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.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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￯﾿ﾽthis 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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly