The New Best Recipe: All-New Edition Description:
With The New Best Recipe, we invite you into America’s Test Kitchen where you will stand by our side as we try to develop the best macaroni and cheese, the best meatloaf, the best roast chicken, the best brownie, and nearly 1,000 more best recipes for all your favorite home-cooked foods.
Behind this book is a deeply felt understanding of how frustrating it can be to spend time planning, shopping and cooking only to turn out dishes that are mediocre at best. With The New Best Recipe in hand, you will have access to a wealth of practical information that will not only make you a better cook but a more confident one as well. In fact, as long as you follow our instructions, we guarantee that these recipes will work the first and every time.
We have also included 800 illustrations showing you the best way to do almost everything from how to carve a turkey and beat egg whites properly to how to frost a layer cake and set up your grill. Also, get valuable information on how and when to splurge on that expensive knife or baking pan and when the basic model will do just fine. We also explain the science of cooking since understanding the science of food can help anyone become a better cook. Complete with recipes ranging from appetizers to desserts, The New Best Recipe
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1096 in Books
- Published on: 2004-10-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 1000 pages
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Customer Reviews:
The Cook and the Baker (who hates to cook) both love it
I’m the Baker. When my husband-to-be first came to my house to cook me a dinner, he rummaged through my cabinets and said “Where are your pots and pans?”; then he looked through the pantry and fridge and said “Where is your FOOD?” I had to explain that, in my vocabulary, “cook” is a verb meaning “to put into a microwave on high for 4 to 5 minutes.” Food? Small boxes in the freezer, of course.
I tell you this so you’ll understand how improbable it is that the first thing I tackled from “The New Best Recipe” was chicken stock. A real-deal chicken stock, I’m talking here–the kind that turns to a jelly when cooled, is deep gold, and can improve nearly any dish you add it to–the kind that takes eight or ten hours to make, the classic way.
See, I had picked up this massive (1028-page) book in the bookstore and idly opened to the Soup chapter, where I read a three-page explanation of how to make real chicken stock in one hour. They detailed all the blind alleys they’d explored in trying to come up with the perfect recipe for stock–the different cooking techniques, times, ingredients–until they’d found a way to make rich golden stock in an hour. The technique was, er, unorthodox to say the least, but it all seemed to make perfect sense, so I bought the book and decided to try to make a stock to present to the Cook as a fait accompli.
Holy smoke, it worked! And I gotta tell you, if I can make a couple quarts of chicken stock between the time my daughter gets home from school and the time my husband gets home from work, then you can too.
So, enough anecdote; now for details.
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1. The book is a compilations of recipes from Cooks’ Illustrated magazine and the America’s Test Kitchen TV show (which I’ve never yet seen). The title seems presumptuous: “best” according to whom? Isn’t “best” a matter of taste? Well, yes, but they are at pains to describe for nearly every recipe just what they MEAN by “best.” Here’s an example, for pound cake:
“…the main difficulty with pound cakes of the classic type is textural. Cakes might be said to have five ‘texture points’: moist/dry, soft/hard, dense/porous, light/heavy, rich/plain. To contemporary tastes, cakes must be relatively moist and soft; the three remaining texture points are negotiable.
“The problem with pound cake is that we ask it to be moist and soft on the one hand but also dense, light, and rich on the other. This is an extremely difficult texture to achieve unless one resorts to baking powder, with its potent chemical magic. Air-leavened cakes that are light and soft also tend to be porous and plain, as in sponge or angel cakes; moist and dense cakes inevitably also turn out heavy, as in the various syrup-soaked Bundt cakes that are so popular. From pound cake, we ask all things.”
Or for broiled salmon:
“We set out to find the best way of cooking a whole side of salmon, enough to feed eight or more guests, in the oven. We wanted fish that was moist but not soggy, firm but not chalky, and nicely crusted, with golden, flavorful caramelization over its flesh. If we would work some interesting flavors and contrasting textures into the bargain, all the better.”
Or for roasted potatoes:
“The perfect roasted potato is crisp and deep golden brown on the outside, with moist, velvety, dense interior flesh. The potato’s slightly bitter skin is intact, providing a contrast to the sweet, caramelized flavor that the flesh develops during the roasting process. It is rich but never greasy, and it is accompanied by the heady taste of garlic and herbs.”
In other words, before telling you how to make X, Y, or Z, they tell you what you’re shooting for. I appreciate this. Mostly my goals and theirs coincide, but if they don’t I’m aware of it BEFORE I start to cook.
2. After they describe the goal, they tell you the variations they tried to achieve it. This might include fiddling with cooking temperatures and times, number or type of ingredients, cooking techniques, tools, containers, phase of the moon… whatever! The folks in those test kitchens apparently have an infinite supply of time and money, not to mention patience.
So, for the chicken stock, they tried blanching, roasting, and sauteing the chicken; backs, wings, legs, or the whole chicken; carrots, celery, onion: yes or no? A sidebar details issues like what kind of chicken to buy, how to cut it up, and tips for storing the stock once you’ve made it.
