Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; The Americas Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook

This job in the kitchen. Is walking through the very day. I'd go to the back corner go towards where growth is coming from. You know I think I've done it once. You know maybe I'm not camera friendly but I'm rarely ever asked to do that. Very. Important. Kelly is kind of our little superstar so. We try to put her in front of the camera as much as possible. You know she's she's young up and coming. Just you know maybe the next which cooks country. So we're just getting primed and ready to go. They might be the toughest one actually. She seems it seems like the nicest but. She's pissed that you're. Not pretty. Her favorite thing to do. So send them out. Actually right across the street there to the lemonade stand. Obviously there's not a lot of traffic on the street. And she makes you sell like. I forget it's like

gallons of lemonade in a day. I mean you basically like whoring yourself out if you don't get rid of it. You know make a profit on it. You have to consume yourself. And we lost good last year too to just over consumption of lemonade. I think the people who really get overlooked them run because they as test cooks. We have to know. Just our segment and we're very focused on our second and on our rest. But the runners have know sort of. Several several recipes. So it's a lot for them to concentrate on. We get to do our segment where we can just relax and they can't they just they have to keep a high level of energy. They. Understand. This way. So are you actually able to in the film industry was teaching you. Yes. I am in charge of getting this beauty shops. Target results. In a. Timely manner.

After learning. Carefully delicately artistically restocks No. Did beauty shot even makes the food look like porn food porn. Easy. One of the worst things that can possibly happen in kissing someone. Just role is to cut it a little bit. I don't think you're ready when the next person doesn't seem like you're. Going to wrap. This up should words people like. You know find the person. If I ever find the person to laugh at myself I'm probably more than one person but one person starts that kind of thing. I hope there's no camera but not good. Enough will have been in our kitchen assistants up here in the country for the last three years.

Without them we would not want to do our job. They are incredible. They stay on top of things they keep us laughing and they are just sharp tickets to hard workers and we can do without them. The backbone of the kitchen. This. Is why. Here. In. In town. So tonight on behalf of Harvard bookstore and. I am delighted to introduce Chris Kimball and the cast from America's Test Kitchen. They're joining us to discuss the America's Test Kitchen healthy family cookbook

currently in its 10th season America's Test Kitchen is the most watched cooking show on public television. CHRIS KIMBALL on the test cooks solve everyday cooking problems test equipment and takes supermarket ingredients. Chris Kimball is the host of America's Test Kitchen and the founder publisher and an editor for Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country. Chris is a regular contributor to the CBS Early Show and has been. They just fired Harry Smith So what. I mean this is a downer. Would you go up here. This is going to be very personally. Bad. I hope you're still a contributor for The New Yorker and The Wall Street Journal. Everybody fired me up. He is also the author of the cook's Bible the kitchen detective and Christopher award

winning. Dear Charlie. Jack Bishop is the editorial director of America's Test Kitchen and directed the launch of Cook's Country. He manages editorial operations at both magazines and edited the best recipe establishing the books division at America's Test Kitchen. Julia Kallen Davison is a senior editor for the book's division of America's Test Kitchen as well as being an on screen test cook. Bridget Lancaster is an on screen test cook for America's Test Kitchen and deputy editor of Cook's Country. Adam Reid is keeper of the equipment corner segment on America's Test Kitchen and an editor for Cook's Illustrated for 10 years. I'll turn things over to Chris now. But first please join me in welcoming the cast from America's Test Kitchen. All right. So they really did fire Harry Smith last week by the way. So

we'll talk about that more. I'm not upset about it. So this is basically a Q&A session so we'll talk just briefly but we're not going to give you a one hour commercial for books and we're here to answer your questions and have a good time but this is one of my last she went to Bridget's favorite letters ever received. No not the one about how beautiful you are and I want to go out to dinner with you. That's a different one too many days. This is this is a mother of a four year old and the letter she was writing a letter in the words of her 4 year old about our television show she writes the 4 year old why is that man standing there watching. I ask myself that all of you wake up not on a TV show. She really feels for Chris Kimball is he going quote is he going to learn how to cook. Why doesn't he know. Didn't his mother teach him. No she didn't actually. So do you have any answer for that. Why is dad. That's all I do. I don't get to cook. I get to use a garlic press and roll

