Table Of Content150 REGIONAL RECIPES
YOU SHOULD BE MAKING
NO MATTER WHERE YOU LIVE
BY THE EDITORS AT AMERICA’S TEST KITCHEN
Copyright © 2015 by the Editors at America’s Test Kitchen All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced or transmitted in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the
publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
America’s Test Kitchen
17 Station Street
Brookline, MA 02445
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cook’s Country eats local : 150 regional recipes
you should be making no matter where you live / by the editors at America’s Test Kitchen.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-936493-99-9 (alk. paper)
E-book ISBN: 978-1-940352-29-9
1. Cooking, American. I. Cook’s country. II. America’s test kitchen (Television program)
TX715.C78535 2015
641.5973--dc23
2015005574
Paperback: $26.95 US
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Distributed by
Penguin Random House Publisher Services
1745 Broadway
New York, NY 10019
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR: Jack Bishop EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, BOOKS: Elizabeth Carduff
EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Lori Galvin
SENIOR EDITOR: Debra Hudak
ASSISTANT EDITOR: Melissa Herrick EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Samantha Ronan DESIGN
DIRECTOR: Amy Klee
ART DIRECTOR: Greg Galvan
DESIGNER: Jen Kanavos Hoffman
MAPS: Michael Newhouse
PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR: Julie Cote ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR,
PHOTOGRAPHY: Steve Klise STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER: Daniel J. van Ackere
ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY: Keller + Keller and Carl Tremblay FOOD STYLING: Catrine
Kelty and Marie Piraino PHOTOSHOOT KITCHEN TEAM:
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Chris O’Connor TEST COOK: Daniel Cellucci ASSISTANT TEST
COOK: Matthew Fairman PRODUCTION DIRECTOR: Guy Rochford SENIOR
PRODUCTION MANAGER: Jessica Lindheimer Quirk PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT
SPECIALIST: Christine Walsh PRODUCTION AND IMAGING SPECIALISTS: Heather
Dube, Dennis Noble, Lauren Robbins, and Jessica Voas PROJECT MANAGER: Britt Dresser
COPY EDITOR: Barbara Wood
PROOFREADER: Pat Jalbert-Levine INDEXER: Elizabeth Parson
Contents
NAVIGATING THIS E-BOOK
WELCOME TO AMERICA’S TEST KITCHEN
Preface
Chapter 1: New England and the Mid-Atlantic
Chapter 2: Appalachia and the South
Chapter 3: The Midwest and Great Plains
Chapter 4: Texas and the West
Dining Destinations
Conversions and Equivalents
Master Recipe Index
Index
Navigating this E-Book
This eBook includes a Table of Contents that allows you to jump to any
chapter. And each chapter has its own table of contents with links to
every recipe in the chapter.
We have also created a Recipe Index that lists all the recipes in the
book, divided by chapter, in one place. You can access the Recipe
Index from the Table of Contents. (It also appears at the end of the
book.) Each title in the Recipe Index is a link that will take you directly
to that recipe.
This cookbook is filled with sidebars; throughout the book there are
links to this material where appropriate.
Most eBook reading devices also offer a search function that allows
you to type in exactly what you are looking for. Please read the
documentation for your particular eBook reader for more information
on its search function and any other navigational features it may offer.
WELCOME TO AMERICA’S TEST
KITCHEN
This book has been tested, written, and edited by the folks at America’s Test
Kitchen, a very real 2,500-square-foot kitchen located just outside of
Boston. It is the home of Cook’s Illustrated magazine and Cook’s Country
magazine and is the Monday-through-Friday destination for more than four
dozen test cooks, editors, food scientists, tasters, and cookware specialists.
Our mission is to test recipes over and over again until we understand how
and why they work and until we arrive at the “best” version.
We start the process of testing a recipe with a complete lack of
preconceptions, which means that we accept no claim, no theory, no
technique, and no recipe at face value. We simply assemble as many
variations as possible, test a half-dozen of the most promising, and taste the
results blind. We then construct our own hybrid recipe and continue to test
it, varying ingredients, techniques, and cooking times until we reach a
consensus. The result, we hope, is the best version of a particular recipe, but
we realize that only you can be the final judge of our success (or failure). As
we like to say in the test kitchen, “We make the mistakes, so you don’t have
to.”
All of this would not be possible without a belief that good cooking,
much like good music, is indeed based on a foundation of objective
technique. Some people like spicy foods and others don’t, but there is a right
way to sauté, there is a best way to cook a pot roast, and there are
measurable scientific principles involved in producing perfectly beaten,
stable egg whites. This is our ultimate goal: to investigate the fundamental
principles of cooking so that you become a better cook. It is as simple as
that.
