Best/Favorite Food Magazines

[Chris Hennes]

I love Cook's Illustrated, but I swear, if they publish one more issue on method number 8437 of how to roast a turkey I'm going to cancel it. I may have to give Fine Cooking a try.

[alexthecook]

Thanks for all the tips guys!

I ended up getting him Food & Wine since, guess what, he also loves wine.

Bonus: I ended up with a free six month subscription for myself! What shame...

[Peter the eater]

Taunton's Fine Cooking is my current fave.

[et alors]

Taunton's Fine Cooking is my current fave.

←

I've been buying this and that on the racks lately, and have been impressed by Fine Cooking. The only magazines *period* I subscribe to are New Yorker and Cook's Illustrated. So you get I love Cook's. I adore the use of illustrations.

I'm mad at saveur because so many of there recipes haven't turned out for me, and I'm an excellent home cook with or without a recipe.

The rest have been uniformly disappointing. I was interested in this thread because I'm looking for good ore food magazines as well-- it seems like the best way to stay seasonal.

You can't subscribe to them (I think) but the edible series of local zines are terrific. I pick up Edible San Francisco every chance I get.

[Bree20]

The quarterly - Art of Eating is fantastic!  Deeply researched and very well written.  No advertising.

←

Art of Eating? Is this a new magazine? Where do you find it? I am in the Atlanta area so book stores and newstands are no problem. Is this a monthly magazine?

As for the question which magazine makes a nice gift - I have a scrip for Bon Appetit, Saveur, and Food and Wine. I am not a big fan of Gourmet for some reason, nor do I like the Taste of Home, Cooking Lite, Paula Dean etc.. type magazines. As for Cook's Illustrated never been a big fan, but then I like reading the history and about people like the stories in Saveur.

I have been reading Bon Apperit since the 70"s (my mom's scrip) and she started giving me my own when I married in '86 and I have kept ever issue since (much to my husband horror!). I have never been unhappy with this gift.

[et alors]

Art of Eating? Is this a new magazine? Where do you find it? I am in the Atlanta area so book stores and newstands are no problem.  Is this a monthly magazine?

←

amazon: Art of Eating

the website has a cruel collection of enticing snippets that will be sure to drive you to order back issues.

[Bree20]

Art of Eating? Is this a new magazine? Where do you find it? I am in the Atlanta area so book stores and newstands are no problem.  Is this a monthly magazine?

←

amazon: Art of Eating

the website has a cruel collection of enticing snippets that will be sure to drive you to order back issues.

←

Thanks - the website was very helpful.

[Devotay]

I'm with all y'all on Fine Cooking and Art of Eating, both fantastic magazines written by people who know what they're talking about, but I gotta put in a plug for all my cohorts of the Edible Communities.

These are magazines of local food all over the country, and now a couple in Canada. See the list of all of them here

Get a deal and subscribe to 3 of your choice by clicking here

Edited December 10, 2007 by Devotay (log)

[RAHiggins1]

I currently have Food & Wine subscribed. It's content is very trendy. I like the wine part better then the food part. I hate that every page of content is opposite a full page add. If there are 150 pages in the magazine, over 75 are sure to be ad pages.

[kbjesq]

I love Cook's Illustrated, but I swear, if they publish one more issue on method number 8437 of how to roast a turkey I'm going to cancel it. I may have to give Fine Cooking a try.

←

I'm with you 100%. In fact, I just canceled my web membership and did not renew my magazine subscription. It's a good resource for the foods discussed, but they repeat recipes and ingredients. Also, for the life of me, I cannot understand the CI claim that a non-stick skillet works just as well as a wok for stir-frying. I understand that if you do not have access to a wok, that a skillet can perform as an adequate substitute, but to claim that you get the same or even better results? I don't think so.

Anyhow, I'm going to try out Fine Cooking. Thanks for the recs.

[marlowe]

I think all of the food magazines go for turkey on the covers of their November issues -- it's the annual "anxiety" issue for the somebody who has to host Thanksgiving dinner for the extended family for the very first time. Fine Cooking certainly maintains this tradition, and does it quite well. I think I have three FC's on this topic, until I started to skip it.

[faine]

Food and Wine definitely has a touch of trendoid disease, but I tend to prefer it to the other soft food magazines (that aren't just about technique, like the wonderful Fine Cooking.) It's got beautiful photography and I think the quality of writing is really high as well. And all the recipes I've tried from the magazine and from the website have come out just plain excellent....you must give the red curry carrots from the December issue a try.

[FlavoursGal]

Taunton's Fine Cooking is my current fave.

←

I've been buying this and that on the racks lately, and have been impressed by Fine Cooking. The only magazines *period* I subscribe to are New Yorker and Cook's Illustrated. So you get I love Cook's. I adore the use of illustrations.

I'm mad at saveur because so many of there recipes haven't turned out for me, and I'm an excellent home cook with or without a recipe.

The rest have been uniformly disappointing. I was interested in this thread because I'm looking for good ore food magazines as well-- it seems like the best way to stay seasonal.

You can't subscribe to them (I think) but the edible series of local zines are terrific. I pick up Edible San Francisco every chance I get.

←

et alors, the "Edible" series of publications does have subscriptions available -- as a single subscription to one magazine, or as a set of three Edibles through Edible Communities. Go to www.ediblecommunities.com to view each magazine's website to get information on single subscriptions, or to access the "3 for $45" special offer.

