Notes about Recipes in this book

• Best butterscotch pudding

  • manond on February 04, 2013

    This was sooooo good! I put it in little French dessert cups and used a pastry bag to pipe whipped cream on top. I made it for the children at a dinner party, and more adults than children chose it! Yum!

  • Analyze on March 25, 2017

    HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! I made it side by side with the older "Butterscotch Pudding" published by the same company in the America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, and this one was SO much more flavorful. Because you end up cooking the caramel to a deeper color/flavor, it turns out a better pudding with WAY more intense flavors; it also has more rich ingredients (more butter and cream). Mine didn't thicken up in step 4, though, so I had to put it back on the heat like you'd traditionally make pudding. The older ATK recipe (while good) is incredibly mild by comparison (kids might like it better). If you do make this amazing recipe, I'll add that we personally preferred it without the rum, though it's good with the rum too.

  • joanhuguet on March 03, 2015

    The flavor was great, but the texture was thin and grainy. I'll stick with the traditional approach to tempering eggs if I make this again.

• Modern beef Burgundy

  • ashallen on October 11, 2019

    I used to make the classic Julia Child Boeuf Bourguignon (which we loved) but have since switched over to this recipe. Although I haven't done a side-by-side of the 2 recipes (that would be a lot of beef stew!), based on memory, we like the flavor of this recipe as much as/better than the JC recipe. This recipe's also significantly easier and less messy to cook than the JC version - Cook's Illustrated did a really great job streamlining the technique. It's also possible to skim excess fat from this recipe - I could never seem to find separated fat to skim from the JC recipe. This is a delicious, sumptuous stew - tender beef chunks and a thick, flavorful sauce. I've used homemade dark chicken stock instead of beef stock - it's worked fine. A decent pinot noir has subbed well for Burgundy. Mushrooms should be fully cooked to taste in oven since they don't cook further in the stew. Leftovers are fantastic. Freezes very well. [Cross-post for Annual Edition/Magazine.]

• Foolproof spaghetti carbonara

  • Rinshin on February 03, 2015

    This came out perfectly for me. I added pancetta and bacon and the sauce was luscious.

  • TrishaCP on May 01, 2014

    This definitely isn't foolproof, as we have tried this twice and only once semi-successfully. The first time, my husband didn't stir the sauce thoroughly, which left huge unmelted cheese clumps at the bottom of the pan and watery sauce in our pasta bowls. The second time I did a thorough stirring, only VERY slowly adding the pasta water. (I didn't use the full cup.). This was better, but still more grainy than silky. So...there will not be a third time.

• Braised red potatoes with lemon and chives

  • wittwoman on April 10, 2016

    Interesting technique to cook off the water and then the butter. Fantastic flavor and crispy cut sides.

• Italian chicken soup with Parmesan dumplings

  • ashallen on June 23, 2021

    This soup was fine, but I didn't love it enough to repeat, particularly since it requires some extra effort to make (searing chicken thighs, making homemade toasted bread crumbs, mixing and rolling allll those little dumplings). The dumplings were tender and delicious - I'll use that part of the recipe for other soups. But I thought the rest of the soup was just so-so with flavors that seemed kind of muddied. It was also a very hearty soup packed with lots of chicken and vegetables - I would have preferred a simpler, more broth-y soup with those yummy dumplings. It also didn't help that I overshot the cooking temperature for the chicken by 15F which probably made it more rubbery than it should have been. Leftover buttermilk biscuits worked well in place of sandwich bread for the dumpling bread crumbs.

• Summer berry trifle

  • ashallen on November 22, 2019

    I loooove trifle-style desserts. This recipe provides a good set of methods for making the basic trifle components (cake, pastry cream, whipped cream, fruit) but I found the recipe as written to have more fruit relative to everything else than I prefer. It's easy to modify the amount and type of fruit (and the alcohol), however, to suit one's taste - I believe I've cut the fruit quantity 30-50%. I've also bumped up the quantity of whipped cream! The recipe as written makes a big dessert (12-16 servings) - cutting it in half has worked fine. My cake often shrinks a bit as it cools after baking, but its texture has always been good in the trifle. Leftovers weep a bit, but I still find them to be absolutely delicious!! [Cross-post for Annual Edition/Magazine.]

• Creamy cauliflower soup

  • Yildiz100 on February 04, 2015

    Ok, but a little bland. The extra steps of cooking some of undercooking some cauliflower and overcooking the rest was definitely not worth it.

• Best chicken stew

  • ashallen on April 26, 2020

    This is the most flavorful chicken stew I've made to date. The chicken and vegetables were very tender and the sauce was basically a thick, rich, flavorful gravy. I usually prefer the stronger flavors of beef/pork/lamb stews to chicken stew, but this is very good. I did use a flavorful batch of homemade chicken stock. My husband, a big chicken stew fan, says this one is his new favorite and has already requested a repeat for next week. The stew was good after the specified cooking time, but I cooked it for an additional 45-60 minutes since we like the meat and vegetables to be verrrry tender. Recipe says to discard chicken wings after cooking, but the meat on mine was actually very good when picked out and mixed into the gravy with everything else. [Cross-post Cook's Ill. Annual Edition/Magazine.]

• Thin-crust pizza

  • ashallen on January 19, 2020

    Excellent recipe for homemade pizza! I grew up on New Haven pizza and can be pretty picky. This recipe surprised me - I wasn't expecting to make this good a pizza with a regular oven + baking stone. Crust was nicely chewy with a moist interior, crisp exterior, and great dough bubbles on the rim. I only did a 1-day cold-ferment with the dough this time and will try the 3-day next time. Used King Arthur's organic bread flour which we've also enjoyed in other breads. Good quantity of sauce and cheese relative to crust, though my husband preferred a bit more sauce (+ a whole tin of anchovies!) on his pie. Recipe doesn't mention using semolina flour to dust the peel, but I find it really eases transfer of the pizza from peel to oven. [Cross-post for 2011 & 2013 Annual Edition/2011 & 2013 Magazine/Science of Good Cooking/Cook's Ill. Cookbook.]

• Boiled potatoes with black olive tapenade

  • debkellie on August 22, 2015

    I used pre-prepped tapenade , and this was a revelation. Really nice served with salmon.

• Black olive tapenade vinaigrette

  • jtodes on January 03, 2016

    Wonderful. Very easy to make. Need to make 20 hours in advance.