Food/Cooking Magazines

[fierydrunk]

We like to cook real food, nothing gourmet and extreme...I like Saveur but are there others I should also consider?

[Gifted Gourmet]

Food and Wine

Fine Cooking

Cooks' Illustrated

Edited July 21, 2004 by Gifted Gourmet (log)

[andiesenji]

Have you looked at Taste of Home?

I get just about every food magazine that is published, mainly because people keep giving me subscriptions as gifts.

It does depend on your tastes and how willing you are to try new things, as to which magazines will serve you best.

I like Fine Cooking as they combine traditional cooking with a little "out there" content, but the recipes are easy to follow and there are seldom any exotic ingredients.

Other favorites are BBC Good Food from the UK, Cuisine At Home, as well as Saveur.

Barnes & Nobel has a great selection of cooking magazines. I suggest you buy a couple every month before you jump in with a subscription. And if possible, see if you can find a "deal" on subscription prices.

I recently received an offer from Bon Appetite for a year's subscription, 12 issues for 12.00.

Often when you visit certain web sites, vendors and such, they will have offers at a fraction of the regular subscription cost.

[kiliki]

Those three are all good, but it is the Cook's Illustrated recipes that have made their way permanantly into my reportoire. Especially since you described yourself as not "gourmet or extreme," pick up a copy next time you're at the store, check it out and see what you think.

[fierydrunk]

Thanks! I will definitely be checking some out, esp. Cook's Illustrated as that seems to have the general consensus vote!

I am getting a sub to Saveur cos it is like the National Geographic of food.

[Betts]

Gourmet - especially since Ruth Reichel took the helm - has everyday food as well as sort of exotic. Very fine photo dept.

Fine cooking - technique based

Cook Illustrated - very technique oriented but can have an annoying style and no pictures

Food and Wine - good all round publication

Martha Stewart Living - not currently fashionable but I have many recipes from its pages and lots of ideas for presentation.

[tanabutler]

Do you mean THREE or THE best cooking mags?

Saveur is in my top three food mags, but "cooking"?

Bon Appetit is more user friendly. Gourmet is fancier. I like both of their diverse sensibilities. Cook's Illustrated is like Spock edited a magazine: scientific and linear and dry, but presumably (as in a good chemistry lab) you can replicate the results.

Edited July 22, 2004 by tanabutler (log)

[Pitter]

Yesterday, while getting my hair cut, I examined Simple Living, and found it to be one of the better food mags. After that I would say Food and Wine, and Cooks Illustrated. Simple Living is going after the Martha Stewart audience, and seems to do that quite well.

[iguana]

Fine Cooking has my vote for the best cooking mag. I've had great success with their fancy recipes and many many of their simple recipes have become my standards. They cover techniques in a way that allows you to be creative, without forcing their taste on you. The photography can be a bit muddy, but the recipes are outstanding and dependable.

Gourmet is a distant second with all the travel, lifestyle, etc.

Saveur is great food/travel porn of a similar, more exotic, ilk.

Cook's Illustrated really annoys me-- how many articles about sauteed cutlets have they done? Also, you have to agree with their idea of what 'best' is. For a while I liked their scientific approach (being a scientist and all)-- then I realized I never cook anything from the mag!

[fierydrunk]

I meant "Thee" as in the Kingly "the" best...

Hmmmm...looks like I may wanna puruse the newstand before I go beyond Saveur. I like the recipes in Saveur as well as its focus on travel and food history. I don't think purely tech mags are very interesting but since Hollis is whom I am trying to get the sub for, maybe I should ask him!

I will read Saveur myself...he's probably like a tech-y type mag come to think of it!

[zora]

Cook's Illustrated without a doubt. Christopher Kimball deserves to be smacked upside the head occasionally (never, ever read the editor's letter if you don't want to lose your lunch over the smarminess), but I have learned more from that magazine than from anything else. Great explanations of food science, and total obsession with technique.

Fine Cooking has a lot of the same features, with a glossier presentation--and iguana's right, they're not so pedantic in their tastes. It might be great, but I got hooked on CI too early. The two seem to overlap so much in the how-to department that it doesn't seem worth getting both.

But you'll probably want to flesh out the rigid New England B&W austerity of CI with something more colorful and relaxed. Of all the glossy mags, I prefer Food & Wine because they incorporate more adventurous ingredients, and their 'quick' section is usually pretty good.

Saveur is great, though I've cooked recipes out of it, like, twice. Definitely worth subscribing just to help keep the enterprise afloat and encourage their excellent work.

[PopsicleToze]

Cooks Illustrated

Saveur

Fine Cooking

[rich]

I've never met a food magazine I didn't like and all the ones mentioned are excellent. Please add Chili Pepper magazine to your list for "real" food.

[ms. victoria]

I'll second BBC Good Food and when I could get it Waitrose Food Illustrated (also UK) is a gorgeous magazine. Everyone in Nashville has stopped carrying it. I also enjoy Donna Hay. It's published in Australia but hits the newsstand seasonally here about 4 months off its newsstand release there. She is the Martha of Australia in many ways but much more realisitic about what mere mortals can do at home without a full crew. Also, everything I have made out of her cookbooks or the mag has been spot on.

