As if I need more reasons to cook, I bought an online membership to Cooks Country. I figured since I got loads of mileage out of their main site—Cooks Illustrated—that I’d try this one website out too since I lovey love love their TV show. Here are some of the amazing yummies I’ve made in the last few weeks.
Chicken Noodle Casserole. The whole fam damily loved this dinner. No cream of chicken soup here! I did use milk instead of half-and-half to make the cream sauce and think I will always make that healthy substitution as it was fabulous with less fat. (Gotta fit in my swimsuit for Hawaii.)
Blueberry Pie—with frozen berries! Adding a grated apple adds plenty of pectin to thicken the filling otherwise I’m sure the frozen berries would’ve made a watery mess. This is by far the best recipe ever, but then again, I love fruit pie. Love. I try to only bake desserts on the weekends (see above swimsuit comment) but it’s so hard with recipe like these!
For the crust I used their regular pie crust recipe for a double-crust pie, not their vodka version. I am fresh out of Vodka, or any booze since I don’t drink. But I really would like to try it since they swear it proves to be the most tender and flaky crust. My crust is rustic and ugly on the edges, but tasty folks.
Others tried but no pictures, sorry, click on the link for the picture though.
Make-Ahead Lemon Cake Mix: Same texture as a box mix but with that delicious, fresh homemade taste.
Fresh Pea Soup: Delish and healthy and 20 minutes. Mmmm
Arrabbiatta Pasta sauce: My favorite (and healthy!) Italian sauce for pasta—peppery and fresh tasting, and from canned tomatoes!
Lemon Buttermilk Sheet Cake: Good grief, super fast, super easy with a simple glaze instead of frosting. Everyone loved it.
It kinda bugs me that America’s Test Kitchen has three different membership sites for all their recipes—Cooks Illustrated, Cooks Country, and America’s Test Kitchen, but that annoyance dissipates whenever I try one of their recipes. (I still wish they had a 3-for-1 deal on all their sites.) But their recipes have changed the way I cook these last 10 years—every recipe is a winner. I’d never try a free recipe from the web (insert Pinterest) before first doing a search to see if ATK has formulated their own version.
P.S. Forgive me for not giving out these recipes—it’s just too much work to imbed PDF documents for all these recipes. Especially when they are easily found at the links I’ve given. Yes, you gotta buy a membership or try a free trial. But I’ve decided you get what you pay for. You can disagree with me but I’m a happy customer.
1 comment:
How great a review Cynthia! I love the sites and had a membership for over 2 years to both ATK and Cooks Country but now boycott it because I think they should be upfront and let you know you are only getting part of the recipes and give us a deal for the whole entire site. Just my two cents.
Linda :)
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