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Mastering Turkey Gravy
Here's how to take the guesswork (and the lumps) out of America's favorite pan sauce--and produce perfect gravy every time.
Reading a Recipe: A Practical Culinary Lexicon
The first step to a successful completion of a recipe is understanding what it is telling you to do.
Eggs 101
How to buy, store, and prepare eggs.
Pan Sauces 101
Just seared some steaks or cutlets? Don't wash that skillet! Here's how to use it to make a rich, savory pan sauce.
Herbs: Fresh versus Dried
Fresh herbs are widely available, but the question remains, can dried herbs do the job of fresh?
Baking Basics
A little know-how goes a long way toward avoiding common baking mistakes.
Cookware Cleaning 101
No one likes to wash pots and pans. Here's how to handle tough jobs efficiently and quickly
Better and Quicker Homemade Stock
We devised a formula for great homemade stock that won't take an entire day to make.
Mastering the Art of Saute
From proper pans and equipment to perfect technique, we take the guesswork out of this often confusing cooking method.
Grilling 101
A little know-how and some practice are all that's required to meet the challenge of grilling.
Guide to Buying and Preparing Chicken
Whole birds taste better than packaged parts and cost less, so it makes sense to cut up chicken at home. Here's all you need to know to master this basic skill and to buy a good chicken.
Product Rating Chart
Shop for all our top rated items with this handy chart.
Crudites Done Right
How to prepare vegetables that taste as good as they look.
Recipe Rescue
Trouble shooting when a recipe takes a turn for the worse.
The Essential Kitchen: 25 Kitchen Tools No Cook Should Be Without
From the editors of Cook's Illustrated, The Essential Kitchen: 25 Kitchen Tools No Cook Should Be Without provides recommendations on the best cookware, tools, and gadgets for your kitchen.
Getting to Know Your Freezer
Is your freezer an overstocked warehouse for aging mystery meat? Learn to get more out of your icebox.
The Microwave Chronicles
Can a microwave oven actually cook food or is it just an expensive tool for reheating coffee? Well, some of each.
Gone Fishin'
Armed with a little knowledge, you can pick out the right catch of the day with ease.
An Illustrated Guide to Beef Roasts
Supermarkets carry many kinds of roasts, often with confusing labels. Here’s how to know what you are buying, and how best to cook it.
How to Substitute Ingredients
Everybody does it (even though they shouldn't). Here are some tips for doing it well.
Artichokes Made Easy
How to choose, clean, and cook this hard-to-handle spring vegetable.
Trimming and Tying Meat and Poultry
A few simple butcher's tricks will make your meats and poultry look and taste their very best.
Leafy Salads 101
Constructing the perfect salad is tricker than it seems. From battered greens to acidic vinaigrettes, simple salads can suffer from a variety of ills. Here's how to produce good salads every time.
A Guide to Essential Cookware
To outfit your kitchen without breaking the bank, invest in cookware that is durable and versatile. Here's our master list of what to buy and why.
Getting to Know Your Refrigerator
Proper storage techniques are the key to longer lasting fruits, meats, and vegetables.
Uncommon Uses for Common Kitchen Tools
Learn some new ways to use six ordinary kitchen tools.
Great Grilled Vegetables
Here's how to cut, season, and grill vegetables without precooking.
Sharpening Knives by Hand
Sharp knives are essential to smooth and precise chopping, slicing, and carving. With two simple tools -- and a little elbow grease -- you can keep your knives in professional trim at home.
Measuring 101: Techniques and Shortcuts
Accurate measuring is the first step to successful cooking. We define the basics, show you some shortcuts, and explain why careful measuring is so important.
The Basics of Brining
How salt, sugar, and water can improve texture and flavor in lean meats, poultry, and seafood.
How to Use Your Kitchen Thermometer
To take much of the guesswork out of cooking, use your instant-read thermometer often -- and use it right!
Cake Frosting 101
Tired of complicated cake decorating instructions that ignore the basics? Here is what you need to know to trim, frost, and decorate a cake without a pastry bag.
Tender Steaks
There are a lot of steaks to choose from, which can make things very confusing. Here's exactly what you get for your money when you buy each particular steak.
Harvesting, Using, and Storing Fresh Herbs
Many gardeners raise herbs but don't know how to pick, use, and store them properly to maximize their fresh scent and flavor. Here are 20 tips that show you how.
Garlic Tips and Techniques
With just a few garlic techniques under your belt, you can master this sometimes frustrating culinary staple.
Pie Dough 101
One of the hardest kitchen tasks for most home cooks is making and rolling out pie dough. Here are some surprising tips on making easy-to-roll-out dough and fitting it to a pie plate.
