The America's Test Kitchen Cookbook

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 pureed 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

Product Description
The Americas Test Kitchen Cookbook is the companion volume to the new hit public television series based on the recipes, techniques, and taste tests created by Cooks Illustrated magazine. Filmed in the actual Cooks test kitchen, both the television series and the cookbook set out to find the best methods of preparing your favorite home-cooked foods from the simplest tomato sauce to the fanciest French tart.

More than just a collection of recipes, this beautifully photographed book takes you inside the entire 2002 season of the Americas Test Kitchen series, with 26 chapters each dedicated to a different episode of the show. You will meet the cast through photographs, bios, and quotes from each member and will follow the Americas Test Kitchen process, as Christopher Kimball and the rest of the cast identify common cooking problems and then test dozens of variations to come up with the best methods for preparing recipes. Many of the most popular segments of the show, including the Science Desk, Equipment Corner, and tasting Lab, have been brought to life with photos.

With more than 200 recipes and dozens of beautiful, behind-the-scenes photographs, The Americas Test Kitchen Cookbook is sure to become an indispensable part of any cooks library.

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.


More than just recipes   January 24, 2003
13 out of 15 found this review helpful

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 brands are better tasting than others, etc. is so interesting if you really want to cook well.


Think of it as a sample size...   October 26, 2002
Brian Connors (Cape Cod, MA)
This was the first Cooks Illustrated cookbook I bought (I now have three) and it's... well, limited. It's meant to accompany the TV series, though in actuality it's really only a small part of what the TV show is about. Like other Best Recipe books, it occasionally nicks material from the other books (a frequent Cooks Illustrated annoyance) but it still manages to work nicely, and the recipes in it are still enough to get the reader going.

It's the odd one out of the series, limited as it is to a fairly narrow selection of items, and it has a rather strange but appetizing Southern accent (strange because of the show's basis in New England). It also has plenty of pictures that give it a playfulness that the bigger books lack.

I do recommend this book, with some reservations (though the recipe that teaches how to butterfly a turkey is not something you're going to find anywhere else, and might be worth it if it saves someone some frustration on Thanksgiving). I really wanted to give it 3 1/2 stars, and rounded up because I don't like being cheap with praise. Just understand that it's a sample of what Cooks Illustrated is all about, and really just a cleverly done ad for their bigger books, and you will definitely not be disappointed.