With a good recipe guiding the way, homemade is always better. So why should today’s home cooks stop at dinner? In this groundbreaking new cookbook from America’s Test Kitchen, our editors and test cooks walk home cooks step-by- step through more than 100 of their favorite D.I.Y. kitchen projects, showing why everything from ketchup and corn chips to goat cheese and prosciutto turn
out better when you do it yourself. Another bonus: When you’re in control, you can customize your D.I.Y. project
Same format and in-depth descriptions that you have come to expect from ATK,
First, a word of warning – most of these recipes you can get free online at America’s Test Kitchen The Feed (AmericasTestKitchenFeed [dot] com). I was unaware of that when I ordered the book, so I just paid for a book of recipes that I already had for free and was very disappointed. THIS WAS MY MISTAKE AND WILL NOT AFFECT MY RATING.
With that said, it’s a good book. If you are the type of person that prefers to have all of your recipes in a book instead of a digital copy, I recommend getting it. If you’re a kitchen geek like I am and would love to learn how to make your own root beer and cured meats, the America’s Test Kitchen DIY Cookbook provides a nice foundation. It is very basic and touches on a few different topics like pickled vegetables, jams and jellies, homemade nutella, and charcuterie. It had only a handful of recipes for each topic and doesn’t go into any great depth about each item.
I think that it might be a good book to give you an idea what each preparation is like and help you decide if you would like to learn more about each topic.
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I always wanted to know,
Did you ever want to know what “bitters” contain? Now I know and if I want to buy the ingredients I can make my own. And American cheese with no funky additives. Imagine the goodness of that grilled cheese sandwich. I discovered duck bacon in the market a few weeks ago and was delighted to find a recipe for duck prosciutto in the book. Even if I never try making it I have an idea now of how it is made. Have you ever had maple cream on your waffles? Now you don’t have to search it out–just get some grade A maple syrup and make it. Believe me it’s worth it!
My one-line tag for the book is, “So that’s how they make it.” This is a terrific reference book for me and I hope there’s a sequel with even more D.I.Y. revelations.
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Very nicely done,
I guess if I have one compliant it is it should be thicker and cover more recipes. Pickled daikon and sag panneer (sp) didn’t make the cut. However, it’s a great book for learning all those odd skills that used to be part of cooking. I’ve been making bacon, pickling, playing at cheese making and brewing for a bit and this book would have been a great help when we started. For one, it has color pictures of steps for each project and very detailed instructions. It’s not as good as having Dad or Grandma teach you to do it, but they are better than anything else I’ve seen and it covers a lot of ground. The book touches on fermentation, pickling, cheese-making, etc so you get an idea of the range of things to do as well as how complicated they are. It’s definitely a keeper.
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