up pastry once a year and I get to carve a turkey. That's about it. That's that's pretty much my repertoire. That's your job. You're going to have a lot of practice right. Eleven years of certified humane products. We get asked. You want to. Somebody else want to take this. Well I mean I mean there are two issues. We've approached it from the way we usually approach it which is we have done taste tests where we are tasting organic products are grass fed beef versus grain fed beef and you know we've reported on those results. You know sometimes the more natural product actually taste better and sometimes it doesn't mean frankly if you were used to the turkeys we've all grown up with and you have an heirloom Turkey it's a bit of a shock a bit of a surprise. It's basically like having another bird you know. The main issue though frankly isn't about taste. It's about politics and ethics in the kitchen and those are the reasons to be buying organic. You know I think personally the bigger differences are about local versus

stuff that was grown you mainly organically 5000 miles away in Mexico. It's probably not going to taste as good as something that was grown locally no matter how it was grown. Can I just inject a note involving deer hunting. I'm just going to ruin this evening for Jack. All right. It's all right. I just posted on a blog a picture I finally got a deer and I actually got one this year and posted it I got 40000 hits on this one thing with all these comments. Can I just say something. Everyone's so interested in a locally sourced foods right in slow foods and this is you can go to the foodie convention that way. But if you talk about hunting and in bringing home your own Me To shot in the woods that's like oh you can't do that. I mean isn't that the ultimate local sourcing. I mean really. Ok I'm done. It. Just drives me crazy. I'm sorry. You know whatever.

Yeah. A small. Network. Well first of all there are if you tried biodynamic wines because we just were actually starting a radio show not this is a commercial. January 8th and GBH 2 p.m. Saturday afternoons were running for 13 weeks when our show that's our commercial was very good. Sneaky but we did as we we're doing a segment by dynamic natural wines. You might try just try that and see if that's a big difference for you because I consume many bottles of it and I feel fine the next day. I don't know if that has the histamine problem or headache problem all the Tannen's Well thank you very Arjay us which is essentially grape juice that's not alcoholic and that's usually what we recommend.

Yeah. Or sugar or something. You know the simplest substitute if you're talking about a recipe that's got a half a cup of wine usually you need the liquid so you use a broth and add some vinegar or lemon juice just because green generally need some acidity. That's a better substitute probably for white wine than red wine. But at least you know if you need the liquid in order to make the recipe work that's the best. The best way to do it. All of the verbs you if you have yours you is going to be a closer approximation of the flavor. Well you now it started because we had USA TODAY in about three years ago for a Thanksgiving piece and we made a bunch of pies obviously. And in some of the crusts were great and some of them were going to. I don't know for support I'm not not a critical link. And some of them weren't. And I've made thousands of pie crust and sometimes they turn out great and sometimes they don't. And so the task of the kitchen was can you come up with a foolproof recipe. Well as you all know making the

perfect pie crust is probably the hardest thing in the world. So one of our test cooks did a lot of work we tried you know a Roseberry mom's recipes we tried putting baking powder we tried putting vinegar in and we weighed all over greedy and and everything else. We tried everything and finally the notion of alcohol came up because you can add more water to the dough when you roll it out. But obviously since vodka is about 50 percent alcohol we use half water half vodka. So 25 percent liquids can evaporate in the oven. So when you end up the final product is actually very flaky if you have a white dough. It tends not to be flaky. So it's easy to roll out but when it's baked It's flaky. So I don't I don't remember how they keep the guy Crosby come up with our science editor. Science is what told us. I don't remember and I think I mean there are other places. Alcohol's often added to frozen desserts for a somewhat different reason but for ice cream or sorbets. And so it's not that much of a stretch and that's actually a

fairly common thing to have a little bit of alcohol in a sorbet to keep it from freezing up really hard. And so sometimes alcohol does show up in desserts and pastry making although I don't think I've ever seen it in pie dough but the leap of you know what can you put that's wet in pie dough that's not going to make the dough tough. You know sort of that's that's the problem we were trying to solve and alcohol is wet and it won't make it tough because it will evaporate. Well you know Also alcohol doesn't react with the flour to form gluten either. That's the other thing about it. Oh sorry I forgot what I was supposed to do. This is this happens all day. They always do and I just drool in the corner and poke me. I go crazy you're supposed to write an editorial comment. So the question is how do we decide what recipes to make and put in the magazine and who ends up writing about the stories and it's the whole selection process. Someone take them and the readers basically decide what we put in magazines.

