PrintWhat food and/or wine related print magazines do you read?
And what do you like/dislike about them?
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19 Comments:
I get Food and Wine, Bon appetit, Cuisine, and, my favorite, Cook's Illustrated. It is my favorite because it is kind of like watching Alton Brown. It not only tells you what to do, but what not to do. Also, the recipes are reliable.
Mich23 at 5:04PM on 04/11/07
Cook's Illustrated is the BEST - that's the only one I read regularly, mostly because it puts other food mags to shame, recipe-wise.
producestories at 5:11PM on 04/11/07
Cook's Illustrated. It is precise & practical which allows me to be successful when I prepare the food item. The taste testing & equipment sections are always helpful.
JEP at 5:56PM on 04/11/07
I just started getting Cooks Illustrated and I love it!. For a while I was getting Martha Stewarts Living but I found it was a bit too stuffy and canceled it. I do get the smaller food magazine called Everyday Food. I think I have outgrown that one though and will not renew.
ThatGirl153 at 6:38PM on 04/11/07
I got an issue or two of CI but wasn't into it. The instructions are of course helpful but I had no desire to make the food if I couldn't see a picture of it or if its in b/w. They have tiny colored pictures on the last page but I still am not a fan. (Plus the first recipe I tried out of it was awful...)
I stick to Gourmet, Saveur, and Cuisine at Home
Gourmet tends to have a lot of ads but the recipes are usually really on the mark. Saveur has really interesting articles and the recipes, although they may have hard to find ingredients, are really intriguing. Its a really wonderfully put together magazine. Cuisine at Home is my guilty pleasure. The food is pretty simple yet tasty (some tweaking may be necessary). I'm mostly a fan of their step-by-step procedures and their kitchen tricks and tips.
pezbabypez at 7:26PM on 04/11/07
I get Eating Well, Gourmet and Food and Wine. Gourmet is my favorite lately - I love Ruth Reichl's editorials, and I can't stop looking at that blue cover with the cake! Eating Well is awesome too, but Food and Wine has been disappointing lately compared with these two. Also, Punk Planet has a cool column called "DIY Food: Everything That Eats, Lives" by Stacey Gengo. Topics have included raw milk, mustard, icebox cakes, and mushroom logs (!).
K at 8:58PM on 04/11/07
I been reading Cook's Illustrated since 1993. Food and Wine the last 3 years. Southern Living on and off. Saveur when the mood grabs me. I don't like Gourmet, it just doesn't represent my demographic. I don't care about pictures, I need content.
JerzeeTomato at 12:46AM on 04/12/07
I am a magazine addict! I get Saveur, Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, Gourmet through subscriptions...in the past I did have a subscription to Cooks Illustrated & Cook's Country, but I found I enjoyed watching America's Test Kitchen more than the magazines...although I will occasionally purchase an issue if I see something interesting on the cover. I will occasionally purchase Cuisine at Home, and am thinking I should be subscribing to that one too, because I'm purchasing it more & more. There is also a hot pepper magazine I've picked up a few times....don't remember the name, but it was pretty interesting.
I just started a subscription to Martha Stewart Living...she has great crafty ideas too....but her Everyday Food magazine is a bit too simple for me.
There are a few more magazines I subscribe too, but they're not specifically food related...I told you...I'm a junkie! :-)
mepolo at 8:58AM on 04/12/07
gourmet, bon appetit and I used to get cooks illustrated.
KItkat at 9:45AM on 04/12/07
I get Gourmet and Saveur... And I like Gourmet better because it has more recipes, but I think the recipes I have tried from Saveur have come out a lot better.
Keprydak at 10:05AM on 04/12/07
Saveur, Food Illustrated, cucina italiana, Italian Food & Living & Gourmet are my favorite magazines, because they are like "Life Magazine" for a foodie. I don't need a magazine to show me basic techniques, provide recipes or give me advice on what kind of colander to buy.
I want a magazine (or cookbook for that matter) that offers history, culture, & personality that puts a particular food, ingredient, restaurant or person into context. If I am reading about Hungarian porkolt, I want more than a recipe...I want the anecdotes that bring the role of that dish in to perspective and make me appreciate it.
I can google data, go to betty crocker or thumb through the joy of cooking if all I want is a list of ingredients, steps & methods. This is why I subscribe to saveur & a few others, then pick and choose from the newsstand.
