The Best Simple Recipes
by America's Test Kitchen
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Book Summary Information
Author: America's Test KitchenEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2010-03-01
ISBN: 1933615591
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Boston Common Press
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9781933615592
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Best Simple Recipes
Book Review: I LOVE this Cookbook
Summary: 5 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I want to start off by saying that I love this cookbook. It is simply one of the best cookbooks I have ever had the pleasure of using, and I have used a lot. Typically I have found you have two choices, great tasting complicated recipes or quick and fast artificial tasting food. This books says 30 minutes or less for making these recipes. I find it is more around 45 or less simply because I am not speedy at the prep work as some might expect. I am not in a great deal of a hurry either.
Now I have had a chance to make five recipes so far, two of them I loved, 3 of them were okay and one I didn't care for so much. Now the one of the ones I found to be okay probably had more to do with the my tortellini selection than anything, and the one I didn't care for much at all tasted plain and bland to me. The thing is though, the recipes are so straight forward that, for instance for the gumbo, I can easily add in my own seasoning the next time around and I will. The cooking method turned out great so it's just a matter of adjusting to taste.
Here are some bullet points of what I found to be good and not so good about the book overall.
Pros
Pictures: not every recipe has a picture, but there are a lot of quality pictures here including technique and info pictures ( 2 pages on cuts of beef too!)
Techniques: this is great, it talks about cutting leeks, cuts of steak, best way to make stir-fys, very instructional tips and the like that is great for novice and reminders for experiences cooks
Brand: they mention brand choices that they find to offer the best flavor, or texture, or etc. I find this especially useful when I am dealing with an ingredient I am not as familiar with.
Fresh food: my biggest complain with some of these quick food cookbooks is they are full of premade, artificial tasting food that doesn't taste good in the end. There are premade pastas, broth and etc. but overall these recipes look and taste more like from scratch kind of meal than some other books do.
Speed: a lot of 30 minute meals hit the 30 minute mark by leaving out most the prep work as if you can somehow have elves magically chop your onions for you. I think a quick prep work cook could easily do these in 30 minutes FOR REAL
Taste: I am happy with the recipes so far, even the ones I didn't care for because they taste and cook like someone actually made the recipe. Sometimes I wonder if some of these other cookbooks are just thrown together and never actually made because the outcome is just so awful.
Cons
Nutritional information: There is none. Zip, zilch, nadda. This is a big disappointment for anyone who might be cooking for someone who has to watch things like sodium, carbs or cholesterol. It's a real shame that they didn't take the time to put in the nutritional information.
Vegetarian Recipes: I should mention I am not a vegetarian but I was surprised to see a measly 9 recipes when the soup section has almost twice as many alone at 17 recipes.
Pictures: how can this be a pro and a con, well as mentioned before, not all recipes have pictures which is always a disappointment for me but not something I would penalize them for so much as mention why not!
Price: Not the prices of the book mind you but the food. It would have been great if some of the recipes mentioned cheaper alternatives to some of the spendier items. There are a lot of recipes that are "budget" type recipes but there are a number that are not for the price conscious. Please don't read this as super expensive either just not necessarily a cheap and quick book
Brand: they make bran recommendations which are handy and even give reasons why but for some of us, these brands aren't available except at some organic more expensive stores
Overall, this is a great cookbook to have. It shouldn't intimidate the inexperienced, offers great tips, simple instructions, tasty meals without pages and pages of ingredients. For those of us have cooked some, and I am not expert, it's great for a quick meal and so far a lot of the recipes can be tweaked easily to accommodate taste as well. By far this is the best 30 minute/quick cookbook I have ever had the pleasure of having. I plan on working through this book, a lot and have no doubt will find many more flavorful treats.
Summary of The Best Simple Recipes
Most quick-recipe collections promise a lot but deliver very little. Bland, uninspired dishes may be fast, but will you make them again? And clever gimmicks sound great, but in reality, they rarely make sense. The team at America's Test Kitchen has created more than 200 easy-to-make 30-minute recipes that guarantee impressive results with a minimum of effort.With our test kitchen know-how (and relentless testing) we found ways to make naturally fast dishes faster, and traditionally slow-cooked dinners a weeknight option. But one thing we never did was settle on shortcuts that shortchanged flavor. Some compromises simply aren't worth making.
No matter the path taken, every recipe in this book is foolproof, full-flavores and fast. And they come with our promise to you: Recipes that work. Every time.
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