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The Best 30-minute Recipe: A Best Recipe Classic (Best Recipe Series)

300 Fast and Flavorful Recipes from America's Most Trusted Test Kitchen

Tired of quick recipes that aren't really quick or don't taste very good? While some cookbooks promise 30-minute meals, America's Test Kitchen delivers. The Best 30-Minute Recipe is packed with more than 300 great-tasting recipes, along with time-saving techniques that will help you become more efficient in the kitchen. You'll also find honest evaluations of ingredients important to quick cooking, such as chicken broth, preshredded cheese, instant rice, and more. And because the type of equipment you use is important to the success of any recipe—made in 30 minutes or not—we tell you which brands are worth buying.

The Best 30-Minute Recipe features a surprisingly wide range of recipes. You get not only the very best versions of naturally quick dishes like salads and stir-fries, but also quick and easy recipes for typically long-cooking dishes that you'd never even think of making on a weeknight—including meatloaf, lasagna, beef pot pie, and a pad thai so easy that you may never call for takeout again. With efficiency and good taste, The Best 30-Minute Recipe is the time-pressed cook's guide to getting dinner on the table, night after night.

The Best Light Recipe (The Best Recipe)

Let's face it. In America's Test Kitchen our goal has always been clear: develop the best recipe possible. Only rarely have we stopped to consider the fat or calorie content of the food we make …until now.

The Best Light Recipe is different. In response to the increasing interest from our readers to shed the same obsessive attention the right ingredients and techniques for the guaranteed foolproof recipe for lighter foods, we are pleased to offer more than 300 guaranteed foolproof full-flavored, lower fat and reduced-calorie recipes, 95% of which are completely new! Each recipe lists calories, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, protein, fiber and sodium per serving to help you cook smart.

From chunky guacamole to brownies, from macaroni and cheese, lasagna, and spaghetti and meatballs to blueberry muffins and even chocolate cake and cheesecake, we tested and retested our favorite recipes until we arrived at the best recipes that cut calories and fat without sacrificing flavor. We also recognized that we couldn't do the impossible- so if we weren't satisfied with the results in our kitchen, the recipe didn't make it into the book. Nor did we include recipes that relied on smoke and mirrors to reduce fat and calories, like beef stew with only a forkful of beef or cookies the size of quarters.

The Best Light Recipe, packed with more than 100 illustrations and 16 pages of full-color photos, also includes naturally healthy recipes tweaked to be even lighter and healthier, like gazpacho, poached salmon, stir-fry chicken, grilled tuna burgers, and pan-roasted asparagus. And the healthy techniques you'll learn, including using milk and cornstarch instead of cream and butter to make a simple pan sauce (trust us, it really works), or reserving the good olive oil to lightly drizzle on your pasta before serving (when you use less and get the most flavor), will last over a lifetime of healthy cooking.

The Best Light Recipe also features objective equipment ratings and ingredient tastings, from the best muffin tin and Dutch oven to the best soy sauce and chicken broth, as well as illustrated tips and techniques, from slicing flank steak for stir fries, to creating the best deep-fried crust without actually frying. In short, it is your essential guide to lighter, great-tasting recipes that deliver every time.

Lidia's Family Table: More Than 200 Fabulous Recipes to Enjoy Every Day-With Wonderful Ideas for Variations and Improvisations

Lidia's Family Table by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich"The best-loved and most-admired of all AmericaÆs television cooks today, Lidia Bastianich, now gives us her most generous, instructive, and creative cookbook. The emphasis here is on cooking for the fami

Warm and calmly authoritative, Lidia Bastianich has won the trust of many cooks, who also devour her TV shows and books including Lidia's Italian Table and Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen. Lidia's Family Table also presents homey Italian fare--savory dishes like Cauliflower Soup with Poached Garlic Purée; Potato, Leek, and Bacon Ravioli; Skillet Green Beans with Gorgonzola; and Grilled Tuna Rollatini Under Tomato-Lemon Marinade--over 200 recipes in all. But Family Table is equally about technique; readers will find it crammed with instructive asides like "Using 'Pasta Water' to Make a Quick Sauce" (the water's starchiness can add body to sauces) and "Reduced Wine Vinegar for Vegetables" (heat-concentrated vinegar makes a deliciously mellow seasoning).

