Customer Review(s)
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Great magazine needs
Comment: an index...they are very concise, the back stories to the recipe testings are funny, entertaining, and great to read while, you wait for bread to rise, chicken to marinate, meat to brine, etc, etc.....my son loves all of the recipes I have made from this magazine (25 +), my picky eater husband also loves the recipes especially the chicken teriyaki (broiler method, plus I add honey to the sauce....), orange chicken, sichuan green beans with pork, dark chocolate cupcakes, cuban roast pork, mushroom risotto, easy oven roasted chicken, blueberry scones, brown sugar cookies, and the Christmas supper I prepared was also very good (though time consuming) shrimp bisque, beef tenderloin, mashed potatoes, flourless chocolate torte, on and on...you get the picture...drooooolllllll
the only problem you will have (if you want to see it as a problem)...is the expanding waistlines that your family will procure after you begin cooking these recipes...!
Customer Rating: Summary: Not for the casual cook
Comment: Gosh I never knew cooking could be so... boring! Like many other reviewers, I was annoyed by the profuse amount of advertising included with a subscription to this magazing. The worst part is how each magazine has a dense construction paper-like front cover ad actually stapled into the binding of the magazine itself, which makes removing a hassle. So much for paying extra for a magazine without advertisements!
I generally subscribe to cooking magazines for inspiration to try new dishes, but the dull writing style and lack of pictures (especially color photos) in Cooks Illustrated really never made me very enthusiastic about the recipes. On the bright side, their more scientific approach to finding the 'optimum' recipe for a certain dish, and discovering the purpose of how adding ingredients led to a successful recipe, is quite interesting to a serious cook. I can certainly understand why some people enjoy this magazine, but it was not for me.
Considering a subsription to CI costs about twice as much as the other cooking magazines for only half of the issues, I felt that the magazine really lacked content or many interesting recipes.
Lastly, I originally subscribed to CI based on all of the positive reviews here on amazon, but to my disappointment I received three letters informing me that my subscription was running out and that I should resubscribe BEFORE I even received m first issue! Pretty tacky business practices if you ask me. In the end, I only received 5 issues of the expected 6 issue subscription, but I had lost interest in the magazine by then so never bothered to track down a 6th issue.
