Preface
All of us cooks take promises of quick recipes with a grain of salt. They are often more marketing hype then accurate description, and that, of course, reminds me of a story. A young man came up to an old horse trader and asked, “How much do you want for that gelding?” The reply was direct. “I’ll take a hundred and a half for her,” and then the old-timer added, “but she don’t look so good.” They finally reached an agreement, and the new owner paid and went off with his purchase. The next day, the young man returned and was pretty mad. “What’s the matter with that horse I just bought?” he demanded. “He ran me right off the road.” The trader looked up and said calmly, “Been blind for a year . . . told you she didn’t look so good!”
Well, that’s how I often feel about quick recipes—it’s all in the fine print. Either they are just counting cooking time, not preparation, or they assume that you graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and have 10 years of experience as a line cook.
Finally, America’s Test Kitchen has narrowed the gulf between the promise of fast home-cooked food and the reality. In The America’s Test Kitchen Quick Family Cookbook we offer over 750 recipes that can be made in 45 minutes or less, including preparation time, and you don’t have to be a whiz in the kitchen. In addition, we have included 175 recipes that can be made in 25 minutes or less—that’s real cooking and preparation time.
And our bag of tricks goes way beyond kitchen-tested quick recipes. My favorite feature is “Putting Ingredients to Work,” in which we take a simple item, cream cheese for example, and then provide five quick and easy recipes—and plenty of them with a hefty portion of creative spark—that hardly need instruction, whether it is a quick approach to Crispy Mexican Bites, Cream Cheese with Red Pepper Jelly, Jalapeño Poppers, Artichoke Dip, or Crab Rangoon. Or, using store-bought cookie dough, we made a great selection of easy-to-make treats including Chocolate Hazelnut Swirls, Chocolate-Cherry Almond Bars, and Dulce de Leche Sandwich Cookies.
Of course, quick cookbooks always turn to convenience supermarket products, and this is often a good idea. Among our favorites are Boursin (it makes a great base for a sauce in chicken pot pie or scalloped potatoes), pesto (just stir it into soup before serving for a fresh hit of flavor, or use it in meatballs), and precooked polenta (grill it or use it as a casserole topping). Equally important were the store-bought ingredients that we tested and did not like, including creamy canned soups, boxed mashed potatoes, jarred teriyaki sauce, and supermarket salad dressings. Do yourself a favor and leave those items off of your quick-cook shopping list!
It is always helpful to improve your basic cooking skills, and so we have included a heavily illustrated section on knife and preparation tips with practical tricks and techniques to help you become a faster, better prep cook. And we found that some appliances, such as the pressure cooker, really did deliver great food fast including beef stew, homemade chicken soup, and baby back ribs—all in under 45 minutes.
We also highlighted many of our core time-saving quick recipes—Everyday Cinnamon Buns, Skillet Chicken and Rice, Paella, and Strata, to name a few—with step-by-step photos since many of these recipes will become part of your regular culinary repertoire.
Best of all, these are not the usual retreads, recipes that you have seen over and over again in other places—this is all-new work. Use a microwave to create an almost-instant appetizer of Easy Melted Brie with Honey and Herbs. Instead of the usual poaching and chilling, make an all-new quick recipe called Broiled Shrimp Cocktail with Creamy Tarragon Sauce. Take lasagna, a serious time-consumer, and make it in less than 45 minutes using no-boil noodles and a spruced-up sauce that begins with jarred Alfredo sauce from the supermarket. Turn to the pressure cooker and make a perfectly cooked, moist turkey breast with homemade gravy in well under an hour. For dessert, we found a way to make Individual Chocolate Fudge Cakes by using ramekins, and then, to create a fudgy center, we simply pressed a square of chocolate into each cake before baking. For a really quick but impressive dessert, you can make an Apple Strudel Bake by throwing apples in a baking dish, microwaving them to soften, and then sprinkling with torn pieces of phyllo before baking. That’s strudel in seconds (well, in a fraction of the time)!
Of course, sales pitches like mine often lose something in translation. A salesman for government bonds during WWII came across an older farmer who was, unbeknownst to him, a bit deaf. He gave his pitch about Roosevelt and Churchill, about Pearl Harbor, and about the need to support the war effort. Finally, after he had left, the farmer’s wife asked, “Who was that and what did he want?” The mostly deaf farmer replied, “Don’t know exactly but it seems that some feller by the name of Rosyfelt got Pearl Harper in trouble over on Church Hill and wanted me to go his bond.”
So maybe I’ve made my case and maybe I haven’t, but, simply put, these recipes are fast and they work. Some days I like to cook all day for company, but, especially during the week, everyone needs fast, reliable recipes to get dinner on the table. This book will be an important addition to my household; I hope that it also becomes part of yours.