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See why.Cookbook Holders
It surprised us how many cookbook holders couldn't hold our cookbooks, much less shield them.
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What You Need To Know
Cooking from an open cookbook can present real challenges: The book may not lie flat, pages flip over, splatters soil the pages, and pages can be difficult to turn with slippery hands. Short of photocopying the recipe or rewriting it on a separate sheet of paper, the obvious solution is to use a cookbook holder.
Arguably, any book holder can act as a cookbook holder, but we felt that at the very least a cookbook holder should have a shield that protects pages from splatters. Making this our baseline requirement for purchase, we ordered several candidates and evaluated them according to the following criteria:
Everything We Tested
Highly Recommended
This is the only holder that held cookbooks of all sizes (even the coffee-table-sized hardbacks). It was also the easiest to use; insertion required only that we fold the front flap forward. All of its components fold flat for easy storage. No complaints.
Recommended
This smaller sibling to the Clear Solutions Deluxe Cookbook Holder lacked stability when we used heavy cookbooks and had a smaller shield. Otherwise, it had the easy insertion and storage qualities we admired in the Deluxe.
Recommended with reservations
The shield on this model is made of tempered glass that is truly scratchproof and easy to clean. However, the glass easily picked up fingerprints, which interfered with readability. We also objected to the metric and dry measurement equivalency chart imprinted on the left side of the shield; it wasn't useful enough to justify the obstruction it caused.
The Amco base comes in two pieces, with an adjustable back piece that slides along the base piece, allowing the book to be set at different viewing angles. The two pieces separate and so can lie flat when stored. Despite these advantages, we found it annoying to reset the metal backing for each book, especially considering that we often had to try several positions before finding the one that worked best. The backing also tended to fall forward when we removed a book from the holder, making it awkward and irritating to turn pages and reinsert the book.
Not Recommended
Only small books could be easily inserted in this one-piece holder, and it toppled over with even moderately heavy volumes.
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The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing.
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