COOK'S ILLUSTRATED

'''Cook’s Illustrated''' is a bimonthly American cooking magazine founded and edited by Christopher Kimball and published by Boston Common Press in Brookline, Massachusetts. It accepts no advertising and is characterized by extensive recipe testing and detailed instructions; the magazine also conducts equally thorough evaluations of kitchen equipment and branded foods and ingredients. The magazine’s staff also produces the PBS cooking show ''America's Test Kitchen'' as well as several series of cookbooks, including the flagship ''Best Recipe'' series, the ''America's Test Kitchen'' TV cookbooks, the single-subject ''How To Cook'' series, and others. A sister magazine, ''Cook's Country'', which emphasizes home-style cooking and reader submissions, was launched in October 2004; the two magazines come out in alternate months.
Though the company is still officially known as Boston Common Press, most of its publishing activity is done under the ''America's Test Kitchen'' brand.

Contents

Style

Recipes

How-To

Tasting

Equipment

Cover

External links

Style

Cook's employs a folksy writing style which carries through each section of the magazine, regardless of article author. This characteristic style is most prominent in Kimball's editorials, which are always anecdotal, and may or may not relate to any particular theme of the current issue.

Recipes

The bulk of Cook's is dedicated to recipes which all follow a theme for that particular issue. Lengthy discussion of every aspect of a recipe is idiosyncratic of Cook's Illustrated. The authors often spend half or more of the recipe's alloted space to explain the metamorphosis of the initial "classic" recipe for a dish to the final recipe published. Cook's often will substitute difficult-to-find or expensive ingredients with more readily available and/or less costly ingredients, fully explaining the justification for doing so. Often, recipe variants are listed after the main recipe. Recipes typically include hand-drawn illustrations of any difficult cuts or other uncommon preparation.

How-To

Cook's usually includes a "how to" section with tips on efficiently completing common cooking chores such as freezing fruit and vegetables, knife technique, and rising bread. The how-to section can usually be applied to one or more of the same issue's recipes.

Tasting

A tasting section is in every issue, where Cook's tastes various brands of a food item and comes to a consensus. Often, a category is sub-organized into purposes, such as "best teas plain" and "best teas with milk". As with recipes, much space is devoted to explaining the selection process, and any exceptions to the general conclusions.

Equipment

Much like the tasting section, multiple brands of a piece of kitchen equipment are tested to determine which brand is most highly recommended, and which is the best value. Cook's spends the first half of the article explaining why the particular piece of equipment is important and what features are important. The second half is a table comparing the various brands' relative strengths and weaknesses. A related section, "Equipment Corner" usually follows and lists generally whether several new or updated pieces of equipment are worthwhile, but without the in-depth analysis of the main equipment section.
Cook's has a small staff, and the majority of the tasting data is dependent upon how this staff rates a product. While not statistically the best, the niche points out how a particular taste enjoys particular regional products.

Cover

The back cover of every Cook's Illustrated magazine is a full-color hand-drawn depiction of a group of a particular food item such as fruits, vegetables,
or cheeses.

External links

★ ''Cook's Illustrated''

★ ''Cook's Country''

★ America's Test Kitchen