I even burned the s$#t out of my hand...

Have you ever used a recipe from Cook's magazine?



or a Cook's cookbook?

The recipes are tested and retested and retested to come up with the absolute pinnacle of flavor, etc. (If you've ever seen the show America's Test Kitchen, that is the same people...)
Christopher Kimball is the guy in charge.

These recipes used to be our absolute, hands down favorites. That is until we had kids... Because once you have kids, who has time to spend 3 hours preparing a meal? Joy of Cooking has been my go to book.

Anyways - I guess that I must have forgotten the truth about Cook's Illustrated when I found a recipe for a pork roast. I skimmed the recipe, thought it looked great and added it to the menu. I prepped the roast the night before, cutting tiny slits into it and loading the slits with cloves of garlic that had been tossed with herbs. I even gave the damn thing an herbal massage before wrapping a la saran for it's relaxing night in the fridge. It was a little jobby, but I thought it would be worth it.

The next day, I took out the roast and the recipe to begin to prepare dinner. The process began at 4 pm. I expected to be able to put dinner on the table around 5:30. I was wrong. Oh so wrong.
Get this - according to the recipe you put it in the oven for 30 minutes at a certain temperature, take it out for 30 minutes and then put it back in for 30 more at a different temperature, and then you let it rest for 15 after it's all done. At each step in the process you take it's temperature. (one can see with a clumsy cook and so many trips into and out of the oven why I ended up hearing my own hand frying on the roasting pan.)
Well, at 6:15 the roast was RAW, which if it were beef, I would be thrilled. But it's pork, and as much as I like to pretend intestinal worms would be okay - you know, so slimming - they really would not be.




SOOOO, I nuked it. And you know how a potato from the microwave is decidedly inferior to one that has been oven roasted. Yes, 2 and a half hours later - not counting the massage the night before, we had crappy microwaved meat. EW.


I don't think I will use a Cook's recipe again, although I may use the spice mixture. Joy of Cooking I am sorry I betrayed you. It totally wasn't worth it! Oh, Christopher Kimball, get that look off your face. It was a mistake!