Rating: 
Summary: If You Suscribe to Cooks's, You May Want to Reconsider
Review: ... If you suscribe to either Cook's Illustrated magazine or receive the hardbound annual editions, you may want to think twice about buying this book.
I couldn't pass up the combined Cook's Bible and Dessert Bible at Sam's Club today (which, I might add, doesn't accept book returns). When I arrived home and began to peruse my purchase I realized that I had many similar articles in hardbound Cook's annuals, sitting on my kitchen bookshelf. Fortunately, I only spent [money] for the three inch thick, hardback tome (Sam's Club Members, alert!).
It may sit under a bed until next Christmas and transform itself into the perfect gift for a culinarily-challenged family member.
I must also concur with Norman OK's assesment of dated comments and advice. Frankly, I've never found Christopher Kimball dull. With so much haphazard cookbook writing and editing out there, I appreciate his painstaking prose. No, he's not Jamie Oliver, but not all of us like the off-the-cuff approach.
If one is looking for a good culinary textbook, instead of a recipe book, this is certainly a strong contender.
Rating: 
Summary: If stranded on a island--this is one cookbook you need.
Review: A thoughtful and scientific homage to american cookery. Mr. Kimball has throughly examined each and every recipe in excrutiating detail. Having tried numerous recipes I can say that each has been a rousing sucess (I can assure you that the sucess was not due to my meager cooking skills). For the novice and the experienced cook the Cook's Bible hits it right on the money.
Rating:
Summary: This book rocked my cooking world
Review: Chris Kimball has hit the bulls-eye. He makes an uncanny connection with the reader. He's perfectly attuned to our cooking needs. He made me feel like I had a professional chef for a neighbor, one who came over every morning to walk me through the kitchen routine, with firm guidance and folksy anecdotes. After 15 years of cooking for my family, I finally feel that I'm beginning to know what I'm doing. And enjoying it more than ever. Buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: None Better
Review: Christopher's style is a scientific methodology of analyzing aparticular food, style, knife, kitchen product, barbacue sauce,etc. The style is somewhat conversational as to how and why he wound up at the master recipe at the end of a section. His writing gives us an insight into the why he used certain ingredients or tools. Throughout the book Christopher includes tips and information that is very useful. For example, Christopher goes into the shelf life of baking powder and how to create your own. There is also a discussion on the use of moisture in the cooking of bread. Christopher discusses all the methods that we know and use and recommends the best (and he tells why). The best part about this book and Christopher's style is that he gives us foundation for creating a food (barbecue sauce) and allows us to experiment from there. The title to this book is very appropriate. It is my bible for cooking. The coverage, as far as food goes, is very broad. The book covers most tas! ks or cooking that an average person could do at home.
Rating:
Summary: Overpromising?
Review: Having been cooking simple and complex meals for some years now, reading a wide range of cookbooks both anthologized and specialized, and learning about culinary theory in food preparation, I am skeptical about any author who attempts to present The Best of anything. Ordinarily I would dismiss "The Best Of" subtitles as the hype of publishers wanting to attract a reader's eye; in Kimball's case, though, I think he means it. His "Cook's Illustrated" and cottage industry of cookbooks has no lesser goal than providing the last word on home culinary technique. As a more or less complete cookbook, the pretentiously named "Cook's Bible" fares adequately. I have read it carefully and tried a number of its selections.... As has been noted, Kimball's recipes are not always reliable, some of his writing is dated, and his insistence that he knows best obscures the fact that culinary tastes vary and preferences are wide ranging. I admire the use of test kitchens and trial cooks, but there are many of them in existence, and each has developed a cookbook or series of books. They all provide variations on the themes, suggesting that in many cases, taste is in the mouth of the beholder. Kimball brings an overly somber, compulsive, almost joyless attitude to cooking. I find his writing to be pompous, absent of the glee and zest other food writers display. He rarely admits to variety in cuisine and assumes that his is the only worthwhile opinion, seeming to need to be correct and authoritative. He is systematic, and he offers advise about technique that can be helpful, especially to beginning cooks. I'm not sure I would be able to recommend just one cookbook for all needs;....
Rating:
Summary: Does Amazon Give Six Star Reviews?