We send out a lot of different surveys daily with multiple ideas of things that we might want to write about things that we're interested in things that we just want to see if they write well or not. And we get those ratings back and the ratings have to be over a certain number in order for us to put it in our magazine. And then when we start to get some ideas of what might work and say an October issue we're looking at seasonality will craft a lineup and then as far as who gets to do what. And as far as writing. Usually they like to give the stories to people that have an interest in that because no work harder for free. Otherwise sometimes you know when you're assigning stories to people you also throw a loop at them and give them something completely out of their comfort zone and it's usually those people that will come up with something kind of ingenious because they're already thinking we just gives you Vonne is our one of our in-house bakers and she's on the show occasionally and she was making a cucumber salad

yesterday. I said What is that. What's that one example of throwing someone. Exactly. But she'll probably come up with something ingenious. She you know she'll bake them. Should make it into a pie. I bet by the way we've rated what six or seven thousand recipes over the years and the top 10 recipes I mean I know probably in this crowd you're more adventurous. But out of all those recipes. Green Bean Casserole showed up twice. Tomato sauce pasta with butter and cheese. I mean you know. Well and the other thing is you're also I'd like to say this because I'm contentious but you're all liars of course because you say you want vegetables and fish you know which we all do. And then we know what you make because Jack you know has these things raided after it goes to the magazine. And you all want meat and chocolate and potatoes all together at the same time preferably. So that's that's actually changing that's not entirely true but I would think five or six years ago that was a pretty fair statement today. It's getting better.

That has changed. I think if we put together a lineup solely based on popularity five or six years ago it would have been pork chicken and potatoes. And so what we really are looking at is among the vegetable stories we're suggesting which vegetable stories are resonating because vegetables don't seem to do as well as you know pork stories or you know and potatoes. Well that's a vegetable but you know that you'd like we just did potato stories at least according to the survey everyone everyone be very happy. So basically we learn to market our vegetables green beans with pork taters remains with chicken and we can put it in the magazine cheese stuff green bean casserole and I would add Actually it's a little different for the equipment because we're always balancing trying to cover everything that's new and coming out with updating testings that we've already done where models may have been discontinued or there may be some sort of new innovation in that you know for instance say cookie sheets and there's a new gold non-stick coating.

Well we want to get that in there. Definitely So we're balancing the updates with the new stuff and the woman she asked about whether we could do a book with a book or magazine with menus about entertaining. That's perfect. Thank you. Who would like to segue. I think Julia runs our book department so it's time for you to talk about her new. You were actually in the middle of doing a mini book right now. So another quick advertisement is it's a book Divided by season so spring summer fall winter and in each season we have 10 menus one of which is vegetarian. All the menus serve eight people and there's a time line and of course we picked Cook's Illustrated or Cook's Country main courses in dessert but then we filled in the gaps with easy to make but interestingly paired ingredients so easy salads were sort of interesting combinations that work and we are mindful that you don't want to pull out every pot and pan you probably only have one oven and that you have a lot of things to do when people come for dinner like make sure the house is clean and you know put the tablecloth on the table so that

we're very mindful to pick one recipe that might involve a little bit of work and that's the showstopper and make everything else a little bit easier. So the book's coming out soon oh in the fifth chapter is a celebration and big batch so how to have a chili party for 15 people how to do Thanksgiving dinner. So yeah that should be coming out next year. Yeah. Know if I can add I think this is a ploy to feed more people at home. But part of the process that Julia has devised is the test cook needs to prepare the entire menu at once so that we can. Well the idea was we needed to make sure that the portions were right also that the workflow was right in the sense of being able to do this. But I actually think they just wanted to make a lot of menus so that people would have complete dinners take home from the test kitchen rather than the usual You know sometimes unbalanced meals that come out of the test kitchen otherwise eight matches and brownies and one day movie followed by two. I'll tell you know day it was Futch people had many pounds

