Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

it's hard to decide on just ONE... because I like several for various reasons:

Cooking Light is one I subscribed for a while... but Vegetarian Times and Everyday Food I find are very good too.

Cook's Illustrated is still my favorite for quality of recipes and being an interesting read (plus the explanations of how they develop their recipes are often applicable to other dishes as well). The others have great photos, but so much of what they offer seems to be available online.

My favorites are Bon Appetit ~ great recipes; Gourmet ~ good recipes and beautiful photos; Cooks Illustrated ~ ditto above and Food and Wine ~ seems as though everytime I let it lapse, they then have fabulous themed issues and my selfish sister won't give me her copy!

I keep my issues for about a year (scan in what I want to save) and then I give them to the local tech school, which has a culinary program.

I've found they all tend to get a little repetitive after awhile.

I had Food&Wine for 3 years and switched to Gourmet and a few months in I added Bon Appetite and continued to pick up single issues of F&W at the grocery store. Several months ago, Gourmet subscription ran out and I didn't renew. Same with Bon App. Now, I pick up single issues of what perks my interest. And when I had a subscritpion to F&W, I'd pick up single issues of BA and Gourmet.

I think the times are changing...online is faster, offers more variety, you read what you want, instead of reading what they think you want.

Saveur and CI would be a god combo. Saveur for the great photos and writing about food and CI for practical information and recipe know-how. CI only comes out 6x/year so it's nice to have something else in the mail also.

I love Everyday Food, from Martha Stewart. The recipes are all easy, quick to prepare, and generally use easy to find ingredients. The issues have great advice and good ideas. There's no travel, restaurant edit - it's focused on recipes, cooking great meals and desserts.

Food & Wine usually has just the right combination of recipes, articles, and product info. Gourmet takes itself a little too seriously for me. Bon Appetit can be great, but has a problem with advertisements--count the full pages devoted to such and then look at the total page count. And publishers wonder why we've turned to the web.

I also like Cooking Light, as much for the lifestyle content as recipes, which I confess I have a tendency to "fatten up". I used to adore La Cucina Italia or whatever the title was, but the new publication just isn't it.

Food Arts is great fun, if you can nab a free sub; otherwise, it's pricey. Fine Cooking is also a little spendy for what you get. Cook's Illustrated lost me entirely when the first line of their "Red Wines for the Holidays" article began: "Now, none of us drinks red wine..." Ahem. If that's the case, I can ask the guy next door who sits outside with his Mountain Creeks and a flyswatter.

No way could I ever choose just one. Gourmet has always been wonderful, and has a number of great features I couldn't do without. Also, the photography is exceptional. Saveur has the best photography of all, but you won't make many of their recipes. It's a "read and dream" magazine. Bon Appetit has fabulous Thanksgiving issues, and I save them year after year. They also occasionally have great summer recipes. Cook's Illustrated is another one I couldn't live without. I always assume their recipes will be the "best," after all that exhaustive research, and that isn't always the case, but I love reading it and getting good tips on techniques, products, and cooking gadgets. I once subscribed to Martha Stewart Living, and found it very annoying. (a bit like Martha...) Food and Wine was another trial subscription for me--one that I let lapse. But everyone has their own favorites built up over time. It will be fun for you to develop your own list of favorites!

Saveur.

Another vote for Saveur.

saveur.

I only subscribe to one magazine and that is "The Art of Eating." I've never cooked from it, but I love the articles, and reviews of cookbooks.

I have issues. No, I'm serious. I have so many issues of so many cooking magazines that I don't know how I got to this point. When did it get so out of hand?? I get Gourmet, Bon Ap, Martha, Everyday Food, Fine Cooking and Cooks Illustrated. To be honest, about four of them started off as presents from well intentioned friends/family who knew I liked to cook and I have considered narrowing down. Poor trees. I buy Food & Wine and Saveur as a treat when I'm in the train station going to visit someone, as if I need an excuse to buy another magazine.

I will say that I enjoy the articles and cut a lot of savory recipes out of Gourmet and Bon Ap. I get cute dessert and concept/decorating ideas out of Martha. But overall, I actually get the most use out of Everyday Food. It's one of those magazines that I read and immediately run to the grocery store to make something.

saveur if you want the best read, cook's illustrated/cook's country if you just want consistent techniques/recipes without crap advertisements.

I get most of them. I would opt for Cook's Illustrated above all others. I find it mroe useful than any other. The rest have advertising. Without advertising or being beholden to advertisers CI doesn't have kiss anyone's ass, a plus in my book. I want a publication to call bullshit where they see bullshit.

Plate, its a Chef's trade Magazine. A lot of excellent recipes currently used in higher end restaurants, good theme focused issues. But you can't get it unless you are in the trades, even then, if you are not a chef it is pricey. The only magazine i have never thrown out an issue of after i read it.

I'll put a vote in for Gastronomica. I know it's a journal, not a magazine, but you can get recipes from websites that are in most of the other food magazines.

Because everything else has been mentioned Art Culinaire. It's actually a large format hard cover "magazine" and I am a big fan of great food photography.

nobody said Eating Well - just got a good deal and I love their email newsletters!

I'm a fan of Food & Wine (though I still struggle to ever find any of the wines they recommend, the recipes are almost always wonderful and there are some great articles)!