I do subscribe to Cooks Illustrated, but I have a love hate relationship with it. I find the magazine & the show preachy, pretentious & arrogant. They assume that by trying 100 different recipes for apple pie that they have perfected the authentic, all American dessert.
I will admit that they do come up with fool proof recipes...but that is all they are....once you have deconstructed & reverse engineered something as American as apple pie, you strip away any personality or character that you formerly associated with it. You reduce it from being an American icon, to a list of ingredients, methods & cooking times.
The premise of the magazine is that they know better than you what is the best....take your pick: recipe, method, utensil, pan, sauce, ingredient, etc.... They state everything with such confident authority, that they make their opinion seem to be fact....
The only true fact is that, while they may have tested 100 recipes for something, there are thousands more that they didn't....and somewhere, someones grandma is making her apple pie the same way as she has for 50 years...and it is far, far better than theirs!
That being said....I do like to read about their testing, development of methods & all the "cooking trivia" features and articles....which is why I continue to subscribe.
2qrs at 11:13AM on 04/12/07
I relish every copy of Gourmet, Food & Wine and Bon Appetit magazines. The gorgeous covers and inside photos literally make my mouth water. I get extra excited if they come, say, on a Friday night when I've had a long week. I love nothing more than to sit on the couch in my sweats with a copy of one of these magazines and a glass of red wine. It's the equivelent to a hot bubblebath for me.
That said, I don't always love the recipes in the above magazines, as they often require expensive and exotic ingredients that would take half the day to find. But I get a lot of ideas from them, which is enough to keep me as a customer.
I love Eating Well because it focuses on fresh, clean foods, and it really inspires me. The recipes are pretty basic, but I enjoy the educational articles they have on subjects like organic farming and vitamin nutrition. One feature I love is their "5 ways to make [fill in blank]. They'll take something like a grocery-store roasted chicken and make five things from it. It's not rocket science, but it often gets me out of a cooking rut.
I love Delicious magazine, which I think is an Australian publication. The recipes, the photos - everything - is awe-inspiring. Too bad it costs $9.50!!
Clare K at 12:17PM on 04/12/07
I love Saveur, and I also subscribe to Gourmet. Saveur seems to be more then just food. I like the history and detail that the articles often go into.
Sweetie at 1:46PM on 04/12/07
I subscribe to Gourmet, Martha Stewart Living and Bon Appetit. I will not renew Bon Appetit, since I don't enjoy it as much as Gourmet. The writing is so much better in Gourmet, but I'm sure that's just because Ruth is the Editor. MSL is fine, but I've found that their test kitchens used to be a lot more accurate. Disappointing, however beautiful the magazine is.
hereandthe at 2:35PM on 04/12/07
I wish there was an equivalent of Jane magazine for food, something that feels young and playful, with a personality, instead of serious and stodgy like the magazines we have now. I like reading the features, but frankly photos of food porn do nothing for me these days, and that seems to be most of what the current reads are now. The Martha Stewart magazines are the most fun by far, and the art direction is frequently, insanely amazing, but they still leave me a little cold.
Lia Bulaong at 2:49PM on 04/12/07
Thanks everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!
FKC at 3:21PM on 04/12/07
I'm hurt. Nobody even mentioned The Hungover Gourmet. Sniff... ;-)
Hungover Gourmet at 9:48AM on 04/13/07
I have an on-off relationship with Gourmet. Sometimes I love it. Sometimes I find the 3-1 ratio of adverts to actual content really frustrating! From a UK perspective the Food Monthly in Sunday's Observer newspaper is a must!
Jules at 10:32AM on 04/13/07
Lia, I believe CHOW attempted to fill that niche, but they only published one or two issues and are online-only now and merged with Chowhound and bought by CNet. Maybe they'll do a print version again? (In addition to loving food, I am a magazine junkie and new ones always catch my eye.)
Or perhaps Serious Eats could get in on that market. Magazines are expensive to start up, require a lot of research, hard to keep going, and require lots of advance planning, but I bet you guys could do it.
I can't say enough good things about Fine Cooking; I wish Gourmet would do more things like that one issue where they had a literary supplement, and Saveur has good articles but leaves me dissatisfied.
toastykitten at 11:28AM on 04/14/07