America's Test Kitchen
5
Books ReviewedAmerica's Test Kitchen books in order
21 books; 1 reviewed on LuvemBooks. Dates and covers from Amazon.
2010The Best Simple RecipesAmazon ↗
2021The Chicken BibleAmazon ↗
2021The Ultimate Meal-Prep CookbookAmazon ↗
2021The Complete Salad CookbookAmazon ↗
2021The Complete Autumn and Winter CookbookAmazon ↗
2021The Complete Mediterranean Cookbook Gift EditionAmazon ↗
2021Our review →
2021More MediterraneanAmazon ↗
2023Ultimate Air Fryer PerfectionAmazon ↗
2024The Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook, 10th Anniversary Gift EditionAmazon ↗
2024When Southern Women CookAmazon ↗
2025Baking for TwoAmazon ↗
2025The Sheet PanAmazon ↗
2025Cocktails IllustratedAmazon ↗
2025The Complete Anti-Inflammatory CookbookAmazon ↗
2026Dinner TonightAmazon ↗
2026The Complete Grilling and Barbecue CookbookAmazon ↗
2026The New VegetarianAmazon ↗
2026The Complete High-Protein CookbookAmazon ↗
2026The New CookieAmazon ↗
2026Mediterranean for TwoComing soonAmazon ↗
Meat Illustrated: A Foolproof Guide to Understanding and Cooking with Cuts of All Kinds
4.8/5
reader rating · 1,722 ratingsMeat Illustrated: A Foolproof Guide to Understanding and Cooking with Cuts of All Kinds is a comprehensive cookbook and reference handbook from America's Test Kitchen, covering 72 cuts of beef, pork, lamb, and veal across 300-plus kitchen-tested recipes. Winner of the 2021 IACP Cookbook Award in the General category, it is designed to serve as both a practical cooking guide and a deep educational resource — organized by animal and primal cut — for anyone looking to build genuine confidence at the meat counter and in the kitchen. This review assesses the book's content, structure, and documented reception from published sources, not a kitchen test.
Reviewed Sep 9, 2026
The New Cooking School Cookbook: Fundamentals
4.8/5
reader rating · 1,560 ratingsAmerica's Test Kitchen's *The New Cooking School Cookbook: Fundamentals* is a comprehensive culinary reference designed to teach foundational cooking skills through 80 themed courses, 400 recipes, and more than 200 kitchen tips and techniques — structured explicitly as an in-home cooking school for cooks at any level.
Reviewed Apr 5, 2026
Foolproof Fish: Modern Recipes for Everyone, Everywhere
4.7/5
reader rating · 1,692 ratingsAmerica's Test Kitchen's Foolproof Fish packs 198 globally inspired seafood recipes into a 384-page reference organised by fish type, with buying guidance, technique demos, and per-recipe substitutions. Critics called its depth and practicality a must-have for seafood lovers — a verdict this source-based review, which does not kitchen-test recipes, finds well supported by the book's structure.
Reviewed Sep 18, 2026
The Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook
4.6/5
reader rating · 10,175 ratingsThe Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook by America's Test Kitchen contains 650 reengineered recipes designed specifically to serve two people, built on the principle that scaling down is a science, not simple arithmetic. It is one of the most comprehensive small-household cookbooks available, covering everything from Classic Beef Stew to Fudgy Brownies with the systematic rigour the brand is known for.
Reviewed May 11, 2026
The Complete Mediterranean Cookbook
The Complete Mediterranean Cookbook, edited by America's Test Kitchen, delivers 500+ recipes spanning Italy, Greece, Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, and beyond, all structured around the Mediterranean Diet Pyramid. The San Francisco Book Review called it "the one book they need to master Mediterranean cooking," and with more than 600,000 copies sold since 2016, its track record is hard to ignore.
Reviewed Sep 12, 2026
Ask LuvemBooks about America's Test Kitchen
- Where should I start?
- The New Cooking School Cookbook: Fundamentals is the best entry point — it's explicitly structured as an in-home cooking school, with 80 themed courses, 400 recipes, and more than 200 tips and techniques, so it works for cooks at any level. It also holds the highest reader rating among the books we've reviewed: 4.8/5 from 1,506 Amazon ratings. If you already cook confidently and want a subject deep-dive instead, Meat Illustrated (also 4.8/5 from 1,719 Amazon ratings) is the natural alternative.
- What's their writing style?
- The house voice is instructional and evidence-first: recipes come with the reasoning behind them, technique demonstrations, and buying or substitution guidance rather than chef personality. Books are organised as references — by fish type in Foolproof Fish, by cut of meat in Meat Illustrated, by themed course in The New Cooking School Cookbook — so they're built to be consulted repeatedly, not read cover to cover. The result reads like a cooking school's course notes: practical, systematic, and deliberately foolproof.
- Books we've reviewed
- We've reviewed 5 America's Test Kitchen titles. The New Cooking School Cookbook: Fundamentals (4.8/5 reader rating) teaches foundational skills through 80 courses and 400 recipes; Meat Illustrated (4.8/5) covers 72 cuts across 300-plus recipes and won a 2021 IACP Cookbook Award. Foolproof Fish (4.7/5) packs 198 globally inspired seafood recipes organized by fish type; The Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook, Gift Edition (4.6/5) offers 650 recipes scaled for two; and The Complete Mediterranean Cookbook Gift Edition (4.5/5) delivers over 500 nutrition-forward recipes from across the Mediterranean world.
- How do their books compare?
- All five share the same test-kitchen DNA, but they split into skill-building and subject-specific volumes. The New Cooking School Cookbook is the broadest, teaching fundamentals through structured courses, while Meat Illustrated and Foolproof Fish go deep on single protein categories. The two 'Complete' gift editions — Cooking for Two and Mediterranean — are lifestyle-oriented: one solves portion scaling for two-person households, the other targets everyday healthy cooking with 500-plus recipes. Reader ratings (Amazon aggregates) are tightly clustered between 4.5/5 and 4.8/5, so the choice comes down to subject, not quality.
- What genre do they write?
- Everything we've reviewed from America's Test Kitchen falls under Cooking & Food — specifically comprehensive, reference-style cookbooks. Their range within that genre is wide: foundational skills (The New Cooking School Cookbook), single-subject deep dives (Meat Illustrated, Foolproof Fish), and diet- or household-focused collections (the Mediterranean and Cooking for Two volumes).
- What should I read after The New Cooking School Cookbook?
- Once you've worked through the fundamentals, the natural next step is a subject deep-dive: Meat Illustrated if you want to master cuts of beef, pork, lamb, and veal, or Foolproof Fish if seafood is your gap — both carry strong reader ratings (4.8/5 and 4.7/5 respectively on Amazon). If your daily cooking is for a small household, The Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook, Gift Edition applies those skills to 650 recipes scaled for two.
Who is America's Test Kitchen?
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Authors Like America's Test Kitchen
J. Kenji López-Alt
Samin Nosrat
Dr. Stuart Farrimond
Julia Child
Simone Beck
Marcella Hazan
