100 Techniques

This is America's Test Kitchen's first book devoted to technique. It presents 100 methods the test cooks developed to make everyday cooking simpler, smarter and more reliable, and it pairs them with more than 200 modern recipes that show each one working in a home kitchen. The range is wide: tender burger patties, grill-roasted leg of lamb, pan sauces for cutlets, homemade duck confit, fluffy griddled pancakes, tempered chocolate, caramel and French pastry.

The book has three sections. The first, Essentials Every Home Cook Should Know, covers core skills. It explains why salt should go on both before and during cooking, using Roasted Bone-In Chicken Breasts and Crispy Salt and Pepper Shrimp as examples. It also teaches a high-low roasting method for cooking any cut of salmon until silky.

The middle section, Techniques You Didn't Know You Couldn't Live Without, gathers methods the test kitchen found by approaching problems from unexpected directions. You can bake a crusty, golden pizza with a bubbling top in a skillet, or make restaurant-quality french fries by starting the potatoes in room-temperature oil.

The last section, The Bucket List, is for ambitious projects cooks have long wanted to try. These include Texas-style beef ribs on an ordinary kettle grill, bacon or gravlax cured in your own refrigerator, and a layer cake baked, assembled and decorated for a special occasion.