Kitchen Efficiency
While every cook's methods are as individual as his or her kitchen, the following tips on kitchen efficiency, which were compiled from interviews with professionally trained chefs, cookbook authors, and avid home cooks, can be adopted by anyone in a home kitchen.
Chef's Dicing Tips & Techniques
Vegetables grow in anything but perfect cube shapes. This presents some definite challenges when you need to cut a vegetable into uniform dice for purposes of even cooking and/or aesthetic appeal.
How to Freeze Summer Fruits
We froze six kinds of popular summer fruits, using up to seven different methods, then thawed them six months later to find out what worked best.
Tomato Basics
Many dishes are much better made with peeled and seeded tomatoes. These step-by-step instructions show you the easiest way to accomplish both tasks, as well as how to dice tomatoes both roughly and precisely.
Avoid Mixing Mix-ups
The majority of baking recipes are written with an underlying assumption that the reader is well-versed in basic mixing techniques. But most of us learned cooking informally, which often means that we learned some things wrong or picked up bad habits along the way.
Turkey Roasting Basics
Below you'll find step-by-step instructions for roasting a turkey.
How to Tie Meat
Tying makes a piece of meat easier to handle, helps to hold in juices, and lends to better presentation.
How to Cook and Serve Salmon
By following these step-by-step instructions, you will easily be able to prepare and cook your salmon.
Shaping Store Bought Puff Pastry
Located in the frozen foods section of most supermarkets, puff pastry works well in a pinch for making shells for sweet and savory fillings.
Boning and Butterflying a Leg of Lamb
The easiest way to get a boned and butterflied leg of lamb is to have your butcher do it for you. But if you don’t have a cooperative butcher or you would prefer to do it yourself, it is easily done by following these illustrated steps.
Shaping Yeasted Coffee Cakes
By following the step-by-step directions below, you will be able to make three of our favorite shapes -- the Horseshoe, the Twisted Coil, and the Lattice Top.
Citrus Secrets
The tang of citrus is wonderful, but these fruits can sometimes be difficult to deal with. Follow the steps below for zesting, juicing, and creating easy-to-use wedges, pith-free sections, serving bowls, and candied zest.
Grilling Fuel, Tools, and Rules
Whether you're grilling chicken breasts, salmon, or using your covered grill to approximate Southern barbecue, these recommendations for the best fuels and the right tools, along with some tips for making the process work more smoothly, should come in handy.
How to Use Chinese Cleavers
A Chinese cleaver can seem like a frighteningly large and treacherous knife. But with practice and proper technique, you'll find it as safe as and even more versatile than a chef's knife.
Constructing and Decorating a Gingerbread Alpine Cottage
A template for our gingerbread alpine cottage.
Basic Knife Techniques
Gripping, Guiding, Cutting, Chopping
Simple Chocolate Decorations
Chocolate decorations give cakes and other desserts an especially professional and attractive appearance.
Quick and Easy Antipasti
Italian antipasti consists of a group of small dishes set out before the meal -- or, as the name implies, before the pasta course.
Useful Kitchen Gadgets
Each one of these unusual tools makes it easier and quicker to perform the task for which it is designed.
Easy Decorative Pie Edgings
By following any of these illustrations, you can make your pies more visually appealing.
Freestyle Cookie Decorating
You don't need a rolling pin, cookie cutters, or specialty decorations to make attractive and interesting-looking cookies for the holidays. We came up with these shapes using gadgets that we found in our kitchen.
How to Clean Whole Fish
There are times when you may want to "butcher" a fish yourself.
Simple Cake Decorating
Here are some simple techniques that you can do quickly and easily with a pastry bag and a little know-how.
Decorative Melon Carving
Carved melons can serve as easy-to-make, decorative, edible centerpieces.
Brioche Desserts
Brioche Plum Tart, Ring, Loaf, Raspberry Shortcake
Preparing Tropical Fruit
Although many tropical fruits are available year-round in the U.S. supermarkets, the widest selection is available during midwinter. By following the steps below, you can easily prepare these exotic fruits for eating or cooking.
Making Puff Pastries
Straws, Palmiers, Tartlets, Smoke Salmon and Chive Mille Feuille, Bistro Apple Tart
Cleaning Shrimp, Squid, and Soft-Shell Crab
How to clean whole squid, peel and devein shrimp, and clean soft-shell crabs.
How to Cut Vegetables
How to chiffonade, julienne, slice, and dice vegetables.
Shaping and Filling Asian Dumplings
Shao Mai, Wonton, Pyramids, Potstickers, Mandu, Pel'meni
How to Carve Turkey and Goose
Carving a turkey is a simple skill, not an art.
