The New Best Recipe Hardcover – November 1, 2004

I have been using the Internet for recipes; everyone and their sister seems to have a food blog these days. It took me quite a while to realize that my method was hit or miss. I mean, who's writing these blogs anyway? So, the search began for a really great cook book that covered "soup to nuts". This one is it! Plus, I got this book for a steal- sold as used but looked untouched. The first recipe I tried out was roasted potatoes. When I would cook them they were crispy on the outside and dry on the inside. Or moist on the inside and blah on the outside. America's Test Kitchen, of course, has it all figured out. They tested all kinds of ways of roasting potatoes, describing what's wrong with various techniques and then gives you the best recipe with an explanation of why it works. And it works great! The whole darned book is great.

This is from a college student on a shoe-string budget with limited cooking experience. At the risk of sounding overly critical, I won't waste time pouring out accolades for the book. It is mostly what everyone else has said. Its strongest selling point is the details in which they present the recipes. As someone who has not yet developed a good cooking intuition, I very much appreciate the short essays before each recipe describing how they came to the 'best' one. Unlike other recipe books that just give you a list ingredients with sparing and often obscure instructions, this one gives you the thought process behind each step so that you understand what is going on, which in the end I think will make you a better cook.

As good as it is, this book does suffer from many of the same pitfalls that plague the recipe book genre. Despite their earnest attempts to make their recipes as robust as possible, I find that their recipes tend to be somewhat kitchen specific. Simple things like differences in oven settings and thickness of pots and pans will throw off the recipe. You will find that while high heat was ideal for them, it may mean a burnt salmon for you. They try to address these things but most times you just have to use your judgement and learn from your mistakes. For me, the recipes almost never come out the way like it on the first try; they tend to be 'ok' but not spectacular. This is usually a combination of me not having their recommended cookware, making small adjustments to cook with the ingredients I have or me just disagreeing with what the authors consider the "best recipe".

The first issue is largely a function of me being college student and not being able to afford the top notch cookware that they recommend. To be honest, the cookware they recommend are not exorbitantly priced. They tend to go for the best value but sometimes even the best value is a bit out of reach for me. Overall, I do find that most recipes were accessible and they try to stick with the most basic set of cookware that they think most home kitchens should have. They would even outline variations based on available equipment. For example, if a recipe calls for mixing they would sometimes show you how to do it with a standing mixer, food processor or by hand. Judging from the very pleasing results from my lackluster cookware, I would imagine that if I had reasonably well stocked kitchen I would be consistently churning out splendid dishes. The second case, not having the exact ingredients, is almost unavoidable in my opinion. They sometimes recommend things that I either can't find at my grocery store (usually a specific brand of a product) or too exotic to be used for something else. They have a thing for fancy cheeses and fine wine. Well, fine wine is always useful :) but I'm not going to buy $12 block of cheese just to grater a little bit over a bowl of soup.

There have been a few occasions where after making everything exactly as they say (right ingredients, cookware, method and everything), I would still find the recipe to be underwhelming. I could think of their blueberry muffin recipe for example. For them, the ideal blueberry muffin should be light, moist, sweet, buttery and loaded with blueberries. After making these muffins, I found that they were too light (almost cake-like), too sweet and too buttery. I would say it was a blueberry cupcake rather than muffin. I like to eat muffins with my breakfast so I like them to have a hearty texture and not to be too sweet. That's just my preference though. I also didn't like their french onion soup recipe. They introduced a short cut that literally involved burning the onions to speed up the caramelizing process but the soup came out way off. I tried other french onion soup recipes and I thought they were way superior. Others will disagree with my taste and that's fine but this is where the book shines. By providing the thought process behind each step, it is a lot easier to tweak the recipe to your liking.

I should also mention that the book is littered with many educational gems such as how to pick out the best knives, why brining a chicken works to improve its flavor and moisture, the different types of flour and how their properties affect your recipe etc.

Other caveats... the book is somewhat difficult to navigate. It presents recipes under broad sections like soups, poultry, beef, breakfast, etc. which I think is fine but the aforementioned educational asides are scattered. The first time I tried roasting chicken by their method I set off my fire alarm because of the smoke coming from the fat dripping onto the hot oven surface. A few pages later, they tried a recipe that was more prone to smoking and took a long aside to go over why smoking happens and how to avoid it. It would have been nice, if they had all these little caveats organized at the beginning of the book or each section so that you can read through them before jumping into a recipe.

In my humble opinion, recipes should provide more inspiration than instruction and this book possesses this quality more than any other I have read. I have just scratched the surface of this book, about a dozen recipes tried, and I have been very impressed with the outcomes so far and I have learned a whole lot. I do plan on investing in good cookware :) and I even have plans to host dinner parties soon.

This became my "go to" cookbook years ago. I'm buying a second copy for a vacation home.

In typical Cook's Illustrated fashion the description of WHY the recipe works is often as important as the recipe itself. Totally worth the time to read everything that comes before the actual recipe. The recipes are foolproof. Every recipe I've used has been a winner.

You'll soon find your own favorites. Some of my favorites, with page numbers:
193 Scalloped potatoes. Mixing white and sweet potatoes tastes good, looks cool.
294 Tuna Noodle Casserole
312-313 Brining Poultry 101. It's amazing what brining does to improve poultry.
318 Crisp skin, high-roast butterflied chicken. Better and faster than traditional method.
451-452 Meatloaf. It's worth the work.
648 Light and fluffy pancakes
693 Golden Northern Cornbread
722 Popovers
773 Thin, crisp chocolate chip cookies
970 Rich bread pudding

The New Best Recipe makes a nice gift for any really good cooks you know. It's also a good gift for new or timid cooks because of the thorough description of WHY each recipe works. Frankly it's earned SIX stars with me.

I was able to get this at a very good price used through Amazon. Not only did i want it for the recipes, but for the cooking techniques as well. If you are familiar with America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Illustrated, you know that they provide very detailed instructions on cooking and preparation. This is full of black and white illustrations of different food prep techniques. This is a cookbook full of "the basics" types of recipes. Some fancy stuff, sure, but this is a good book to get for someone who is new to cooking or someone who wants to step up their game.

Very highly recommended --- and for a bit of appeal to authority, before I was a nurse, I went to culinary school. This is on par with many of the textbooks I used in school. An awesome guide to the kitchen for anyone regardless of skill level

Fantastic fantastic book. One of books that I got when I first started learning how to cook.

Sure, my journey into the culinary world started with Alton Brown and his crazy antics and, uh, distinct, uh, way of speaking...but, uh, uh, this was one of the bricks that led me to where I am today (still pretty close to where I started, but I can make really good bread and other such foods).

This is a great book because they write about the process behind the recipe itself. So they discuss the various recipes they found, and what they liked about each one, and how they came to choose what to use and what not to use. It gives you an idea of how different ingredients affect the flavor and or chemistry in the cooking process. Making cookies? How does oil v butter v lard work? Check it out.

Oh, and follow the recipes, will you? People who deviate will blame it on the book, but you should at a minimum do it to the letter first. Afterward, feel free to alter it!