of fudge broken fudge. You see that it was separated. Oh Bedford Yeah. Oh I'm sorry. You should get as many pounds of Betfred as the marketing goes to counting the really nice substitutions for nuts. Suggestions in baking or cooking or. Well I mean often you'll find that they're probably not needed. It's going to air our seeds a problem because things like pine nuts usually don't. So it's ok. I mean pine nuts have a similar. They're not actually ever similar. Can you find of cheese. Or are they. I think what not tired is a nice texture crunchy texture. I mean obviously they have flavor but if you're using them to sprinkle on something or as a crust

on something you may just want to use a little bit more bread crumb some hard parmesan cheese things like that. Things that are going to give you texture and really intense flavor as well. Sorry. What are the recipes are as hard to make as pie crust. Ask Oh we don't have enough time to go to the first challenge. Well I think the walk actually going back to fudge and you're going to have some other ones that we did about three years ago decide to make a classic fudge recipe. And so the gentleman actually who worked on it he quit soon after that he actually did because he had shoulder separation problems among other things but he made it for two months and made 2000 pounds of it. And I said we only publish the recipe if I can make it at home without a really good instant read thermometer to get the sugar syrup so I made it in. You know seized and I came I said look you know this is just not foolproof. And so someone said well why don't we see what Martha Stewart does. And so we looked at

her recipe and she said she basically said if it doesn't work out too well poured over ice cream. God bless Martha I mean that's pretty creative stuff. You know we never published that recipe because it was just too difficult to really good thermometer and so that remains in the archive or it's online probably. Right. The last refuge to address that. What about some other ones. I think people have trouble making biscuits. There often are chicken and dumplings. Even any of those kinds of things. And up singers you know because the dumplings just go right down to the bottom of it. I think any time you're dealing with the dough that we had we had a phone call on the radio show plug from a woman who said she had a recipe called chicken and dumplings. Yeah that's right. Because they all the all sung together at the bottom of the one huge job. Well she said she had one chicken and one don't think it was perfect. Julian do you have any.

Yeah I think the simplest things are the hardest to make like a really good roast chicken with no not a lot of seasonings to cover up you know skim that's flabby or overcooked meat. Not a lot of sauce. I think roast chickens up there in my book. St. Louis Ritz. I mean we usually will run a gas variation or give instructions for how to modify the charcoal into gas but almost every drilling recipe or vice versa. If you're if the rescue call basically for gas then we convert it to charcoal. But if it's a two level fire which I'm assuming it is with all the coals banked on one side at that point that that means all the heat source is coming from one side and you have a cold spot on the ground so basically you could set your gas grill up the same way you could brown it all over the heat and then just turn off the burners that are underneath your ribs and leave the fire and smoke Packett over. Right on the direct fire.

You do have to really watch your grill at that point though because I find that gas grills can be a bit more finicky as far as having to maintain it. You know you'll think you've maintained it so you'll turn it up and you'll come back out and it's all in flames. Aid to wash and St. Louis wraps go up in flames. Some of that will depend a little bit on how many burners are in your gas grill. Two burners will not be quite as hot as the three burners so you just have to watch it. Richard's exactly right. You have to like give it some careful attention for 20 minutes or so and make those adjustments. The other thing is that if you're smoking something just because you're working with a gas grill doesn't mean you can't smoke. You can take a disposable woman and pan like a pie plate or something and put soaked wood chips on that and put it over the burner that stays on while you're finishing the ribs and that way you'll get not quite the same quality of smoke you would get from a charcoal grill. But some smokiness. Well I just bought an expensive of course and for a quick quick gas grill and it has a little drawer you pull out to put the salt. Yeah they're great. After five minutes they were incinerated. Is that an officer.

Did you know this was a gas grill. No. It has a little drawer thing. I mean I went back to the packet as you said which worked fine but the little things I mean I put it on. Absolutely. And the other thing to think about in terms of temperature on a gas grill when you're doing barbecue is to try to hover below 300. So like Bridget said Keep your eye on it make sure it's not engulfed in flames. But if you can maintain the temperature between 275 and 300 that's a good approximation of what we're doing on the gas grill. Have you got recipes that would be high on my list but I don't think anybody else on this panel. I'm sorry. Repeat the question. Will we do wild game recipes on the show. The answer is probably not but I do it because it wouldn't be. I would rather be in the bottom of that was. Yes. I mean we all have our personal preferences peccadilloes whatever you might call them. But we all agree to live and die by the survey. And so when we ask you know are you interested in

