Americas Test Kitchen: Americas Test Kitchen

Americas Test Kitchen - George Forman Grills vs. Krups Grills; and Cutco Knives vs. Wusthof Knives and Victorinox Knives

I had never seen Americas Test Kitchen. The first time I saw it, I was really impressed. It struck me kind of like the Consumer Reports of food.

America’s Test Kitchen is currently in its seventh season and is reportedly the most-watched cooking show on public television with over 2.9 million viewers. Just outside Boston, the show is produced at the test kitchen of Cook’s Illustrated magazine.

Each episode features recipes that purportedly work every time. The host and the test cooks test equipment, solve typical cooking problems, and taste supermarket ingredients.

In a recent test on Basmati rice, they ranked a rice grown in the Himalayas as the top rated rice. A show on favorite citrus dessert recipes pitted baking non-stick sprays against regular non-stick sprays - no contest, the baking sprays fared better. The two that got me were the table-top grill reviews and the knives reviews. After reviewing several, they came up with the following recommendations:

GRILLS:

They highly recommended the KRUPS Universal Grill and Panini Maker FDE312 and recommended, you guessed it, the GEORGE FOREMAN Family Size Grill GR26.

I ended up buying the Krups. I've included my next Grill here, too: The newest Foreman grill is much improved. I also got a grill for individual meals to make in my microwave, which saves a ton of time and does a great job - the Microgrill.

You can get them all here:

George Foreman GRP90WGR Next Grilleration Removable-Plate Grill with 5 Plates, Red

Krups FDE312-75 Universal Grill and Panini Maker

Foreman Family Size Plus with Cookbook

The Micro Grill

KNIVES:

Cutco knives are great knives with a lifetime warranty but some might find them out of their price range. The Test Kitchens recommendation is the Victorinox Fibrox chef's knife. They also recommend Wüsthof Gourmet Cook’s Knife