Steaks, Chops, Roasts & Ribs

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