Obsessed with the Best : 100+ Methodically Perfected Recipes Based on 20+ Head-to-Head Tests

A charmingly obsessive, visually stunning, thoroughly tested exploration of the best ways to cook and bake your favorite foods—featuring recipes that combine the smartest tips, tricks, tweaks, and shortcuts, and a series of essays from a 14-month round-the-world reporting trip—from Ella Quittner.

Some might think the “best” chicken means “most efficient without sacrificing juicy meat,” while others might think “best” is the one that you won’t be able to stop thinking about for fifteen years, no matter how long it takes in a sous vide bag. When writer Ella Quittner (former creator of Food52’s “Absolute Best Tests”) is cooking or baking something, she absolutely cannot rest until she’s tested every method she can, to arrive at the best result. Even if that means traveling to Tokyo to learn the trick to extra juicy tsukune for her tender meatballs, or driving through Emilia-Romagna to collect nonna-approved methods for her chewiest fresh pasta, or spending time in the Alabama black belt gathering intel from the pros for her flakiest biscuits. 

In Obsessed with the Best, Ella walks you through the results of 24 head-to-head tests of cooking methods to help you find the perfect choice for your palate, plus the reasons behind her top results. From these building blocks, Ella shares more than 75 recipes, grounding you in minimalist techniques that maximize flavor, and sharing creative options as jumping off points for your own favorite flavors. Recipes include:

• The Fluffiest No-Special-Equipment-Needed Pancakes
• No Fail Perfect Poached Eggs
• The Last Vodka Sauce You''ll Ever Need
• Foolproof Cheesy Smashed Crispy Potatoes and more than a dozen optimized veggies, like Tomato-Butter Braised Cabbage. 
• Entrées from Triple-Secret Tender Meatballs, One-Hour Roast Chicken, Opulent Slow-Roasted Chicken, and Poached Lemon-Butter Shrimp
• Sweets like Overachiever Extra Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies, Malted Chocolate Chunk Cookie Bars, The Softest Yellow Cake, and Actually Doable Brown Butter French-ish Buttercream

Sprinkled with reports on people, places, or things obsessed with “the best”—be it a bacon evangelist from Iowa who flies annually all the way to Kofu, Japan, to throw a “Porktober Fest” in the middle of a seasonal celebration of samurai culture, or an international spin through different pasta-making methods from Osaka to Tuscany—Obsessed with the Best is precise, informative, personal, and fun in equal measure.