Whats the best cooking magazine for serious cooks?
“Cook’s Illustrated – Seriously, it’s THE magazine for serious cooks.” [snob] No. It’s not. It’s the magazine for cook’s who want to learn some fundamentals, or see some alternate methods for traditional recipes. Serious cooks have hopefully move beyond Cook’s Illustrated. [/snob] Cook’s Illustrated is very good. Their book is better, and cheaper in the long run. Food and Wine has the highest percentage of recipes I actually end up cooking.
Okay, so I seem to have come late to this discussion, but if anyone’s still reading this far, I’ve always been thoroughly unsatisfied with Cook’s Illustrated. Here’s why. For tool reviews, they always invariably test 15 or so mediocre gadgets and pick the best of those, but miss the actual one that’s the best and usually either the same price or even slightly cheaper. Pick up a PCD catalog – most of the things they sell are better than what you can find at Williams-Sonoma, yet those products never make it into the reviews. For techniques, a similar problem. They do limited testing and come to broad sweeping generalizations, but their underlying method is “find a few likely candidates and test those”, but they almost always overlook some alternative that’s actually superior. It looks like science, but it’s not. In short, I’ve never read a Cook’s Illustrated column I didn’t have some issue or another with, either their methods or testing range or conclusi
That CI is not perfect, I’ll be the first to agree. They are the quintessential “suburban kitchen” magazine, that is, they rarely use any exotic ingredients, and heavily Americanize any “ethnic” recipe they present. That said, I’ve never had a poor result with a CI recipe, some mediocre ones, but never a complete disaster. If you know its limitations, CI is a fine magazine. Fine Cooking is more adventurous, true, but is generally more superficial than CI, in my opinion. It is also an excellent magazine, probably the best of the glossies. McGee has a new edition of “On Food and Cooking” coming out, by the way. Apparently it’s a substantial rewrite (the first edition came out in what, 1984?). That too would make an excellent gift.
Also, on the PCD note. I have done business with a large number of cooking supply companies (as a serious amateur chef), and PCD hands down has absolutely the best customer support of any of them. I once asked a question and got the surprisingly refreshing “I don’t know. Hold on a minute, let me get one and try that”. Their prices are good, and their products are, while in the same general class as the other companies, generally a step up or three in quality. My only complaint is that they don’t carry Mac knives.
