read this review and others at http://readingforsanity.blogspot.com/...

Gary and I have had a lot of fun baking/cooking from this book lately! A lot of great tips on everything...including the best ways to cook an egg, potato etc. Very yummy and informative!

Throw that Betty Crocker/Better Homes and Gardens Family Cookbook out the window! Burn it! Do whatever it takes to get rid of it and replace it with this one. You will not regret it! EVER.

If I were to own just one cookbook, it would be this one. It contains a staggering number of recipes, like any good cookbook should, but the best part is the multitude of helpful culinary hints. How should I store lettuce? What is an acceptable substitute for buttermilk? How can I tell if my bread dough is adequately proofed? What the hell does it mean to proof bread dough, anyway? At 700+ pages it commands a sizable portion of the shelf, but the ring binding is perfect for laying open on the bar without risk of flopping shut halfway through cooking. I would have to say its only major flaw is its scope. There's no way one book can be the end-all, be-all of food preparation. But this one comes quite close.

I'm using this religiously. The directions are clear and there are some recipes that have become staples at our house. My only complaint is that some of the recipes are all-day projects. For a family cookbook I think there should be more time-saving tricks. (The recipe for pizza is amazing, but the dough was like my life's work. I wanted to make it ahead of time and refrigerate it, but the recipe informed me that it would keep in the fridge for up to "12 hours." What? So I make it the night before and then I have to bake a pizza first thing in the morning? Not cool.)

Gave this one to my wife several years back...still benefiting from it immensely...still growing from it (literally).

All of the recipes we have tried have worked out so far. We love the show and so when we are trying to get a tried and true recipe this is where we start.

This is my all-time favorite cook book! Every time we make anything, we open this book first. It's replaced Betty Crocker and Better Homes and Gardens for us, and now for my parents and in-laws too. The pages of our copy are stained and dog-eared for loving over-use, and we've only had it 2 years! I recommend this to anyone who wants to cook anything, from a basic hamburger to fancy chocolate suffle, the best it can be.

*drool*

If you have never gotten an issue of Cooks Illustrated or watched Test Kitchen, you will love this cookbook. If you have done those things mentioned above, you will find this a little boring b/c it covers some of the same stuff. Good recipes, mostly doable and not too fancy. Just TOO much info in one book.

I bought this (pricey) cookbook after watching the show and being given old issues of "Cooks Illustrated". I have since made 5 or 6 recipes and I have to say that each and every one has turned out flawless. The directions are clear, lots of pictures and product testing.

This is a good, basic cookbook. Almost every recipe has variations, making the chapters more consise than other cookbooks.

I will be gifting this to all my friends who have to cook.

I won't put many cook books on this list, but this one deserves to be there! Hard to go wrong with any of these recipes!