The Best SLow & Easy Recipes
The Best Slow & Easy Recipes is brought to you in splendid detail and very well researched and tested dishes by the folks at America’s Test Kitchen.
Ease of Use/Performance: 24/25
Convenience/Storage 24/25
Appearance/Design 25/25
How much I enjoy 25/25
Total: 98/100
America’s Test Kitchen is not only the place they put together a few cookbooks, videos and a couple of magazines, it’s where they test every recipe that makes it to those forms of media and out to the public. Each recipe is tested as well as the tools to make them like pots, pans and utensils so just about everything gets at least the once over before going to the final stage of making it to the recipe page.
The thing I really like and which wins my Blue Ribbon for Excellence is how much effort goes into every part of a recipe before it gets their seal of approval. Not only do they test the recipe in so many ways to make sure they are doing it the best way they can they check out all the equipment as well.
From trying the recipe in how its put together, cooked and even the variety of ingredients you can use as well as the various gadgets they test every possible way they can think of to turn out the best product. This does not always mean the most expensive either; another plus is the use of good quality but low cost ingredients or being given the option to use the lower cost ones for those of us on a budget.
America’s Test Kitchen does the work so you can simply follow the recipe and get the food cooked the best way they could possibly figure out. This goes for every recipe and variation they tried which is quite a bit, look at their egg dish called Eggs en Cocotte or the French dish of eggs cooked in small ramekins or dishes.
They literally cooked hundreds of eggs to get the recipe right, at 4 ramekins in a cooker at a time with 2 eggs each that is a lot of cooking to get one recipe right. That is how much effort they put into each recipe to create not only dishes that are fantastic and easy for you and I to create but ones we can actually use.
I enjoy cooking and learning about cooking but do not have the time to take classes, or the money, so the recipe books I review are the next best thing and with the America’s Test Kitchen variety I get the classes as well. The books contain not only recipes, more than 250 here, but the explanations of what they did and why the dish works the way they did it.
From explaining why that chili tastes better when you cook the spices in oil to the actual utensils and tools you use in cooking and which ones are the best the cookbook has you covered. I really enjoy the hints and tips like how to prepare various vegetables and meats when they are ones I have never purchased before and have really been missing out on.
The Best Slow & Easy Recipes takes you through a wide variety of dishes that are cooked in a slower method such as a traditional Dutch oven or the more current modern method of crock pot or slow cooker. Recipes range from meats and simple single main dishes to side dishes and even stews, soups and desserts with plenty of variety.
I tried a few recipes and really enjoyed not only cooking and, heavenly, eating the dishes but learning about how and why with the recipes. You can really learn a lot when you have the previous testing and research skills of a full and well staffed test kitchen behind the cookbook.
Oven roasting is for things like turkey, pot roast and leg of lamb but the cookbook not only tells you the best ways to prepare these roasted dishes but how the dishes come out the way they do. Beef and fowl are easily roasted but fish and other dishes can also be roasted with the right conditions like oven poached salmon.
Other main chapters include Cooking en Cocotte or casserole roasting, Chili Stews and Sauces, Braises, Slow-Cooker Favorites, Side Dishes from the Oven and Slow-Cooked Vegetables and Fruits. The slow cooker recipes may seem familiar but many have a better take due to the research involved with the Test Kitchens.