The Cook's Illustrated Cookbook

THE
COOK’S ILLUSTRATED
COOKBOOK

Copyright © 2011 by the Editors at America’s Test Kitchen

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

America’s Test Kitchen

17 Station Street, Brookline, MA 02445

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The cook’s illustrated cookbook : 2,000 recipes from 20 years of America’s most trusted food magazine/ by the editors at America’s Test Kitchen ; illustrations by John Burgoyne. -- 1st ed.

p. cm.

ePub ISBN: 978-1-936493-13-5

1. Cooking, American. 2. Cookbooks. I. America’s Test Kitchen (Firm)

TX715.C78545 2011

641.5973--dc23

2011025965

Hardcover: $40 US

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Distributed by America’s Test Kitchen

17 Station Street, Brookline, MA 02445

Editorial Director
: Jack Bishop

Executive Editor
: Elizabeth Carduff

Senior Editor
: Lori Galvin

Contributing Editors
: Keith Dresser, Louise Emerick,
Elizabeth Emery, Kate Hartke, Rachel Toomey Kelsey, Dawn Yanagihara, and Dan Zuccarello

Editorial Assistant
: Alyssa King

Design Director
: Amy Klee

Art Director
: Greg Galvan

Designers
: Beverly Hsu, Tiffani Beckwith, and
Sarah Horwitch Dailey

Front Cover and title page Artwork
: Robert Papp

Illustrator
: John Burgoyne

Production Director
: Guy Rochford

Senior Production Manager
: Jessica Quirk

Senior Project Manager
: Alice Carpenter

Production and Traffic Coordinator
: Kate Hux

Asset and Workflow Manager
: Andrew Mannone

Production and Imaging Specialists
: Judy Blomquist, Heather Dube, and Lauren Pettapiece

Copyeditor
: Cheryl Redmond

Proofreader
: Debra Hudak

Indexer
: Elizabeth Parson

Welcome To America’s Test Kitchen

Preface
By Christopher Kimball

Acknowledgments

Recipe Table Of Contents

CHAPTER 1
Appetizers

CHAPTER 2
Salads

CHAPTER 3
Soups

CHAPTER 4
Chilis, Stews, and Braises

CHAPTER 5
Curries, Stir-Fries, and Asian Noodle Dishes

CHAPTER 6
Pasta

CHAPTER 7
Rice, Grains, and Beans

CHAPTER 8
Vegetables

CHAPTER 9
Poultry

CHAPTER 10
Meat

CHAPTER 11
Fish and Shellfish

CHAPTER 12
Grilling

CHAPTER 13
Eggs and Breakfast

CHAPTER 14
Quick Breads and Coffee Cakes

CHAPTER 15
Yeast Breads and Rolls

CHAPTER 16
Pizza, Calzones, and Flatbreads

CHAPTER 17
Cookies, Brownies, and Bars

CHAPTER 18
Cakes

CHAPTER 19
Pies and Tarts

CHAPTER 20
Fruit Desserts

CHAPTER 21
Pastry

CHAPTER 22
Puddings, Custards, and Frozen Desserts

CHAPTER 23
Beverages

Test Kitchen Tips

Test Kitchen Illustrated Steps

A Note on Conversions

T
his book has been tested, written, and edited by the folks at America’s Test Kitchen, a very real 2,500-square-foot kitchen located just outside of Boston. It is the home of
Cook’s Illustrated
magazine and
Cook’s Country
magazine and is the Monday-through-Friday destination for more than three dozen test cooks, editors, food scientists, tasters, and cookware specialists. Our mission is to test recipes over and over again until we understand how and why they work and until we arrive at the “best” version.

We start the process of testing a recipe with a complete lack of conviction, which means that we accept no claim, no theory, no technique, and no recipe at face value. We simply assemble as many variations as possible, test a half-dozen of the most promising, and taste the results blind. We then construct our own hybrid recipe and continue to test it, varying ingredients, techniques, and cooking times until we reach a consensus. The result, we hope, is the best version of a particular recipe, but we realize that only you can be the final judge of our success (or failure). As we like to say in the test kitchen, “We make the mistakes, so you don’t have to.”

All of this would not be possible without a belief that good cooking, much like good music, is indeed based on a foundation of objective technique. Some people like spicy foods and others don’t, but there is a right way to sauté, there is a best way to cook a pot roast, and there are measurable scientific principles involved in producing perfectly beaten, stable egg whites. This is our ultimate goal: to investigate the fundamental principles of cooking so that you become a better cook. It is as simple as that.

