Cook’s Illustrated: worth it?

[JeffJ]

I'm an active subscriber and have been for at least a decade. They do some things that are pretty cool. They will describe a somewhat exotic dish that requires ingredients not readily available and will attempt to duplicate the dish with ingredients that are readily available. They experiment. A lot. And reading the process they go through to develop a recipe is interesting but it's also thought-provoking. Oftentimes they take an outside the box approach and when you read their methodologies it sometimes translates to you being more innovative in your kitchen and on your patio. They explain the science of certain things. Oftentimes they will take a dish that normally takes a lot of prep and time and will figure out ways of making the process more efficient without sacrificing quality. Every issue has a page of innovative ideas their readers send in for storing food, prep work, etc. It's some pretty clever stuff. They also perform equipment reviews and comparisons as well as comparing various brands of staples, like canned tomatoes, etc. Their recipes are detailed and specific and illustrations are provided as needed. They will revisit basics and see if they can improve a process. For instance, in the most recent edition they revisited sauteing mushrooms and developed a process where very little oil is required to produce the result we all seek when going through this process.

All in all, I definitely recommend CI.

PS - I learned about dry-brining and reverse sear from CI years before discovering AR.