wild game. You know for most people the answer is No. Even the lamb which doesn't really quite qualify as a bit of a hard sell. You know that's about as adventurous as we can get. We've done one or two duck recipe. I think we did a goose recipe. And yes but you know they just you know partly because we do 32 pages and Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country. You're only only six times a year we want to make sure that we're putting recipes that not necessarily appeal to everybody but that have broad rather than limited appeal so even if Chris feels passionately about it we're not doing squirrel recipes or to go look you make fun of Scraw. I mean you shouldn't make friends. It makes a great spaghetti sauce but it's grey squirrel versus red squirrels is test. I promise you there will not be any recipes in the menu book for Chris can entertain me. Chris Kimball's house squirrel fray. That might be good for the blog but actually that's a new cookbook idea a squirrel for ape squirrel at 8.

How about the question is how many people on our staff have degrees from a corner school first of all we have about 130 people on the staff in the Test Kitchen. Forty five fish people and all of them have either restaurant experience or a culinary school experience right. Yeah. The dirty secret is a Christen are the only people seven people in the editorial department who don't have any cooking school experience. So thanks for sharing Jack. Well. We were there first so we were grandfathered in. That's also an appropriate term grandfather. Actually we it was years ago now was probably five years ago when we did a saucepan testing there was one copper model in there. And copper is great it's really conductive but most people are not used to cooking with something that responds that quickly. And so when we had a bunch of different test cooks test these things which we always try to do. There were some some problems with it just because people weren't that accustomed to it. Also obviously the expense and it's super heavy and it's just not something we feel like most people are going to invest

in. So you know we may do them as little sidebars or in the equipment corner in the back of Cook's Illustrated but we probably wouldn't end up doing a test of you know all copper skillets comparing different brands or copper cookware sets or anything. It's also 200. I mean the alkalies 230 40 bucks for three quarters. Right. Right. So the question is about gluten free mixes or powders versus using all purpose flour in the healthy book. Yeah you know in the healthy book we started down that path. But as you said the gluten free world in terms of the baking mixes is really confusing. And we didn't have time to do it right. So we decided not to do it at all. But I do know that the baking mixes we tried had at least four or five different things in it and some of them were pretty good. If you see me after I'll try to remember the names in the cookbook. Yeah. The question is Where do we buy the food to use in the test kitchen for testing. You know we have two full time shoppers who go to all the supermarkets you know from Whole Foods to stop and shop and shop and whatnot.

We also have food delivered from a supermarket because obviously even though we're going through vast quantities of canned tomatoes we can't use a big industrial can. We have to use you know a commercial residential size you know a small can. But we do have purveyors from me. And butter and milk. I mean I forget how many pounds of butter we go through in a week. I think it's you know 50 60 pounds of butter in a week and that's just for your rest. And that's just for my test. It does include Bridget. Bridges got 500 pounds of pork every week. Yeah yeah. So you know it's a it's a full time job for two people and I'm in the kitchen. I don't know if you've ever seen it but there's there's cupboards obviously and every covered has a test cook's name on it and they have a secret stash of ingredients that they're working with and they have their own dedicated refrigerator with their own stuff. So that shopping is not only about the shopping but the organizing of all the ingredients. It's pretty incredible. OK it's time for a quiz. How much do you think we spend on food with the test kitchen.

We did this on Twitter. Yeah. Well when you find out I did this about six months ago almost passed out when I got it. And you and even tell you the right number got Jack Bishop discount. OK let's have some guesses now and you will how much total money we spend per year on just food for the test kitchen. You are you trying to kill Chris. Let's have a different number. That was two million five notes to get those squirrel recipes the stuff with fois gras for two million five. Now 940000 itself $470000 right. That's about right. I know Jack's top five and a quarter but. Well I will take that we'll take the 475 million a year. And we shop at Stop and Shop right. I mean this is a question about do we have more information about the world of legumes