You find out what works, and why, but also what didn’t work, and why not. Knowledge really is power. Time after time in the past I’ve followed a recipe (or so I thought) and messed it up–with no idea of where I went wrong or how to fix it. Most cookbooks assume that cooks just don’t make mistakes. This one tells you just about everything you could do wrong, so you won’t.
By the way, I LOVE it that they attribute techniques and recipes found in other sources (including, in the case of pound cake, recipes from 1772, 1824, and 1985).
3. Is there some science about your ingredients or techniques or equipment? You’ll learn about it. Why is is that butter and eggs for a cake should be at room temperature? Some cake recipes say combine everything at once (“quick mix” technique) and others say to cream suger with butter, then add the eggs and flour. Why do they both work? What’s the difference in the end result? And what about those dark non-stick cake pans? Will they change anything? You’ll find out.
4. After you understand the issues around your recipe, they give you the recipe itself. Many have three or four variations given after the main recipe. Each step is spelled out clearly, with both visual and time cues (e.g., “until the pork is in small, well-browned bits, about 5 minutes”), often accompanied by clear B&W illustrations and useful sidebars.
5. There are separate mini-essays on ingredients and equipment, comparing them a la Consumer Reports. We learn which are the best brands of chocolate chips for cookies (with different recommendations for thick/chewy vs. thin/crispy, no less!) and which paring knives were rated best.
I found a chart that lists the volume of medium, large, extra-large, and jumbo eggs. For that alone, I’d have bought the book, since the Cook (who’s also the shopper) buys XLs, but the Baker’s recipes all assume Ls. Now I actually know by how much they differ (8:9 is the ratio, in case you wondered).
6. Have I mentioned that everything I’ve made so far has rocked?
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Downside? The Table of Contents and the Index both stink like the stinkiest of stinking fish. Does 22 lines (“Pork… 385″, “Cakes… 823″) seem to you like enough detail for the contents of a thousand-page cookbook? Me neither, especially as the individual sections don’t have their own ToCs. This is ridiculous. But the index is even worse. Tiny print, uniform font sizes for all three levels of indent, no indicator letters at the top of the page to remind you where you are, and a distinct lack of cross-indexing make it a near-total waste of time. Someone could make a lot of people happy by preparing sectional ToCs and a decent index for this massive tome.
We don’t accept every single bit of information in this book (the Cook has a serious bone to pick with them vis-a-vis their unflattering assessment of bluefin tuna, for instance), but for each item we disagree with, there are ten that have us nodding in agreement.
It could be described as a scientific cookbook, but that might leave you with the impression that it’s dry and colorless. Quite the contrary–I find it fascinating reading, especially the parts about how they screwed up.
The prose is not lyrical or charming, as The Joy of Cooking frequently is, but it’s truly engaging in its eagerness to give you all the tools you need to succeed. I doubt there’s a cook in America who couldn’t learn something from this book. I think it’s that rare cookbook that is equally suitable for beginners, experienced cooks, and everyone in between; as much fun to read like a book as it is to use as a manual. Get it!
These Recipes Consistently Deliver
I consider myself an experienced cook but I have had frustrating experiences with cookbooks and recipes I’d find in magazines and newspapers. Something would sound wonderful, I’d buy ingredients, spend hours cooking and the results would be…OK. Not terrible, not inedible, but a disappointment none the less. Even cookbooks that I love and contain recipes I think are wonderful would also have recipes that I found pretty so-so. In fact, in many cookbooks the ratio of successes to non-successes is pretty small. Finding The Best Recipe (the edition that preceded this one) was a revelation for me. Each recipe I tried was a success. When The New Best Recipe was published, I bought one immediately and was thrilled to find so many new recipes.
This is now my go-to cookbook, the first place I look when I want to find a recipe, and a book I check other recipes against when considering recipes from other sources. I use this book in the way my mother used the Joy of Cooking when I was growing up in the late 60s and early 70s. And just as Joy was the book she used when she needed a recipe for a classic like beef stew or a then fashionable food such as quiche or cheese fondue, The New Best Recipe has recipes for classics (spaghetti and meatballs, pot roast, coq au vin, shrimp scampi) and also has recipes for foods that have hit the American culinary radar more recently such as pad thai, beef fajitas, and pozole. In fact the huge range of foods is one of the things that makes this cookbook so wonderful; for instance, the pasta section includes recipes for lo mein, tuna noodle casserole and ravioli.
This is a great book for beginners because of the detailed explanations of how the ultimate recipe was achieved which include discussions of different techniques that were considered or used and why they were rejected, as well as the many sidebars which give information on technique and equipment. Plus there is nothing that teaches you to cook like cooking, and nothing that keeps you cooking as much as having success. But it is a book that an experienced cook will find just an interesting and useful. I have been cooking for years and I have learned from this book.
This is not (and does not represent itself to be) a low-fat cookbook. The recipes are about achieving maximum flavor and taste. It is also not (and does not represent itself to be) a cookbook full of fast recipes. However, this book contains so many recipes that low fat and fast recipes can be found among them. The recipes are always clear and easy to follow, and the results will speak for themselves.
