Beat This! Cookbook: Absolutely Unbeatable Knock-'em-Dead Recipes for the Very Best Dishes

By Ann Hodgman

Do you think you have the absolute best recipe for apple pie? Maybe your neighbor claims to make the best meatloaf around. Did your Italian grandmother serve the best spaghetti sauce this side of the Atlantic? Well, unless you or that neighbor or your grandmother is Ann Hodgman, you’re wrong!

The book that the editor in chief of Vanity Fair called “the funniest, most engaging book about food I’ve ever come across” has now been revised and updated: more than half the recipes are completely new, and many of the originals have been “oomphed up” to make them even more shamelessly delicious.

Beat This! Cookbook contains more than a hundred all-time favorites, from Burnt Sugar Ice Cream and White Chocolate Raspberry Pie to Chili-Cheese Casserole and Onion Rings. Each one is guaranteed to make people take a bite, stagger with joy, and beg you for the recipe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Mar 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9780547691701

Ann Hodgman

ANN HODGMAN is the author of Beat This! and Beat That! Cookbooks and One Bite Won’t Kill You. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, and Food & Wine. She lives in Connecticut.

Reviews for Beat This! Cookbook

[shelleyraec · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

With a family of six I am always looking for new recipes to try and the Beat This! Cookbook, which is about to be rereleased, sounded promising. While the style is certainly readable with Ann Hodgman's warmth and humor, I didn't find any recipes that particularly suited me. Many of the recipes require a lot of prep and ingredients (including some not available in Australia like Corn Syrup). Neither were any of the recipes particuarly original, I felt that they could have come from my mothers pre cholesteral 197O's cookbooks - particuarly with so many recipes calling for 2 entire sticks of butter.There are a few good hints and tips however, and I most likely I will try her Caramelised Bacon recipe because I love bacon and can't resist.Beat This! is unlikely to appeal to the health concious or busy mother, but may provide a solid collection of recipes for those who enjoy cooking or are looking to improve their culinary skills.

[eamcnair · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If you cook often, you know that you have lots of cookbooks that you really only use occasionally for one or two recipes. On your shelf, this one has the best pie recipe, and this one has the best casserole so you have quite a lot of cookbooks. What if you had one cookbook with the best of every type of recipe all in one book?Well, the claim that Ann Hodgman makes is that every single recipe in Beat This! is the best recipe that you will find for that dish. This new cookbook which was released March 2011 is the new and updated version of the cookbook by the same name published in 1999, so one would hope that these recipes are even more amazing than the last ones.The best part of this book is the author’s style of writing. While some might find her assertions that her recipes are the best slightly annoying, quite frankly I wouldn't want to try a recipe if someone told me that it was just an “ok” recipe. The way that she describes her recipes is so enticing. Ann Hodgman gives plenty of helpful advice before she gives you the recipe such as “Triangles, by the way, always make a bar cookie look more impressive.” As you may see, the style of Beat This! is different from most other cookbooks. In addition to the above, Hodgman chose to arrange the alphabetically by the main ingredient. This leads to some interesting combination next to each other, but it works well for this book.So if you are looking for another cookbook for your collection, I would certainly suggest Beat This! Cookbook.