Cook's Illustrated

If you want to serve the best to your family and friends, you can depend on these recipes. They are thoroughly tested and only the recipes that resulted in the finest results are published. You'll even learn what to avoid (and why) from the results of their tests.

I simply don't know of any other cookbook or cooking magazine in which I've found the recipes to be totally successful 100% of the time.

I don't like to give 5 star ratings. It seems to me that there's a flaw in just about everything -- Cook's Illustrated, however, has proved to be flawless in every recipe I've tried.


Great down-home cooking mag   August 14, 2004
Ixchnel
6 out of 11 found this review helpful

Any magazine that doesn't except advertisements seems to be a step ahead of those that do. This is the case for Cooks Illustrated. Some of the recipes this family loves are: Best Beef Chili, Ground Beef Tacos, Glazed Carrots (although I prefer the recipe in the Northern Exposure cookbook), Maple-Glazed Pork Roast, and many of the pastas. The drawbacks I've found for this magazine are that sometimes the spices are a bit powerful. This is usually true for the chicken sauces. They have one in which they recommend 40 garlic cloves to be cooked with the chicken breasts. This is just too many cloves and leaves one feeling like they just bit into a head of garlic. I suppose that being these people work in a test kitchen all day it takes a lot of spice to activate their taste buds. Being one has to alter some of the ingredients for any recipe this is not a huge burden, it just takes awhile to get used to. I also don't like the fact that they always use no-boil noodles for their lasagna. I hate these noodles. They never turn out as good as boil noodles and it only takes 10 minutes to boil them. When you're taking two hours out of your day to make Lasagna Bolognese an extra 10 minutes for good noodles shouldn't be too much extra work. I've also found that the baking recipes aren't the greatest. I've tried the chocolate chip cookies and they are too thick. My three year old didn't even like them. The New York cheesecake was ok, but that's it...just ok. However, aside from these minor quibbles a lot of the recipes are fantastic for making dinner. It's one of the few mags where you can grab a recipe out of it and know it's going to be edible... and possibly exceptionally good. The quick tips section is also a joy to read. I also enjoy their equipment reviews (although The Cooks Catalogue is a must have for this). They used to have cookbook reviews where they tested recipes in different cookbooks and printed the results. They seem to have withdrawn this section, which is too bad because I really enjoyed it. It gave one an idea of what cookbooks to stay away from and which ones were really good. I especially liked how they would mention if it was for an average cook or an advanced cook based on whether or not the cook listed exact recipes or just gave a general idea of what to use and let the reader come up with their own measurements. Overall, if I could have only one cooking magazine this would be it. It has many great things going for it. I also subscribe to Intermezzo for the "fancier" recipes.


Fascinating and informative   August 13, 2002
Anne Uhlmann (Friday Harbor, WA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

This is the best cooking magazine I have ever read. It not only gives great recipes, it tells the "why" this is the best recipe and what results were obtained using different ingredients or methods. One can sit and read it cover to cover, and I do.


Don't let the high price fool you, CI is a STEAL!   December 7, 2002
fair_deal_guy (Prior Lake, MN USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

I can't think of another culinary magazine that delivers so much good, well considered information each month. Editor Christopher Kimball has such a clear, thoughtful vision of what he wants to communicate, that the reader just gets pulled along. The recipes in this magazine are uniformly excellent. They are well researched, yes, but more importantly, they are well edited. There is no fluff; each word is there for a reason. Instead of wading through endless self-important puffery (like some other culinary magazines I won't mention), Cook's Illustrated has mastered the knack for providing just enough information to educate and entertain. It never preaches, never bores. The illustrations are top-flight, and if you can't learn 50 worthwhile things from every issue, then you're not paying attention!

Cook's Illustrated is not only my favorite cooking magazine, it's my favorite magazine--period.