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Epicurus.com - Cook's Illustrated
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List Price: $35.70
Our Price: $26.95
Your Save: $ 8.75 ( 25% )
Availability: Usually ships in 2 to 4 months
Manufacturer: Boston Common Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Magazine
First Issue Lead Time: 12-16
Format: Magazine Subscription
Issues Per Year: 6
Label: Boston Common Press
Magazine Type: Consumer magazine
Manufacturer: Boston Common Press
Number Of Issues: 6
Publisher: Boston Common Press
Release Date: 2002-06-28
Studio: Boston Common Press
Subscription Length: 365
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Editorial Reviews:
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Cook's Illustrated provides readers with recipes, cooking techniques, and product and food recommendations exhaustively developed in our extensive Test Kitchen facility - the same kitchen featured on our cooking show, America's Test Kitchen. Included are best ways to prepare favorite American dishes -- from pot roast and chocolate chip cookies to grilled salmon and fruit cobbler. Best (and worst) cooking equipment -- from chef's knives to cookie sheets. Best brands -- from canned tomatoes to baking chocolate. Best cooking techniques - from brining shrimp to baking ham. And all of this is provided without a single page of advertising - just 100% cooking information.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A must have magazine
Comment: Not only does Cook's Illustrated provide you with amazing recipes (I have received numerous compliments on their Olive-Rosemary Bread) but also the background explanation as to how the testers created the recipes. This is extremely useful in helping you understand what ingredients perform what functions in different dishes so that if a dish doesn't strike a perfect chord with you the first time you make it, you know what to alter to customize it to your liking.
I recommend this magazine to everyone I know, cooks and non-cooks alike. You will NOT regret a subscription to Cook's Illustrated.
Customer Rating:
Summary: No other cookbooks required!!
Comment: This cookbook along with the 30 minute cookbook has replaced all my other cookbooks with the rare exception of a Tyler Florence recipe here and there. Love it. Just to know that they have extensively tested these recipes and worked them out scientifically is so reassuring. You know before even starting that they are not going to be a waste of time and money like so many recipes I've tried along the way. Thanks.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Cooking Should Not Be This Boring
Comment: I always wondered why I disliked the results of cooking with the "best" recipes proffered from this magazine, and then I understood when I saw their companion PBS TV show. The "best" is very subjective. Some of the finished products looked vile, textures were off, and an incredible amount of cooking time and pans are used in this navel-gazing approach to food. A problem that I noticed with many of the cookie and cake recipes were gummy, undercooked results. Apparently this is the style that they prefer, but textural results should be noted for the reader. I think it is an interesting concept, but reducing cooking to a rigid chart seems to take away some of the joy and spontaneity, especially when the promised results are far from perfect. I do enjoy reading their unvarnished tasing panel results, and the equipment testing is valuable, but these pluses are not worth the price of a subscription. I think the magazine could benefit by revamping their college-textbook approach. When reading recipes feels like cataloguing bills, something is amiss. Weirdly enough, I love editor Christopher Kimball's musings on the editor's page and I keep my back issues to re-read them. It takes chutzpah to do what he does. We need more American eccentrics!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Generally reliable, a decent read, but sometimes annoying
Comment: This is a generally useful magazine with a clear vision, but I don't always find myself agreeing with that vision. Try a couple of issues from the newsstand before splurging on a subscription.
CI is a great choice if you want reliable, no-nonsense recipes that (a) involve foods most people would be open to eating, (b) educate you a bit about the purpose of various ingredients and techniques in a recipe, and (c) involve minimal use of canned and processed ingredients (e.g., not just dumping cans into a crock pot). If you're interested in moving up from typical Better Homes and Gardens recipes or a PTA Cookbook, CI is a reliable source of reliable recipes. Call it serious cooking for the traditional home cook. You won't see restaurant reviews, discussions of molecular gastronomy and Top Chef, or travelogues. I've been a regular reader for over five years, archive all my copies, and cannot think of any recipe which has turned out poorly. There's no "food porn" showing fabulous presentations that are beyond the skills of the average home cook, as the recipes all present themselves as something that a reasonably skilled home cook could achieve. CI is at its best when they happen to feature a recipe for a food you enjoy, or one that you have already cooked and wondered about improving.
On the other hand, the magazine has several annoying qualities. Equipment reviews are not consistently helpful to me as, like Consumer Reports, CI often subjectively emphasizes much different features than are important to me. Ingredient tastings are rarely useful because they invariably choose brands that are not available in my region. Why don't they research which brands are nationally distributed? The opening essay by Christopher Kimball is a maudlin, page-wasting moralistic vanity puff about country living. The recipes often seem recycled, particularly between the related magazines and books (Cook's Illustrated, Cook's Country, America's Test Kitchen, Best Recipes, etc.). It can be difficult to find the recipe that you seek unless you spend more at the website or for additional publications. The magazine is organized by recipes (e.g., Roast Chicken, Brownies, etc.) but not indexed by ingredients, so if you are in the mood for something based on a particular ingredient you may not find it terribly efficient to use. Many of the reviewers here on Amazon seem fascinated with the culinary experimenting and optimization process described in the text before each final recipe, but this doesn't do much for me. I don't always agree with CI's definition of the proper taste, and their experimental procedure is poorly designed. By this, I mean that if a recipe involves ingredients and methods ABCDEF, it doesn't always work to find the best A, then the best B, and so on. It's quite possible that the choice for E makes a different B the better choice in the ultimate outcome. There's a certain pomposity of tone when CI is preparing something outside their own New England regional cuisine. It can be grating to have a Yankee self-proclaimed expert assert how a Southwestern dish is supposed to taste or announce that this-and-that is the "proper" technique to make American Southern biscuits. Sometimes the recipes are too interwoven, as in a recent issue where it seemed they were just thrilled beyond words with their new Dutch oven and everything involved use of the same $240 LeCreuset. It's also annoying to have to buy a hard-bound book or another magazine at the end of the year to get something useful as a reference for the cook's bookshelf. Without spending more money you will not be able to use the magazine as a reference. For example, if I noticed some really striking specialty produce at the farmer's market and brought it home not sure what I wanted to use it for, CI would be at the bottom of the list for sources I'd consult for ideas. The stylistic limitation of using only Wall Street Journal-style monochromatic drawings instead of color illustrations is sometimes useful and sometimes less than ideal. Finally, I find that I frankly enjoy advertisements that are designed to inform me about new cooking tools, products, training or culinary topics, and that can make a magazine more enjoyable to browse. If you enjoy this sort of thing, then CI will seem quite dry as the only advertisements are for more products from their publishing empire.
Bottom line: it's a worthwhile magazine if you are geek-serious about cooking, fussy about making familiar foods better, or enjoy having ideas presented about things you already happen to be considering cooking. It's not so useful as a reference, for quick feed-the-family-in-30-minutes meals, or for those moments when you want to figure out how to make a particular dish you have in mind or how you can use a given ingredient. I'd say it's more useful and archive-worthy than Saveur, Bon Appetit, or Gourmet. It's more accessible than pro-level magazines like Arts Culinaires. Buy a sample copy or two at the newsstand before you decide on a subscription. Myself, I'm leaning toward Taunton's Fine Cooking lately.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Best
Comment: My cooking has improved tenfold since I started receiving this magazine (and watching the show, America's Test Kitchen, on PBS). I can't seem to stop making their recipes.
I can't recommend it enough!
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