Product Description

An illustrated step-by-step guide to beef, lamb, pork, chicken, seafood, and vegetable stews.
This selection from the "How to Cook" Master Series covers stews - a dish that you'd think would be quite simple but is actually anything but. In the pages of How to Make Stew, we begin by answering some frequently asked questions. Which cuts of meat or types of fish are best for a stew? Should a stew be barely simmered, or can it stand a more vigorous heat? Which is the best place to cook a stew, on the stove top or in the oven? Equipment? Wine? Homemade versus canned stock? We tell you which ingredients make a difference and which ones don’t.

Once we cover the basic elements of stew, we go on to provide you with a wide array of flavorful and satisfiying recipes.

Stew is a dish that is more than the sum of its parts—hearty, satisfying, and intensely flavored when prepared well. This beautiful hardbound book, with over 90 pages of well-tested recipes, hand-drawn illustrations, and in-depth instructions, will provide you with the tips and techniques you need to guarantee perfect stews.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #884960 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-27
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .40 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 96 pages

From Amazon.com
Stews warm and comfort, but are too often carelessly made. To the rescue comes How to Make Stew, a concise guide. In fewer than 100 pages it provides illustrated, step-by-step instructions for preparing perfect meat, chicken, seafood, and vegetable stews--recipes, tips, and information that all cooks can use.

Asserting the importance of cooking any stew at temperatures below the boiling point, the book then provides useful data on ingredients and equipment. Chapters based on the main protein ingredient, or on vegetables, follow, with master recipes and variations. Thus "Meat Stews" provides a basic blueprint plus recipes that include Beef Stew with Bacon, Mushrooms, and Pearl Onions; Irish Stew; and Pork Stew with Prunes, Mushrooms, and Cream, among others. Seafood lovers will want to try Sicilian Fish Stew and vegetable fans will love Spring Vegetable Stew with Fennel and Asparagus, one of a number of delicious vegetable-based recipes. Throughout, underlying techniques are explored and illustrated (useful charts depict the provenance of various animal cuts), and sensible tips abound (avoid packaged stew meat, which may be made up of irregularly shaped end pieces from different muscles, for example).

A true primer, the book is part of the Cook's Illustrated Library series. Like the magazine, the books are dedicated to presenting tried-and-perfected recipes and cooking techniques in a concise, approachable way. --Arthur Boehm

About the Author

Cook's Illustrated, Home of America's Test Kitchen producesthe very popular America's Test Kitchen Public Television series that is seen inboth the US and Canada by over 1 million viewers. Additionally, it is associatedwith Cooks Illustrated Magazine, a leading and highly respected foodpublication that is available throughout Canada.

Cook's Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen titles includingThe New Best Recipe - revised and expanded from the classic, The BestRecipe, which has sold over 350,000 copies, companions to the America's TestKitchen Public Television series, and many other bestselling and award-winningcookbooks such as Baking Illustrated, Cover and Bake and TheBest Kitchen Quick Tips.