But the teaching doesn't stop there. Bastianich's discussions of risotto and polenta are particularly good (when preparing risotto, for example, the liquid must simmer for the dish to become properly toothsome), while a section on quick skillet sauces, like one made with sausage, onions, and fennel, will get many readers to the kitchen pronto. Bastianich also offers advice for preparing lesser-known yet attractive meat cuts like shoulder and butt, as well as quick-take recipes for the likes of whole corn cooked in tomato sauce and eggplant with scrambled eggs. The Bastianich approach also applies to the dessert section, which offers simple fruit-based sweets like Fig Focaccia, and Crostata with Poached Apricots and Pignolala. (Included, too, are a number of simple strudel recipes, a bow to the cooking of Istria, Bastianich's birthplace.) Color photos make succinct technical points as well as showing Lidia's extended family at table and very much in action. --Arthur Boehm

Paula Deen Celebrates!: Best Dishes and Best Wishes for the Best Times of Your Life

Fans of Food Network star Paula Deen enjoy her unpretentious Southern-gal persona as much as her easy, what's-not-to-like recipes. As a writer of four other cookbooks, including The Lady & Sons Just Desserts, restaurant owner, and purveyor of her own product line, she's also something of an entrepreneur. In Paul Deen Celebrates! she offers 170-plus recipes arranged by menus for traditional holidays and other, sometimes whimsical celebrations like Elvis's Birthday and Movie-Watching Pizza Party in Bed. The recipes, which are often Southern-rich, range from the more traditional, such as Shrimp Etouffé, Muffuletta Sandwiches, and Macaroni Salad, to the innovative, including Collard Green Wantons, Grilled Chicken Pita, and Scallop and Bacon Pizza. Her sweets include the likes of Old Fashioned Banana Pudding, Gooey Toffee Butter Cake and Margarita Mousse. Offered also are decorating tips, and "Paula's Pearls of Wisdom" like "treasure today's moment's because they will tomorrow's memories."

Deen's dishes couldn't be more approachable and will doubtlessly inspire many holiday menus. Readers should know, however, that she regularly calls for convenience products like cake mixes and canned soups, whose use (by now something of an American tradition in itself) can do little to make homemade food taste as good as it otherwise might. Paula Deen Celebrates! should, however, excite Deen's many fans, who, along with the attractive formulas, receive lots of "back-story" on the author's own celebrations, life, and mostly good times. --Arthur Boehm

Beloved Food Network personality, restaurateur, and author Paula Deen loves a party, and in her latest book, Paula Deen Celebrates!, Paula shares with fans old and new how she celebrates a year's worth of holidays and special occasions. Now anyone can share in the down-home celebrations Paula, her husband, Michael, their kids, and extended family enjoy at their beautiful home in Savannah, Georgia.

What better way to start off the New Year than with a New Year's Eve Brunch with friends -- at midnight! This colorful celebration includes Crab and Spinach Casserole and Baked Tomatoes, and finishes with a quintessentially southern Hummingbird Cake and Irish Coffee. Welcome St. Patrick's Day, Savannah style, with Lamb Stew and Green Grits Pie. The centerpiece of an Easter dinner is a Peanut Butter-Glazed Ham, accompanied by Spinach-Swiss Casserole, Squash Boats, and flaky Butterhorns, with a bonus recipe for Ham Salad that makes eating leftovers a treat. Looking for a reason to party, south-of-the-border style? Try Paula's Cinco de Mayo Fiesta menu, with Macho Nachos and a cool and creamy Margarita Mousse. Paula honors the memory of her mother, and all the other women who have blessed her life, with a Mother's Day Tea of dainty sandwiches and irresistible cookies served on her best china, and fathers get their due with a Father's Day Boating Picnic. The Fourth of July is the perfect occasion for an Outdoor Grill Party and Low-Country Boil, and if what you want is a quiet evening at home, pop a movie in the DVD player and chow down on your choice of Paula's savory and sweet pizzas. Gather the family to watch some football and savor Jamie's Cheeseburger Pies, and give family and friends the gift of a sweet treat at the holidays with Paula's Icebox Fruitcake or Peppermint Bark. Her Christmas feast starts with Cranberry Holiday Brie and stars an impressive Standing Rib Roast, with Twice-Baked Potato Casserole. The show-stopping dessert is Paula's butter-laden Coconut Pound Cake glazed with coconut syrup and covered with icing and toasted coconut!

