Soups Stews & Chilis Hardcover – October 1, 2010

I was so excited to get this book. We love soups and stews. This will hit the next tag sale. Was so disappointed. More chatter and not enough recipes with just terrible pictures. Expected more from cooks country.

A few years ago my husband scheduled to undergo a surgery that put him on a completely liquid diet for a full month, and since I had zero experience making soups or broths, I bought this cookbook so that I could provide a variety of liquid foods. This book proved to be invaluable to me during this period, although I was limited at that time soups that were either pureed or wouldn't suffer too badly from being food-processed within an inch of their lives, regardless of whether or not the recipe call for it. After my husband's recovery, however, (which went very smoothly and without a hitch, thank you), we discovered a dazzling array of new soups and stews through this cookbook, many of which have become much-beloved staples in our household. Not only does this book teach you how to make soups, stews, and chilis, but it also has product review sections so you know what’s best for your recipe, and more that teach you how to clean and prepare ingredients that you may otherwise not be familiar with. This is a standard thing for Cooks Illustrated to do, but since I was not subscribed to their magazine at the time, these informative sections really blew my mind! This cookbook has taught me so much and brought so many new, amazing foods into our lives. I recommend it to absolutely everyone, and I’ve even started giving these away to friends who are getting married. If you’re thinking about getting this, you ABSOLUTELY should!

I needed a gift for a dear friend who loves to cook as I do...this was the perfect gift! It is an incredible cookbook, I highly recommend it...my husband and I have made so many of the soups, stews and chilis, the stained pages in the book are proof of that! My friend loves to cookbook too, it's top of the list and sure does come in handy if you live anywhere that gets cold weather! Gift it... your family and friends will LOVE it!

I have no idea how to make soup. I purchased this book to learn some classic recipes and teach myself the basics. It does give you a lot of "how to" information about different ingredients, how to cut/chop them, what things can do for flavor, etc. It is a good learning tool, however I've made about 6 soups (so far) and they all seem to be ...lacking flavor. So far I have found that each of them need more of something. It offers a good base for soups and stews I think, but overall the recipes are somewhat labor intensive (if you follow the instructions) and need to be doctored. I'm not counting the recipe that was so bad that we dumped out after 3 hours of prep and cooking and ate hotdogs instead. I think that was just a flavor preference. I'm going to keep using this cookbook and if I find other recipes that are amazing (as is) I may update my rating but so far I'm not terribly impressed.

There are so many delicious sounding recipes in this cookbook. African Stew, and so many others.I am so glad that I have begun switching my cookbooks over to my Kindle (iPad). I can get an entire Kindle library on my iPad. I can take the heaviest, bulkiest, awkward cookbook to bed to read. It is also easy to keep my cookbook open to the page I need to read.

I love Cook's Illustrated books. They are thorough and take the guess work out of a lot of recipes. Beware that making soup is complicated! And many of the recipes require fresh produce (such as fresh corn), which we can only get a few months out of the year. I like the book, but only when I am in the mood for an afternoon in the kitchen.

The book arrived on time, and was in the condition described. Thank you.

Helpful how-to’s included at the beginning of the book and at some points in the recipes. See photos I’ve shared. As you can see, all the colour photos of the finished soups are in one section in the middle. There’s a special chapter for speedy soups.

Great cookbook with easy to make soup and stew recipes

An ok book,but I think for $50 there shouldnt be black and white pictures. The pages are thin and poor quality.