that will be our next scope with the world of legumes. Yes we do we have the brining. Brining beans is that what you're talking about. Yeah. And it was a real joke at the beginning like Oh really you're going to brine beans now because everything in the Test Kitchen is brine and when it works we're all really laughing like we really are going to brine beans. But yeah it's amazing how well it worked. My other favorite trick is putting baking powder baking powder soda into with black beans to keep them black. So they don't turn that gray color a little pinch. Early on in the beginning when you're simmering do you want to get the Chef's Choice 130 knife sharpener. I would say one of the biggest problems in home kitchens. Whenever I get in my friends houses and I'm going to finish up something or make a salad and I pull out their knives you couldn't cut through soft butter with their knives. So a knife sharpener is a key thing and the Chef's Choice 130 is our favorite one. If you have some money to spend on an instant read thermometer the thermo pen

splash proof instant read thermometer it's close to 100 bucks it's like 96 for $97 So it's not cheap but it's great. It you know if you use this thing you will never overcook another piece of meat. Another thing that I love it's also by thermo works. It's a timer thermometer combination and it's an alarm that you can set to ring when it reaches a programmed temperature that you can put in yourself. And it's got a probe that stays in you know the bread you're baking or the meat that you're roasting whatever you're cooking with it. And the probe plugs into the little base unit and when it reaches you know 138 or 140 for pork if that's what you're going for it will be. And that way you're almost guaranteed never to overcook another piece of meat. You just want to be careful with those two double check that the probe part is accurate because we've had problems with that in the past. But those are three good ones. How about the American innovative timer. Oh my God. I still can't stand that timer. Chris's favorite time which he swears is

intuitive. Is this thing nonintuitive possible. It is got color a really I'll style. Yeah I love that type of power. All right Jack. Break the tie. I don't think she'd have to read a manual to use a timer. It's because I don't like looking with things that make me feel stupid. That doesn't matter. Should I. Should I leave now. Yes exactly. One more I'll give you a bonus if if you're looking for a scale the OXO digital food scale rock and good scale it's about $50 goes up to 11 pounds. You can pull the read out which is big and easy to read you can pull it away so if you're measuring something in a huge bowl it doesn't obscure the the read out and you can detach the little wing platform actually keep it clean which is very nice. It was a lot of enthusiasm.

I used to have more than four pairs of good tongs a good good chef's knife and a cutting board. No seriously. So you're talking about sort of starting a kitchen from scratch. The question was which are the six key kitchen utensils right. You know I am I'm serious I probably would have two pairs of tongs in my kitchen at home I have five and I use them all every day. I have the OXO good good. I've only got six at home and two of them be the same. That doesn't work. One pair of tongs for sure. You know the the Victorian Oxx Forstner five Brox eight inch chef's knife you want to have a good chef's knife and that one. There's a lot of dispute and debate and conversation about which knives are best. We've always really liked that one it stays fairly sharp it's got a sort of a tacky handle that doesn't get too slippery. It's not nice to relax and it's pretty cheap it's $25. You want to have a good cutting board

if you can get a polyurethane one that fits into the dishwasher. That's ideal because it's a soft for the knife strike and you can sanitize it in the dishwasher. And what else will microplane encapsulate Yeah for grating cheese or chocolate or citrus fruits the microplane graders Esther. And that's fabulous. That is the tip for me. Chris what's your favorite kind of time are you. Going to Christmas. Last question for the evening after the 9th. I'm getting the time you need a timer. I mean I've cooked with a number of people over the years and some of them never used a timer and you know knew when things were ready intuitively. No that's not me. No I need a timer multi timer. So in terms of pots and pans I'm pretty minimalist and I think he'd get away with a Dutch oven a 12 inch skillet with a lid and a rimmed baking sheet. I think those three pieces are rimmed baking sheet. And if you have a wire wrap that fit inside it. Those are the three things I think you could make almost any recipe.

You know I actually went away for a year years ago and had a tiny little kitchen and you were you were sent away. I was banished and I brought you know I couldn't bring that much cookware I brought three court All-Clad straight sided saute pan. I used that for sautéing I used it for roasting. I used it for braising I used it for baking. It actually worked really really well. A great pan. They're not cheap like 200 plus $250 and $45 but they're wonderful. All the questions about the testing process. Well well we have 45 test cooks. We have three groups. Julie heads up the book division like you still just doing Cook's Country. Yes. And and then we have Cook's Illustrated So we have three separate teams which are independent. We look at the surveys. Pick a recipe. For one doctor probably help with that process. We do a line up and then we start with the recipe and find 20