Gail Gordon Oliver

Publisher and Editor

Edible Toronto

[FlavoursGal]

I'm with all y'all on Fine Cooking and Art of Eating, both fantastic magazines written by people who know what they're talking about, but I gotta put in a plug for all my cohorts of the Edible Communities.

These are magazines of local food all over the country, and now a couple in Canada.  See the list of all of them here

Get a deal and subscribe to 3 of your choice by clicking here

←

Keep plugging away, Kurt. ;-) Looking forward to meeting you in Charleston!

All the best from your cohort Gail, Canadian Edible #1 in Toronto. Vancouver is coming in May, eh?

[kirschej]

Art of Eating will give you more wine articles, (as well as cheese, veal, etc etc) with more depth opinion, thought and research than you will find in any other bar none publication on the market. The editor, publisher and janitor ( I’ll bet) Ed Behr follows no journalistic restraints like , word count . I have taken more than one trip based on his stuff, and am about to take another based on the “Aglianico in Basilicata” article. I am a little fanatical about this pub (does it show?) but take pleasure in knowing I am in veeeeery good company.

[MaxH]

As many people said, it depends on interests. The three or four popular mainstream US pubs have been mentioned. (Gourmet is by far the oldest, its recipes were collected in the landmark and still useful Gourmet Cook Book, 1950. In the 1970s first (I think) Bon Appetit and then Food and Wine took it on seriously. I've bought issues of Gourmet in the past because of some beautiful food photography.

Professionals I know read Food Arts and (for European wine reviews) Nouvelle Revue de France. Don't limit your consideration to North American publications even if you live there. In the past I got a lot out of the British wine journal Decanter, with an unapologetic, very international perspective (at least 15-20 years ago) and the Viennese food-wine magazine Falstaff. Years ago a professor I knew recommended La Cucina Italiana but didn't like the idea that it might be available in English translation. (It now is.)

[twomartinis]

Art of Eating will give you more wine articles, (as well as cheese, veal, etc  etc)  with   more depth opinion,  thought  and research than you  will find in any other bar none  publication on the market.  The editor, publisher and janitor ( I’ll bet) Ed Behr follows no journalistic restraints like ,  word count .  I have taken more than one trip based on his stuff, and am about to take another based on the “Aglianico in Basilicata” article.  I am a little fanatical about this pub (does it show?) but take pleasure in knowing  I am in veeeeery good company.

←

Hmmm, if I can draw a corollary to the audiophiles out there, it 'sounds' like The Art of Eating would be The Absolute Sound while Gourmet would be the omni-present Stereophile...

Edited August 1, 2009 by twomartinis (log)

[Marmish]

I like Food and Wine and also will second Cuisine at Home. It has no ads and the recipes are good and well categorized. I also have a couple of their books, the grilling one, and one other. Most recipes appeal to me and there is a good balance of simple and more complicated dishes.

[nakji]

I pick up food magazines fairly rarely since I don't have regular access to English-language ones, but when I find it, I like to buy Saveur. I bought the June/July 2010 "Market" issue and read it cover to cover; I like that it's less recipe-oriented and more about features. I usually look at Bon Appetit but am never inspired to buy it - I can't quite put my finger on why.

BBC Good Food has supplied me with some solid recipes, but seems generally focused on simple/beginner-style dishes. I remember fondly the Sainsbury's magazines my aunt used to send me from the UK when I was a teen - do they still put them out, I wonder?

[Anonymous Modernist 2882]

I thought I would post this question here, rather than some of the other food forums I am a member of I suspect that the people around here are more serious about food.

The problem I find with most food magazines is that they are too housewife focused. Many still give measurements in volume rather than weight. Or my pet hate - "a stick of butter". I am not interested in countless recipes on how to make trifle, or roast a chicken, or bake a potato. None of these magazines will ever mention sous-vide or even discuss the place of cutting edge technology in the kitchen.

The only magazine I subscribe to on my iPad is "Saveur", but even then it uses imperial measurements and does not cover any modernist technique. I like Saveur because of the outstanding food journalism and the great photography.

So - what magazines do you really rate, and why?

[Anonymous Modernist 2623]

Which languages do you understand, or at least, you can you read ?

[Anonymous Modernist 4764]

One magazine I would highly recommend would be Art Culinaire, which has been at times anindispensable resource for current trends that occur in the culinary world. By the way it's not written for housewives

[Anonymous Modernist 2882]

nullptr, I speak English, Malay, Chinese, and have enough understanding of German, Italian, and French to get by. Spanish is about the only international language I can't speak. Do you have any suggestions?

pnfloyd, thanks for that ... I will look for it on my iPad!

[Anonymous Modernist 665]

Some more suggestions (BTW, I also like Art Culinaire, especially their current 100th volume):

-- Apicius (Montagud Editores -- in Spanish, but also in international editions incl. English)

-- YAM (www.Y-A-M.fr -- in French)

-- Port Culinaire (www.port-culinaire.de -- in German)

Happy reading!

[Anonymous Modernist 2623]

Keith_W said:

nullptr, I speak English, Malay, Chinese, and have enough understanding of German, Italian, and French to get by.

Wow! That's impressing.

Port Culinaire is my recommandation as well ( which you can easily get with amazon.com )

Additionally (also in german ) "jc -journal culinaire" which focuses more on the scientific and cultural approach.