Product Description

The companion cookbook to our acclaimed public television series, Here in America’s Test Kitchen brings you everything – every recipe, every kitchen equipment test, every tasting, every discovery, even every flop from the 2003 season. Best of all, this handsome, photo-filled volume lets you share the discoveries and fun on your schedule – not the network’s!

From the search for perfectly crisp – not flabby and greasy – Buffalo wings to the best cherry cobbler that pairs real cherry flavor with a tender, feather-light biscuit topping…this companion volume puts you right at the side of the America’s Test Kitchen detectives. Unlike most television shows and cookbooks, however, this one gives you a close-up look at our failures as well as our successes. After months of testing, our recipes for lemon meringue pie, twice-baked potatoes, and pan-roasted chicken are reliable because we’ve tested dozens of possible ways (including many failures) of making them.

In the pages of Here in America’s Test Kitchen, you’ll get a behind-the-scenes view of how we test recipes, taste-test foods, and put cookware through its paces. You’ll meet the cooks, the editors, the tasters, the directors, and the rest of the staff. Filled with candid shots and 32 pages of color photos, you will get an intimate portrait of the inner workings of the Cook’s test kitchen.

America’s Test Kitchen is all about discovering how cooking really works, rooting out the bad recipes, and identifying the methods and techniques that produce real winners. Now you can have all of the recipes, the techniques, the taste-tests, the equipment ratings, and the shortcuts from our 2003 season in one volume.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #330684 in Books
• Published on: 2002-12-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 350 pages

From Amazon.com
At a certain point you have to ask yourself, do you really need another couple of hundred recipes all carefully clustered around a food concept, or do you want a more manageable number of recipes that all work--guaranteed? Welcome to Here in America's Test Kitchen by the editors of Cook's Illustrated magazine. Not only can you rest assured that the results will taste as good as they look in the color photo, you get to learn along the way exactly why these recipes work so well. If you are a little confused about which salt or which pasta is going to bring you the pleasure you deserve, that information's in there, too, along with the inevitable concerns about kitchen tools. Ingredients, tools, technique, kitchen science, good humor, insatiable curiosity, bonhomie--this is the world of Here in America's Test Kitchen.

With Here in America's Test Kitchen, a companion book to popular PBS TV series, the kind editors of Cook's Illustrated have placed the busy cook first and foremost in their concerns. Fine, the rustic bread is going to be a weekend project. But what about coming home after work knowing a few friends are going to fall by and being able to crank out award-winning nachos, Buffalo wings, fresh guacamole, and delicious sangría with complete confidence? That's where this book starts. Along the way you'll find the perfect fried rice and kung pao shrimp, or steak au poivre with a brandied cream sauce. Beef burgundy, Texas chili, barbecued salmon, pasta classics, American casseroles--these editors know what you want to put in your mouth. What they do best is showing the process they went through to get the exact result they were looking for. If you cook your way through this book, cover to cover, you will not only be a good cook, you will know exactly why that is so. And you can take that to the bank. --Schuyler Ingle

From Publishers Weekly
Kimball, founder of Cook's Illustrated magazine and host of the PBS show America's Test Kitchen, offers a preface to this guide to the tools, techniques and ingredients needed in today's kitchens, along with about 50 recipes. At first glance the casual cook might be daunted by the recipes, but by following the careful instructions an inexperienced cook could turn out a perfect meal consulting just one or two of the 26 chapters (e.g., "Party Foods," "Chicken in a Flash," "Ham Dinner," "Cookie Jar Favorites"). The editors offer such homey dishes as Cheesy Nachos, Spaghetti Putanesca, Scalloped Potatoes and Lemon Meringue Pie. Moreover, the recipes have been formulated to ensure short lists of ingredients and common home equipment. Veteran cooks will revel in the analysis of the science behind the recipes-the single bread recipe here, five pages long, answers questions that dozens of other cookbooks do not-and will appreciate the illustrated technique sidebars and brand-name comparisons of everything from pastas to saute pans.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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.

