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Title: The Best Recipe by Editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine ISBN: 0-936184-38-8 Publisher: Boston Common Press Pub. Date: 10 September, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4.81 (190 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: The One Cookbook Anyone Who Loves to Cook Needs
Comment: I've been buying cookbooks for decades. I'll buy cookbooks for just one recipe I'm dying to learn. The funny thing is, I'm really not that good of a cook, but I love working in the kitchen.

This cookbook just blows me away. Just like the Cooks International PBS television series, it explains the why of cooking. Lasagne without ricotta? Beef marinade without acid? How could that be? The explanations are there, and they make total sense.

I sit in my bedroom reading this book at night. I read about the things I already know how to make, looking for the subtle ideas to make them perfect. It's really not a cookbook even though it's got hundreds of recipes. It's more a book about cooking, and it's got me more inspired than all of the scores of books I've bought before.

I'll give these guys the best compliment I can think of: I wish I had written it.

Rating: 3
Summary: Warning! Warning!
Comment: This book has a tendency to throw out tradition for "revisionist" recipes. For example, their lasagne doesn't include ricotta/cottage cheese because it doesn't "look right." As a result, it doesn't "TASTE right"! Sacrificing taste for looks isn't the good sign of a cookbook to me. (Presentation doesn't hurt, but, please, get your priorities straight!). The Beef Stew has a wine & chicken broth-based sauce (like a good portion of the recipes) instead of the more traditional & hearty, gravy-like sauce. The meatloaf is more traditional, but it's not above average. As far as the clam chowder, I've had better with Campbell's Home Cooking canned chowder. It doesn't have much of a clam taste--the potatoes & bacon come through with stronger flavor. It's not that the recipes are bad, I mean, I thought the Beef Goulash was great, but they're not the "best recipes", which in my opinion would have the best tasting traditional recipes. The book also mentions how they tried 70 recipes for gumbo on the inside sleeve, but, guess what?-- no recipe for gumbo in the book! On the plus side, this book is fascinating for it's explanations of how & why things work the way they do when cooking.

Overall, this is just another cookbook with a gimmick to get you to buy it, by saying they've tried 70 times to "get it right." But in the end, they don't "get it right." Like I said before, the recipes aren't bad, but what's lasagne without ricotta cheese?

Rating: 2
Summary: Salt & Pepper - what's the big secret?
Comment: I was expecting a recipe book full of the best recipes for both baking and cooking. What I got was a book full of great baking, but extremely simple, cooking recipes. The Best Recipe is innovative in that it explains why the authors choose to use particular cooking methods. As a beginner, I learned quite a bit from these explanations. While The Best Recipe does do a fabulous job of teaching you how to cook various types of dinners, the recipes left me wanting in flavor. Almost every recipe looks like this: ", salt and pepper". Here is their prime rib recipe: "1 3-rib standing rib roast, salt and ground pepper". I hope I didn't breach any copyright laws there. Seriously, almost all of the cooking recipes look like this. Granted, some have a "master" recipe of salt & pepper, and include "variations" that have actual ingredients in them, but this was less common. I really don't understand how everyone can give The Best Recipe 5 stars. I suppose everyone else is using the book for baking, for which it does excel - their coconut chocolate chip recipe was indeed the best. I was quite disappointed with buying a "best recipe" book full of salt & pepper recipes. The Best Recipe should be renamed "Modern Cooking Explained", or some other educationally-focused title.

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