A fine whole tenderloin of beef is a great piece of meat to roast and serve on a special occasion, and is expensive enough it could give one pause at the open oven door--that great What If, as in what if I don't really know what I am doing. The editors of Cook's Illustrated magazine have settled the issue. It's all right here in Steaks, Chops, Roasts, and Ribs: Where the tenderloin can be found on the beef, whether to buy it untrimmed or not, how to roll and tie it for uniform roasting (including a sidebar on how to tie the butcher's knot), the best temperature at which to roast this cut of meat, and the length of time you can expect to wait beside the oven door. Having tested the process with 11 tenderloin roasts, these editors tell you all you need to know to get the results you want.

Steaks, Chops, Roasts, and Ribs opens with meat basics. If you know where a specific cut of meat comes from, you have a leg up on how best to cook the meat. Pork, lamb, veal, and beef are all covered. The buying information leads to a section on cooking basics. And then into the chapters. This isn't a book based so much on the kind of meat as on what you want to accomplish with any meat. The chapters cover steak (cooking outside and indoors), chops, cutlets, ground meat, ham, roasts, and more--polus there's a chapter on Rubs, Sauces, Salsa, and Gravy.

The pace is moderate and the information is thorough, both about the product, the technique, and the truth by experience about the tools you need to achieve success. There are hundreds of helpful line drawings and pages of color photos. And most important of all, 300 recipes that have been tested and retested by the people who invented the test kitchen. Steaks, Chops, Roasts, and Ribs is the meat eaters insurance policy. --Schuyler Ingle

From Publishers Weekly
Forget the spinach, forget the potatoes: many Americans dream of a dinner with a glistening, juicy, well-caramelized steak. But with high-end steaks pushing $20 a pound, there’s little room to experiment, which makes this collection of fail-proof recipes by the editors of Cook’s Illustrated (The Best Recipe; etc.) all the more valuable. Reading the volume is like taking a crash-course at the butcher’s: the first 20 pages explain and rate various different cuts of beef, veal, pork and lamb, as well as various cooking methods (grill-roasting, pan-searing, braising, etc.). Subsequent chapters are organized to satisfy all kinds of kitchen hankerings (e.g. "I Want to Cook Meat on a Stick," "I Want to Make Pot Roast") using simple and easy techniques. Ever concerned with efficiency and affordability, the C.I./America’s Test Kitchen team devised many innovations for this collection, among them a tasty Beef Goulash that doesn’t require beef stock and a method for slicing beef for Philly Cheesesteak Sandwiches with a food processor. Attractive line drawings illustrate important techniques like making a pan sauce and working with supermarket puff pastry. From simple recipes like Pan-Fried Breaded Pork Cutlets (complemented by an excellent recipe for homemade Japanese Tonkatsu sauce) to more time-consuming ones like the flavor-bursting Braised Lamb Shanks with Lemon and Mint, the recipes streamline traditional dishes without loosing an ounce of flavor. Perhaps in response to complaints that Cook’s Illustrated recipes can be boring, this cookbook includes several contemporary sauce ideas-such as Roasted Red Pepper and Smoked Paprika Butter for steaks and assertive wet-rubs for pork tenderloin-that would not be out-of-place in a professional kitchen. This cookbook could quickly become indispensable to any carnivore’s dinner dreams.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

San Francisco Chronicle, September 1, 2004
"Steaks, Chops, Roasts, and Ribs conquers every question one could have about all things meat."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Meat May be America's Favorite Main Dish, but it still provokes plenty of questions. Are prime steaks worth the extra money? Can you make real barbecue at home? Is there a good way to keep pork chops from drying out as they cook? What's the secret to a foolproof holiday ham? If you have ever wondered about the best way to cook a particular cut of meat, then you will find Steaks, Chops, Roasts, and Ribs indispensable. Packed with more than 300 recipes, this book represents the cumulative experience and knowledge of the test cooks and editors at America's Test Kitchen. Have you ever spent $50 on prime rib only to ruin the roast at home? Have you ever made a pot roast that was tough, a steak that was charred on the outside and raw on the inside, or a beef stew that tasted no better than a can of Dinty Moore? We've tested (and retested) just about every technique, ingredient, and piece of equipment imaginable to produce reliable recipes that should work the first time -- and every time. As we like to say, we roasted 32 cuts of prime rib so you don't have to.

