Comfort Food Makeovers Author: Editors at America's Test Kitchen | Language: English | ISBN:
193649342X | Format: EPUB
Comfort Food Makeovers Description
- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: Cook's Illustrated (March 1, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 193649342X
- ISBN-13: 978-1936493425
- Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
I always look forward to cookbooks from America's Test Kitchen. Their exhaustive approach to recipe-building, tinkering each aspect one at a time, ensures that the end product is spot-on. Although I love many of their past cookbooks, it's no secret that some of their best comfort food recipes are laden with fat, calories, and sodium. This cookbook starts over from scratch to build healthier, cleaner versions of classic comfort foods.
The book begins with an introduction that includes tips to cut fat and calories from food, important staple ingredients for a healthier diet, and necessary kitchen tools or equipment. In traditional America's Test Kitchen style, each recipe contains an introductory paragraph or two that details the recipe-building process. These can be great ways to gain insight into the methods used to cut calories and fat from classic dishes, and many of the techniques can be employed to tweak your own favorite dishes. The rest of the book is laid out in the following sections:
Appetizers and Snacks
Salads, Sandwiches, and Pizza
The Soup Bowl
Classic Casseroles
Baked Not Fried
A Chicken in Every Pot
Favorites from Land and Sea
Pasta Night
On the Side
Breakfast and Brunch
Chocolate Desserts
Cookies and Bars
More Sweet Treats
I have tried several of these recipes thus far (Roasted Artichoke Dip, Creamy Tomato Soup, and Spaghetti Carbonara). Each of them has been delicious -- well-balanced flavors that don't taste like a bland "health food" version of the original. I also appreciate that the folks at ATK don't shy away from using stereotypical "unhealthy foods" (bacon, butter, etc.); they just cut back wherever possible and make substitutions when necessary.
I have a lot of cookbooks - you could almost say I am addicted to them, though I prefer the term "collector" ;) Anyway, very few of them are for the healthier side of life, simply because I have a husband who believes he is allergic to the word "healthy". We've been married for 14 years, and it's taken this long for him to accept that low-fat won't kill him, and that it isn't necessary to eat meat every. single. night. So I was really looking forward to trying this cookbook, figuring what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him - and then I could have the pleasure of "I told you so".
This book did not disappoint. Before I get into the recipes I tried, let me give you an overview of the book itself. The chapters are broken down into these categories:
Appetizers and Snacks
Salads, Sandwiches, and Pizza
The Soup Bowl
Classic Casseroles
Baked Not Fried
A Chicken in Every Pot
Favorites from Land and Sea
Pasta Night
On the Side
Breakfast and Brunch
Chocolate Desserts
Cookies and Bars
More Sweet Treats
Nutritional Information
Conversions and Equivalencies
There are between 8 and 18 recipes in each category. There are some meatless ones, but not a large amount so if that is what you're looking for, you're better off looking elsewhere or being comfortable converting.
As my personal policy, any time I review a cookbook, I have to make at least 3 different recipes within the cookbook and I have to follow the recipe to the letter. Hard to review something when I've changed it. Anyway...being as there are so many different sections, I also decided that each recipe I tested needed to come from a different section within the book, in order to get as wide a range as possible.
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