This is a great cookbook for anyone who likes to cook, but wants to cut calories without sacrificing flavor !! I have now made several of the recipes and they are all GREAT !! I love that they have tested them all and we can then reap the results !! It's kinda like Consumer Reports, but for cooking ..... helpful tips, reasons behind the recipes, etc..... so it's informative as well as just being full of great recipes. This is now one of my mainstay cookbooks.....

These are some of the classic recipes lightened up. I particularly like the product comments and advice. The broccoli soup recipe is worth the price of the book. They say small amounts of half and half work best.

This is a very detailed - how to make it - for classic recipes. Not as many recipes as I would have liked. Great for a beginning cook or someone new to lighter recipes. The product advice is the biggest benefit for me.

Overall, I have been pleased with this book. I have tried a fair number of the recipes, and although there were a handful of "misses," the good definitely outweighs the bad. Furthermore, there are some good calorie-cutting (but flavor-preserving) ideas that you can glean from their recipes and apply to other favorites.

On the other hand, the book isn't perfect. In addition to the occasional bad recipe, the book sometimes lacks the coherence you might expect from a book like this. While one fried chicken recipe uses Melba Toast as a coating, a chicken parmesan recipe uses toasted panko bread crumbs. The reason for picking one over the other in somewhat similar recipes is never explained. Furthermore, many of the recipes -- especially the quickbreads and the desserts -- aren't enormous calorie savers (although many of the meat and pasta recipes really shine in this regard).

These complaints aren't terribly serious, though, and in general this is a good book for people looking to trim some calories from their meals without sacrificing all of the flavor.

The recipes in this book are amazing. I've always loved The Best Recipe series, as well as Cook's Illustrated. This cookbook goes a step further by lightening up their amazing recipes without losing any of the taste. I bought one for my neighbor too.

I was very disappointed with this book. They touted it as "light" recipes (according to the title of the book), yet many of the recipes only reduced the calories of the original recipes by only a few calories per serving. The other problem I have with these recipes is how incredibly labor intensive some of them are. The recipe makeover for Chicken Parmesan is absolutely ridiculous!! If you want a cookbook of healthy recipes that a working person can actually prepare on a weeknight get the latest Ellie Krieger or Evelyn Tribole cookbooks. If you want to get this cookbook, just make sure that you have hours devoted to preparing extremely labor intensive recipes!

My husband and I cook from this cookbook at least twice a week. It has helped us get our diet on track in a sensible and TASTY way! Even my cajun grandmother who thinks lard is the best oil to cook with enjoyed this book.

The test kitchen has done all the work and has determined the best way to make favorite foods light and healthy, without messing with the flavor. This is a great book for people learning how to cook, or someone who's been cooking for years. The book teaches you about ingredients and how they affect taste and texture. It also teaches about cooking methods. Excellent!

The recipes are great but I really enjoy reading how they come up with them. It gives me ideas on how to improve my own recipes.

I have always liked Christopher Kimball's work but have continually been disappointed that nutritional information was missing from everything his kitchens created. This book finally gets it all together! The explanations and analyses are totally understandable and the final recipe product can be assessed according to whatever dietary parameters one is cooking around. Well done, indeed!

Reviewers who complain about the reduction of only a few calories should be realistic. If you are seriously trying to reduce your weight, just simply forget about brownies and mac and cheese. This Cooks Illustrated book has wonderful salad dressings, soups. The Chinese stir fry sauce recipes are worth the price of the book alone. I am grateful for the nutritionional information listings at the end of each recipe. Just bear in mind: low fat, high fiber is what you are after. I have lost 55 pounds so far by sticking to these ideas.

Great book on how to cook common normally high fat high calorie dishes that are trimmed to more healthy. The mac and cheese was awesome. You'd never know it wasn't the full fat version. You will not be disappointed if you buy this book.

Everything I've made out of this cookbook tastes great. The brownies are wonderful, along with the chocolate sheet cake (to die for!), and the hummus too.

This is an excellent recipe book for the serious cook. The instructions and explanations are thorough. I particularly appreciate the detailed review of processes and ingredients that did NOT work to convert regular high-fat recipes to low-fat versions! The only problem I have with the recipes is that at times they do require very careful attention to process. For example, the cheesecake on the cover may be delicious (I haven't made it), but the making of both the crust and the filling requires a level of finesse which looks to be beyond me. And the result is still a slice with 400 calories! The other recipes I have tried have turned out very well, however, and I am enjoying the book.

I have made several of the recipes in this cookbook. They have been great. Recipe sections I enjoy are homemade salad dressings, soups, pan sauces for chicken and, of course, desserts! Cook's Illustrated does not compromise taste or quality in any of these recipes.