Shaping Filled Pastas
Ravioli, Tortellini, Tortelli
Shaping Individual Dinner Rolls
Eyeglasses, Small Braid, Single Knot, Butterfly, Stick or Twist, Double Knot, Crescent, and Paraker House
How To Prepare Lobster
Everything you need to know to select, prepare and eat lobster.
Lobster Techniques
Because lobsters are often special occasion food, most of us don't work with them enough to get comfortable handling them. The result is that for many people, preparing a lobster can be overwhelming and eating it can be intimidating. The following step-by-step illustrations are meant to put the cook and diner at ease.
Parchment Paper: Kitchen Workhorse
We use parchment paper every day in the test kitchen, not only for baking but for many other tasks. Here's how to take parchment paper beyond the cookie sheet.
Chefs' Vegetable Preparation Tips
When it comes to vegetables, there are some that can seem just too cumbersome, messy, or prone to pitfalls to prepare often. Even with the more straightforward vegetables it's common to wonder when carving with a knife: Is there an easier way?
High Altitude Baking
Suggestions for adapting baking recipes for high altitude -- from Baking Illustrated
Three Fruit Tart Designs
Suggested designs for our Fresh Fruit Tart Recipe.
Shopping for Supermarket Cheeses
When we taste cheese in the test kitchen, it’s usually to determine how it will behave in a particular recipe. Flavor certainly matters, but we are just as concerned with properties such as creaminess, melting ability, and stability at high temperatures. What’s the best cheese for the best recipe? Some of our findings may surprise you.
Pie-Pastry Troubleshooting Guide
There are three key steps for pie dough: cutting the fat into the flour, adding the liquid, and rolling out the dough.
Chocolate 101
From shopping to chopping, our no-nonsense guide puts an end to chocolate confusion.
Steaming Times for Fish Fillets and Steaks
A handy timing guide for steaming fish.
How to Cook Rice and Grains
Start by ignoring the directions on the box. Then consult our guide to match the right grain with the right cooking method.
Granitas Made Easy
How To Roast a Cheap Cut of Beef
Choosing the proper cut and oven temperature are just as important as the final internal temperature of the roast.
Quick Pickle Recipes
A Master Guide to Pickling a Variety of Vegetables
A Guide to Recommended Bakeware
Price doesn't always equal performance. The design details that prevent stuck muffins and burnt cookies may be the
ones you least expected.
Common Equivalencies
Equivalencies for common recipe ingredients
Guide to Marinating for Flavor
This chart provides a general guide to amounts of marinade and marination time when using low-acid marinades, designed to provide flavor rather than to tenderize.
Essential Guide to Cooking Pasta
Cooking pasta seems simple--just boil water and wait--but cooking perfect pasta takes some finesse. Here's how we do it.
Preparing Fruit for Cobblers
This makes enough fruit for one 8-inch square or one 9-inch round pan, topped with either pastry or shortcake.
Illustrated Guide to Kitchen Knives
Do you really need $400 worth of forged German steel? Here's our guide to choosing (and using) the essential knives--and which ones don't make the cut.
Knowing When Food is Done
Few kitchen mishaps are more frustrating than improper cooking. Here's how to cook food right every time.
Spices 101
Throwing away that antique jar of ground pepper is only the first step. Here's our guide to getting the most flavor from your spice rack.
Potato Primer
Think all potatoes are the same? Think again. Here are the basic information and cooking techniques you need to know for perfect mashed, roasted, boiled, and baked potatoes every time.
Bread Baking Demystified
Bread baking is shrouded in mystery and plagued by misinformation and myths. After years of kitchen testing, we're ready to set the record straight.
A Guide to Buying Fresh Pork
Here's everything you need to know about cooking today's lean pork, including identifying the best cuts and choosing the proper cooking method.
The Best Kitchen Tools
Countless gadgets promise convenience but deliver disappointment and lost drawer space. Here are 18 tools that really work.
How to Freeze Summer Produce
We froze freshly picked summer fruits and vegetables last summer, then thawed them in the middle of winter to find out which methods of freezing work best.
The Best Way to Cook Vegetables
Vegetable side dishes often don't get much attention and taste rather dull. How do you build flavor with a minimum of work?
Stocking a Baking Pantry
Here's what you need to have within reach.
Mastering the Art of Stew
A little know-how goes a long way toward avoiding common mistakes when making stews. Here's how to get it right every time.
Roasting Meat 101
A properly cooked roast is simple and satisfying. It is also a rarity. Here's how to make a great roast every time.
Fish 101
When it comes to fish, the goal is straightforward: Buy good quality, keep things simple, and don't overcook.
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