Also, Cooking Light has good food and good tips for healthy living..

One word - Saveur! Amazing articles, information, photography -- it transports you!

If you have a big enough library, I buy them (all of them) in the library bookstore for about 50 cents a piece. I can usually get the newer ones within 2 weeks of them coming out, the library gets donations of almost all the magazines listed here (from individuals or whatever) then they blackout or cutout the customer address and name.

I pick and choose depending on which ones have stuff to read.

I can confirm others suspicions here, and two different intervals I counted the ads, and ads that look like part of the magazines (just because they have food pics or merchandise or a small article and/or recipe) and they run from 60 to 75 percent in both Gourmet and Bon Appetit. I had these subscriptions for free for years because if you spend at least 40 or 50 bucks at ecooksbooks.com (or jessicas biscuits) you can pick from one of the two for a year free subscription. And I bought a lot of books from then in the past.

If you subtract the big pictures after that, then theres not really that much content.

I hated that I had a subscription to Cooks Illustrated but had to pay again for the online subscription...so I dropped the mag and subscribed to the site, then dropped the site because my personal preferences and experience did not consistently match up with their 'ratings'.

Saveur. I paid for that gladly...and found discounts for it too...

But now If I can't get it at the library I just go look at it on mygazines.com FREE

Donna Hay Magazine is gorgeous to look at and filled with delicious recipes you won't see stateside. Because it's out of Australia, the recipes won't be "seasonal" for those in the Northern hemisphere. But, don't let that stop you. It's too good to pass up!

I liked Jamie Olivers magazine that he started putting out, not sure what subscription cost though...and I did like Delicious, Olive, and a few others from the UK but thats because they are not from here where I live (US) so the perspective was nice because it was new and different, and even some of the ads were interesting...but with time I am sure they would get old too.

Cook's Illustrated (CI) to learn a lot and use (though I also think it stinks you get double dipped for the online sub), and Everyday Food to learn and use a lot. I've read many of the above and if it had to be one, it'd be CI.

Cooking Light? I know it's really popular but the majority of our country men & women weigh what??? Low fat is crap. I've had high cholesterol and been able to lower it (lower the bad stuff and raise the good) by eating grass fed beef and whole fat everything (organic and raw when possible...how can I afford it?...CSA/co-op/greenmarkets & smart shopping) and no meds. This was a tough question because each mag has different things to offer...Saveur, Fine Cooking, Gourmet, Eating Well, Martha Stewart Living and Vegetarian Times all appeal to me. I haven't seen or gotten the Jamie Oliver mag yet but I love Jamie so I'll have to check it out.

I'm afraid I let them all expire about the time all the shelter magazines went belly-up in late 2008. None of them has anything really new to say, I own lots of cookbooks I truly love, and all of the mentioned publications have Web sites. Why would you buy the magazines, especially in this economy.

Cooks Illustrated is what I'd like Food network to be, full of good quality information (tested) and no advertisements. Dave

My faves are Cooks Illustrated and Savuer...two different food worlds.

Saveur is one of the best magazines out there, regardless of category. But as someone above noted, each issue is usually focused on a singular topic. So on its own, it may not suffice. But it's the best. We've subscribed to most of the other popular mags, but we now get just Saveur and Gourmet.

It's hard to pick one so I subscribe to the following: Saveur; Cook's Illustrated; Food and Wine; Gourmet; Bon Appetit; and Everyday Food. My favorites are Saveur and Food and Wine.

I've been wondering this too. I used to get Real Simple for the recipes...but now that I try to eat seasonally and from scratch it's a bit on the useless side.

Right now I subscribe to Saveur and EatingWell. I used to subscribe to Cook's Illustrated as well.

CI lapsed at one point and I picked up an issue about 6 months later and realized about 50% of the content was familiar and sure enough I pulled out an issue from 2 years prior and there were about 5 recipes in the old one that were "revisited" in the new one. So I didn't resubscribe.

Saveur I probably won't renew b/c the past several issues have had way too much advertorial in it. I used to really love the magazine but now I find it take about 15 minutes to get through and I don't have that happiness I used to have.

EatingWell has been a great source for health recipes. I find it less laden with "low fat" fake things than Cooking Light plus it just concentrates on food.

Why choose? Chances are your local library stocks most of the favorites, and at our library I can check out back issues. So I can peruse Bon Appetit, Cook's Illustrated, Southern Living, and Cooking Light and even take home a few for seasonal stuff.

Gotta be Saveur, it's just too much fun!

I sub to Everyday with Rachael Ray and Saveur. I have always loved Saveur. I used to sub to Bon Appetit (for many years) and to Gourmet (still love it but don't sub). My mom subbed to Food & Wine for many years. I don't like Bon Appetit as much as I used to. I would go with Saveur if you want an interesting magazine aside from good recipes. If you want a magazine of just good recipes to cook from then I would go with Food & Wine. I also like the new Food Network magazine. It is a difficult question to answer. So many good ones.

Cooks Illustrated gets my vote too. But, after reading this I might switch to Cooking Light for a year or so.

Fine Cooking!

I love Fine Cooking. I used to get Cook's Illustrated, but found the "one and only" attitude more annoying than endearing.