Meat Illustrated: A Foolproof Guide to Understanding and Cooking with Cuts of All Kinds

by America's Test Kitchen (Editor)

Increase your meat counter confidence with this must-have companion for cooking beef, pork, lamb, and veal with more than 300 kitchen-tested recipes.

Part cookbook, part handbook organized by animal and its primal cuts, Meat Illustrated provides essential information and techniques to empower you to explore options (affordable cuts like beef shanks instead of short ribs, lesser-known cuts like country-style ribs, leg of lamb instead of beef tenderloin for your holiday centerpiece), and recipes that make those cuts shine. Meat is a treat; we teach you the best methods for center-of-the-plate meats like satisfying Butter-Basted Rib-Eye Steaks (spooning on hot butter cooks the steaks from both sides so they come to temperature as they acquire a deep crust), meltingly tender Chinese Barbecued Roast Pork Shoulder (cook for 6 hours so the collagen melts to lubricate the meat), and the quintessential Crumb-Crusted Rack of Lamb. Also bring meat beyond centerpiece status with complete meals: Shake up surf and turf with Fried Brown Rice with Pork and Shrimp. Braise lamb shoulder chops in a Libyan-style chickpea and orzo soup called Sharba.

Illustrated primal cut info at the start of each section covers shopping, storage, and prep pointers and techniques with clearly written essays, step-by-step photos, break-out tutorials, and hundreds of hand-drawn illustrations that take the mystery out of meat prep (tie roasts without wilderness training; sharply cut crosshatches in the fat), so you'll execute dishes as reliably as the steakhouse. Learn tricks like soaking ground meat in baking soda before cooking to tenderlize, or pre-roasting rather than searing fatty cuts before braising to avoid stovetop splatters. Even have fun with DIY curing projects.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Reference, Food, Nonfiction

432 pages, Hardcover

First published October 27, 2020

About the author

America's Test Kitchen, based in a brand new state-of-the-art 60,000 sq. ft. facility with over 15,000 sq. ft. of test kitchens and studio space, in Boston's Seaport District, is dedicated to finding the very best recipes for home cooks. Over 50 full-time (admittedly obsessive) test cooks spend their days testing recipes 30, 40, up to 100 times, tweaking every variable until they understand how and why recipes work. They also test cookware and supermarket ingredients so viewers can bypass marketing hype and buy the best quality products. As the home of Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country magazines, and publisher of more than one dozen cookbooks each year, America's Test Kitchen has earned the respect of the publishing industry, the culinary world, and millions of home cooks. America's Test Kitchen the television show launched in 2001, and the company added a second television program, Cook's Country, in 2008.

Discover, learn, and expand your cooking repertoire with Julia Collin Davison, Bridget Lancaster, Jack Bishop, Dan Souza, Lisa McManus, Tucker Shaw, Bryan Roof, and our fabulous team of test cooks!

Learn more at https://www.americastestkitchen.com/.

Reviews

[Mike May · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow.

[Mara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mmmmm. I prefer the foolproof fish cookbook over this. 40% of the recipes have photos and those photos are small only a quarter of the page. It really does go into depth about the many different parts of a cow, lamb, pork, and ground meat. It’s just not the most inspiring recipes.

[Leigh W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding and informative!

[Aasinathena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptionally crafted. Thus its by ATK. No wonders ! Getting this soon to my library.

[Patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything America's Test Kitchens puts out is gold.