I have been looking for ways to lighten up my diet, and since I love Cook's Illustrated I figured I would give their book The Best Light Recipe a try. What I found was a whole lot of inconsistency. I have tried five of the recipes so far: Chinese Chicken Salad, Meat & Cheese Lasagna, Macaroni & Cheese, Brown Sticky Rice, and New York Cheesecake. Of the five, only two were worth making again, not a very promising start. I was tempted to try the chocolate chip cookie recipe, but when they manage to cut a paltry 10 calories from each cookie, I might as well stick to the regular recipe I have.

The Chinese Chicken Salad is one of the worst I've ever had. Shredding the chicken made for a weird texture, and the dressing doesn't have nearly enough oomph to it; if I made it again, I'd do sliced grilled chicken (possibly basted with hoisin at the end of cooking) instead of their combination saute and poaching, and to the dressing I would add extra hoisin and a small splash of sesame oil (which they completely left out) to boost the flavor. Both of these will bump up the calorie count a little bit, but it's better than making a big bowl and throwing half away because you just couldn't enjoy it. Mac and cheese tasted hollow and dull, and the brown sticky rice was overcooked and dry. The lasagna was good, but to get it there I had to add more herbs, and the cheesecake recipe is one of the best cheesecakes I have had, delicious and creamy enough that if I just took a bite without knowing, I never would have guessed it had a fourth the fat of a traditional cheesecake.

I was at odds with some of the portion sizing on "makeover" recipes. Most notable was the lasagna. In The Best Recipe, the classic lasagna recipe has 1 pound of dried lasagna noodles and serves eight; in The Best Light Recipe, there are 8 ounces of dried lasagna noodles and the same size dish serves 10. Likewise, the CI classic mac & cheese recipe serves four, while a similar size light recipe serves 5. The rice portion was half the size of the same recipe in The Quick Recipe. The one recipe that escaped this fate was the cheesecake, with similar recipes both serving 12.

I wish that I could recommend this book to people, but it really doesn't shine. But the cheesecake recipe is good enough to warrant further testing of recipes. I think I would rather skip buying this book (unless I found a used copy at half price) and copy down the cheesecake recipe from the library.

The recipes I have made from this cookbook have all been great, but many of them are really time consuming. To make a cheesecake their way takes a minimum of a day, if not two.

Don't believe me? First you need yogurt cheese - not available at my local supermarket, so you have to buy yogurt and drain it, about 12 hours. Then you have to make the actual recipe, cook it at two temps for several hours and then cool it for several more hours. About 8 hours. Assuming that you start the night before you could have their cheesecake the following evening, but no sooner.

Personally I don't like cooking meals that take more than an hour - of course exceptions are made for things like roasting turkeys and smoking meats. The problem is that many (the majority?) of recipes in this book are fairly intensive and time consuming. The results are good, but it hasn't been a practical everyday cookbook for me.

I've been a fan of the America's Test Kitchen show on PBS for some time. I saw a segment on their "less fat" cheesecake a few times and finally bought this book that featured the yummy looking recipe. Though I haven't baked the recipe for which I bought the book (!) I truly LOVE this book. Firstly, I loved the "forensic" aproach that the test kitchen takes to deconstructing a recipe and recreating it with less fat. I really like the chattiness of the text and the insight given. The recipes that I've tried - I have made over and over. I made the Chocolate Bundt Cake - OH MY! This is the best chocolate cake that I've EVER tasted. I followed every instruction and appreciated the tip of making a paste with butter and cocoa powder to grease the pan (if you don't have non-stick spray with flour - which I didn't). The chocolatey-ness of this cake is Scrumptious! I've made this my signature cake! The other recipe I've made numerous times is the Parmesean Risotto. I'd never made Risotto before I made this recipe. I made it for a dinner party (taking a risk, trying something new) but it won raves and I love making this recipe! If these recipes are any evidence of the quality of the others, I look forward to eating tasty food from this book!

This cookbook is just what I've been looking for, the best tasting food with the fewest number of calories. This is the cookbook I keep turning to when fixing dinner.

This is NOT a low-fat or no-fat diet cookbook by any means. The Cook's folks did a great job in lowering the fat content without sacrificing the taste, mouth feel of many favorite recipes such as lasagna, brownies, mac and cheese. Sometimes you will notice that the lower-fat recipe only lowered 10-50 kCal per serving only, but the fat and cholesterol became lower.