If you’re curious to see what goes on behind the scenes at America’s Test
Kitchen, check out our daily blog, The Feed, at
AmericasTestKitchenFeed.com, which features kitchen snapshots, exclusive
recipes, video tips, and much more. You can watch us work (in our actual
test kitchen) by tuning in to America’s Test Kitchen
(AmericasTestKitchen.com) or Cook’s Country from America’s Test
Kitchen (CooksCountryTV.com) on public television. Tune in to America’s
Test Kitchen Radio (ATKradio.com) on public radio to listen to insights,
tips, and techniques that illuminate the truth about real home cooking. Want
to hone your cooking skills or finally learn how to bake—from an
America’s Test Kitchen test cook? Enroll in a cooking class at our online
cooking school at OnlineCookingSchool.com. And find information about
subscribing to Cook’s Illustrated magazine at CooksIllustrated.com or
Cook’s Country magazine at CooksCountry.com. Both magazines are
published every other month. However you choose to visit us, we welcome
you into our kitchen, where you can stand by our side as we test our way to
the best recipes in America.
FACEBOOK.COM/AMERICASTESTKITCHEN
TWITTER.COM/TESTKITCHEN
YOUTUBE.COM/AMERICASTESTKITCHEN
INSTAGRAM.COM/TESTKITCHEN
PINTEREST.COM/TESTKITCHEN
AMERICASTESTKITCHEN.TUMBLR.COM
GOOGLE.COM/+AMERICASTESTKITCHEN
Preface
Back in the 1970s, I drove across America on three different occasions,
stopping in Tennessee diners, truck stops in Oklahoma, and local eateries
from the Deep South to the Texas Panhandle to the fast-food haunts of
Southern California. Not all of the food was brilliant, but once in a while I
came across a recipe that was so special that it told the story of that
particular place—it couldn’t have been served anywhere else.
Yes, I was familiar with most of what New England has to offer, like
Connecticut Steamed Cheeseburgers and Chicken Riggies, and I knew
something about Muffulettas and Oyster Po’ Boys from New Orleans as
well as Cheddar Beer Soup from Wisconsin, but I had never tasted
Moravian Sugar Cake, Sweet Potato Sonker from the Carolinas, Iowa Loose
Meat Sandwiches (these sound awful and don’t look so good but they are
fabulous), Millionaire Pie, Texas Caviar, or Tick Tock Orange Sticky Rolls.
For half a century, local American regional specialties have been
relegated to the back burner—community cookbook recipes that few of us
took seriously. The food scene was all about the hottest New York, LA, or
San Francisco chefs, the “new” American cuisine rather than the cooking of
our past. And, to be fair, much of the older repertoire did need a fresh look
to make it vital and modern without losing its essence. (That’s where our
test kitchen can help out—we rebuild recipes as if they are old cars, fixing
the transmissions and restoring body work to new condition!) Plus, many
recipes depend on hard-to-find local ingredients, and we work hard to make
these recipes accessible to a national audience.
Cook’s Country Eats Local is the result of almost a decade of
investigation by the editors of Cook’s Country magazine who have scoured
the country looking for local specialties. We attend local food festivals,
interview local restaurateurs and cooks, and spend weeks at a time on the
road, the “Blue Highways” (small two-lane roads) that many writers have
found so inspirational. What we have discovered is a whole new world of
American cooking, recipes that have flown beneath the national radar for
generations only to come back into the spotlight in time to honor our own
culinary history.
Who wouldn’t want a recipe for Thoroughbred Pie, made with butter,
bourbon, and a layer of melted chocolate on the bottom? Or Iron Range
Porketta, which is packed with the flavor of fennel (fresh and seeds), or
Knoephla Soup, made with chicken and tiny dumplings (just squeeze the
batter out of a zipper-lock bag that has one corner cut off)? Bierocks (also
called Runsas) are more than tasty beef buns filled with beef, cabbage, and
cheese. And, one of my favorites, Bee Sting Cake is made with lush vanilla
custard filling, and the cake itself is a brioche-style cake with a honey-
almond crust. I’ll take that dessert over a French tart any day.
Plus, Cook’s Country Eats Local provides regional maps with
information about where to go to eat many of these recipes locally, from
Maine to Southern California. And, of course, these recipes have been put
through their paces at the Cook’s Country test kitchen so you know that they
will work the first time and every time.
When I was growing up, Marie Briggs, our town baker, was known for
her hand-size molasses cookies that were soft, not hard, and had the salty
tang of good blackstrap molasses. It was her signature recipe, although she
also made top-notch biscuits and anadama bread as well. Just like Marie,
there are thousands of cooks around the country who have their own local
specialties, recipes that are tied to small towns and their history. This is the
food of America’s past and future, the recipes that make us who we are
today.
Thanks for stopping by. We are proud of this collection of recipes and
hope that many of these dishes become part of your culinary repertoire, no
matter where you live.
CHRISTOPHER KIMBALL
Founder and Editor,
Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country
Host, America’s Test Kitchen and
Cook’s Country from America’s Test Kitchen