Paula brings you into her home, her kitchen, and her heart with family stories and photographs. This time, her husband, Michael, sons Jamie and Bobby, and brother, Bubba, chime in to share their memories, too. Decorating and serving ideas will inspire you to use what you have to carry through a theme to make the most informal meal special. And Paula shares her most private thoughts in a special feature -- Paula's Pearls of Wisdom -- which you'll find with each menu.

Paula Deen Celebrates! is Paula at her very southern best. Join her in making and sharing her best dishes for the best times of your life.

Party Basics for New Nesters: More Than 100 Fresh Ideas for Holidays and Every Day

You did it! You got married and hosted what was probably the most significant party of your life. Now it's time to begin that very important first year as a married couple. Taking your first steps as newlyweds should be an extension of the wonderful events that just took place, paving the way for all of the celebrations to come in your new life together. And there isn't a better guide through this first year than Maria McBride, who knows from experience that spending quality time with family and friends is the healthiest way to embrace and celebrate a new partnership.

With McBride's signature dose of style and elegance, this book guides newlyweds through their new world of couples entertaining, offering ideas for every occasion, including romantic parties for two, weekend feasts, family celebrations, and holidays. Organized by event, each chapter is beautifully designed and filled with photographs that capture the stylish decor, table settings, and menu options that make these ideas extraordinary. From a New Year's Eve midnight buffet filled with crystal vases and caviar shooters, to a Cinco de Mayo celebration highlighted with candlelit trees and salsa-tinis, Party Basics for New Nesters provides newlyweds with plenty of avenues to celebrate and offer a toast to family, friends, and each other.

Baking Illustrated: A Best Recipe Classic (The Best Recipe Series)

The mysteries of cream of tartar revealed! How to make maximum use of blackening bananas! The hidden meaning of folding in dry ingredients until just blended! Perfect pie crusts for perfect fools! It's all here in Baking Illustrated, from banana bread to pecan bars, and everything imaginable in between--500-plus pages of densely packed, illustration rich, photo finished information all devoted to baking. Tools, techniques, ingredients, tips, and perfect, tested recipes.

There's cooking and there's baking, and the two should never be confused. Good cooks are ever commendable. Good bakers, on the other hand, have something about them bigger than skill or imagination, something that reaches back to the beginning of agriculture and the first inklings of civilization. Good bakers are their own mystic society. So hats off to Cook's Illustrated for throwing open the doors and sharing the mysteries with the rest of us. Baking Illustrated absolutely has it all. You'll find chapters devoted to "Quick Breads, Muffins, Biscuits, and Scones"; "Yeast Breads and Rolls"; "Pizza, Focaccia, and Flatbread"; "Pies and Tarts"; "Pastry"; "Crisps, Cobblers, and Other Fruit Desserts"; "Cakes"; and "Cookies, Brownies, and Bar Cookies". No mean undertaking, all that. Tools are tested and names are named. Techniques are stripped back then rebuilt. Cook's Illustrated carries all this off with a style and relish for inquiry and detail that sets a standard. Nothing is taken for granted because there's no fudge room with baking. It works or it doesn't. So trust is a big issue. And the end result of all the mighty labors of the Cook's Illustrated staff is text you can trust. This is a baking book that works.

