If you’re getting an aspiring cook his or her first volume of recipes and kitchen wisdom, browse through “The Complete America’s Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook” before you buy.

The “Cook’s Illustrated” magazine editors have been publishing compilations of their intensively researched recipes for nearly a decade, producing scores of volumes. So it’s no small compliment to say: This might be the best one.

“America’s Test Kitchen” is the television arm of Cook’s Illustrated, but this cooking show shouldn’t be confused with the Food Network’s often lightweight fare. Along with recipes, it offers information gleaned from the staff’s exhaustive remaking of every dish.

So, in addition to more than 650 recipes, the book contains an education, a kind of graduate-level culinary seminar.

Why does using lemon zest instead of lemon juice make a difference in the dish’s flavor? When can you replace cream with milk without ruining a dish? Why shouldn’t you crush garlic ahead of time?

The America’s Test Kitchen editors have you covered.

Chapters like “Easy Skillet Suppers” and “One-Pot Dinners” lean toward practicality, offering Skillet Baked Ziti that doesn’t require a separate pot to boil the pasta, and Latino-Style Chicken and Rice that uses substitutes for ingredients that may be unfamiliar, like achiote.

Another outstanding feature of Cook’s Illustrated recipes is their focus on technique. Through the recipe refining and testing process, the editors achieve a level of precision few cookbooks can offer.

When told to slice potatoes for the “High- Roast Chicken”—a recipe that leaves a whole butterflied chicken with skin of potato-chip crispness—a broiler pan is lined with sliced potatoes. Sliced “ntovinch thick,” to be specific, or they won’t cook correctly.

The book includes another valuable resource: a compendium of all the America’s Test Kitchen product testing. From chef’s knives to vanilla extract, the show has subjected commercial offerings to blind taste tests and usage challenges, focused on offering well-grounded recommendations. Colanders, thermometers, peelers—they all look similar on the shelf, so the show has tried them all.

The results can be surprising. In a world where kitchen hobbyists routinely pay $200 for a chef’s knife, the America’s Test Kitchen recommends the Victorinox Forschner Fibrox, retailing at about $30. With tips like that, you might save enough money to buy a couple more cookbooks.

To make grilled shrimp in lemon butter, go online at blogs.buffalonews.com/hungryformore