CookSmart: Perfect Recipes for Every Day

I am a good cook who also appreciates the reasons why something does or doesn't work, so the format of the book appealed to me. My first run was with the 90-minute pot roast. I was following the recipe meticulously until my husband said "90 minutes at 450 for a 2-1/2 pound chuck roast? No way!" We checked the roast after 60 minutes and it was definitly time to pull it out of the oven. I think the recipe was poorly edited. It should have said to heat the oven to 450 and then lower it to 325 when putting the roast in. Anyway, the flavor of the roast was good, and the lesson learned was to keep common sense in mind when following other recipes from the book.

I have two other Pam Anderson cookbooks, and loved them. Her recipes are perfectly seasoned and prepared. I really enjoy reading her trials and errors in perfecting the perfect recipe. This book doesn't seem to have as many recipes that I might like, but I cannot say for certain this is true. That is the only reason I gave it 4 stars rather than 5. If I cooked more recipes from this book, I might raise the rating to 5 stars.

Pam Anderson is a great cook---every recipe tastes delicious. She creates recipes that are easy to follow and usually suggests variations. I am a big fan of hers.

I truly enjoy Pam Anderson's recipes, which are always a hit with family and friends. I particularly love her waffles. In fact, I don't think I've had better waffles in any restaurant. I also enjoy all of her pasta salad variations. This is one cookbook worth keeping on your shelf.

Not what I expected. It's more of a dissection , not a collection of recipes.

This, along with the Perfect Recipe, are my go-to cookbooks. Pam's explanations illustrate that she has done all the trial and error, so you don't have to. So many of the recipes are the best I've ever tried. In CookSmart, my favorites are the chocolate cake and the blueberry pie. The chocolate cake is truly the best chocolate cake you'll ever make. However, I have had to make a couple minor adjustments to the recipe. First, the baking time is too long. Maybe it's just my oven or my cake pans, but 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees makes the cake too dry. So I recommend either lowering the temp or baking for only 25-30 minutes. Second, the frosting is much better with two sticks of butter instead of one. With only one stick of butter, it just isn't as creamy or flavorful.The blueberry pie is as perfect as the recipe title suggests. I make it often during the summer. I omit the lemon juice and grated rind, otherwise I think the tartness overpowers the blueberries. Another tip is after you have cooked the potato starch mixture, let it cool to almost room temp before you fold in the rest of the blueberries, otherwise all of the whole blueberries break down to mush, which still tastes fine, but it's nicer to have some intact whole blueberries in the finished pie.For the awesomest apple pie, meatloaf, chicken pot pie, and mashed potatoes you'll ever make, try her other book, The Perfect Recipe.

First off, I am a 55 year old Male. I like to cook, but I am not skilled in any way. I look at cooking as if it was a science. Pam writes her books so I can even understand how to create her amazing dishes. And the recipes are simple and about as homecooked-by-grandma as you can possibly get. I thought I was able to cook a great turkey, and I have cooked dozens of them over the years, but until I started using Pam's techniques, I never realized I could improve upon my own attempts. Now I follow her methods religiously. Apple pie! My favorite! Ever slice into an apple pie and you find a huge cavity in between the top shell and the apples? Ever scoop out a nice slice of pie and have a lot of liquid running into your pie plate? Pam pre-cooks her apples partway then assembles her pie! Brilliant! I don't know if she was the first to come up with this wonderful technique, but I learned how to make masterful pies using her method. And ever wonder what kind of apples are best to use for Apple Pie? Heck she bought hundreds of apples of dozens of varieties and tried them all. You don't have to, she's done the work.I call her a cooking nerd! I hope she would appreciate that tag, I chose it lovingly. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, famous architect said "God is in the details". And Pam gets the details right!

This is a very unusual cookbook. For each recipe, there's a few pages about experiments she did to come up with the final recipe.In that, this reads a whole lot like Cooks Illustrated.Frankly, I like to read what WORKS, not what didn't, then finally, what did.Since one of her goals was to make things "simple", it is very hard to know that the recipe calls for something because it works, or it's just the thing you can find at an average supermarket.I want this to be a comment. It's not going to turn off everyone.But if you'd rather read an Alton Brown book than Cooks Illustrated, this may not be an ideal book for you.