And those blackening bananas? Simply keep adding them to a Ziplock bag you store in the freezer, then use them when you wish and as you like. --Schuyler Ingle

Packed with 350 recipes and 500 illustrations, Baking Illustrated brings you inside America's Test Kitchen, where the test cooks and editors have exhaustively examined every ingredient, technique, and piece of equipment that is critical to your baking success. Have you ever wondered how long you can keep that can of baking powder in your cabinet or what brand of chocolate will yield the best brownies or flourless chocolate cake? Or puzzled over the key to making pizza crust that is thin and crisp or cookies that bake evenly? The editors at Cook's Illustrated have pulled back the curtain on the seemingly complex world of baking to give you the answers to these and thousands of other questions.

Recipes range from quick breads and yeast breads to pizza, cookies, cakes, pastry, crisps, and cobblers to all manner of pies and tarts. And they feature American home classics (including Southern Cornbread, Pecan Sandies, and Sour Cream Coffee-cake) as well as more contemporary favorites (such as Rosemary Focaccia, Orange-Almond Biscotti, and Chocolate Truffle Tart) and European baked goods (such as Brioche, Black Forest Cake, and Tarte Tatin). Every recipe has been exhaustively researched and tested to bring you the "best" recipe (we'll let you be the judge), along with detailed and precise explanations from everything from why you should use unsalted butter to what is the best oven temperature and why it all matters. We've also tested every kind of baking equipment available, from mixers and food processors to the humblest spatulas and loaf pans, and the results of our experiments are described throughout so you can benefit from our trial and error.

And because we know that good baking depends on understanding basic techniques, Baking Illustrated features a 16-page, full-color insert that shows you how to avoid some of the most common pitfalls in baking, such as overmixed egg whites, cheesecakes that crack, and bread dough that has overproofed. (We know a lot about mistakes - we've made them all.) We don't want you to take the time to bake a layer cake from scratch only to settle for the "homemade" look. The visuals in this insert show you how to do it right. Color photographs demonstrate good results as well as bad, and hand-drawn step-by-step illustrations help you to perfect your technique for fail-safe baking.

Baking Illustrated also gives you the handy tutorials on baking basics, including how to stock your pantry and how to store and measure ingredients, cream butter and roll out pie dough. A master baking class between two covers, Baking Illustrated takes the guesswork out of baking and will expand your repertoire without ever losing sight of your ultimate goal: making family favorites that taste better than ever.

The Best Soups & Stews: A Best Recipe Classic (Best Recipe Series)

What's the secret to great chicken stock? Which cut of meat makes the best beef stew? What's the best way to thicken New England clam chowder? Do you really need to soak black beans before making soup?

In an exhaustive effort to answer these and many more questions, the test kitchen simmered more than 6,000 pots of soup and stew. The result is this definitive collection of more than 200 recipes covering just about every soup and stew imaginable. Choose from perennial favorites such as Manhattan clam chowder, cream of tomato soup, Cincinnati chili, and beef barley soup or international recipes such as hot-and-sour soup, borscht, and miso soup.

The Best Soups and Stews also contains 200 illustrations that show you how to cut up a chicken, defat stock, shape matzo balls, mince ginger, and much more. No-nonsense equipment ratings and taste tests of supermarket ingredients are also included. Find out which supermarket chicken broth received our highest rating, which blender turns out the smoothest pureed soups, and which pot is best for making stews. With this book at your side, we guarantee that you will never turn out a bland pot of soup or a greasy stew with tough stringy meat—in fact, cooking favorite and new recipes will be easy and foolproof.

What separates great corn chowder from the pack?

For deep corn flavor, grate ears of corn to create a thick pulp bursting with fresh corn flavor, then add whole kernels at the last minute. And for richness and smoky flavor, sauté salt pork and leave it in the chowder as it simmers.

What is the secret to rich-tasting beef stew?

First, use beef chuck and cut your own stew meat (for consistency of texture and flavor); then skip the flouring step—floured meat gives stew a weak, less beefy flavor. And for the perfect texture overall, cook the stew in the oven after browning the meat and add the vegetables in stages.

