The America's Test Kitchen Cooking School Cookbook: Everything You Need to Know to Become a Great Cook

The America's Test Kitchen Cooking School Cookbook is my favorite cookbook of the fall so far. It is chock full of culinary know how and is an absolute pleasure to leaf through on these autumn evenings. It has something to offer everyone whether they are a beginning cook or an advanced cook.This is one heavy, well-made book. They didn't skimp on binding it either. This 822 page beauty should stand up to years of heavy use in the kitchen. Toss it on the counter and use it as a reference as you cook--it will stay open on its own.The chapters are as follows: cooking basics; how to cook: eggs; vegetables; pasta; rice, grains, and beans; meat; poultry; seafood; grill; stocks and soups; salads; quick breads; yeast breads and pizza; cookies; cakes; fruit desserts; pies and tarts; custards, puddings, and frozen desserts; appendix; and index.I'm going to answer a question that many of you have. Those of you familiar with America's Test Kitchen are wondering about the recycling of recipes from book to book. The answer is yes, they did recycle recipes. I own the America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook 2001-2010 as well as ATK Family Cookbook. The first item I compared in the index is "eggs". I came up with repetitions from one book or the other for eggs benedict, some deviled egg recipes, several frittata recipes, huevos rancheros, omelets, quiches, a salad, and scrambled. Next I cross referenced "sauces" between the three books as came up with as generous an amount of overlap and then got modest overlap once more when I searched "potatoes, mashed" in the index. So why am I giving this book 5 stars?I'm giving this book 5 stars because I feel that it offers something not many other books do. I'm a self taught cook, cooking everything from Rachael Ray to Thomas Keller in a week. No one at my house could teach me to cook growing up, and I will never be able to afford culinary school. There are huge gaps in my cooking knowledge and this book will fill them! When I hold this book and get picture by picture tutorials on recipes, I know that I'm going to learn how to do them accurately from beginning to end. There are 35 pictures to show you how to make sticky buns with pecans. It's hard to get that kind of in depth tutorial just anywhere.The book is set up so that a core technique is photographed thoroughly so that you can master it step by step such as pan roasted chicken breasts and then they present you with a recipe library so that you can practice the master technique in other ways such as in chicken saltimbocca or chicken marsala. Despite 2,500 beautiful photographs to teach you, you aren't going to get step by step photography or even a finished picture of every dish.I appreciate the "what can go wrong" charts on all the master technique recipes. They give you a wide range of problems ( fillets overcooked, fillets take longer to cook than indicated, etc) and then give you suggestions on how to cope with the problem in your home kitchen. Most of us have had similar problems regarding a dish that didn't quite want to follow the recipe's directions.Each master recipe has stats to tell you how long to prep, how long to cook, the portion yield, whether you can make it ahead, and the difficulty level. Each master recipe also gives you a comprehensive list of all the kitchen tools and gadgets you will need to make each recipe a reality.There are nice encyclopedic primers for a variety of ingredients that educate the reader all about cuts of beef and cuts of pork as well as the basics of prepping vegetables and what basic kitchen tools do. I could go on and on, but each time I turn the page, there is a new surprise. Tables for conversions and equivalencies, high altitude baking, and meat doneness temperatures reside in the appendix.I love their sticky buns with pecans--talk about a breakfast treat. The chicken piccata is also a dependable recipe that is savory and well-balanced. Their French apple cake can't be beat. ATK consistently produces dependable recipes.My summary after a lengthy review? Buy it. Sure, you aren't getting hundreds of new recipes. You are getting dependable, trust worthy culinary know how. This is the one cookbook I am choosing to stuff in my bag when I go on vacation with plans to cook.

I am a male in my 50's. I got tuned into these books because there was a copy of "100 Recipes" by America's Test Kitchen at a B & N store that had been abused and they were offering it for sale for $5. I came home and read it and what an eye opener it was. I simply have never seen a cookbook that got down to basics in such a way that I could understand. I have known how to cook some things for years, but I rarely cooked, and there was nothing special about my cooking. America's Test Kitchen has changed all that."Cooking School" has further enhanced my interest in cooking enormously. It TEACHES. In each chapter, after you read and learn, there are an array of recipes that will incorporate what you just read about. I cannot emphasize enough how much my knowledge of how to cook has skyrocketed after incorporating the concepts it describes. And somehow, unlike any book I have ever read about how to cook, the concepts STICK. Breakfasts, lunches, dinners, desserts, meats, birds, vegetables, soups, sautees, pie crusts.I am now getting a reputation among friends as an excellent cook. People at work are coming to me to ask questions about what they want to cook at their own houses. Women have begun asking if they can come to my house for an afternoon to make and eat a dish (not a date, but better than a date because it can be so casual). I have this huge kitchen with two ovens that has been underutilized for the 9 years I have lived here and I am just beginning to see its potential. I bought a huge (4 foot by 2 foot) cutting board that makes so much cutting and chopping and mixing very easy.The book has MEGA pictures, it describes in detail the best tools to buy to outfit your kitchen and pays attention to keeping the costs down if you want to. In fact, it pays a lot of attention to budget, which I love. It teaches about terminology, methodology, and each chapter goes into detail about the likeliest places where cooks make mistakes, so you can place extra attention on those areas. There is one little two page section called "How to make food taste better" that is worth the price of the entire book.I have a roommate who has been in the food service industry for his whole life. He has enormous stores of knowledge in his head. He's also very particular about what he likes--nothing fancy, exotic, or non-mainstream. He laughs as I talk about insights I am gaining as I learn from this book, and says dismissing phrases like, "everybody knows that." However, I see him glance through this book, always when he thinks I am not looking, and he reads the little sidebar sections that are so informative. He's broadening his horizons when he tastes some of the more exotic food I am cranking out. And I know for a fact that he has incorporated at least one idea straight out of this book into the recipes his restaurant makes. He wouldn't admit it, but he is learning, too. And now I find him coming into the kitchen when I am cooking and asking lots of questions about why I am doing something that way as opposed to another way. Because of the book, I can answer, because America's Test Kitchen gives the reader the reasons why. This might not seem remarkable until I tell you that he is a lifetime veteran of cooking and I have only been pursuing cooking for about 4 months. I am nowhere near as good as he is but I am noticing the respect I am starting to get in my kitchen.For Thanksgiving, less than a week ago, we both cooked up a feast for about ten people entirely from scratch. He did the main courses, meats, vegetables, stuffings, and potatoes. I did the breads (2 kinds), pies (3 kinds), cakes (2 kinds). Just four months ago, I guarantee there was no way I would take on such a task because it would have been just too intimidating. But thanks to this book, and a little diligence making an effort to learn, my part of this meal was excellent, and didn't frighten me at all. I knew exactly what I was doing. And even better--I had FUN.Wanna learn about cooking even if you know nothing? Buy this book. I give it my highest recommendation.

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