Foil Pack Dinners

by Julia Rutland

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Foil Pack Dinners is a technique guide and recipe collection for steaming/grilling and more in foil on the grill and oven. Released by Simon & Schuster on their Tiller Press imprint, it's 192 pages and available in paperback and ebook formats.

It has a logical and accessible format. The author provides a good introduction (I was unaware of the papillote or el cartoccio techniques prior to encountering this book, except in the most general terms from camping trips in my childhood - very primitively steamed fish). She continues with a tutorial on sourcing and buying the right heavy duty foil for cooking, different ways of packing food in foil (flat packs, tents), ingredient prep, liquids, and even transporting food in foil. The author does a thorough job of covering all the relevant points of different heat sources, safety, and food handling.

The recipes are well written and clear. They're grouped by category: chicken, meats, fish, vegetarian. The recipe ingredients are listed in a sidebar. Measurements are given in American standard only (with a conversion table in the back of the book for metric). The recipes don't include nutritional information or serving size/yields.

My main quibble with the book is that the recipes are mostly not photographed. There are some photos, and they're clear and attractive, but they only represent about 5% of the recipes included in the book. It is, however, a very well written book full of tasty food prepared in a novel way.

This would make a good gift for folks living away from home for the first time, as well as adventurous cooks looking for some interesting and tasty new techniques. I liked that much of the recipes can easily be made ahead of time. This would be a great collection to adapt to meal-prep and planning lifestyles.

Four stars. Well written and attractive.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.