How do you make the ultimate French Onion soup?

The best French onion soup starts with caramelized red onions (they have the most intense sweetness and complexity of flavor) and two types of broth—chicken and beef broth. And for the perfect cheesy crust, use Asiago for flavor and Swiss for meltability.

How do you make great chicken cacciatore?

Start with skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs for the deepest flavor, then discard the skin after the initial sauté to prevent the stew from becoming greasy. Add portobellos for earthy flavor and build a robust sauce with red wine and a Parmesan rind.

Christmas with Paula Deen: Recipes and Stories from My Favorite Holiday

"I've gone through all my books and put together this collection of my most treasured recipes and memories for the holiday season to share with you...You'll find a few new dishes, a sprinkling of new holiday stories, and some family pictures you might not have seen before."

There's no holiday Paula Deen loves better than Christmas, when she opens her home to family and friends, and traditions old and new make the days merry and bright. Filled with Paula's trademark Southern charm and happy reminiscences of Yuletide seasons past, Christmas with Paula Deen is a collection of beloved holiday recipes and stories interspersed with cherished family photographs. Included are Paula's most requested homemade gifts of food; a collection of cookies sure to become your family's favorites; easy dishes for a Christmas breakfast or brunch that will let you enjoy the food and your guests; impressive fare for Christmas dinner and holiday entertaining and, of course, spectacular cakes, puddings, pies, and other sweet things.

"So Merry Christmas, y'all, and best dishes and best wishes from me and my family to yours."

Feast: Food to Celebrate Life

If you consider eating with friends and family a joyful, indulgent celebration chances are you love a good feast. And who better to carefully guide you through the daunting task of preparing that Feast than the domestic goddess herself Nigella Lawson. Written in the tradition of Nigella Bites and How to Eat, Feast is a cookbook for the sensualist that wants to eat very well, but also wants to spend time enjoying the company of their guests instead of struggling with the creation of the meal. What sets Lawson apart is not that she's a good cookbook writer, but a strong writer period. Similar to her other books, Nigella's Feast is presented as part personal memoir, part educational, and part recipe presentation. There is a nice blend of occasions including the obvious (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and Easter), a few culturally specific ones (Rosh Hashanah, Georgian Feast, and Venetian Feast), feasts for kids, for vegetarians, and an elegant cocktail party. Each chapter begins with an overview of that particular "Feast." Generally, there is a personal story and experience told, an overview of the cultural importance of the feast, and a description of foods that are associated with each occasion. Impressively, every recipe begins with a personal anecdote giving that impression Nigella didn't just throw it in the book, but is experienced with the recipe and has used it with success. Take her twist on the decadent Chocolate Guinness Cake for example: "I wanted to make a cream cheese frosting to echo the pale head that sits on top of a glass of stout. It's unconventional to add cream but it makes it frothier and lighter which I regard as aesthetically and gastronomically desirable." Who can argue? The cake is to die for. So next time you need to prepare a dinner party let the goddess be your guide, and remember: Keep the preparation simple, use easily available ingredients, and take time to enjoy your guests and your meal. Feast may not be the most advanced cookbook you will own, but if you want to create excellent food with relative ease in a short amount of time, you can not beat Nigella. --Rob Bracco

Nigella Lawson, Gourmet magazine's "It Girl," New York Times "Dining In" columnist, and bestselling cookbook author, is celebrating life -- and you're invited. Feast, Nigella's most festive book yet, offers savory, spicy, and delicious recipes for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah, Eid, New Year's, Passover, Easter gatherings, and any time you want to celebrate food and life. This book is filled with festive recipes, and in it, Nigella offers tips, tricks, and shortcuts that will ensure you dine with ease, style, and fun. Feast also includes some surprising gems, like Nigella's Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame, and her best cheeseburger. And like her other cookbooks, Feast is a cookbook that will be treasured all year long.

Gooseberry Patch Christmas, Book 10 (Gooseberry Patch)