Review: I can't say enough good things about this book. Kimball tells you in precise detail what does and does not work. He and his staff do all the necessary research to let the reader know why a recipe turns out well. And his book reads like a conversation. If you are one of those cooks who wants to understand food then this book and the whole Cook's Illustrated volumes are for you. They will tell you how to do their dishes and give you the intellectual background to understand the process. I hate to use such highbrow words for Kimball's downhome style, but this certainly ought to be part of the American gastronomic tradition. By the way, did I mention that the food turns out fabulously?
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: I have many other cookbooks, but this is the only one I need. It is incredible
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good...
Review: I have the version of "The Cook's Bible" that came as one book together with "The Dessert Bible." If you are at all familiar with Cook's Illustrated Magazine, the format and style will be familiar to you. As for recipes, you will find it all in here -- product tests, exhaustively researched recipes for the food your mom and grandma used to make, etc. Some of the product testing is a little dated, but frankly, I don't base my purchases on Christopher Kimball's opinions anyway. I rely on an amalgam of information from many different sources to determine the best kitchen equipment, ingredients etc. It's a great kitchen resource, but be warned -- if you own this, there's no need for you to buy "The Best Recipe," "The America's Test Kitchen Cookbook," or basically anything else Cook's Illustrated puts out, because the recipes are the same. This book is basically an expanded version of the non-dessert recipes in "The Best Recipe," which I also own. Cook's Illustrated is famous for recycling their recipes over and over and just putting new titles and covers on the cookbooks. If you buy this, don't buy another CI book until you're absolutely positive (through side-by-side comparison) that you need both. The only other criticism I have of this book -- and all the Cook's Illustrated books, really -- is there's not a lot of diversity of cuisines involved. The magazine and cookbooks stick to tried-and-true staples of American (actually Northeastern American) food, and occasionally step a just a little over into ethnic cuisine. But if you're looking for explosive new tastes, interesting fusions of different cuisines, daring flavor combinations, new twists on old standards etc., these are not the cookbooks you're looking for. This would be a great gift for nervous new cook who's interested in learning the fundamentals and needs the reassurance of extensively tested recipes, but there's not a lot of excitement or intrigue here for a cook who's more or less mastered the basics of American cuisine and is now branching out into cooking the food of other parts of the world. A very nice basic "resource" cookbook to have, but definitely not the be-all end-all "bible" of cooking Kimball purports it to be.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good...
Review: I have the version of "The Cook's Bible" that came as one book together with "The Dessert Bible." If you are at all familiar with Cook's Illustrated Magazine, the format and style will be familiar to you. As for recipes, you will find it all in here -- product tests, exhaustively researched recipes for the food your mom and grandma used to make, etc. Some of the product testing is a little dated, but frankly, I don't base my purchases on Christopher Kimball's opinions anyway. I rely on an amalgam of information from many different sources to determine the best kitchen equipment, ingredients etc. It's a great kitchen resource, but be warned -- if you own this, there's no need for you to buy "The Best Recipe," "The America's Test Kitchen Cookbook," or basically anything else Cook's Illustrated puts out, because the recipes are the same. This book is basically an expanded version of the non-dessert recipes in "The Best Recipe," which I also own. Cook's Illustrated is famous for recycling their recipes over and over and just putting new titles and covers on the cookbooks. If you buy this, don't buy another CI book until you're absolutely positive (through side-by-side comparison) that you need both. The only other criticism I have of this book -- and all the Cook's Illustrated books, really -- is there's not a lot of diversity of cuisines involved. The magazine and cookbooks stick to tried-and-true staples of American (actually Northeastern American) food, and occasionally step a just a little over into ethnic cuisine. But if you're looking for explosive new tastes, interesting fusions of different cuisines, daring flavor combinations, new twists on old standards etc., these are not the cookbooks you're looking for. This would be a great gift for nervous new cook who's interested in learning the fundamentals and needs the reassurance of extensively tested recipes, but there's not a lot of excitement or intrigue here for a cook who's more or less mastered the basics of American cuisine and is now branching out into cooking the food of other parts of the world. A very nice basic "resource" cookbook to have, but definitely not the be-all end-all "bible" of cooking Kimball purports it to be.
Rating:
Summary: Money well spent
Review: I own a lot of cookbooks, most of which I never open. After I began reading The Cook's Bible, I thought about all the money I wasted on other books. After all, I want to learn how to cook, not how to read a recipe. I also consult Mr. Kimball when I am thinking of purchasing a piece of equipment, to make sure I am buying the right item for the job and getting a good value. You can't believe how much information is in this book. Money well spent.
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