Customer Reviews

Buying more in the series
This is the one cookbook that has not gone on the shelf, but instead sits on the corner of the counter. So far I've made the beef burgundy, pan roasted chicken, smothered pork chops, lemon meringue pie, macaroni and cheese, nachos with salsa and guacamole, and more. I'd've done more in the past two weeks, but I do have a job to go to. These may not sound like extraordinary recipes - they're all in my Betty Crocker cookbook or Good Housekeeping cookbook - but this is the cookbook that tells you the how and why, what works and what doesn't work (based on their own testing, which is an interesting read in itself). One of the things I like most is that they make an honest effort and usually succeed at restricting themselves to ingredients found in nearly every supermarket. Serving sizes are extremely generous. I ate nachos for four days --- luckily, they were delicious.

I do wish they would include nutritional analyses. These recipes are all about taste and optimal preparation to ensure the best results; nothing particularly low cal or low carb and certainly not low fat here; and it doesn't purport to be a diet cookbook. That's okay, but it would still be nice to have the numbers. And it would be nice if they would test a few ways of cutting calories and/or carbs and/or fat while developing the best recipe.

As a novice, I also got tripped up in the pan roasted chicken because the recipe didn't give me even a clue as to how long the pieces would be in the oven; I guessed about 30 minutes but turned out to be 50 minutes to get to temperature, which threw off the timing on the side dishes...minor, novice issue.

Finally, I also subscribe to Cook's Illustrated published by the same people. In the Nov/Dec issue was an incredible recipe for pumpkin cheesecake (beg, borrow or steal it from someone). Their technique explanation ranted about the wonders of cooking a cheesecake in a waterbath. Indeed it made a great difference. But in this cookbook, there's a recipe for a New York Style Cheesecake with no mention of a waterbath. I'm not a pro, so maybe the different techniques deliver two distinct textures, but it was curious why both ways aren't discussed in the cookbook since they touted it in the magazine (or vice versa).

I've bought a couple pieces of their recommended equipment and believe they've been right on target there too.

It's an impressive book that has pursuaded me to buy both the Italian Classics Cookbook and the cookbook for the 2002 television series. Looking forward to receiving those soon.

Quality Cooking Advice & Phenomenal Ribs!
As someone who consider's themselves an elite "home chef", I stopped using recipe books years ago and just built on the basics that I'd gleaned from reading what I considered the "essential" cookbooks. Then, one stormy Saturday afternoon when the husband was at work and the kids were away at Grandma's, I stumbled on America's Test Kitchen on PBS. Needless to say, I loved what I saw.

Now I am a Cook's Illustrated fan. I have not come across anything done by these folks that isn't absolute quality cooking instruction - no matter what your level of cooking expertise. That's because ATK doesn't just write the recipes - they write articles and background about every recipe that breaks down each element of the recipe and explains why certain ingredients, techniques and equipment work so much better than others in producing the best tasting recipe. Even if you never follow an America's Test Kitchen or Cook's Illustrated recipe step-by-step, the things you learn just by reading the recipe books can be carried over into all of your cooking. If, like me, you are a non-recipe cook, there is still much to be learned here.

"Here in America's Test Kitchen" carries on the standard of excellence that Cook's Illustrated has established for itself. Detailed recipes that are actually essays about what goes into creating each recipe and why certain ingredients and methods are used will elevate the level of every home cook - regardless of your current level of expertise.

This book contains some of the best recipes I've ever had. The BBQ Rib recipe prepared with a dry rub and slow cooked over a smoky grill is simply the best rib recipe I've ever made - spicy, smokey, fall of the bone tender with a wonderful crisp skin on the outside. At a recent 4th of July party, these ribs and the ATK buffalo wings were a huge hit. And the cookie jar favorites - chewy, flavorful double chocolate cookies and ginger cookies are family favorites. The recipes here aren't always the quickest, the cheapest or the lowest in fat and calories, but if you are looking for the best in flavor and texture, with America's Test Kitchen you can't go wrong.

Just As Good As the PBS Show!
I have been watching this series on PBS and the book is just a delightful. The receipes are pretty easy to follow, ingredients are available in most grocery or gourmet shops. Plus they have done all the testing and we get to prepare the perfect combinations! Highly recommend it, especially as a gift!