(FORTUNE Small Business) – You probably can't tell the difference between imitation vanilla extract and the real thing. Cheesecake will almost always crack at 160 degrees, so use a thermometer and take it out once it hits 150. Ninety-nine-cent Ronzoni tastes better than any of those fancy pastas imported from Italy. Those are the kinds of things most cookbooks won't bother to tell you, because they're the kinds of things most cookbook authors don't have the curiosity to find out. Chris Kimball is the exception.

Kimball hosts the public television series America's Test Kitchen, which is a more realistic cooking program than the culinary pornography you'll find on the Food Network. Instead, Kimball always starts with the presumption that something's going to go wrong. "Nobody takes the approach we do, which is to go into the kitchen with an investigative stance," Kimball says. "We say, 'Here's a God-awful brownie. Let's figure out how to make a good one.'"

Launched in 2000, America's Test Kitchen now has more than a million viewers, and Kimball just released the second cookbook based on the series: Here in America's Test Kitchen (Boston Common Press, $29.95). Like the show--and the bimonthly magazine Kimball edits, Cook's Illustrated--the book walks you through the process of making, say, chicken piccata, then describes how the test kitchen staff cooked and tasted a dozen variations on the basic recipe before explaining which one worked best and why. (Hint: Flour the chicken but don't bread it--the breading only turns soggy in sauce--and add the capers at the last minute "so they retain their structural integrity.") The result is a kind of Joy of Cooking meets Consumer Reports.

Kimball's approach grew out of a childhood in Vermont farm kitchens and an adulthood frustration with the always-perfect dishes you see in the food world. He spent his early career in publishing, not in food, and his attempts to recreate those dishes at home would often fail. "I got pissed off," remembers Kimball, "and I said, 'I'm going to go start a magazine.'" That magazine has had a few identities since its 1980 launch, but today Cook's Illustrated is the foundation of a multimedia enterprise that includes the TV show, several websites, and more than 30 cookbooks.

In addition to recipes, Kimball and his staff apply their try-it-and-see approach to appliances, ingredients--in the book they taste ten brands of canned beef broth, nine types of salt, and eight different blue cheeses, among others--and even utensils. The section evaluating kitchen tongs reads like a food-prep decathlon: "We used them to pick up slim asparagus spears, to retrieve irregularly shaped corn on the cob from boiling water, to saute slippery scallops, to pan-fry breaded chicken cutlets, to move ramekins filled with water and chocolate mousse ... and to turn a three-pound pot roast." So you feel you can trust the book's conclusion that your best bet is the Edlund locking 12-inchers for $9.95. (It's also worth noting that none of Kimball's media outlets--books, magazine, the websites, or the television show--accept advertising.)

But best of all in this book is the writing--accessible, free of jargon, and interesting enough on most pages that you want to sit down with it even when you're not cooking. "It's like going out for a beer with a good friend of yours," Kimball says, "except you're talking about making pie dough."