Obsessed With The Best Review

Obsessed With The Best: Redefining How We Find the “Best” Recipe

In this week’s cookbook review, we explore Obsessed With The Best by Ella Quittner, a rigorous and deeply personal collection that redefines what it means to perfect a recipe by testing every possible path to get there.

Recognized as one of the best cookbooks of 2026 by Bon Appétit and Food & Wine, Obsessed With The Best is built around a simple but demanding idea: there is always a “best” way to cook something, but that definition depends entirely on what you value.

Structured around 24 head-to-head cooking tests, the book moves beyond traditional recipe writing, offering a methodical exploration of technique, flavor, and preference, and encouraging readers to define their own version of “best.”

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A Cookbook Built on Obsession

At the core of Obsessed With The Best is Ella’s signature approach, familiar to readers of her “Absolute Best Tests” series. She doesn’t settle. Whether it’s roast chicken, pancakes, or meatballs, she tests method after method, sometimes traveling across continents, to understand what truly delivers.

This isn’t casual experimentation. It’s rigorous, methodical, and often extreme. From studying tsukune techniques in Tokyo to sourcing biscuit knowledge in Alabama’s Black Belt, Ella’s process feels closer to investigative journalism than recipe development.

The result is a collection built around 24 head-to-head tests, each one comparing different techniques side by side. Instead of presenting a single definitive answer, the book carefully breaks down the strengths and trade-offs of each approach, allowing you to decide what “best” actually means for you.

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Where Testing Becomes Cooking

The book includes over 100 recipes, each grounded in these carefully tested foundations. But this isn’t about complexity for the sake of it, many of the dishes rely on minimalist techniques that maximize flavor without unnecessary steps.

Standouts range from flaky, pressure-tested biscuits and no-special-equipment buttermilk pancakes to deeply flavorful mains like triple-secret tender meatballs and contrasting roast chicken methods that highlight both efficiency and indulgence. Even familiar comforts, like caramelized shallot soft scrambled eggs with Comté or brown butter chocolate chunk cookies, are elevated through precision and repetition.

There’s a satisfying range throughout, moving seamlessly between everyday cooking and more involved, technique-driven dishes, always anchored in the same central question: what truly makes this the best version?

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The Narrative Layer

What elevates this cookbook is its narrative layer. Interspersed essays explore people and places equally obsessed with perfection, from a bacon enthusiast traveling annually to Japan for a niche pork festival to a global exploration of pasta-making techniques stretching from Osaka to Tuscany.

These stories add depth and personality, turning the book into something broader than a traditional cookbook. It becomes a reflection on obsession, craft, and the pursuit of excellence in all its forms.

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Final Thoughts

Obsessed With The Best is precise, informative, personal, and genuinely fun. It balances deep technical exploration with an approachable tone, making complex ideas feel accessible without oversimplifying them.

This book isn’t for someone looking for the fastest possible dinner, even if it occasionally provides one. It’s for cooks who question technique, who want to understand the reasoning behind each step, and who enjoy refining their approach over time.

If you’ve ever gone down a rabbit hole trying to perfect a single dish, this book will feel instantly familiar.

Rather than dictating a single “correct” method, it gives you the tools to define your own version of “best.” And that’s exactly what makes it stand out.