Founded in 1980, Cook's Illustrated (formerly Cook's Magazine) has emerged as "America's Test Kitchen," renowned for its near-obsessive dedication to finding the best methods of American home cooking. Over the years, we've tested 80 recipes for chocolate chip cookies, more than 70 recipes for gumbo, 40 versions of the peanut butter cookie, and more than 20 versions of such simple recipes as coleslaw, roast chicken, and hash brown potatoes. The Best Recipe is a collection of the editors' picks from the pages of Cook's Illustrated. The recipes have been edited, organized, and annotated with in-depth descriptions of how we developed the "best" recipe. And they appear alongside dozens of equipment ratings and taste tests of supermarket foods, as well as more than 200 illustrations demonstrating the most efficient food preparation methods. 
 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.

The Best Recipe

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine

Regional & International

Cook's Illustrated

Can you make really good pulled pork at home? Which cut of meat makes the best beef kebabs? How do you keep lean pork tenderloin from tasting like sawdust? What is the secret to great-tasting burgers? Is it possible to make barbecued chicken that isn't dry? 
In an exhaustive effort to answer these questions, the staff of Cook's Illustrated magazine lit more than 5,000 charcoal fires to test different grilling and barbecue techniques for The Best Recipe: Grilling and Barbecue. 
The Best Recipe: Grilling and Barbecue also contains 300 illustrations that show you how to cut up a chicken, slice a T-bone steak, and remove the pinbones from a salmon fillet. No-nonsense equipment ratings and taste tests of supermarket foods are also included. Find out which commercial barbecue sauce received our highest rating, whether or not a fish basket really works, and what's the best tool for lighting a charcoal fire. You'll also learn which cuts of meat work best in different recipes, how to quickly brine foods to keep them moist over intense grill heat, and how to make the most of a gas grill. (All recipes include both charcoal and gas grill variations.) 
More than 400 recipes cover just about everything that has ever been grilled, from steaks and chops to ribs and pulled pork. You'll find recipes for seafood—salmon, tuna, shrimp, and more—as well as instructions and recipes for grilling almost every vegetable imaginable, from asparagus to zucchini. 
With The Best Recipe: Grilling and Barbecue at your side, we guarantee that you will never ruin another expensive piece of meat or fish because of some easily avoided mistake. Light the grill with confidence. With this cookbook as your guide, grilling and barbecuing will be easy and foolproof.

The Best Recipe: Grilling and Barbecue

Outdoor Cooking

The Test Cooks at Cook's Illustrated, America's Test Kitchen, simmered enough chicken soup, beef stew and corn chowder to feed a small city-- the result? More than 200 exhaustively tested recipes and hand-drawn illustrations, kitchen equipment tests and blind food tastings that share our discoveries of the undisputed best ways to make America's favorite soups and stews. 3rd title in "The Best Recipe" series.

The Best Recipe: Soups & Stews

Main Courses & Side Dishes

This winner of the IACP Cookbook Award contains all the stateside favourites from corn muffins and Caesar salad to waffles. American Classics features more than 300 recipes from favourite regional dishes such as Boston baked beans, New York Cheesecake, Chicago deepdish pizza and New Orleans' legendary red beans and rice. There are chapters on soups and stews, salads, vegetables, meat, poultry, fish and shellfish, breads, sandwiches, breakfasts, cookies and brownies and puddings.

American Classics: More Than 300 Exhaustively Tested Recipes For America's Favorite Dishes

Entertaining & Holidays

Cook's Illustrated Index, 1993-2002

Cook's Illustrated Magazine

Presents the best versions of more than three hundred dishes ready to serve in less than sixty minutes, with background information, recipes, and cooking tips, based on comparative testing of multiple variants of each one.

The Quick Recipe (The Best Recipe Series)

Cooking Education & Reference

Presents more than two hundred one-dish recipes, including such traditional favorites as lasagna, pot roast, chicken pot pie, and baked macaroni and cheese.

Cover & Bake (Best Recipe)

Baking

The definitive grilling encyclopedia for novices and experts alike The Cook’s Illustrated Guide to Grilling and Barbecue is a comprehensive nuts and bolts volume that thoroughly examines outdoor cooking—starting with the basics. The 12-page introduction to grilling, "Outdoor Cooking 101," walks you step-by-step through the essentials of grilling, grill-roasting, and barbecuing using both charcoal and gas grills. And since outdoor cooking requires just the right tools and equipment, the editors of Cook's Illustrated share the results of their product tests in an extensive buyers guide where charcoal grills, gas grills, grill brushes, tongs, instant-read thermometers, and more are rated. At a glance, you will know which brands we recommend (and why) and which to avoid. Armed with the right equipment and instructions, you’ll be ready to tackle just about any recipe from a simple and perfectly cooked burger to succulent pulled pork and restaurant-perfect grilled tuna. You’ll find more than 450 recipes for all your favorites—steak tips, ribs, and barbecued chicken as well as some that will expand your repertoire—from Thai-Grilled Chicken and Skirt Steak Tacos to Grilled Corn with Spicy Chili Butter and Bruschetta with Fresh Herbs. The Cook’s Illustrated Guide to Grilling and Barbecue also contains more than 300 step-by-step illustrations that walk you through the basics of food preparation, such as how to cut beef for kebabs, trim beef tenderloin, and grill-roast a turkey. Whether you’re a novice outdoor cook or aspiring grill-master, this encyclopedic examination of one of America’s favorite pastimes will be your guide to foolproof grilling and barbecuing.

The Cook's Illustrated Guide To Grilling And Barbecue

Cook's Illustrated Magazine Editors

The Best Light REcipe offers more than 300 full-flavored lower-fat and reduced calorie recipes that still taste great and are guaranteed foolproof by the test cooks and editors who bring you Cook's Illustrated magazine. If we weren't satisfied with the results in our kitchen, the recipe didn't make the book.

The Best Light Recipe

Cooking by Ingredient

300 Fast and Flavorful Recipes from America’s Most Trusted Test Kitchen 
Tired of quick recipes that aren’t really quick or don’t taste very good? While some cookbooks promise 30-minute meals, America’s Test Kitchen delivers. The Best 30-Minute Recipe is packed with more than 300 great-tasting recipes, along with time-saving techniques that will help you become more efficient in the kitchen. You’ll also find honest evaluations of ingredients important to quick cooking, such as chicken broth, preshredded cheese, instant rice, and more. And because the type of equipment you use is important to the success of any recipe—made in 30 minutes or not—we tell you which brands are worth buying. 
The Best 30-Minute Recipe features a surprisingly wide range of recipes. You get not only the very best versions of naturally quick dishes like salads and stir-fries, but also quick and easy recipes for typically long-cooking dishes that you’d never even think of making on a weeknight—including meatloaf, lasagna, beef pot pie, and a pad thai so easy that you may never call for takeout again. With efficiency and good taste, The Best 30-Minute Recipe is the time-pressed cook’s guide to getting dinner on the table, night after night.

The Best 30-Minute Recipe

Quick & Easy

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Cook's Illustrated publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Cook's Illustrated