Notes about Recipes in this book

• Classic pot roast

  • EdM on March 24, 2017

    The sauce/gravy is the outstanding part of this recipe. Can be similarly done with most braised meats.

• Classic spaghetti and meatballs for a crowd

  • mfto on July 25, 2011

    I made and froze this ahead and took to the beach for the first night for the children. Everyone liked it including adults. I followed the recipe exactly making 40 very large meatballs. Next year I will make the meatballs a little smaller to make them easier for children to eat.

  • Rinshin on August 15, 2015

    This was the ultimate meatballs. Made half the recipe and loved the silkiness coming through with small amount of gelatin without any added protein taste. I used bacon in place of panchetta. Loved the use of buttermilk instead of milk. Cook's Illustrated is way ahead of other web sites when it comes to introducing new ideas. Instead of following the sauce recipe, I used my own because I had lots of fresh garden tomatoes to use. Perfect!

• Bread stuffing with fresh herbs

  • ashallen on September 26, 2019

    Excellent stuffing recipe. It cleverly bakes stuffing with turkey/chicken wings nestled on top in order to replicate the flavor/moisture you get from true stuffing baked inside a turkey. Texture was very moist. Flavors were excellent. Now for personal preferences... We're not sure we like it better than our usual, non-turkey wing Cook's Illustrated recipe (circa 1998) without a side-by-side comparison. It does require some extra steps beyond that other recipe and I find it's pretty easy to replicate some baked-in-bird flavors with the 1998 recipe by reserving drippings and rendered fat from roast chicken and subbing them for chicken stock and butter. The moisture from the wings prevented a crunchy crust from forming on top of this stuffing - I missed it! I tried chewing on a couple of the leftover turkey/chicken wings but found them pretty tough. I used them for stock vs. soup/salad as suggested by Cooks. [Cross-post for Annual Edition/Magazine/Cook's Ill. Cookbook.]

• Chewy chai-spice sugar cookies

  • ashallen on January 07, 2022

    This is one of several variations of a basic sugar cookie recipe. The base recipe is wonderful and makes flavorful cookies with an awesomely moist and chewy texture. I assumed the spice flavor in this variation would be more intense, but these definitely tasted like sugar cookies with a bit of spice mixed in and a bit of heat from the ginger and pepper. Overall very nice flavors, though, for a relatively gently flavored cookie. If my spices had been super-fresh, that probably would have bumped them up a notch.