Vast and authoritative, with 38 chapters containing nearly 500 recipes and 300 illustrations, The Cook's Illustrated Complete Book of Poultry offers readers the very best methods for preparing chicken, turkey, duck, goose, quail, squab, and pheasant.
Nowhere can you find the volume of testing and research that you do in Cook's Illustrated. Forty turkeys roasted to find the best Thanksgiving bird. Duck prepared ten different ways to ensure the crispiest skin and moistest meat. Countless chickens basted and turned to determine that preheating the roasting pan is the secret to the tastiest one. No other cookbook has taken this approach to the subject, and no other book has broken such new ground in the kitchen.
Master recipes provide all the basics to prepare poultry in particular styles--from fried chicken to braised quail, sautéed turkey cutlets to roasted Cornish game hens.
The variations follow: an exhaustive listing that will yield fresh recipes for years to come. These include delights like Sautéed Chicken Cutlets with Marsala, Chicken and Herb Dumplings with Spring Vegetables, and Cincinnati-Style Turkey Chili. There are even recipes specially designed to make use of leftovers. For grill enthusiasts, sidebars cover such topics as finding the best charcoal and setting up the grill for indirect cooking. Recipes range from easy grilled chicken wings to a show-stopping grill-roasted whole turkey guaranteed to be the best you've ever tasted. Step-by-step illustrations guide the reader through every technique. Informative sidebars rate everything from roaster racks to canned chicken broth.
Enlightening, instructive, and invaluable, this is a book that any cook interested in poultry--and in learning the best way to prepare any bird--can't afford to be without.
The Cook's Illustrated Complete Book of Poultry is, bar none, the Great Mother Hen of all poultry cookbooks. If it is incomplete in any way, it is only that the editors have not included poultry recipes from absolutely every culture in the world familiar with the birds. But with this book tucked under your wing, you can check out poultry recipes in cookbooks from all corners of the globe and know exactly how to get the results you want. Thanks to the
Cook's Illustrated magazine test kitchen, all possible contingencies have been exhaustively covered.
There are 38 chapters in this book, starting with a guide to buying poultry (the more expensive birds are better than their commercial sisters) and ending with a note on smoking. You won't even get to Chicken Salad until chapter 23. You will find nearly 500 recipes, the perfect roast turkey among them. There are 300 pen-and-ink illustrations demonstrating everything from carving a bird to getting the pit out of a mango. Want to know which is the best canned chicken stock? The best countertop deep fryer? The best roasting rack? The best way to sauté chicken cutlets? It's all in here, in meticulous detail. That stir-fry that has always given you trouble? It's a thing of the past. Always felt intimidated by duck? Forget about it.
Plan on getting lost in The Cook's Illustrated Complete Book of Poultry once you open the cover. You will surface only long enough to go to the grocery store. Your life will never be the same. It's that kind of book. --Schuyler Ingle