versions of it and cookbooks online occasionally. Other places whomever is running that particular recipe will pick five versions to make they're made in the Test Kitchen to do a blind tasting. They like things they don't like things we cobbled together a working recipe and we go to work. One person is in charge of the recipe development but every stage in the testing he or she will share those tapes with sheets to be filled out like this I didn't like that they're all blind taste tests and then it's made I would say cooks 50 times at least you know 40 to 80 times. It's made an all purpose flour cake flour this kind of oil that kind of oil. And then when that's done it's sent out with a survey to a bunch of folks who volunteered to make our recipes probably some of you will get those results back. And Jack you want to take it from there. Yes. So we will send the recipe out and usually get somewhere between 50 and 200 people to make the recipe. Give it a road test. And right back

with their experience. Couple of things. Nobody actually follows those recipes even though they're doing a road test so we're trying to read the tea leaves about actually good good check for us to go back in the kitchen and say these are the things people are going to do to our recipe in terms of the substitutions or the places that they're going to cut. Make shortcuts. We ask all kinds of feedback but the most important question is the last question in the survey which is would you make the recipe again. And basically our standard is to get four out of five people. 80 percent to say make again. I mean we get people to make the recipe who then say oh I don't like mushrooms and this mushroom dish. Well they're not going to make it again. Thanks for making it. And you know you can't get make a recipe that although we've had some recipes it appeals to almost everybody. 80 percent is a pretty high bar. And I would say probably a third of the recipes the first time they go out come back with significant comments that make us go back in the kitchen. The number one thing is make it simpler. It isn't so much that the recipe didn't work but that it was an awful lot of effort. I think one of the

things that we're always vigilant about in the Test Kitchen is you know number one we have people who shop and do the dishes which you don't have at home and is a real advantage. And sometimes you don't quite see what you're doing. The other thing is skill level. I mean obviously everybody says kitchen is a fabulous cook and they're really fast and they're really efficient and things come out great but that isn't the way it works at home. That's kind of my job since I didn't go to cooking school. I'm the sort of naysayer in saying really you think people like me to do this because I don't think I can do this at home. And that's a bad sign. And you know we'll then sometimes go back in the kitchen retest the recipe send it back out if we've streamlined the recipe or we've trouble come up with some troubleshooting or it's a good clue about when we want to do illustrations or photographs. We see that everyone is having trouble with the same part of the recipe. Well maybe we just need to illustrate that or photograph that so that people understand it better than the written recipe that we sent out. Well the best example of this was a year and a half ago with the chicken recipe. I told the story many times but it's a great story and that the

gentleman hated the recipe would not make it again. So it was one of the worst recipes ever made his life. It was a sauteed chicken breast and Jack noted at the bottom to sort of you know place for comments and he said I substituted shrimp for the chicken. I mean really. That's even beyond the pale for us. And it was tough and overcooked. Really. Who would have thought. So we get a lot of those too. Yeah. We expect that when it says Basil some people might use parsley but you know for chicken if you're on your own with that water for chocolates him for chickens. So how did you get involved with doing whatever taste testers you. If you go to the home page of Cook's Illustrated there's a blurb that says recipe testers wanted and you will become a friend of Cook's Illustrated or a friend of America's Test Kitchen. Same thing at Cook's Country. There's a few If you're a subscriber to Cook's Country. Go to the home page of the Web site you can sign up and you'll be sent more recipes for testing than you ever wanted.

You have to give us your checking account number two because you're famous and doing my job. She's making cookies and wants to know about flavoring them let's say orange barang is when you have disaster in the orange oil and. Flavoring egg whites is pretty hard. But I would fold in your flavorings right after you've whipped them before you foot you know before you pipe the cookies at the last minute. I think if you add it too early it might affect the whipping up that way especially the oils. And you can add too much sugar it really affects the texture. That is the cream of tartar trick. Yeah. Why am I kind of assume that we already had to give you a half teaspoon of cream of tartar. Excuse me. I'll put in a half teaspoon or a quarter teaspoon of cream of tartar with the egg whites. When they first start whipping it is called. And that I. That's all right. Otherwise the poisonous dye. Publisher kills people in Cambridge. It's help stabilize the egg whites

and makes them less likely to collapse. So you might want to try that. Thanks for coming. Be happy to sign the healthy cookbook tonight at the. Well I don't know. It's. It's tuesday.