I subscribe to Bon Appetit (with leftover flyer miles, I think) and enjoy some of its cooking tips and commentaries about individual ingredients (from cheeses I've never heard of to celery leaves), and always a wide selection of unique recipes (although I don't think I've ever used one without deviation for simplicity or on-hand ingredients). I also clip all their full page pictures for use as backgrounds in my planned cookbook-scrapbook, so don't think this is intended as a total slam even if it comes off sounding like a complaint. It's more like amusing observations on what is probably typical of magazines of all sorts but which I happened to notice here in particular.
Mostly, the staff works together too much. The recipes are clearly developed in committee and they have worked together long enough to have determined a single style of cooking with certain joint preferences rather than a lot of diverse opinions (as I find in our local newspaper, which provides recipes from individuals all over the region, virtually none of whom have ever worked together)
-- They always specify kosher salt, and too much of it, usually with unsalted butter, even though I can't imagine it's that important to every recipe that a precise measurement of that much salt makes such a difference that most people would even notice if you used half or a quarter as much household salt and salted butter instead. Some recipes, yes--chicken usually benefits by the inclusion of a bit of salt--but all of them?
-- They always come up with some complicated or unique process, even for preparing soup, so that only a stay-at-home spouse with no kids could actually sit down and prepare more than one of these recipes in a week.
-- they get their vegetables from the same expensive source daily (they would not otherwise have felt compelled to specify that the celery include "celery leaves from inner stalks": our own celery varies greatly and may or may not have inner stalks with leaves, leaves at the top of all the stalks or overgrown stalks with chopped off leaves for ease in packaging. We buy what we can get but prefer them younger with leaves when we buy them and leaves may grow inside if we don't go through the celery quickly). We use the leaves that aren't browned or wilted along with the chopped celery, but to tell the difference in the resulting dish? Only if they are fresh, and for the texture, not the taste.
-- They always use a few basic herbs and spices (Kosher salt, freshly cracked pepper, fresh common herbs such as thyme, parsley, and chives--including fresh bay leaves which I've never seen available in a store and experience (I have two potted bay leaf plants) shows isn't worth the bother of trying to get if you have to buy them--and virtually never play with the many potential substitutes for these basics, such as fennel, lovage, savory, and leeks. (That may also be a side effect of their stores; savory and lovage, at least, seem more available in the garden department than grocery stores).
-- They never list potential options with individual recipes, although the magazine itself offers some; they had a spread on alternative oils such as grapeseed (handles very hot temperatures and doesn't alter the flavor from less healthy vegetable oils) and walnut oil (which is better for cold uses such as salad dressing and does add a nutty flavor), but none of the recipes suggested their use nor specifically said better to stick with the recipe's specified oil, nor do they ever just say "oil" or "vinegar".
It has it's advantages; I create my own recipe every time I try one of theirs because I don't have space in my kitchen for all their specified ingredients, I like the other ingredients they never choose to use, and shopping isn't sufficiently convenient to keep running to the store when I have a perfectly good substitute (For things being cooked, dried herb virtually always work just fine, thank you and I can keep plenty of little jars on my spice racks). On the other hand, some recipes are more tolerant of change than others and it would be nice to know when variation is particularly discouraged (for example, was there a particular reason corn oil was used in one recipe and olive oil in another? Could either or both be replaced with grapeseed oil?), and why. (In the why is often the best cooking lesson available).
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