Two new ones I just discovered are another BBC project called Olive and another Australian mag called Delicious.

[CtznCane]

1. Cucina Italiana

2. Fodd & Wiine

Why? The recipes all work. I'm sort of a simple guy who goes by the adage "instructions work when followed." Well when you follow the instructions and it doesn't work, well, I go off like a ten cent watch. The common ground with both these magazines is that their recipes work. That is number 1 in my mind. Beyond that, I'm just a big fan of Cucina Italiana.

[Artichoke]

Saveur is the one cooking magazine that I read cover to cover, I think it is the best overall. It is not simply the writing and the subjects covered that are great, but so are the recipes. I have cooked many recipes from Saveur, some are more involved than others, but there are simple ones as well and most importantly, the recipes work. The Saveur cookbooks, French, Italian and American, are a great compilation of recipes from past issues and have the same beautiful photgraphs that are in the magazine.

I will second Ms. Victoria's mention of Waitrose Food Illustrated, a beautiful magazine with very good recipes and articles Waitrose Food Illustrated

My new favorite cooking magazine is from New Zealand and is called Cuisine. Like Waitrose, it is a very pretty magazine, but I also love the articles and recipes which tend to be so original compared to what you find in magazines like Food & Wine, Gourmet and Bon Appetit. I do not think those magazines would often carry an article such as this one about a favorite ingredient of mine In praise of tripe

I think that Cooks Illustrated is overated and there are few people on this Earth that are more annoying, more arrogant or a bigger nerd than Christopher Kimball. I mean Chris, take a look at yourself, what the hell are you so smug about? I would bet he went through very few school days without taking a beating. I cannot bear to watch his show.

[Cusina]

I'm also a fine cooking fan. I like that they take one idea and run with it, giving lots of recipe variations. CI is just out to find the "best" recipe for whatever their focus is. I use their recipes, and many are quite good, but it isn't as inspiring. Fine cooking is more likely to get my creative juices going. Guess it just depends on your style.

The magazine I just can't stand is Better Homes and Gardens. Their layout is awful. Yish.

[petite tête de chou]

Im not sure where people get the idea that Kimball is smarmy. I find him down to earth, dry of wit and frugal. I love Cooks Illustrated for its cut and dry style. Thing is, because they tell you exactly what they did to acheive a specific result I can pin point where in the recipe or technique I want to change something to tailor it to my tastes. If I want pretty pictures I buy Waitrose, Saveur or go online.

[bloviatrix]

I'll second BBC Good Food and when I could get it Waitrose Food Illustrated (also UK) is a gorgeous magazine. Everyone in Nashville has stopped carrying it.

I don't know if Barnes & Noble carries the same magazines nationwide, but check them for WFI. I know they carry it up in NYC, maybe it's the same by you.

[jenifresh]

Saveur to learn ABOUT food

Cusine at Home/Cook's Illutrated if you want to learn HOW to cook

And be sure to check in with Australian Gourmet Food Traveller, Waitrose, Martha Stewart, Williams-Sonoma's mag and the likes for that ever-important INSPIRATION.

http://www.cuisinemag.com - I like this one even better than Cook's Illustrated

http://gourmet.ninemsn.com.au/gourmettraveller/default.asp - Australian Gourmet Food Traveller is an incredible publication. More epicurean and less practical - but really inspiring.

[spoonbread]

I really like Food Arts mag. One of my favs.

[saltedgreens]

My favorites:

Art Culinaire

-To keep with what is current in the professional world and some interesting information. This is done without much of the mass marketing influences (like instant this and that, Atkins, whatever...)

Gastronomica

-Essays, poems, and journals on food.

The Art of Eating

-More essays on food.

Slow Ark

-Essays on the food supply situation.

Others are good but books supply a lot of the basic knowledge I need.

[tanabutler]

Which brings me back to the original question.

FOOD mags or COOKING mags?

There is a huge difference if you're merely collecting technique and recipes.

[Romaney O'Malley]

I second Australian Gourmet Traveller - it's outstanding

also Delicious. which is a bit more informal with often more simple recipes.

I subscribe to Vogue Entertaining and travel as well which is great but is not just cooking - all three are Aussie but I have them sent over to London. they do a delicious. publication in London as well and it's by the same people but I think the Australian one is much better.

I don't get Donna Hay but have heard it's great

[Suzanne F]

I rarely cook from the recipes I read. But there are some magazines that are good as reference guides:

- Another vote for Fine Cooking -- a great resource for learning about ingredients, and the recipes always work. When there's an article by a "famous" chef or noted authority, it's more likely to work than the recipes you read in chefs' coffee-table cookbooks.

- And a vote for Australian Vogue E + T -- I've subscribed since 1998, there's no problem having it sent to New York City.

Food Arts is great (even though it no longer has the Vita-Prep ads), but I wouldn't call it a cooking magazine. I like reading Saveur, but view it as strictly for reference; and I cannot stand the usual suspects, any of them (F&W, Bon Appetit, Gourmet). They just don't have enough of the WHY of anything, and the recipes don't much interest me.