You can watch us work (in our actual test kitchen) by tuning in to
America’s Test Kitchen
(
www.americastestkitchen.com
) or
Cook’s Country from America’s Test Kitchen
(
www.cookscountrytv.com
) on public television, or by subscribing to
Cook’s Illustrated
magazine (
www.cooksillustrated.com
) or
Cook’s Country
magazine (
www.cookscountry.com
), which are each published every other month. We welcome you into our kitchen, where you can stand by our side as we test our way to the best recipes in America.

I
started
Cook’s Illustrated
magazine in 1992. The reason? My cooking teachers were unable to answer basic questions about why they scalded milk before making a béchamel, why they recommended whisking egg whites in a copper bowl (hey, this was a long time ago!), or when to use baking soda instead of baking powder. I also noticed that many of the recipes being offered (coulibiac of salmon comes to mind) were hopelessly outdated. And the other food magazines of the era,
Gourmet, Food & Wine, Cuisine,
and
Bon Appétit,
were celebrating the dining, not the cooking. Who was going to give me straight answers?

I finally realized that I was going to have to answer my own questions by starting a cooking magazine and building my own test kitchen. At first, we struggled, but today, we have a 2,500-square-foot test kitchen just outside of Boston with 45 test cooks who test everything from Crisp Roast Chicken and Vegetable Lasagna to Triple-Chocolate Mousse Cake and Blueberry Pies.

Many of you know that I grew up in Vermont although I am a flatlander by birth. I worked summers on a small mountain farm, learned to milk cows and pitch hay, shoveled my share of manure (both in the barn and in writing), and learned to cook under the watchful eye of Marie Briggs, the town baker who lived in a small yellow farmhouse next to the town line. This experience has given me the gift of independence of thought, a trait crucial to the ongoing mission of
Cook’s Illustrated,
which is to take an unbiased, no-nonsense approach to the culinary arts in an effort to discover what works and what doesn’t in America’s home kitchens.

This reminds me, of course, of a story about the old-timer from Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom who sat down one night to fill out his taxes. Now, like any thrifty farmer, he hardly found this a pleasant task, and staring him in the face at the head of a box in the top right-hand corner of the printed form were these words in bold type: DO NOT WRITE HERE.

Before going any further, the old gentleman took a firm grip on his pen and wrote in the box, in equally bold letters: I WRITE WHERE I GODDAMN PLEASE.

I guess that pretty much sums up how we go about recipe testing. If you tell us to scald the milk before making a béchamel, we’ll try it cold, right out of the refrigerator. (It works just fine.) Or tell us to use natural cocoa and we’ll test Dutch-processed. Or make a point of insisting on the use of bread flour and we’ll try all-purpose. It’s not just that we are contrary (we are), it’s that we have spent too much time listening to culinary experts pontificate on the rules and regulations of cooking only to find that they hadn’t fully tested their propositions; they were simply passing on conventional wisdom.

We often talk about the “best” way of making a recipe and many folks argue that there is no such thing. Fair enough. But there are lots of wrong ways to cook a recipe and we consider it our job to ferret out those mistakes before you do. And for the last 20 years we have been eager to share our discoveries with you, our friends and readers.

The Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook
is the fruit of that labor. It contains 2,000 recipes, representing almost our entire repertoire. (Older versions of a recipe were sometimes discarded in favor of better, newer approaches.) Looking back over this work as we edited this volume, we were reminded of some of our greatest hits, such as Foolproof Pie Dough (we add vodka for an easy-to-roll-out but flaky crust), innumerable recipes based on brining and salting meats (our brined Thanksgiving turkey in 1993 launched a nationwide trend), Pan-Seared Thick-Cut Strip Steaks (we warm steaks in a low oven to promote enzymatic activity before finishing them in a sauté pan), Poached Salmon (a very shallow poaching liquid steams the fish instead of simmering it in water and robbing it of flavor), and Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies (we brown the butter for better flavor).

Now, you may not like change. You may prefer to follow your grandmother’s recipes or, perhaps, those from a dog-eared community cookbook published in the 1930s. You would be much like the Vermonter who was asked by the city visitor, “I imagine you’ve seen a lot of great changes in your lifetime.”

“Yes,” replied the old-timer, “sure have. And I’ve been against every damn one of ’em!”

So, please take our findings with an independent spirit; use what you like, and ignore what you don’t. You will find, however, that these pages are filled with two decades of first-hand testing, with the spirit of adventure and discovery, and with a heartfelt interest in making your cooking experience as foolproof and rewarding as possible. Recipes that you can count on, the first time and every time, is, indeed, a bold promise, but we stand by our work and are all ears. If you have a better suggestion or a new technique, send it in. We’ll test it and let you know the results.

Cordially,

Christopher Kimball

Founder and Editor

America’s Test Kitchen