The Best Recipe

Rating:
Summary: A true classic
Review: This book has recipes for all the staples that your average American cook might do. So what makes it special?

Well, this books tells you why some recipes work and some do not. For example, they've done a lot of experiments where they varied a key ingredient or cooking process in a recipe, and they tell you the results. This means that you know the 'why' that goes along with the 'what' in each recipe. Think how much money and how many failures those experiments alone would have cost you, then buy this book.

Rating:
Summary: Presents the "Why's" along with the "How to's"
Review: While cooking and baking, I like to adapt a recipe depending on the time and ingredients I have at hand. Sometimes, this has worked incredibly well for me ... and then there the failures.

Flipping through my friend's copy of this cookbook, I was delighted to find detailed and thorough descriptions of WHY you should do something the way they tell you -- and what happens if you try alternate methods.

On the simplest level, I read their instructions on how to scramble the best eggs. While many of the things I already did, something as simple as lowering the heat produced the fluffiest eggs ever turned out of one of my skillets. I'd never fully appreciated the science in the process, but they described in such a way that it made perfect sense.

More complex, their recipe on chicken and dumplings tested different shapes and sizes of dough to see which type and recipe held up best against the broth. The detail is well-written and fun to read.

All in all, coupled with the new Kitchenaid I've ordered from Amazon -- I'm looking forward to trying more and more recipes from this book!

Rating:
Summary: A Perfect Recipe Book. Maybe the Only One You'll Need.
Review: This is, simply put, the perfect recipe book. Buy it for yourself, and for your friends and family. You'll thank me.

Rating:
Summary: What your mother never taught you
Review: Most cookbooks are what I call 'recipe books'. Although the textbooks used in culinary school have the most valued information, it can be very dry reading. The average home cook does not need to know or understand the history of chocolate to make good fudge. -But one does need to understand bittersweet, semi-sweet and unsweetened. This book contains the best of both worlds.

Pros:
- Everything is rigorously tested for taste perfection.
- Most every basic dish is included. (e.g. omelet, chicken noodle soup, hamburgers, yellow cake, pie dough, white bread)
- Perfect for the home cook. No long-winded recipes. If an ingredient is listed, it's necessary. One will not find recipes with a list of ingredients and instructions just to drizzle or dab on the plate for color and presentation.
- Information is given with every recipe. Not who the recipe came from, but why the cake presented is better then another. What to do if one wants their brownies more fudgy, while another prefers them more cake-like. Why every ingredient listed is used and why it is in the quantity given. How simple basics such as creaming vs. melting butter can produce a drastically different result.
- Very well organized. The scientific data (e.g. How Brining Works), provided for background understanding, is in shaded boxes to enable the reader to skip around to desired sections.
- Any fan of Alton Brown (host of "Good Eats") will be sucked in with this text.
- No ego driven chefs with "their" version of slop on a plate.

Recipes I've tried and would make again:
- Banana Bread (already lost count how many times I've made this)
- Master Recipe for American Sandwich Bread (4x)
- Master Recipe for Chicken Stock (Poured mine into ice cube trays and stored in zip lock bags. Keeps for up to 4 mths.)
- No-Cook Tomato Sauce for Pizza (I made 8 small-medium sized pizzas with one recipe!)
- Master Recipe for Pizza Dough (3x)
- Pepperoni Pizza
- Basic Brownies (2x)
- Cream Cheese Brownies (sounds unusual, but are soooo delicious)
- Nut Oatmeal Cookies
- Peanut Butter Cookies
- Double Chocolate Pudding (If one is unable to find light cream for this, adjust from 2 C. to 1 C. whole milk and 1 C. light cream to 2 C. half-and-half. This is not in the book. The editors of Cook's acknowledged they had assumed light cream was readily available and were mistaken when mail started to pour in in search of other options. While there is a plethora of information available on the percentage of cream vs. milk for one to make their own modifications, this is Cook's "best" alternative for this recipe.) (3x)

Cons:
- Virtually nothing on ethnic dishes. America is a melting pot. This is a shame. On the flipside, Cook's is doing more testing in this area for future publications.
- No color photos. Many won't open a cookbook unless there is a bombardment of color photos to accompany each recipe. Black and white photos, detailed sketches and line drawings are littered throughout the book for step-by-step guidance when necessary. The finite detail provided in the illustrations is more then adequate.

Do you own Cook's Illustrated? Some of you may not, while others do and still stand in confusion of all this talk of duplicate recipes in other publications. Let me break it down:
- Cook's Illustrated Magazine (bi-monthly publication)
- Cook's Illustrated Collector's Edition (a.k.a. Cook's Illustrated Annual) = 1 year of Cook's Illustrated Magazines
- Take the Cook's Illustrated Collector's Editions for 1993-2000 minus 700 "best recipes" and you have The Best Recipe book.
- Note: Any books included in The Best Recipes Series (American Classics, The Best Recipe, Italian Classics, Soups & Stews, Grilling and Barbecue, and The Quick Recipe), will have recipes pulled from the pages of Cook's Illustrated Magazine.

