Recommendation: Cooks Illustrated

[coraa]

Cooks Illustrated is a magazine for, well, cooks. It's difficult to describe, because there are a hundred cooking magazines, and Cooks Illustrated isn't like any of them. And I am totally not an objective person to talk about it, because I love it unreasonably.

First thing: Cooks Illustrated doesn't have any advertisements. This results in a somewhat higher per-issue price than other cooking magazines... but it also means that their reviews of ingredients and kitchen tools are pretty reliable. While I don't always agree with their opinions on what makes for a good can of diced tomatoes or brand of whole-wheat spaghetti, I often do; and I have not once been disappointed by a gadget I bought based on their review.

But the biggest draw of this or any cooking magazine is the recipes, and this is where I think my geeky friends would be particularly impressed. Cooks Illustrated takes a recipe or topic (pot roast! inexpensive steaks! marinated tomato salad! spaghetti carbonara! chewy brownies!) and researches and tests it exhaustively. They make dozens, or sometimes hundreds, of variations, controlling for one element while modifying another. If you keep all other ingredients constant, is it better to include tomato juice in your pot roast braising sauce, or not? Should you roast the garlic before you include it, or leave it raw? What about vegetables? Does adding carrots and celery to the braise improve it, or water it down? They try each variant and report on the effects, in addition to providing their final, best-variant recipe.

It's an impressive magazine, because there's evidence of long testing and experimentation for each of the score of recipes in each issue. And so it's a great magazine for people like me who don't follow recipes strictly. For instance, I just made a butterflied-and-roasted herbed chicken recipe... and I made a lot of adjustments to the recipe: thyme instead of tarragon, shallots instead of chives, four times the lemon because I really like lemon, and so on. And it still came out beautifully, because the long article describing all their trials and errors gave me a good idea of what techniques to use when cooking the chicken and making the pan sauce... and so I was able to execute it well despite having meddled with half the ingredients.

Anyway. If you like cooking, and have an analytical mind, I highly recommend Cooks Illustrated. I've found it to be a delightful read, and worth its price for sure in terms of what I've learned and applied to my cooking.

(I should add that it may not be a great value for vegetarians, since it does lean more toward meat-based main dishes. But it might be worth picking up a few newsstand issues and seeing what you think.)

Comments

[oyceter]

I love Cooks Illustrated so much! I don't even cook very often, but I love reading all the experimentation and food science for the same reason I love Good Eats. Also, their quick tips section is made of WIN. I have picked up so many useful shortcuts/tricks from it.

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

One of my few remaining US vices; I love Cooks Illustrated.

[saladinahmed.livejournal.com]

Sadly, to make room for other things in life, I've banished myself to microwaveland for the past couple of years. But when I used to cook all of the time, I loved that magazine. Especially b/c they are strictly a COOKING magazine, rather than the food-porn 'lifestyle' mag that my beloved-but-infuriating Gourmet was. I love how CI demystifies things, too -- they once did a creme anglaise tasting with a bunch of well-known pastry chefs where they made one with deluxe real vanilla extract and one with vanillin. And all the snoots rhapsodized about the vanillin-based dish, swearing that THAT had to be the one with real vanilla :P

BTW, I LOVE the fact that all of your mood icons come from Elfquest!

[paperclippy.livejournal.com]

Apparently I am the only person in the world who doesn't like Cook's Illustrated. I got a couple free sample issues because I subscribe to other cooking-related things (like Cooking Light), but there are a few major problems I have with it. Number one is that it's so analytical it kind of takes the fun out of making a new, totally unknown recipe. Number two is that most of their recipes are not the type of cooking I do or the type of recipes I make (I am very much not a meat and potatoes person, and I almost never make a main meat dish with some vegetable sides for dinner). Number three is that the one time I actually tried making one of their recipes (it was brownies), Ben and I ended up saying, how the heck did they decide these were the best possible brownies? Martha Stewart's brownies are way better.

Actually in general I find that if I plan to cook either a meat-and-potatoes type meal, or I plan to cook something particularly unhealthy (which is about 90% of the recipes in 90% of the cooking magazines IMO), Martha Stewart is usually a good bet. I don't think I've ever made a recipe from her magazine that wasn't decadent and delicious. (This is why I only use her recipes once or twice a year.)

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I'm with user on Cooks. Sometimes the recipes are more complicated than they need to be and they are definitely 'meat and potatoes' oriented. Useful in its place, but limited. I have a vegetarian friend who subscribed to Cooks to learn to cook meat for her new husband. I usually check the recipes and then make a decision about whether these are things I need improvement in cooking. However, I DO like the pictures.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I picked up a copy of Cook's Country last weekend. It's put out by the same people, seems to contain much the same type of stuff you describe above with no ads, and I like it enough that I'm considering subscribing. But I need to wait a month or two because otherwise they'll send me a copy of the issue I already have as the first issue. :D

[sthaddeus.livejournal.com]

Because they don't sell advertising, the cost of the subscription is pretty close to the cover price of the magazine. So I check it out at the newsstand and only buy the ones that look the most useful.

Also, the folks behind CI produce the TV show America's Test Kitchen. Our local PBS station shows a block of cooking shows on Saturdays, and when I get a chance, I try to catch at least ATK.

[rowr.livejournal.com]

Yes! Cook's Illustrated! it is SCIENCE! :D heheh and yes, that's part of the reason why I like it. I do agree that sometimes the recipes can be somewhat overly complicated but I tend to try the recipe as best I can true to the original, then make substitutions after that based on what I deem unnecessary. So far they have been great, I really do love it and will continue to subscribe. :D I also like that they don't overwhelm you with recipies like so many other magazines.

[owlfish]

I've never looked through Cooks Illustrated so had no idea it was advertising-free. Thank you for the recommendation!

[theinated.livejournal.com]

thank you for reminding me about this. i really must subscribe when i move.