The New Best Recipe: All-New Edition
by Cook's Illustrated Magazine
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Book Reviews of The New Best Recipe: All-New Edition
Book Review: A great encyclopedia of "Benchmark" recipes, with explanations
Summary: 5 Stars
{Review written Jan 2005}
This is a SOLID book, and it's a great reference to have in one's culinary library to fall back on, in the event you encounter problems or need guidance on how to troubleshoot or otherwise improve upon something that's giving you grief.
Want to make a solid version of "Coq au Vin" (chicken stewed in red wine) ? It's in there. Want advice on how to make an all-American classic like "Yankee Pot Roast" ? You got it - along with tips on what cuts of beef work best, and why. Want a good recipe for Deli-style "Egg Salad" ? Fine. Also included is a detailed treatise on how to hardboil & peel eggs without having the yolks turn green and how to avoid having the shells split during cooking or stick to the whites when you peel them.
STRENGTHS:
* Good breadth (1,000 recipes, most of them are popular and frequently asked-for classics ... not just American but also some international favorites from around the world).
* Excellent depth - each recipe gives detailed instructions on not just HOW to make a given dish, but also what does/doesn't work, and WHY the author(s) arrived at the version of the dish that they recommend. Very informative and instructional.
* Reliable - all recipes have been well-tested, evaluated repeatedly and polished before inclusion.
NITS:
* I have a sligtly older edition of this book, in which pictures were few, and usually of the black & white hand-drawn variety. The newer edition (which is the one I've linked to this review) includes photos for some recipes (along with other additions), which are a welcome improvement.
* Just because Chris Kimball & Co (re: Cooks Illustrated / America's Test Kitchen) are reliable sources when it comes to things like basic food science and diligent recipe testing, it doesn't mean they're perfect by any stretch. Case in point is wine - I've found from experience that their advice/competence in that area is rather mediocre.
Book Review: My New Go-To Cookbook
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased this about six weeks ago on the strength of the reviews here and on my increasing familiarity with America's Test Kitchen and bound annuals of the CI magazine. I thought it would be a nice reference to have, and it is, but it is much, much more than that. I'm a bit of a cooking "geek" myself. I like to know the whys and wherefores and not just blindly follow a recipe. In fact, most of my cooking is done without any recipes at all. I know what to do because I have learned most of the basic techniques and have a good sense of what flavors and textures go together. But I am constantly on the lookout to hone the techniques I already have and to learn new and better ones. That's why this book and all the CI books and magazines are so good. They are really learning tools. By working through their recipes for basic dishes you learn how to do it better, more efficiently, and bring out the best flavors. Thanks to this book I have finally figured out how to make a good pie dough. Their process for partially mixing flour and fats in the food processor, but then not adding the water to the mixture in the processor, but doing it on the counter by hand, made all the difference in the world for me. I now have much greater control over the process and can apply this technique to any different pie dough recipe I come across. Same is true for the pork chops I made the other night. This is not something I cook everyday, so I wanted some help with technique and timing. One of the things CI has taught me is to always use an instant read thermometer to check the internal temperature of cooked food so that you take it off the heat at the peak of flavor and juicyness. And it worked beautifully. So thanks, Cooks Illustrated, for one of the best tools a cook can have. This book is one that would make an excellent present for any young person setting up their own household who is serious about wanting to learn to cook.Book Review: Gold standard at my house
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the best all-purpose standby cookbook I've used. I have the Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition - 2006, Betty Crocker, and How To Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food, and a multitude of books devoted to particular cuisines. The New Best Recipe is extremely reliable. It's a happy medium between the fussiness of the Joy of Cooking and the homey-ness of Betty Crocker. The recipes are much better refined than in Bittman's How to Cook Everything (which does tell you how to cook everything, just not necessarily how to cook it well!). I'm always surprised at the breadth as well. Random sampling: tabbouleh, caesar salad, broiled chicken, phad thai, apple crisp, chocolate ice cream.
