The Best Recipe
by Editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine

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Book Reviews of The Best Recipe

Book Review: Wisdom for the Everyday Cook at a very good price
Summary: 5 Stars

The `best recipe' in the opinion of the editors of `Cooks illustrated' is generally the one with the most flavor which can be completed in a reasonable amount of time. This means that it may in fact be quite possible to achieve a more flavorful result if you are willing to spend more time with the preparation. There are usually additional special criteria depending on the recipe. My favorite example is the recipe for a simple tomato sauce. The objective of the editors is to use a minimum number of ingredients (tomato, oil, garlic, and salt) in order that they may achieve the most distinctively tomato flavor in the result. This eliminates many common tomato sauce ingredients such as carrots, wine, onions, thyme, basil, tomato paste, and meat. This strategy may have its virtues, but it will not convince me to change my allegiance from Mario Batali's basic tomato sauce with grated carrots, onion, and thyme. It will also not convince me to change from using canned whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes. But, the article did bring out many useful facts and opinions for evaluating other recipes. For example, it revealed that tomato puree in canned tomato products has been cooked before canning, so it has a less bright flavor than the whole or chopped tomatoes. For those who may be using butter in making sauces, it ventured the opinion that butter dulls the bright acidic flavor of the tomatoes. Another useful suggestion was that olive oil be added in two stages. Part should be added at the beginning to bring some flavor out of the garlic. The remainder should be added at the end to add fresh olive oil flavor. But this is what Italian chefs have been doing for the last 200 years.

I think the lesson from the tomato sauce story is that the `Best Recipe' recipe will not necessarily be better than others, especially those formulated by talented, successful chefs. It is also true that some of their findings may simply be things chefs have been doing for a long time anyway. The difference between the way Molto Mario presents the sauce and the way Cooks Illustrated presents the sauce is that Cooks Illustrated explains why certain things work and why others do not.

This lesson is repeated in earnest in their discussion of recipes for vegetables. In a world where everyone stresses that vegetables not be overcooked, why does Mark Bittman repeat a Paula Wolfert presentation of a Moroccan recipe which cooks the bejesus out of green (string) beans, with the statement that this recipe can simmer on a back burner for up to an hour and it's taste will not suffer. Well, it turns out, as Cooks Illustrated explains, that green beans have a very firm skin which requires a lot more cooking in the first place to make them light on the tooth. And, once cooked, this skin will retain its crispness long after your broccoli or asparagus will have descended into mush. This lesson is repeated for most common vegetables found in your local megamart. You will get the best blanching, steaming, sautee, or roasting time for each vegetable, and their opinion on which method best suits each vegetable. I read this section with great interest. But, if I want a recipe for doing my broccoli rabe, I will go to Alice Waters or Marcella Hasan, depending on whether I wish to compliment an American or an Italian style meal. But, that's because I have a lot of cookbooks at hand. If you enjoy reading about cooking and your budget for cookbooks is slim, I would put this book at the top of your wish list, just as I would put `Cooks Illustrated' on the short list of culinary magazines I buy.

My greatest satisfaction in reading this book is the way in which the authors have cited sources for their ideas. Cooking is a combination of manual and intellectual skills where achieving the best result is due to both practice and knowledge. Knowledge can be discovered, written down, and communicated. So, I am delighted, for example, when the authors cite John Thorne as the starting point for their excellent macaroni and cheese recipe. They candidly state that they could do very little to improve on it. Similarly, in the essay on Foccacia, they cite the work of Carol Field as the basis for their recipes. This is much more true to life than an author's giving the impression that they came up with 200 recipes all by themselves. I really wish this were a more common style in culinary writing.

Bottom line is that for less than 30 bucks, this is a first class cookbook, even if it does not represent gourmet restaurant cooking.

Summary of The Best Recipe

In The Best Recipe, we invite you into our test kitchen, where you will stand at our elbow as we try to develop the best macaroni and cheese or the best split pea soup. You'll discover how to make a foolproof yellow cake, a perfectly cooked prime rib roast, and homemade bread in under two hours. You'll find out how to solve the problem of watery coleslaw, overcooked turkey breast, acidic salad dressing, dull tomato sauce, sticky white rice, dry turkey burgers, tough scrambled eggs, and sunken birthday cakes. You will also find the secret to bakery-style high-rise muffins and the way to make that restaurant favorite, warm, fallen chocolate cake, at home, with only a few minutes of preparation.

The Best Recipe also gives you useful tips on purchasing cookware (based on extensive test kitchen evaluations), including pie plates, food processors, standing mixers, chef's knives, skillets, vegetable peelers, and Dutch ovens. We also explain the science of cooking (how to cream butter and why, how baking powder works, the difference between semisweet and bittersweet chocolate) and offer tips on purchasing canned chicken stock, canned tomatoes, flour, butter, and dried pasta.

The editors of Cook's Illustrated have performed thousands of hours of kitchen testing to bring you a cookbook that not only provides the best recipes but also tells you how they came to be that way. Let The Best Recipe become your one-stop cooking school and your favorite kitchen reference.

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