Here’s to Your Health

The Healthy Cooking gift set features hundreds of foolproof, full-flavored, recipes that will make it easier for those you care about to make smart choices at the supermarket, in the kitchen, and at the table. We draw on 20 years of solid experience in our test kitchens pure and simple science, and innovative cooking techniques to coax the most flavor from great tasting, healthy ingredients.

THE GIFT SET INCLUDES:

Light & Healthy 2012

We went back into the test kitchen to see if we could keep the taste of our favorite recipes of the year, while losing a good amount of the fat and calories. We created a rich and creamy Chicken Pot Pie without loads of butter by toasting the flour a bit before whisking in milk and chicken broth. Slow-cooker recipes, a particular challenge given the traditional use of fatty cuts of beef and canned (high-sodium) ingredients, get a healthy makeover with dishes like Super Veggie Beef Stew and Pork Loin with Cranberries and Oranges. Our Greek Lasagna swaps out ground beef in favor of light and dark ground chicken and a just the right amount of cheese. Desserts, usually a weak spot in “diet” cookbooks, rely on just enough butter, cream cheese, cocoa—and in the case of our Light and Fluffy Chocolate Mousse, a fat-free meringue-style mixture—to provide sweet endings that only taste decadent.

∙ 189 recipes

∙ 312 pages, hardcover

∙ 56 pages of color photos

The Best Light Recipe

This is the book that sprang from the America’s Test Kitchen cheesecake incident. For years we resisted paying attention to fat and calories, assuming sensible eating could bring people closer to a healthier lifestyle than eating “lite” foods. But we weren’t immune to the growing number of requests from our readers to offer lower-fat alternatives to recipes they relied on to work - and taste great - every time. The test kitchen staff was convinced they could make a low-fat cheesecake with taste that rivaled a full-fat version, and 28 cheesecakes later, they succeeded. After that, the challenge to makeover our most popular recipes and create new favorites that are lower in fat and calories caught on. In addition to hundreds of low-fat recipes, The Best Light Recipe includes healthy cooking tips and techniques that will serve readers over a lifetime in the kitchen.

∙ 305 recipes

∙ 384 pages, hardcover

∙ 16 pages of color photos

∙ More than 100 illustrations

Perfect vegetables

Vegetables can be prepared quickly, but in many cases these fast recipes yield lackluster, predictable results. Many of us grew up with a limited array of vegetables at the dinner table, most if not all boiled slightly beyond the point of tasting like anything, let alone anything good. There’s a reason why we had to be told to eat our vegetables, yet not our roast beef or dessert. It was in the spirit of correcting this wrong that we created Perfect Vegetables. These are vegetable recipes so good that they'll give main dishes a run for their money, and chances are no one will have to be coaxed to eat them.

∙ 350 recipes

∙ 342 pages, hardcover

∙ 16 pages of color photos

∙ More than 200 illustrations