A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

TART AND SKEPTICAL: Today's Chicago Tribune (registration required, I think) has a great List piece today -- the top fifty magazines "that you'll find on staffers' nightstands and coffee tables, in our backpacks and on our car seats and on the edges of our bathtubs. These are the periodicals for which we pay good money."

And number one is a household favorite here:

1) Cook's Illustrated. The measure of a magazine is how well it covers its chosen field, and in that regard, Cook's is a gem, notable both for the quality of its recipes, for its testing of kitchen gadgets and for the obsessiveness of its recipe testing ("Now I had solved the problem of the soggy crust, but there was still work to do. The egg wash had proven only deflective, not impermeable. . . ."). Even if you're not a foodie, this magazine's tart, skeptical prose is well worth reading, and its product reviews are as trustworthy as can be, given its exhaustive testing and the fact that it doesn't take any ads.

Cook's Illustrated (and their series of books) has changed the way Jen and I cook almost everything, from linguini with garlic and olive oil to pan-roasted chicken in a shallot-vermouth sauce to their incredible dry rub for barbecue, which Jen has mastered. They even figured out how to make scrambled eggs better.

Enjoy the list.

(Via Romenesko.)

edited to add: TMFTML has thoughts on the list. Read them.