some stuff, Americas Test Kitchen just gets right.

[vash]

hard boiled eggs and soft boiled eggs. ATK really changed my life in both departments. they nailed them both.

in a nutshell: hardboiled. get water boiling, with a steamer basket. steam them for exactly 13 minutes, then into ice water for 10. done. easy to peel despite ANY level of freshness, the fast heat damages the membrane or something.

softboiled - get 1/4 inch water boiling. put in cold eggs into the water. they are not submerged at all..you are ALSO steaming them. 6 minutes.. done. rinse to chill so you can handle them. eat. i do 6.5 minutes on the giant eggs. you could use a steamer basket if you wanted, i suppose.

i like methods because they are independent of how many eggs you want to cook.

[tabs]

Ohhh geezus you to?

I learn things from them...get ideas...

Last night I made their Korean Chicken wings...twice fried.

These dam cooking shows all use the large La Cruset Dutch ovens...

They all use Cuisinart food processors or Robo Coupe

They all use Vita Mix Blenders.

They all use the large Kitchen Aid mixers.

A good portion of them use All Clad pots and pans or other top of the line cookware.

Of course the shows all have sponsors that provide them with the good stuff. I can not disagree with having those appliances because they are quality items that help work wonders.

The Grill, BBQ guy Steve Rachlin ..has a $12000 KALAMAZOO Santa Maria grill on his show.


Everything they do should taste good..they pour the SALT on everything ..ehhhhh

[VincentVega]

Their jerk chicken is the standard in my book. Might be cooks illustrated but same thing to me.

[Rickysa]

Might be cooks illustrated but same thing to me.

Same group....we buy the CI's in bound form at the end of each year. Great online source as well.

[vash]

Originally Posted by tabs

Last night I made their Korean Chicken wings...twice fried.

this is on the list!! nicely done T.!

[wayner]

Thanks vash

I’ve been eating every meal in a restaurant for the last year & 1/2

Before that I’d been banished from the kitchen for 27 years but just got one of my own that should be up and running in a few weeks

Hard boiled eggs are a good start for me soon (that and a whole pre cooked greasy chicken.)

[vash]

Originally Posted by wayner

Thanks vash

I’ve been eating every meal in a restaurant for the last year & 1/2

Before that I’d been banished from the kitchen for 27 years but just got one of my own that should be up and running in a few weeks

Hard boiled eggs are a good start for me soon (that and a whole pre cooked greasy chicken.)

sweet!! youtube is your friend. i bet every recipe; someone that loves to hear themselves talk and see themselves on video filmed themselves. it's there.

[drkshdw]

While I did learn how to hard steam eggs from them I find many of their recipes to be fussy and borderline pretentious. Of the dozen or so recipes I've tried (I have the 1K page cookbook which is WAY too big for a cookbook but I digress), only 1 has been pretty good. None have been great. Most have been blah. And not worth the time it took to make them. Maybe it's my midwestern upbringing but I much prefer basic recipes with not a lot of ingredients and 20 steps before it gets cooked.

[Alan A]

The chicken pot pie is great. It’s my go to for that dish.
The pulled pork otoh is way too fussy. I can make it in the slow cooker in 1/2 the time and can’t tell the difference.

I actually still get a lot of mileage out of Mrs Beaton, so I may not be in their main demographic.

[mjohnson]

We did the bound annual CI releases for about 10 years - at that point they started to repeat themselves it seemed. All of the recipes worked. Not many were amazing but all put out good food.

seriouseats.com is our new go-to. Has at least one CI alumnus on staff and their product is pretty awesome. Kenji's food lab cookbook is really good - somewhere between McGee and CI in technical details.

[VincentVega]

Originally Posted by drkshdw

While I did learn how to hard steam eggs from them I find many of their recipes to be fussy and borderline pretentious. Of the dozen or so recipes I've tried (I have the 1K page cookbook which is WAY too big for a cookbook but I digress), only 1 has been pretty good. None have been great. Most have been blah. And not worth the time it took to make them. Maybe it's my midwestern upbringing but I much prefer basic recipes with not a lot of ingredients and 20 steps before it gets cooked.

