Christopher Kimball, founder and editor or Cooks Illustrated, defends his dismissal of recipes and cooking advice found on the Internet:
In terms of recipes, no, I do not believe in a Wiki website, with a community opining on recipes as a means of creating a valuable database. Making a recipe 75 times in a test kitchen under controlled circumstances (yes, this is deeply self-serving) is vastly better than the voices of millions under less the ideal circumstances, with kitchens with a host of different problems/equipment/etc.Cooks Illustrated is the finest magazine I know. It’s ad-free, well written, useful, and beautifully designed. Put it next to your typical cooking or lifestyle magazine and they seem like they’re from different worlds.
It’s easy to dismiss Kimball back, painting him as a technophobic curmudgeon. But keep in mind, Cooks has an excellent website as well, and Mr. Kimball’s Twitter feed paints him as a funny, warm, and knowledgeable dude.
We need trusted editors, and we need people with strong opinions. For me, what stands out about Cooks is that they’re committed to challenging their own subjective tastes. Their authority derives from repeat performance and comparative taste tests. Their recipes are not lists of instructions; they’re stories that tell the whole process, from the idea to the finished dish.
Cooks Illustrated is a valued resource as a publication, and their website is one of the very few that I actually pay for. The companion TV show America’s Test Kitchen also holds a very special place in my TiVo.
While I enjoy community and sharing on the internet, I prefer to listen to the experts when it comes to cooking rather than waste ingredients and spend a lot of time & energy on finding the best methods (although sometimes it can be a fun weekend project). Kimball and co. are almost scientific in their approach, and I appreciate that.
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