I am a huge fan of America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Country but I honestly haven’t kept up with Christopher Kimball much since he left that gig. Sporadically I will catch him on PBS now in Milk Street. Other than an old Cook’s Country cookbook, I have never really perused one of his books. I grabbed Shorts from the library recently to see what it had to offer. This is another book that showed up on some “Best of 2025” list.
About the book:
In the kitchen, brevity is brilliance. Short recipes are the ones cooks remember best—not only because they’re simple to make and easy to repeat, but because they are boiled down to their elemental beauty and charm. It’s time to transform your home cooking with the smartest, simplest, most powerful recipes yet from the James Beard Award-winning team at Milk Street.
In “Milk Street Shorts,” we developed a repertoire of nearly 150 recipes that are casual, improvisational and fun. These recipes are short, yes—but they’re also bold, creative and change the way you cook. The recipes get their power not from long ingredients lists or all-day cook times, but their essential cleverness. And every recipe packs a punch. There are throw-it-together meals like “Nothing Soup,” Chili Crisp Peanut Noodles, and Five-Ingredient Pork and Kimchi Stew; snacks and side dishes such as Sunflower Hummus, Crispy Spiced Chickpeas and Salt and Vinegar Smashed Potatoes; and smart ways to use your oven, like Reverse-Sear Pork Loin, Skillet Lasagna and Two-Hour Turkey.
We organized the recipes by simplicity—“Short, Shorter, and Shortest”—with chapters including skillet suppers, sheet-pan tray bakes and weeknight desserts. Each chapter turns the table on what you expect from standard recipes: These are easier, shorter, more flavorful, surprising, game-changing and, let’s be honest, just plain fun to cook.
“Shorts” is not a five-ingredient or “meals in minutes” cookbook; it’s an opening into a world where the last bite is as good as the first. With their perfect balance of flavors and textures, these recipes project confidence—and, as you cook with them, so will you. (From the Milk Street website)
About the author(s):
This is a Milk Street publication with obviously Kimball at the head of the organization.
Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street in downtown Boston — at 177 Milk Street — is home to the editorial offices and cooking school. It also is where Milk Street television and radio shows are recorded. Milk Street’s aim is to change how we cook by searching the world for bold, simple recipes and techniques. Adapted and tested for home cooks everywhere, these lessons are the backbone of what they call the new home cooking. (Edited from the Milk Street website.)
What I thought….
The blurb above is pretty comprehensive so I won’t recap the structure and organization of the book. I will say that there is no fluff here. I enjoy reading cookbooks that have a story about what’s to come in the recipes. There is a one page introduction to Shorts; that is all.
So instead of repeating that this book covers “Short,” “Shorter,” “Shortest,” “Short-ish” recipes, I decided I would make a recipe from most of the sections. I’m basically doing this because there’s not a whole lot to comment on. Shorts is a book of recipes.
From “Shorter,” I made Sunflower Hummus. If there is a hummus recipe in a collection, I will make it. There are so many versions and just when I think I have found my favorite, I try another. The author even states, “We thought we’d tasted enough unusual iterations of hummus. Then we went to Tbilisi and had sunflower hummus!” (64). This recipe comes from Craft Wine Restaurant and chef Giorgi Andghuladze. This is a hummus recipe where you simmer the canned beans in water with baking soda to get a smooth and rich consistency. This is basically a regular hummus recipe except there is coriander instead of cumin, a bit of dry mustard and red pepper flakes and no tahini. Instead you use sunflower butter. The headnote states that it doesn’t matter if you use sweetened or unsweetened butter but I made the decision to use unsweetened.
How was it? Not my favorite. I ended up adding more lemon juice. I will be looking for other recipes to use up my sunflower butter.
Note that this recipe is better after it sets awhile and that, again, may be to the temperature setting. Also know that you will need to add plenty of water to get the consistency you like (and perhaps more lemon juice).
There is actually another hummus recipe that I wish I had tried instead, Romanian Caramelized Onion “Hummus” (45). It is a cannellini-based version topped with lovely sliced red onions cooked with tomato paste and sweet paprika until almost jammy.
I moved on to the “Oven Easy” section for Oven-Baked Three-Layer Croque Monsieur Sandwiches. This recipe is again a chefy inspired one from Parisian master fromager Laurent Dubois. Here’s the premise:
Bechamel, or flour-thickened white sauce, is classic, but we take a shortcut and stir together crème fraîche, shredded Gruyère or Comté cheese, some mustard and nutmeg. And instead of griddling the sandwiches one at a time, we cook four at once on a baking sheet. Don’t substitute sour cream for the crème fraîche. Crème fraîche is higher in fat and will stand up to the heat. (183)
So there you have it. Once your fake bechamel is made, you butter sliced bread (I used a homemade white bread), spread on the cheese mixture, top with ham and repeat to make a triple layer of Croque Monsieur.
I’ve made Croque Monsieur one other time and I do love this technique. It is simpler and just as delicious. This is a 35 minute recipe. As with my previous Croque Monsieur experience, these are expensive sandwiches to make. Use a good deli ham–$9.99 a pound. The Gruyère and the crème fraîche were about $10 a pop, too. Note: my farmers market white bread was super heavy and dense. I did NOT do a triple layer. These sandwiches are very dependent on your bread quality. 
I will say that obviously pasta dishes are short and easy to whip up. There are a LOT of pasta recipes in the book. Remember that the book is organized by time and technique, not by type of recipes. So, you will have to search a bit if you’re looking for a specific type of recipe like side dishes, appetizers, mains, etc.
I also made Cheese-Crisped Pinto Bean Quesadillas (41) along with Cilantro and Jalapeno Spiced Rice (89). I loved both of these dishes and I’ve used the bean filling mixture for the quesadillas on its own a couple of times as a side dish. (I honestly don’t remember which section these two recipes came from.)
One more that intrigued me and that are on my to-make list was the Spanish Tortilla with Potato Chips (127). Stay tuned for that one soon for my Cook the Books Club post for Call of the Camino.
While this book was not the most entertaining cookbook to read, it probably produced the best recipes of any that I have reviewed thus far. Pick this one up!
I’m linking up with May’s Foodies Read. 
Leave a Reply