Cook’s Country isn’t just a magazine full of recipes, although you certainly will get plenty of those. The staff explains techniques – and the reasoning behind them – to make you a more skilled and confident cook. You’ll also learn some history about a wide variety of dishes and ingredients.

The recipes are for foods that you’d actually like to eat and the recipes are easy to follow and produce good results. Ultimately, there’s no replacement for hands-on experience in the kitchen. The more you cook, the more confident you become and the more success you have. A reference like Cook’s Country is a great companion for the journey.

If you like to try your hand at making a diverse array of dishes from around the world, then you’re going to like this magazine. It’s not uncommon to find recipes for Cuban sandwiches, Gobi Manchurian, and pasta alla puttanesca all in the same issue.

The editorial team does a fine job of balancing entrees with appetizers, soups, desserts, and beverages. I’ve noticed that most, but not all, of the recipes reflect the nature of the season in which they’re published. This helps when shopping for some of the harder-to-find fresh ingredients and putting together the right side dishes.

I respect a magazine that is willing to come right out and say that they don’t recommend a certain product (or only recommend it with reservations) from a major manufacturer. Unfortunately, this level of honesty is so rare in the publishing industry these days. Cook’s Country can do this and avoid conflicts of interest altogether because there is no advertising anywhere in this magazine. I appreciate that I can trust what they’re writing in their reviews without wondering whether they’re fluffing up a certain product to maintain or attract advertising revenues.

Cook’s Country lends itself particularly well to printed form because of its oversize format and brilliant photography. I just don’t think it would be the same reading it on my phone or even my computer. I keep the latest copy in a drawer in our kitchen and read it while I eat breakfast or have a late-night snack. There’s something about reading this while I’m in the kitchen that motivates me to cook something new.

I still subscribe to a variety of printed magazines because of how they help remind me to slow down. Ever since I was in middle school, I’ve always enjoyed looking forward to receiving my next issues and reading them while I relax for a bit. With this magazine in particular, it’s nice to have a printed copy to bring to the grocery store when I’m shopping for ingredients.

Everything I have made from this magazine has exceeded my expectations. The articles frequently include details about how the test kitchen failed dozens of times before getting the precise result they were looking for. You definitely get the impression that a real, live person has made the recipes and dialed them in.

One of my favorite things about Cook’s Country are the pre-perforated recipe cards from the dishes covered in the issue. You can save your favorites and curate a personal collection without having to save the whole magazine.

I credit Cook’s Country for taking my culinary skills up a couple of notches and for giving me the inspiration to try new dishes that are now in regular rotation in our home. It puts a smile on my face when I stop by the mailbox on the way home from work and see my copy waiting for me. In addition to subscribing yourself, considering gifting a subscription to that fledgling cook in your life in exchange for a future dinner invitation.

I find myself using these with my cast iron pans in the kitchen as much as I do with my outdoor propane-fired wok, which I reviewed in detail here. Wooden spoons are fine for many foods, but a nice wide spatula like these ones are superior for stir frying. The idea is to chase the food around a screaming hot pan. You need surface area – that you don’t have with a spoon – in order to do that.

Wooden cooking utensils are the best choice when they fit your cooking application. They’re light, easy to clean, will never rust – and most importantly – they won’t scratch or gouge your pots and pans. This is especially critical with Teflon or other similar non-stick coatings. Not only will you ruin an expensive piece, but these compounds are not something you want to be ingesting.

These spatualas are handcrafted from wood from the Zelkova tree, which grows native in Japan, eastern China, and Korea. They look and feel like they would cost twice as much if they had a name brand on the handle. My favorite feature is their thin leading edge. This makes it really easy to get under delicate foods such as potstickers.

I haven’t noticed any splintering or splitting after almost two years of use with these. I like to apply a thin coat of mineral oil (available at any hardware store) over any new wooden cooking utensil before I start to use it. The oil is completely safe and helps prevent the wood from absorbing moisture, odor, and color from the food when you cook. This extends the life of the cooking utensil and makes it easier to clean.

A screaming-hot wok is the only way to get what’s called “wok hay” – a Cantonese expression that is loosely translated as the “breath of the wok” – that refers to the particular essence or aroma that is created in a dish when you stir-fry it authentically. This is the “restaurant” taste that your dish has when the guy at the Mongolian BBQ cooks it on the large gas-fired wok right in front of you. You can use the freshest high-quality ingredients and even cook it in a stove top wok, but you will never attain wok hay without the intense heat that only a propane or gas-fired wok.