We adapted the chicken parmesan recipe to make oven-baked Japanese-style pork cutlets (tonkatsu), and the same method created a crispy, breaded, non-greasy outside with a tender, moist inside. The oven-baked tonkatsu is a family favorite.

Great reciepes!
I really like all the information on products tried to achieve the best tasting results.

I have one for myself and I bought this book for my Daughter.

This book could have been a lot thinner. There is way too much text explaining how CI arrived at each final recipe. Maybe that is OK for the magazines, but I'm really disappointed. A cookbook should be jam packed with recipes. I don't intend to read it as a novel. There are some good tips, like how you line a pan to easily remove brownies. A picture is enough and we do not need a thousand words on top of that. Save your money - don't buy it.

With this cookbook you don't notice that some of the fat is missing from the recipes. The lasagne, brownies, and cinnamon rolls all turned out great..better than comparable full fat recipes that I have tried. The cheesecake is to die for. My coworkers thought I was crazy when I told them I was bringing in a lower fat cheesecake. After they tasted it they all wanted the recipe and didn't believe me when I reminded them it was low fat(for a cheesecake). This cookbook is in no way a diet cookbook. Many of the recipes are lower in fat...not low fat. The recipes are a bit wordy and have lots of steps, but it's worth it.

Cooks Illustrated is like Consumer Reports for recipes. They experiment, evaluate, and come up with, well, the Best Recipe for anything you want to make. I've had their original Best Recipe cookbook for some time. My son recently gave me the Light version. I've made many dishes from both books and have yet to come across a recipe that isn't (you guessed it) the Best Recipe. I especially love the Best Light Recipe because they don't lower their standards to cut calories. Their turkey chili, for example, is better than most full-fat beef chili recipes I've tried. You get full nutritional info, of course, which makes it a snap to calculate Weight Watchers points. If you could only own one cookbook . . . (you know the rest)

Excellent book for anyone that wants to know the best to prepare/cook something. Book contains a whole section devoted to food preparation/technique. I am a fan of America's Test Kitchen, this book does not disappoint.

This is a book that seems to take all the guesswork out of "light" and healthy cooking. The chefs that have prepared these recipes have practiced each recipe hundreds of times until they got the light version just right. They give a great account of the nutritional information for each recipe and compare them to their fat filled, unhealthy counterparts.

I found The Best Light Recipe to be a wonderful cookbook! It offers lighter versions of the recipes in The Best Recipe cookbook. The recipes are easy to understand and it is interesting to read about the tests they did to determine which recipes are the best. This is not a diet cookbook! It is a lighter version, but it still has fat and calories which are necessary to make these recipes the best.

Unlike other reviewers, I was unfamiliar with the editors of this cookbook. Bought it because of the cheesecake on the cover!

When, at 100 pounds overweight, a family member decided to take off the weight with a low fat, low calorie diet, I set out to do everything I could to support this decision. I rid my house of everything that would be a temptation and determined to learn to cook with less fat.

THIS BOOK IS FANTASTIC! Everything I've tried has been amazing. Not quite as low fat as I wanted, but if we're careful about the combinations, we can enjoy the fine food in these pages. This book has made the adjustment from full fat to low fat VERY EASY and VERY TASTY. We don't feel like we're missing anything with these recipes. We even have company over and the bowls are licked clean. My children love it too,

I LOVE the notes about the recipes and what worked and what didn't. With these notes, I'll be able to apply their lessons learned to things I want to try.

So far, my family member has lost 30 pounds in 7 weeks and continues to lose 3-4 pounds a week. (Based on the weight control program in The Healthy Obsession by David Kirshenbaum.)

I have to admit I am not a fan of "light" cooking or the many magazines out there; I am also a huge fan of the whole "Cooks Illustrated" books and magazine, so I loved this book. Most low fat and/or low calorie recipes rely on "light" or artifical products to cut calories. This book does not, it adheres to the high standard of Cook's Illustrated recipes. The recipes are not the most low fat or calorie possible, but each is delicious and most importantly works like they say it will. This is also the first of their books to provide full nutritional counts. There are the usual detailed explanations of what works and what doesn't so you know exactly why this recipe is going to work. Everything I've tried has been fabulous.

So far, I've enjoyed every recipe I've tried in the book. Low-fat blueberry muffins to me taste even better than the original, because they're less greasy. And they're vastly improved from the hockey puck, low-fat muffins I've made in the past. You'll often have to do a little extra work with the recipes -- this is from Cook's Illustrated, after all, not Betty Crocker. But paired with thoughtful illustrations, buying guides, and taste tests for low-fat products, these recipes are a must-have.

