Table Of ContentCopyright © 2012 by The Editors at America’s Test Kitchen All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced or transmitted in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher,
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
AMERICA’S TEST KITCHEN
17 Station Street
Brookline, MA 02445
Library Of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The America’s Test Kitchen quick family cookbook : a faster, smarter way to cook everything from
America’s most trusted test kitchen / the editors at America’s Test Kitchen ; photography, Daniel J. van
Ackere, Carl Tremblay.
p. cm.
Includes index.
EPub ISBN 978-1-936493-37-1
1. Cooking, American. I. America’s Test Kitchen (Firm) II. Title: Quick family cookbook.
TX715.A5495 2012
641.5973--dc23
2012010045
Ringbound: $34.95 US
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Distributed by America’s Test Kitchen
17 Station Street, Brookline, MA 02445
Editorial Director: Jack Bishop
Editorial Director, Books: Elizabeth Carduff Executive Food Editor: Julia Collin Davison Executive
Editor: Lori Galvin
Senior Editor: Louise Emerick
Associate Editors: Chris O’Connor, Kate Hartke, Christy Morrison, and Dan Zuccarello Assistant
Editor: Alyssa King
Test Cook: Ashley Moore
Assistant Test Cook: Danielle DeSiato-Hallman Staff Photographer: Daniel J. van Ackere Additional
Photography: Keller + Keller and Carl Tremblay Photo Editor: Steve Klise
Food Styling: Catrine Kelty, Marie Piraino, Mary Jane Sawyer, and Kelly Upson Photoshoot Kitchen
Team:
Associate Editor: Chris O’Connor Assistant Test Cooks: Daniel Cellucci and Sara Mayer Design
Director: Amy Klee
Art Director: Greg Galvan
Associate Art Director: Matthew Warnick Designer: Beverly Hsu
Production Director: Guy Rochford
Senior Production Manager: Jessica Lindheimer Quirk Senior Project Manager: Alice Carpenter
Production and Traffic Manager: Kate Hux Workflow and Digital Asset Manager: Andrew Mannone
Production and Imaging Specialists: Judy Blomquist, Heather Dube, and Lauren Pettapiece Copyeditor:
Jeffrey Shier
Proofreader: Debra Hudak
Indexer: Elizabeth Parson
Original Series Design: BTDNYC
Contents
Preface
Welcome to America’s Test Kitchen
Navigating this E-Book
Master Recipe Listing
Getting Started
Appetizers and Snacks
Soups and Stews
Salad for Supper
Sandwiches, Pizzas, and Calzones
Casserole Favorites
Pasta
Poultry
Meat
Seafood
Vegetarian Mains
Dinner Off the Grill
Eggs for Dinner
Pressure Cooker
Kid Friendly
Simple Sides
Quick Baked Goods
Cookies and Bars
Shortcut Desserts
The Quick Pantry
Equivalents and Conversions
The America’s Test Kitchen Shopping Guide
Putting Ingredients to Work
Index
Preface
All of us cooks take promises of quick recipes with a grain of salt. They are
often more marketing hype then accurate description, and that, of course,
reminds me of a story. A young man came up to an old horse trader and asked,
“How much do you want for that gelding?” The reply was direct. “I’ll take a
hundred and a half for her,” and then the old-timer added, “but she don’t look so
good.” They finally reached an agreement, and the new owner paid and went off
with his purchase. The next day, the young man returned and was pretty mad.
“What’s the matter with that horse I just bought?” he demanded. “He ran me
right off the road.” The trader looked up and said calmly, “Been blind for a year .
. . told you she didn’t look so good!”
Well, that’s how I often feel about quick recipes—it’s all in the fine print.
Either they are just counting cooking time, not preparation, or they assume that
you graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and have 10 years of
experience as a line cook.
Finally, America’s Test Kitchen has narrowed the gulf between the promise of
fast home-cooked food and the reality. In The America’s Test Kitchen Quick
Family Cookbook we offer over 750 recipes that can be made in 45 minutes or
less, including preparation time, and you don’t have to be a whiz in the kitchen.
In addition, we have included 175 recipes that can be made in 25 minutes or less
—that’s real cooking and preparation time.
And our bag of tricks goes way beyond kitchen-tested quick recipes. My
favorite feature is “Putting Ingredients to Work,” in which we take a simple item,
cream cheese for example, and then provide five quick and easy recipes—and
plenty of them with a hefty portion of creative spark—that hardly need
instruction, whether it is a quick approach to Crispy Mexican Bites, Cream
Cheese with Red Pepper Jelly, Jalapeño Poppers, Artichoke Dip, or Crab
Rangoon. Or, using store-bought cookie dough, we made a great selection of
easy-to-make treats including Chocolate Hazelnut Swirls, Chocolate-Cherry
Almond Bars, and Dulce de Leche Sandwich Cookies.
