Pillsbury’s Complete Cookbook: Recipes from America’s Most-Trusted Kitchens

Pillsbury’s Complete Cookbook: Recipes from America’s Most-Trusted Kitchens is a good guide with easy to follow recipes. Coming from a name that everyone trusts, it lists easy to follow directions for good tasting food. It also has a handy bit of cooking tips to help you learn how to cook, instead of assuming that you already know everything there is about cooking. A handy addition to any kitchen, this is a wonderful starter cookbook or a great addition to a collection.

I was looking for a cookbook with basic simple directions, easy to follow recipes that didn’t require a culinary school background, and tasty food as the outcome. I didn’t want a meal where I would spend five hours in preparation for a dinner that didn’t even fill you up. I wanted real food, simple food, and good tasting filling food. I bought this cookbook because I trusted the name Pillsbury, and I took it on that assumption that it would be what I was looking for. I was very right on that assumption.

On the inside binding it lists a guide to emergency substitutions, something I wasn’t expecting but I was happy to have in such a handy location. There is a baking, dairy products, and chocolate section in the substitutions with such tips as subbing baking soda and tartar for baking powder and sugar with water for corn syrup. This list of tips was really an eye-opener for me. I now don’t panic if I am out of a listed recipe item; I just look for a proper emergency substitution to take the place of it.

Table of Contents:
Intro
Menu Ideas
Appetizers and Beverages
Breads, soups, and stews
Beef and Veal
Pork and Lamb
Poultry
Fish and Shellfish
Vegetarian Cooking
Eggs
Salads, Vegetables, Sides
Desserts, Cakes and Pies
Cookies and Candies
Canning and Cooking Basics
Cookbook Glossary
Index

This cookbook was illustrated in color, which made it a lot easier for me to tell if I was doing it correctly, and gave wonderful cooks tips like how to thicken stews and how to make salad molds. All recipes have listed the prep time, time to readiness, and how many servings it will yield. There are nutritional information, the dietary exchanges and the USRDA values. They really didn’t leave anything to chance with this cookbook. The special section on canning and cooking is nice for a good southern gal like myself, that would like to get started putting up the local gardeners bounty. You will get everything you need, and right where you need it.