certain ingredients work better than others, which... Read more
Published on January 23, 2003

4.0 out of 5 stars Think of it as a sample size...
This was the first Cooks Illustrated cookbook I bought (I now have three) and it's... well, limited. Read more
Published on October 25, 2002 by Brian Connors

5.0 out of 5 stars If you enjoy the show, you'll love the book...
I've enjoyed the cooking show, America's Test Kitchen, for several years. Their web site ... includes the current season's recipes -- but not the full list. Read more
Published on October 12, 2002 by Rosemary Brock

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent resource for the curious cook
This companion volume to the PBS series is presented as 26 chapters that correspond to the individual shows and include recipe analysis, equipment recommendations and illustrated... Read more
Published on September 5, 2002 by audrey

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Have Cookbook
Whether you've been cooking for years and years or a beginner...this is the most educational cookbook I've ever seen. Read more
Published on September 1, 2002 by Marty Hollingsworth

5.0 out of 5 stars If you want to learn to cook well, there is no better guide
I found this book a fascinating read. I can easily spend a couple of hours immersed in this book, learning new techniques and observing the art and science of cooking. Read more
Published on July 4, 2002 by fair_deal_guy

4.0 out of 5 stars 'Consumer Reports' meets Julia Childs
After falling in love with the series, I decided to give the cookbook a try. I wasn't disappointed-- the casual presentation translates well into text, and the book is... Read more
Published on May 23, 2002 by skytwo

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed
I love the "America's Test Kitchen" TV program so I decided to purchase the book. Although the information given is the same as that which is shown on television, the... Read more
Published on May 6, 2002 by Dorothy Greaney

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