I love cookbooks and have many but if I were forced to have only one cookbook, this would be the one
Absolute best cookbook
I’ve been cooking for over 40 years, but I still consider myself a very bad cook. I almost always use a recipe, but if I don’t have something, or don’t want to bother with some technique, I try to substitute. Not a good idea for me. Or often the recipes don’t include little details that they assume cooks will know, but I don’t. I look through numerous recipe books and think I’ve found the best one for something, but it often doesn’t come out perfectly. But that’s all changed now! This book is amazing at not only giving you terrific recipes, but it explains why the cook made the choices she did in creating the recipe. It is so fun to read the background of how they created the perfect recipe for something and they discuss all the other things I would have done and why those things don’t lead to a good product. I’ve tried one recipe from each chapter and had so much fun because they all came out terrific.
From Publishers Weekly
A literal encyclopedia of recipes (culled from the magazine), this revision to Cook’s Illustrated’s popular The Best Recipe is almost double in size and includes more than 1,000 recipes. Cook’s Illustrated is known for careful (some would say compulsive) testing of recipes with a focus on foolproof technique; detailed line drawings that take readers step-by-step through recipes; and opinionated guides that assert that their way is the best way. This methodology appeals particularly to a specific kind of cook, one with a primarily scientific rather than artistic or intuitive approach to cooking. Though there are a few photographs, readers who buy cookbooks for full-color photographs and personal anecdotes aren’t likely to be drawn to this work. Twenty-two chapters cover appetizers to desserts. Even the simplest tasks, such as blanching vegetables or peeling an egg, are explained and illustrated in detail. More involved techniques include brining poultry and roasting a turkey. Pad Thai gets a full-page description with photographs to help home cooks learn how to properly soak the noodles. Well organized and extremely clear, the book has only one drawback: its heft may make it tough to hoist onto kitchen counters.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“. . . .will please those who groove to the cooking geek sensibility of CI editor Christopher Kimball.” — People Magazine, Novembe 12, 2004
“Its charm is its over-the-top thoroughness.” — Newsweek Magazine, Decmeber 6, 2004
“This new edition (The New Best Recipe) means business.” — The New York Times Book Review, November 5, 2004
“the book’s recipes…you don’t need to be a gourmet to pull them off.” — San Francisco Bay Guardian, October 13, 2004
From the Inside Flap
With The New Best Recipe, we invite you into America’s Test Kitchen, where you will stand at our elbows as we try to develop the best macaroni and cheese, the best meat loaf, the best roast chicken, the best brownie, and nearly 1,000 more best recipes for all of your favorite home-cooked foods. For the past decade, nearly two dozen test cooks and editors have worked together to develop thousands of recipes that millions of cooks have come to rely on. When the original Best Recipe was first published in 1999, this collection won accolades for its landmark approach to food and recipes. Now, with this newly revised and practical cookbook, we offer you the best of the best, an expanded collection (with 500 recipes new to this edition) assembled by the editors of Cook’s Illustrated.
Behind this book—and indeed everything we do at America’s Test Kitchen—is a shared understanding of how frustrating it can be to spend time planning, shopping, and cooking only to turn out dishes that are mediocre at best. Have you ever been frustrated by piecrust that shrinks down the sides of the pan once baked? Have you ever spent a -fortune on prime rib only to have it come out dry and tough? Or baked a cheesecake that emerged from the oven with a crack the size of the San Andreas fault? Most of us don’t have the time or inclination to spend hours and hours finding the answers to these and hundreds of other common cooking problems. We want recipes that work the first time and every time, and we want clear instructions. With The New Best Recipe in hand, you will have access to a wealth of practical information that will make you not only a better cook but a more confident one as well. No one likes to make mistakes in the kitchen. That’s why we test recipes over and over again (in some cases, more than 50 times)—so you don’t have to.
Because good technique is also critical, we have included 800 illustrations that show you the best way to do everything from carving a turkey to beating egg whites properly to frosting a layer cake to setting up your grill. And because the right equipment always makes a difference, you’ll find valuable information on how and when to splurge on that expensive knife or baking pan and when the basic model will do just fine. (In our test, for instance, the $4 Baker’s Secret loaf pan trumped competitors with prices four times as high.)
We also explain the science of cooking (for instance, how brining works to ensure juicy meat and why butter should be added before dairy for the silkiest mashed potatoes) because understanding the science of food can help anyone become a better cook. Complete with recipes ranging from appetizers to desserts, The New Best Recipe promises to be a classic and timeless kitchen companion, one that draws back the curtain on our testing process so you learn firsthand what makes even the simplest recipe the best.
Founded in 1980, Cook’s Illustrated is renowned for its near-obsessive dedication to finding the best methods of American home cooking. The editors of Cook’s Illustrated are also the authors of a best selling series of cookbooks (The Best Recipe Series) as well as a series of companion books to the America’s Test Kitchen public television show (which reaches 2.4 million viewers per episode). Filmed in America’s Test Kitchen (a 2,500-square-foot test kitchen in Brookline, Massachusetts), the show features the editors, test cooks, equipment testers, science experts, and food tasters from the magazine’s staff.
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