:: The Fat Cat Skinny ::
The New Best Recipe from Cook's Illustrated contains 1,000 recipes and weighs in at a hefty 1,028 pages. New features include expanded tutorials on grilling, making chicken stock and more, plus a new "appetizers" section.
:: :: :: ::

Sometimes in the kitchen I feel like Al Pacino in the Godfather 3: Just when I think I've plowed through every recipe in The Best Recipe, Cook's Illustrated pulls me back in with a New Best Recipe. Dammit.

But we can't sing the praises of those good folks at Cook's Illustrated enough, and the New Best Recipe wins our undying love by including the newest recipes that America's Test Kitchen has tested and compiled since publishing The Best Recipe 5 years ago.

More About The New Best Recipe
The first thing you'll notice is the size: this thing is so heavy you could beat even the toughest chicken breast into pan frying submission.

And it's packed with 1,000 recipes -- including the original 500 in the first The Best Recipe. And the new "appetizers" section is a nice addition. When we have guests over to sample the latest Fat Cat Kitchen Concoctions, we like to keep the chit-chat to a minimum with a nice spread of pre-dinner goodies (not to mention a frosty homebrew).

New York City Appearance by Christopher Kimball
On November 8th Christopher Kimball was in the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble in New York City to give a roomful of eager home cooks the scoop on the latest Best Recipe cookbook.

He started with background info on America's Test Kitchen (an actual test kitchen located inside a warehouse in Brookline, MA; 22 full-time cooks), Cook's Illustrated Magazine, and the mission of Cook's Illustrated: to produce simple, fail-proof recipes that you can easily make at home.

After exhaustive testing in the Kitchen and sending the final recipe to 1,000 magazine subscribers for a definitive home cooking test, Cook's Illustrated arrives at the "best recipe"... and a ton of offshoot cookbooks.

As always, Chris shared some fun food facts, and some of the funky emails Cook's Illustrated receives. (One readers asked the Kitchen to reproduce Chef Boyardee recipes.)

Here are some of his comments during the Q&A session:

Seasoning -- when possible, keep tasting your food as your cooking. That way you can adjust seasonings as you go. And if you're adding fresh ingredients like parsley, add them near the end.

Kosher Cookbook -- maybe in the future, but they have a 2 year backlog on publishing their current cookbooks.

Substituting Vegetable Stock for Chicken Stock -- it's tough to find a good commercial veggie stock, and a homemade one is a chore to make; that's why they always use chicken stock. By the way, chicken stock is easy to make, avoid the store bought stuff.

Cook's Country -- a new magazine that focuses on country-style cooking. The format is more colorful and lively... though I find Cook's Illustrated Magazine lively enough.

Reader Tips -- they're all submitted by actual readers and whittled down by an editor. This is one of my favorite features of Cook's Illustrated Magazine.

Stuffing a Turkey -- don't do it my fellow Fat Cat's, don't do it. For safety reasons you need to bring the stuffing to 160, and by that time you'll dry out your bird.

Kitchen Disasters -- they received over 900 submission for kitchen disasters, proving that people love to share horror stories.

:: More Fat Stuff ::
If you don't subscribe to Cook's Illustrated Magazine, you can get a free trial issue. Do it today, it's the best investment you can make to improve your cooking.

Same thing with the Cook's Country free trial.

And check out Christopher Kimball's upcoming appearances.