Of course, quick cookbooks always turn to convenience supermarket
products, and this is often a good idea. Among our favorites are Boursin (it
makes a great base for a sauce in chicken pot pie or scalloped potatoes), pesto
(just stir it into soup before serving for a fresh hit of flavor, or use it in
meatballs), and precooked polenta (grill it or use it as a casserole topping).
Equally important were the store-bought ingredients that we tested and did not
like, including creamy canned soups, boxed mashed potatoes, jarred teriyaki
sauce, and supermarket salad dressings. Do yourself a favor and leave those
items off of your quick-cook shopping list!
It is always helpful to improve your basic cooking skills, and so we have
included a heavily illustrated section on knife and preparation tips with practical
tricks and techniques to help you become a faster, better prep cook. And we
found that some appliances, such as the pressure cooker, really did deliver great
food fast including beef stew, homemade chicken soup, and baby back ribs—all
in under 45 minutes.
We also highlighted many of our core time-saving quick recipes—Everyday
Cinnamon Buns, Skillet Chicken and Rice, Paella, and Strata, to name a few—
with step-by-step photos since many of these recipes will become part of your
regular culinary repertoire.
Best of all, these are not the usual retreads, recipes that you have seen over
and over again in other places—this is all-new work. Use a microwave to create
an almost-instant appetizer of Easy Melted Brie with Honey and Herbs. Instead
of the usual poaching and chilling, make an all-new quick recipe called Broiled
Shrimp Cocktail with Creamy Tarragon Sauce. Take lasagna, a serious time-
consumer, and make it in less than 45 minutes using no-boil noodles and a
spruced-up sauce that begins with jarred Alfredo sauce from the supermarket.
Turn to the pressure cooker and make a perfectly cooked, moist turkey breast
with homemade gravy in well under an hour. For dessert, we found a way to
make Individual Chocolate Fudge Cakes by using ramekins, and then, to create a
fudgy center, we simply pressed a square of chocolate into each cake before
baking. For a really quick but impressive dessert, you can make an Apple
Strudel Bake by throwing apples in a baking dish, microwaving them to soften,
and then sprinkling with torn pieces of phyllo before baking. That’s strudel in
seconds (well, in a fraction of the time)!
Of course, sales pitches like mine often lose something in translation. A
salesman for government bonds during WWII came across an older farmer who
was, unbeknownst to him, a bit deaf. He gave his pitch about Roosevelt and
Churchill, about Pearl Harbor, and about the need to support the war effort.
Finally, after he had left, the farmer’s wife asked, “Who was that and what did
he want?” The mostly deaf farmer replied, “Don’t know exactly but it seems that
some feller by the name of Rosyfelt got Pearl Harper in trouble over on Church
Hill and wanted me to go his bond.”
So maybe I’ve made my case and maybe I haven’t, but, simply put, these
recipes are fast and they work. Some days I like to cook all day for company,
but, especially during the week, everyone needs fast, reliable recipes to get
dinner on the table. This book will be an important addition to my household; I
hope that it also becomes part of yours.
CHRISTOPHER KIMBALL
Founder and Editor,
Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country
Host, America’s Test Kitchen and
Cook’s Country from America’s Test Kitchen
Welcome to America’s Test Kitchen
This book has been tested, written, and edited by the folks at America’s Test
Kitchen, a very real 2,500-square-foot kitchen located just outside of Boston. It
is the home of Cook’s Illustrated magazine and Cook’s Country magazine and is
the Monday-through-Friday destination for more than three dozen test cooks,
editors, food scientists, tasters, and cookware specialists. Our mission is to test
recipes over and over again until we understand how and why they work and
until we arrive at the “best” version.
We start the process of testing a recipe with a complete lack of conviction,
which means that we accept no claim, no theory, no technique, and no recipe at
face value. We simply assemble as many variations as possible, test a half-dozen
of the most promising, and taste the results blind. We then construct our own
hybrid recipe and continue to test it, varying ingredients, techniques, and
cooking times until we reach a consensus. The result, we hope, is the best
version of a particular recipe, but we realize that only you can be the final judge
of our success (or failure). As we like to say in the test kitchen, “We make the
mistakes, so you don’t have to.”
All of this would not be possible without a belief that good cooking, much
like good music, is indeed based on a foundation of objective technique. Some
people like spicy foods and others don’t, but there is a right way to sauté, there is
a best way to cook a pot roast, and there are measurable scientific principles
involved in producing perfectly beaten, stable egg whites. This is our ultimate
goal: to investigate the fundamental principles of cooking so that you become a
better cook. It is as simple as that.
You can watch us work (in our actual test kitchen) by tuning in to America’s
Test Kitchen (www.americastestkitchentv.com) or Cook’s Country from
America’s Test Kitchen (www.cookscountrytv.com) on public television, or by
subscribing to Cook’s Illustrated magazine (www.cooksillustrated.com) or
Cook’s Country magazine (www.cookscountry.com). We welcome you into our
kitchen, where you can stand by our side as we test our way to the “best” recipes
in America.