Overall:
Most cookbooks provide an average of 100-150 recipes with a studio photo of the final dish and unwanted headshots of the working chef. For the same price, one can purchase this book with 700 tried and true recipes, detailed illustrations, and lots and lots of substance. You decide.

Amazon ratings scale: 5 stars = Outstanding

Rating:
Summary: A Cookbook, Not A Recipe Book
Review: I actually keep this book in the bathroom, where I read it for pure enjoyment and education. The authors have saved me years of hit-and-miss attempts at recipes, by doing the work themselves and explaining what works and what doesn't and, most importantly, why.

It is certainly one of the most valuable cookbooks I own, but it is not one of my favourites. It is utterly emotionless, and almost completely lacking in photographs. It is also too big and heavy to fit in my plexiglass cookbook holder. It is really more of a textbook than a cookbook, which is why it ended up in my bathroom. If I want to make (say) polenta or risotto, I will first consult this book to find out the physics and chemistry of polenta or risotto, and then will grab one of my favourite Italian cookbooks (like Diane Seed, for example) and approach that recipe armed with solid technical knowledge.

When I started writing this review, I gave the book only 4 stars, but I find I have to raise it to five: the amount of invaluable work that went into it is astonishing, and I do really consult it almost daily. I just rarely actually make recipes out of it. Another downside is the index, which is almost completely unuseable -- you may think that you are in the "B" section, and may be mystified why you can't find what you are looking for, but you might actually be in the "bacon" section -- impossible to tell from the tiny indentation differences and the complete lack of colour cues.

Strange that I seem to be slamming a book that I use almost daily. Nonetheless, that's what I'm doing, while still giving it 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Perfect for technical types
Review: This book isn't just a collection of recipes. It's a basic course in cooking.

I'm an engineer by training and the book has the feel of a textbook. Many of the basic principles and science of cooking is presented. The book doesn't just tell you the how, but also the why. This way, you can exercise some creativity and discretion if you have to deviate from the prescribed recipe.

I also like the way the book collects many of the most popular recipes, methods, and tools, tests them all, and makes recommendations. That way you have some basis for judgement when confronted by an alternative way of doing something.

I just have one reservation and that was the section on rice preparation. It seems essentially correct but doesn't mention the use of rice cookers at all. I'm Asian-American and I have always lived in households with rice cookers. They make the task vastly easier. I realize that infrequent rice consumers can't justify a $50 appliance, but the book should have mentioned it.

Rating:
Summary: Painstaking, methodical testing so you don't have to
Review: This book is largely a snapshot-in-time summary of the experiences in Cook's Illustrated Magazine, America's Test Kitchen and the various other cookbooks that the magazine has put out over time. They've sine gone back and reviewed some of the processes they came out with and drawn different conclusions.

The editor's of Cook's go through painstaking effort to develop what they consider to be the perfect recipe for any given dish trying to balance out taste and the amount of time it creates the dish for what it is as well as ingrediants likely to be available.

They summarize their experiences for many of the dishes (although not in as much detail as some of their other sources) so it helps you understand why things matter (and what things don't).

Although this is just their perspective of "the best recipe" they give you enough information to tailor it to what your idea is if you happen to disagree.

At times they're a bit to perfectionistic, and some of the things they think matter don't matter as much (especially if you're balancing out against time) but generally you get an idea of what's ok to change around as you work with their recipes.

I own many cookbooks and this one seldom leaves my countertop, and if it does it doesn't stay gone for long.

Rating:
Summary: Good Standard Recipes
Review: This is not a cook book one looks to for new recipes, rather it is a cook book that will tell you the best way to do something basic, like cooking a turkey. It is also a really interesting read for those who are really anal about finding the best way to do something, in this case cook (the title is apt.) The book is not strong on using innovative ingredients or the preparation of interesting new dishes, but hey! this is a book that will tell you how to do the basics, which is always good.

This Thanksgiving I followed the recipe for cooking a turkey. I innovated a little, like adding garlic, but basically I did everything they said. It was the best turkey I have ever had. It was so good that my mother called me months later to find out how I made it.

Rating:
Summary: If you own 1 cookbook, this has to be it
Review: I used to be a ho hum cook, now my standards are much higher. My goal is when family and guests sit down at my table, they say "this is the best ____ that I have ever had!" With this book, you can!! I give this as a wedding present to all my friends.

Rating:
Summary: Best cookbook I've ever owned
Review: I can't say enough good things about this cookbook. Almost
every single recipe is a complete winner.

This book will describe in dense detail what the recipe
creators were after and what worked and what did not. These
descriptions really help you understand the recipes.

It includes lots of tips, such as:
I could never make chicken cutlets that weren't bone dry --
the book describes their extensive testing that showed that
you absolutely must put a thin coating of flour on them

or they will never turn out moist.

My chicken soup never tasted very chicken-y. Their recipe
tells you to hack the bones with a cleaver before you saute
them to help extract the flavor.

This book and the "Joy of Cooking" are now my 2 staple
cookbooks. Couldn't live without them both.