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 [Larger view] | Cook's Illustrated
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 A great magazine even for the culinarily-challenged | |
| "Cook's Illustrated" serves as a mentor to me and others who refused to learn the art and science of cookery in the kitchens of their loved ones. I did take a home economics class in high school, but my main memory of it is my teacher's repeated iteration of "Oh mercy, Elaine. Mercy." It took a long diet of college jello and Spanish Rice, and then a marriage in which neither of us fathomed the mysteries of the kitchen to get me interested in the art of cooking for myself and others.
Most of the other magazines in the culinary market don't seem to cater to the cooking-challenged. For instance, the seemingly simple instruction "beat enough sugar into the meringue to stiffen it" caused me to set the oven on fire. I added cups and cups of sugar to my three egg whites and the darn meringue finally got grainy, which I figured was the equivalent of 'stiff.' Not so. Once enough heat was applied, the meringue flooded over the sides of the pie plate and set the oven ablaze. It was not easy explaining my culinary mishap to a sceptical fireman. My inadvertent attempt at incendiarism wouldn't have happened if I had been following a recipe in "Cook's Illustrated." Here the recipes are lovingly detailed, and there diagrams on 'simple' techniques such as How to Slice an Onion. Most of you probably learned about such matters at your mother's knee, but I was more interested in Astronomy than Onions back in the good old days when someone cooked for me. As a consequence, I've been slicing onions incorrectly until the December 2004 "Cook's Illustrated" hit the newstand. The contributors to this magazine test their recipes multiple times, varying the ingredients, using different cooking utensils, until they get what they consider to be the perfect outcome. For instance, in the article on "Balsamic Braised Chicken," John Olson writes: "At that point, I stopped my tests with the high-end vinegar. Simmering such a vinegar might well be considered high crime in Italy. All the time and effort expended to create its subtle flavor balance would be wasted, as boiling destroys it. (This is not a problem with the cheap stuff.)" "Cook's Illustrated" recipes are adventures into a mysterious art, as well as producers of wonderful dishes. The editors don't accept advertisements, so you can trust their ingredient and product recommendations. If you are a fan of the show, "America's Test Kitchen" on public television, then you'll definitely love the magazine that details this program's favorite recipes. Also check out their website at cooksillustrated.com for eleven years worth of recipes. | |
| The Best Cooking Magazine out there | |
| Some people don't care why the food came out great or why it came out horrible. I do, and that's why I love this magazine. I enjoy reading what the author/cook went through to arrive at the printed recipe. I also enjoy the colorful covers and the back page with beautiful drawings of a "topic" food, such as a variety of tomotoes, hams, etc. Great magazine. However, I'm not crazy about their website. | |
 Great down-home cooking mag | |
| Any magazine that doesn't except advertisements seems to be a step ahead of those that do. This is the case for Cooks Illustrated. Some of the recipes this family loves are: Best Beef Chili, Ground Beef Tacos, Glazed Carrots (although I prefer the recipe in the Northern Exposure cookbook), Maple-Glazed Pork Roast, and many of the pastas. The drawbacks I've found for this magazine are that sometimes the spices are a bit powerful. This is usually true for the chicken sauces. They have one in which they recommend 40 garlic cloves to be cooked with the chicken breasts. This is just too many cloves and leaves one feeling like they just bit into a head of garlic. I suppose that being these people work in a test kitchen all day it takes a lot of spice to activate their taste buds. Being one has to alter some of the ingredients for any recipe this is not a huge burden, it just takes awhile to get used to. I also don't like the fact that they always use no-boil noodles for their lasagna. I hate these noodles. They never turn out as good as boil noodles and it only takes 10 minutes to boil them. When you're taking two hours out of your day to make Lasagna Bolognese an extra 10 minutes for good noodles shouldn't be too much extra work. I've also found that the baking recipes aren't the greatest. I've tried the chocolate chip cookies and they are too thick. My three year old didn't even like them. The New York cheesecake was ok, but that's it...just ok. However, aside from these minor quibbles a lot of the recipes are fantastic for making dinner. It's one of the few mags where you can grab a recipe out of it and know it's going to be edible... and possibly exceptionally good. The quick tips section is also a joy to read. I also enjoy their equipment reviews (although The Cooks Catalogue is a must have for this). They used to have cookbook reviews where they tested recipes in different cookbooks and printed the results. They seem to have withdrawn this section, which is too bad because I really enjoyed it. It gave one an idea of what cookbooks to stay away from and which ones were really good. I especially liked how they would mention if it was for an average cook or an advanced cook based on whether or not the cook listed exact recipes or just gave a general idea of what to use and let the reader come up with their own measurements. Overall, if I could have only one cooking magazine this would be it. It has many great things going for it. I also subscribe to Intermezzo for the "fancier" recipes. |