For the last 8 years since leaving home I have been figuring out how to convert all my parents old recipies to be healthier. This cookbook does not always go as far as I would, but it does have really great recipies and has finally solved some of the recipes I had not figured out yet (biscuits being the best find). I have not made anything from this book that wasn't great so far! Even better, the authors choose to not give recipies that are poor imitations, and this is something I really dislike about other healthy cook books. Instead of giving a bad pie crust recipe they suggest making cobblers, and I really appriciate that honesty in this cookbox.

If you are looking for a recipe book that allows you to make healthy versions of all the staple foods you love, look no further and pick up this book!

*(Health Freak Disclaimer) I have to agree with the reviewers who said that the only dissapointment is the one-directional approach the book takes to healthier eating by reducing calories and fat. I never cook with "bad" carbohydrates, replace all white sugar with other sweeteners and take other such steps to make my food more healthy.

What I can say in favor of this book, is that even though I have modified every recipe to replace white flour with whole grains, and white rice with brown and sugar with agave or date sugar I have had everything turn out great. If you are used to converting recipies like this anyway then this book will provide a much better starting point then other cook books.

I have made the biscuits with WW Flour (they turned out great). I modified the carrot cake recipe to replace white flour and sugar and I modified the veggie bell peppers by using brown instead of white rice. I modified the banana bread to use WW flour instead of white. I would prefer the authors had already done these conversions, but the truth is that they are easy and by using "standard" igrediants they will reach a much wider audience.

This "light" recipe collection is such a joy to try out. So far, I have tried making the chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, cheesecake and pasta dishes (as you can see, my priorities are set the dessert way). They have all turned out delicious despite the recipe's call for substitutions with lower fat/calorie ingredients. This is very important to me as a food enthusiast and health maven. Although I try to maintain a healthy lifestyle, I love food! This food allows me to enjoy many kinds of fares (such as fried chicken, mac'n'cheese, chicken parmesan and spaghetti with meatballs) with less guilt. The recipes in this book may skimp on fat and calories but they are chock full of flavor!

However, it must be duly noted that this is not a book for dieters though it might be helpful. All in all, I really enjoyed the recipes I've tried so far and I can't wait to try more!

Christopher Kimball and the chefs of America's Test Kitchen/Cook's Illustrated (ATK/CI) have long been noted for their tireless devotion to perfecting "everyday" foods. In our kitchen, their Family Cookbook has been the go-to guide for anything that I was making for the first time. However, low-fat and low-calorie it was not, and my fiance and I had decided to drop the extra pounds that we had gained over the years...

Enter the Best Light Recipe cookbook from ATK. We have been counting calories and eating "smart" for the past 3 months, and use recipes from this book at least 4 times a week. We have tried every main course recipe and many of the appetizers, soups and salads, and have thoroughly enjoyed 98% of them. (I would consider this phenomenal for any cookbook, even the others published by the editors of CI!)

Each recipe has detailed calorie, fat and nutritional information for each serving. And speaking of servings, this cookbook does not use the same trick as other light cookbooks and magazines (i.e. Cooking Light) in that it's serving sizes are very generous and filling. Also, there is a narrative for each recipe describing how they cut out calories and/or fat without significantly affecting taste. Variations of many recipes are given, which helps avoid "recipe fatigue."

I can't imagine a better cookbook for calorie counting or a low fat lifestyle. Previous reviewers have complained about the lack of low carb recipes. These reviewers are correct: the recipes are not low carb and do not claim to be. The recipes are, however, delicious and lower in calories than anything comparable in taste.

Take it from us, low calorie diets work. We're at 63lbs lost and counting!

I have liked every recipe so far. I have a few other cook books from CI and I love all of them. I do agree it's not a total diet cookbook, but it is nice to see CI low fat. I would suggest it to anyone!

I love to cook and have researched the subject of healthy eating
extensively. I knew I would not be able to change my eating habits unless I could find a way to make the food taste wonderful. Most of the recipes are better than the more fattening standard recipes.
I have read many many books and light cookbooks on the subject.
This is far and away the best of the bunch....chock full of wonderful tips and recipes. It is definitely up to "Cook's Illustrated" high standards.
What a fabulous book......for people looking for healthier food and for anyone who loves to cook.

I found the recipes for the mac n cheese, lasgna, and bundt cake online from this book (at the cbsnews website) and decided to try the mac n cheese recipe before shelling out $22.00 for the book. I followed the recipe. While the mac n cheese looked like it was going to be good, it didn't really taste so good. I don't think I'll put up the $22.00 to purchase it. I'm actually surprised by all the raving reviews. Perhaps it's just different taste buds. :(