This wok is ideal for someone who wants to be able to prepare professional-level Asian cuisine in very little time. The actual cooking time is a fraction of the time that it takes to prep your vegetables and meat or seafood. If you’re food takes longer than a couple of minutes to cook with this wok, you’ve either overcooked it or overloaded it.

I can’t emphasize enough how short the learning curve is on a propane-fired wok like this one. Most guys will concede that it takes some time to learn the art of grilling and searing a mouthwatering steak to exactly the desired level of doneness or to get just the right amount of bark on your brisket during a 15-hour smoke. In contrast, you’ll probably surprise yourself with how good your first stir-fry in a wok like this turns out.

This sounds cliché, but I’m serious – if you have neighbors, be prepared for them to stop by and ask you what smells so good. I get more compliments on the food I make in my wok than I do with my smoker, on which I have spent far more time honing my craft.

Getting restaurant-quality results with this wok isn’t hard as long as you use the right amount of oil (I prefer peanut oil for its high smoke point and the way it complements Asian food), add the ingredients in a logical order, and keep the food moving.

I don’t think I could ever become a vegetarian, but if I did, it would only be under the condition that I could cook my vegetables with this wok. It’s just so easy to elevate basic vegetables into an amazing entree with nothing more than a little bit of your favorite sauce or seasoning. Some of my favorites are soy sauce, oyster sauce, teriyaki sauce, fish sauce, chili garlic paste, and ginger.

This kit comes with everything you need to get started except for a standard propane tank. They even include a couple of cooking utensils and a thermometer (which is useful if you want to use it to deep fry and need to check the temperature of the oil). I did buy a lid at the same time that I bought my wok, but have since gotten rid of it at the friendly behest of some experienced wok masters who I admire. You essentially want to continually “chase” the food around with a spatula (here are the basic wooden ones that I use that are much better than the metal one that comes with it), so the food really should not be sitting still at any time. If you need to increase the temperature, forget the lid and just turn up the gas.

You might think that a specialty setup like this would require special care, but that’s not the case at all. The wok cools down in a matter of minutes because of how thin it is. Once it’s completely cool, clean it up with some diluted Simple Green or dish soap, hose it out, and dry with paper towels to prevent rust. Just like with a cast iron skillet, this wok will develop a natural non-stick seasoning overtime that will make cleaning it a little bit easier every time.

At 22″, this wok is huge, however it will only take up about as much storage space as a charcoal grill since you can tuck the propane tank right underneath it.

If you buy this wok and find that you enjoy cooking with it and want to explore more authentic Chinese cuisine, I highly recommend the book The Breath of a Wok. The authors cover the history and evolution of the wok as well as technique. The storytelling is weaved throughout the 125 authentic recipes that you’ll definitely want to try for yourself.

I think of my cast iron cooking in two different eras: before dutch oven (BD) and after dutch (AD) oven. Well, not really, but I can’t overstate how much versatility this single piece of cookware added to my kitchen.

This dutch oven is available in three different sizes. The 7-quart option is best for the majority of cooks because it gives you extra room. Be warned that this oven is heavy and takes up a fair amount of storage space in the kitchen. I certainly wouldn’t go any larger than the 7-quart for our family of four. The smaller ones are lighter and easier to store, however they make it difficult to scale up your recipes if you’re entertaining or want to make extra to freeze.

I have cooked full recipes of soup in this oven on our electric range with a smooth glass top and was never worried that it would crack the cooking surface. As with all glass top surfaces, you want to take care not to scratch it by sliding a pot across.

As with the lids on their skillets, the lid on this dutch oven has basting points to help keep your food from drying out.

Cast iron cookware works best when you heat it gradually. While I occasionally use this to saute large amounts of onions and/or mushrooms for a recipe, I usually only break this out when I am cooking low and slow. Even though I have an Insta-Pot Duo and a traditional slow cooker, my Lodge dutch oven is my go-to piece when I am braising meat or making soup.

When shopping for a cast iron dutch oven, apart from capacity, you need to consider what kind of lid you want and whether you want an oven with feet. If you want to be able to cook over a camp fire, then you’ll want an oven that has feet and a recessed lid so that you can place hot coals on top of and underneath. Personally, I would just buy a separate outdoor oven if I wanted to cook both inside and outside, as the ones with feet are a little unwieldy on the oven’s grate.