Before each recipe is an explanation of how the authors arrived at their final formulation of the recipe. They try it a bunch of different ways and arrive more or less scientifically at the "Best" Recipe. The explanation helps beginners learn how recipes work and it also helps you to tweak the recipes as needed since you can understand what elements are critical and which aren't. Of course, you can always ignore the explanation and get right to the recipe if you're not up for the extra reading.
Further, this book is currently a steal!
If you like it, I'd also recommend Thomas Keller's Bouchon and/or Ad Hoc at Home. The recipes are a little more exotic than The New Best Recipe, but the preparations aren't much more complicated. As you might guess from the title, ad hoc is the easier of the two.
Book Review: Great baking recipes! As for everything else...
Summary: 4 Stars
First of all, to assume that you can even compile a book of the "Best Recipes" is a bit presumptuous--everyone likes their food cooked differently, it's all a matter of taste. Looking for the best gumbo recipe is a bit like looking for the best baroque-era violin piece, everyone's going to have a slightly different opinion.
That said, I used this book with somewhat mixed results. I've tried a good number of varied recipes, including the shrimp and sausage gumbo, the potato-crusted salmon, the spaghetti marinara, and the orchietti with broccoli, to name a few. Although the salmon came out absolutely delicious, the rest were varied from decent to well below average. The orchietti was bland and lacked any real complexity. The gumbo tasted more like shrimp broth than anything else. Although I love how they explain in such detail their experimentation techniques (although they could do well to tone down the pretentiousness in their tone), the recipes were ultimately lackluster. I'm far from the most skilled or the most experienced chef, but I feel that a good cookbook should be able to compensate for that. Frankly, I've had better success from epicurious.com.
THE BAKING RECIPES however were FANTASTIC and the only reason I am still giving this four stars. The lemon cheesecake was absolutely perfect and got rave reviews from all my friends. The same with the New York cheesecake, the chocolate chip cookies, the apple pie, and the chocolate macaroons. Thanks to this book, I am now the official baked-goods provider of our weekly hang-out nights (like it or not :P).
My recommendation: If you're looking for good daily food recipes, either purchase something else or use this as a foundation for your own personal creations. If you want to bake, however, either spring for this book or get BAKING ILLUSTRATED, another book by the same editors that covers solely baking.
Book Review: The Cook and The Baker review says it all...
Summary: 4 Stars
It's a huge tome of information. It's a science book really. The cookbook part is just secondary. The recipes are all well researched and you'll be instructed exactly from sourcing ingredients, which tools to use, which techniques, and what the end result should be.
I'm taking a star off for the lousy index. Lousy. LOUSY index.
Finally I struggle with this book because it's too big to keep in my kitchen. But on the shelf it sort of gets ignored. I subscribe to the Cooks Illustrated online content. (~$25 annually, I don't buy the magazine and don't have any of the other cookbooks.) The online site has all the Cooks Illustrated / Americas Test Kitchen recipes and equipment reviews and techniques and videos. If you add the size of this book plus the terrible index it's really a lot faster for me to find what I'm looking for online.
I think this book is for a foodie who really cares about what is the best way to cook something and why AND has the critical thinking skills to use that knowledge for other things. A cook who just wants to get the job done WILL NOT like this book because some of the techniques are time consuming and out there. For example, when I make their scone recipe it suggests I freeze the butter and then grate it, half a stick at a time - reserving the other mangled half stick for something else. It's ridiculous. The butter I buy doesn't come in stick form and I'm not grating it when I can easily and more quickly cube it. That might be a lame example but it's the first and most annoying one that comes to mind.
I could go on and on about the book. Overall it's a great value. There is a lot of content and a lot to learn and I think it is much more readable than say, Julia Child's Mastering French Cooking volumes which are also more about technique and ingredient sourcing and using the right tools than being a cookbook.