Detailed instructions and hundreds of step-by-step drawings will help to guarantee your success. Illustrated tutorials take you through the process of making a pan sauce, stir-frying, roasting on the grill, and more. Steaks, Chops, Roasts, and Ribs is also packed with the kind of no-nonsense ingredient tastings and equipment ratings that make the Best Recipe books so useful. We tell you which skillets, roasting pans, instant-read thermometers, and chef's knives to buy -- and which ones to avoid. You will learn whether expensive sea salts are worth the money as well as why chicken broth is a better choice than beef broth in most meat stews.

Steaks, Chops, Roasts, and Ribs begins at the market, where many people make their first mistake. Knowing what cut to buy for a given recipe and then finding that cut in your local supermarket or butcher shop can be an obstacle to success. The same cut of meat that works beautifully in a stew might fail miserably on the grill. And, to make matters worse, the labeling in most markets is either nonexistent or inconsistent. To solve these problems, we've created a 16-page illustrated (and opinionated) guide that will tell you all you need to know about buying meat. Included in this valuable guide are precise, hand-drawn illustrations that will help you identify 70 of the most popular cuts of beef, pork, lamb, and veal and learn their various alternate names so you can interpret the labels in the supermarket. Detailed (and honest) tasting notes describe the pros and cons of each cut, and our unique rating system ranks each cut for flavor and cost. We even tell you which cuts are not worth the money or bother -- something you'll never hear from your butcher. At America's Test Kitchen, we don't mince words and won't hesitate to pronounce a cut of meat, a cooking technique, or a piece of equipment utterly worthless.

Steaks, Chops, Roasts, and Ribs is organized into 16 chapters based on how a home cook (not a butcher) thinks about meat. "I Want to Make a Stew" (chapter 8) explains the basic cooking techniques that link all stews (no matter the cut of meat used) and shows you how to turn beef, pork, veal, and lamb into hearty meals. "I Want to Barbecue Something Smoky" (chapter 13) demystifies the art of barbecue and shows you how to produce real barbecued brisket, spareribs, and more with the help of your backyard grill. "I Want to Cook Cutlets" (chapter 6) explains how to turn pork and veal cutlets into quick weeknight meals. You know you love Southwestern fajitas, North Carolina barbecued pulled pork, New York strip steaks, and Philly cheesesteak sandwiches. But if you're going to spend the money to buy the meat and then take the time to cook it, you want good results. Steaks, Chops, Roasts, and Ribs is your no-nonsense guide to great meat cookery.

SYNOPSIS

Would you barbecue 150 pounds of baby back ribs to find the ultimate recipe, one guaranteed to yield fall-off the-bone meat with intensely smoky flavor? We did. Here are more than 300 foolproof recipes for every favorite cut of meat. While most books are organized by the animal ￯﾿ﾽ beef, veal, lamb, pork ￯﾿ﾽ the Editors of Cook￯﾿ﾽs Illustrated magazine organized this book by how the home cook thinks about meat (I Want to Make Stew, I Want to Grill Steak, I want to Grill Chops, I want to Cook Cutlets, etc). This is both a very appealing and practical way to approach the topic of cooking meat. Finally, this title features a comprehensive and illustrated shopping guide to buying meat. All information about cuts is grouped in the front of the book, where we present illustrations of the 70 best cuts, along with ratings for flavor and costs, detailed tasters￯﾿ﾽ notes, alternative names and the best ways to cook.

FROM THE CRITICS

Dwight Garner - The New York Times

Here's another book from America's Test Kitchen. It's heavily researched, full of good advice and packed with solid recipes. Buy it for the carnivorous straight-A student in your life.

Library Journal