The Cook's Country Cookbook: Regional and Heirloom Favorites Tested and Reimagined for Today's Home Cooks - Books

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Welcome to Cook's Country - a place where you'll learn what's cooking in kitchens across America. This debut collection from the editors of Cook's Country magazine celebrates the landscape of American home cooking from yesterday and today. In the tradition of great American cookbooks like The Fannie Farmer Cookbook and The Settlement Cookbook, The Cook's Country Cookbook is, at its core, a wide-ranging, comprehensive collection chock-full of beloved classics like roast chicken, beef stew, biscuits, blueberry pie, and more. In addition, the editors of Cook's Country magazine have also reached back in time to revive old favorites to suit modern tastes and lifestyles. Here you'll find Chicken Divan without the soup mix - only tender chicken crisp broccoli blanketed in a velvety cheese sauce. You'll learn that it's possible to serve a from-scratch comfort food classic like meatloaf on a weeknight when time is tight: our mini-meatloaves cook in a fraction of the time of traditional versions.
Discover fresh, new, and sometimes regional recipes that illuminate the depth and personality behind American cooking - recipes such as North Carolina Pulled Pork (a slow-cooker dish with real barbecue flavor); 24-Hour Salad (a make-ahead salad where the vegetables remain crisp and fresh); and King Ranch Casserole (a kid-friendly creamy chicken casserole with toasty corn chips and Southwestern spices, made famous by Lady Bird Johnson).
In addition to foolproof recipes, The Cook's Country Cookbook also pulls back the curtain to reveal the often fascinating origins of classic American favorites, such as the use of breakfast cereal in party snack mixes or how Bundt pans gave rise to the popular cake. Much more than a collection of foolproof recipes, The Cook's Country Cookbook provides a lively, in-depth portrait of the great American table.

Customer Reviews: Read 44 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

Comprehensive November 20, 2008
Pretty decent comprehensive all-purpose cookbook. Personally, I would highly recommend this for novice cooks as each recipe gives detailed explanations of each step. Pictures are also included with select recipes to further illustrate methods.

The recipes included in the book are tried and true American classics, such as chicken-fried steak, pot roasts, and pumpkin pie. I have made several recipes from the book to taste test them, and what I tried was superb.

This book would be a welcome addition to any collection and it's also a fine reference cookbook.

5 out of 5 stars

Vintage cookbooks, old recipe boxes, and cross-country travel uncovered a host of dishes November 15, 2008
American home cooking is the focus of THE COOK'S COUNTRY COOKBOOK, a cornerstone of any basic cooking collection offering up foolproof results and regional American dishes. Vintage cookbooks, old recipe boxes, and cross-country travel uncovered a host of dishes but all had to be tested, and many modified, to produce superior and failsafe results. Dishes such as corned beef hash, fried chicken, meatballs and more are given more than just recipes: each dish receives extensive comments on how the America's Test Kitchen editors tested and retested, adjusting recipes to produce superior results. So cooks receive not only recipes, but insights into the influences upon and differences between good cooking and superior results. THE COOK'S COUNTRY COOKBOOK should be as basic an acquisition as The Joy of Cooking: both are 'bibles' of essential culinary information that beginners simply must have.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

5 out of 5 stars

A great cookbook -- but not a diet cookbook :) November 10, 2008
Great reworks of some classic recipes. But you know that when you're talking about "classic" or "heirloom" recipes, there is no sparing on the butter, milk, cheese, etc! If you're diet conscious and looking for ways to cut calories, this is not the book for you. But if you like classic comfort foods and would like some advice on excellent recipes and techniques for preparation, then this is the one!

We get both the Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country magazines in my house. I personally am a Cook's Country fan. I'm all about simple, uncomplicated, and classic flavors. And I am a recipe follower, so I need simple, easy-to-follow recipes. And the detailed instructions are much appreciated by me. The Cook's Illustrated/Country people seem to have a knack for knowing when you need tips on techniques. And I greatly appreciate them! And if they say "this is the best chicken pot pie recipe", I'll take their word for it. You can trust them. And they'll give you time-saving tips that don't sacrifice quality. You won't be disappointed!

I saw other reviews that complain about the point size of the type. This is a large book with TONS of information. I'd rather have the point size be small that give up any of the helpful hints or recipes. But I don't think it's disturbingly small. But I guess it's the kind of book you'd probably need to place in a cookbook stand since it's so large and not really soil-resistant.

All in all, I think it's a great buy and definitely a great addition to a recipe book collection! My only wish would be that someday they might come out with a "light" version of the recipes for those of us trying to count calories. :)

Ch. 1 - Starters and Snacks
2 - Salads and dressings
3 - Soups, Stews, and Chilis
4 - On the Side
5 - Lunch Counter Specials
6 - Hearty Breakfasts
7 - Morning and Teatime Treats
8 - Bread Basket Favorites
9 - Casseroles and Other Potluck Favorites
10 - Chicken (and Turkey) Every Way
11 - Beef and Pork
12 - Seafood
13 - Slow-Cooker Favorites
14 - Cookies and Bars Galore
15 - Blue Ribbon Cakes
16 - Homespun Pies and Fruit Desserts
17 - Spoon Dessert

5 out of 5 stars

cooks country cookbook November 5, 2008
very good cookbook. every receipe is shown step by step. Have other
cookbooks by Americas Test Kichens and enjoy them all.

5 out of 5 stars

Heh heh heh. Hee hee heh heh ha ha ha. MWAHAHAHAHA!!!!! November 4, 2008
For those of you who have been following Cook's Illustrated's strange little side project, this book, the companion to the Cook's Country TV series, is a collection of some of the best stuff from the magazine, as well as a few niceties from older Best Recipe books. For those of you who don't, let's back up a bit. Cook's Country is the companion magazine to Cook's Illustrated, something of a nerdier, more upscale version of Taste of Home magazine, that focuses heavily on comfort food and recipe ephemera -- those recipes your mother had bags of on random slips of paper, sometimes spread by email or faxlore these days, passed down over decades or (if you're lucky) centuries.

So we return to this book, which in some ways can best be described as The Best American Classics, Volume 2. Where the first book was like a menu at a well-established neighborhood diner, this book is a crazy-quilt of regional American specialties, with no less than five different types of fried chicken, numerous different cakes (including the Brooklyn classic Chocolate Blackout and the quick-draw WWII-ration-era Wacky Cake), classic diner breakfast overindulgences like monster Denver omelets and stuffed French toast, and even braised and barbecued versions of pulled pork. Everything is handled with the usual CI poke-and-prod approach, so if that old recipe from your grandmother's recipe file is in here, all the bugs you were never quite able to work out are fixed here.

It's sometimes hard to remember that American cuisine, though sometimes tacky and often fattening, is very much a cuisine with its own traditions and interesting flourishes. This book shows off a few of the more fun and interesting corners of that cuisine without pointless flag-waving and excessive use of prefab ingredients. Its only real flaw is that it really doesn't tie into the TV show very well -- there's no episode guide anywhere. Oh well, can't win 'em all.

Good Grape Wine Company