I hear you, some of their stuff is a bit much. But, I think they are usually right. Might be a pain but the steps are usually worth it. Different tastes for sure but I like food, love to cook and enjoy learning about flavor combinations and new techniques.

To me its like bbq. Sure, you can boil ribs or cook them in the oven and they are still ribs. I like spending half a day with a rub, oak in the smoker.... Worth every minute to me.

[vash]

Originally Posted by mjohnson

seriouseats.com is our new go-to. Has at least one CI alumnus on staff and their product is pretty awesome. .

damn..it's Yvonne Ruperti! she was a breath of fresh air for that place. super cute.

[javadog]

Originally Posted by drkshdw

While I did learn how to hard steam eggs from them I find many of their recipes to be fussy and borderline pretentious. Of the dozen or so recipes I've tried (I have the 1K page cookbook which is WAY too big for a cookbook but I digress), only 1 has been pretty good. None have been great. Most have been blah. And not worth the time it took to make them. Maybe it's my midwestern upbringing but I much prefer basic recipes with not a lot of ingredients and 20 steps before it gets cooked.

That cookbook is a good one to have, if you're on the left side of the learning curve, in terms of learning the finer points of cooking. Not only does it give you recipes, but it teaches you a lot about what works and what doesn't, the "why" behind the art of cooking. It also covers pretty much everything the average cook will ever try, in terms of the main cuisines of the world. Yeah, you can go much deeper into recipes from a particular country, but that's not likely something you'll do, if you find this cookbook too detailed.

If you only own one cookbook, that one should be it.

[vash]

i have two cookbooks. one is that big ATK one. i know there is a newer version out (unless we are talking about the newer one)

[javadog]

The one I'm referring to is the Cook's Illustrated Cookbook, 2011. 2,000 recipes, around 900 pages. They have a bunch of others but this one is the one to have if you only have one. I don't know if there's a newer edition.

I'd buy some of their others but I already have north of 150 cookbooks...

[vash]

Originally Posted by javadog

The one I'm referring to is the Cook's Illustrated Cookbook, 2011. 2,000 recipes, around 900 pages. They have a bunch of others but this one is the one to have if you only have one. I don't know if there's a newer edition.

I'd buy some of their others but I already have north of 150 cookbooks...

yea, i have that one. mine is tabbed and marked up. i used to stuff loose recipes in there, but i quit doing that..i was blowing up the binding.

[javadog]

So, what's your other cookbook?

[arcsine]

The Cook's Illustrated Best New Recipe's is pretty much the only cookbook I use. Mostly for the reasons already mentioned that they give you the how's and why's and reasoning behind the recipe's. I am not a fan of duplicating things by rote (except in baking of course) and this book gives me some guidelines to work within and still make something tasty.

[vash]

Originally Posted by javadog

So, what's your other cookbook?

haha..

it is a Saveur cookbook. the Italian cooking one. i bought it for one recipe (in hindsight, i should have snapped a pic)..the Bolognese. it had chicken livers in it..had me line, hook and sinker.

(i'm not counting the stapled together papers that were given to me at a Thailand cooking school as a "cookbook" or that would be THREE)

[masraum]

We've got one of the big ATK cookbooks.

It looks something like this but is several years older



We've made a bunch of the recipes from ^this one^ and had 95% of them turn out to be really good-to-great. I think there have been 1 or 2 or 3 that we didn't get to turn out or we didn't like. I remember one in particular that has a bunch of rice in a large pan, then pieces (breasts, thighs, etc...) of chicken in it. The flavor is good, but we tried it 3 times and managed to burn the rice each time. I'm sure we had the heat too high or something. Some (ok, many) of their recipes are very involved. Cook this like this. Then cook that like that. Then put the 2 together and cook them a third way. Then set that aside and make something else to go with the first two items, etc....

I think there was one that we just didn't like the flavor of, and then I think there was 1 or 2 that we had a hard time cooking (like the burned rice).

We also had a "quick 30 min meals" from them.

I also bought this from a used book store.


It's got some interesting stuff in it.

I think the recommendations for tools in their book are generally pretty good.

I also like stuff from Alton Brown. We've had some good success using some of his methods/recipes.

I also look for other sources.