Speaker 1: America's Test Kitchen has been studying and deconstructing recipes to
Speaker 1: help educate home cooks for twenty five years. Their readers
Speaker 1: and viewers rely on the science driven thinking that America's
Speaker 1: Test Kitchen provides. Dan Susa has held many roles at
Speaker 1: America's Test Kitchen and is currently the chief Content Officer
Speaker 1: for the brand. That means he oversees sixty test cooks,
Speaker 1: creating four television shows, two magazines, and thousands of recipes
Speaker 1: for the website. I'm sitting with Dan now at America's
Speaker 1: Test Kitchen headquarters in Boston, and we're discussing his role
Speaker 1: at ATK, which is America's Test Kitchen, and how he
Speaker 1: hopes the brand will evolve in months and years ahead.
Speaker 1: Welcome to my podcast, Dan, thank you for having me
Speaker 1: Muche very nice and we've not met before, It's true,
Speaker 1: which is weird because we're both in exactly the same
Speaker 1: business of creating recipes for the American consumer and teaching
Speaker 1: them and publishing stuff for them. And it's very nice
Speaker 1: to be here. And this is very reminiscent of my
Speaker 1: big kitchen at Star at Lee High, which is where
Speaker 1: I started really doing my thing. In New York City. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you do it here in Boston. You have two
Speaker 1: hundred employees here.
Speaker 2: Yes, a little over two hundred employees.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep. And how many shows?
Speaker 3: So we have our two flagship shows which are on PBS,
Speaker 3: America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Country. We also have an
Speaker 3: Amazon show called America's Test Kitchen the Next Generation, which
Speaker 3: is sort of a competition show to get on our
Speaker 3: other shows, a whole slate of YouTube shows and others
Speaker 3: on OTT and Fast Networks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're very rigorous kind of way of choosing recipes.
Speaker 1: I'll make it onto your show. So can you describe that?
Speaker 2: Sure? Yes, it's definitely quite involved. So it starts with research.
Speaker 3: We have a beautiful cookbook library here with over five
Speaker 3: thousand titles.
Speaker 1: We have a great any of my cookbooks in your Life?
Speaker 2: We definitely, we definitely have I'm ready to go check. Yes, well,
Speaker 2: we will try to hear this, but we absolutely do.
Speaker 3: And so that we start with research and then we
Speaker 3: do what we call five recipe tests. So we'll pull
Speaker 3: recipes from cookbooks and online and choose five that we
Speaker 3: feel like represent the landscape of that recipe. We try
Speaker 3: them in the kitchen. Everyone comes and taste, and we
Speaker 3: figure out what works what doesn't work. We learn a
Speaker 3: lot from that process. We cobble together what we call
Speaker 3: our working recipe, and that's what we'll test true scientific method,
Speaker 3: trial and error against over a period about six weeks.
Speaker 1: I should have asked you before I came here, because
Speaker 1: we recently discovered something weird about pacha shoe. Uh huh?
Speaker 1: Now are you you make pacha shoe? Right?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, what's your recipe? America's Test Kitchen has just
Speaker 1: published their new twenty fifth anniversary cookbook called America's Test
Speaker 1: Kitchen five hundred favorite recipes, Yes, five hundred recipes that
Speaker 1: changed the way America cooks. So let's see what your
Speaker 1: pacha shoe recipe says. I'm very curious because I did
Speaker 1: not refer to yours when I was testing my recipe.
Speaker 2: You did it?
Speaker 1: No, I didn't. But I did refer to an awful
Speaker 1: lot of classic recipes for pata shoe, and I found
Speaker 1: a really unusual fact.
Speaker 2: What did you find?
Speaker 1: Well that they're pretty much all exactly the same.
Speaker 2: Yes, they definitely are.
Speaker 1: Goujear is a way of baking the pata shoe dough.
Speaker 3: So we have two large eggs plus one large egg white,
Speaker 3: five tablespoons of butter, two tablespoons of milk, six tablespoons
Speaker 3: of water, a little bit of salt and sugar, and
Speaker 3: then half a cup of all purpose flour.
Speaker 1: Oh, so that makes a very few pata shoe twenty
Speaker 1: four little foals. Yes. So I had a young man
Speaker 1: working in my kitchen and I said, oh, please make
Speaker 1: guget four cocktails for tonight. And he made the gujeer
Speaker 1: and they were the best guget I have ever tasted.
Speaker 2: Did he mess something up?
Speaker 1: Well, he didn't mess it up. He actually fixed it.
Speaker 1: And he used twelve eggs per cup per cup of flour. Wow,
Speaker 1: And it made the lightest, fluffiest, most hollow gouge air
Speaker 1: you've ever seen. And he didn't put the cheese in
Speaker 1: the dough. He put the cheese on top, very very
Speaker 1: finely grated cheese. He used to a rasp, but would
Speaker 1: rasp to grate the cheese and it was He put
Speaker 1: it on top of the dough and that sat out.
Speaker 1: He said for a while it the best. So obviously
Speaker 1: the four eggs was somebody's idea that that's really what
Speaker 1: it should be. For one cup of flour. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be I love that and I
Speaker 1: loved it. I just loved that, and I thought, I
Speaker 1: actually did think of America's Test Kitchen and I was
Speaker 1: doing that, yeah, wondering did they ever find that out?
Speaker 3: Well, so, yeah, so it sounds like that's even twice
Speaker 3: what we have in this recipe. We use a one
Speaker 3: less yolk in our recipe. Fat has that tenderizing effect
Speaker 3: on baked goods, so we get less spring out of it,
Speaker 3: so we have a dryer, fluffier result from the egg white.
Speaker 3: But it makes sense to me that more eggs you're
Speaker 3: gonna have more leavening power and more ability to trap back.
Speaker 1: See your lighter, Yeah, more tender it really worse.
Speaker 2: Try it, I will I definitely.
Speaker 3: I saw the photo in your book and you can
Speaker 3: see like sunlight poking through them.
Speaker 2: It looks so light. Yeah, I will say, I've never
Speaker 2: seen the goose that looks.
Speaker 1: It's kind of fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: But that just it just makes me think that cooking
Speaker 1: is a science, and it is it is a science
Speaker 1: that changes according to the Women of.
Speaker 3: The Ship, actually well exactly, and that trial and error
Speaker 3: is so key to our process. You know, we we
Speaker 3: don't find things out unless we try them and see
Speaker 3: if they make it or fail. When we're finally happy
Speaker 3: with the recipe in house, we also do this kind
Speaker 3: of big in the real world experiment where we send
Speaker 3: our recipes to forty thousand home cooks that actually volunteer
Speaker 3: to make our recipes before we publish them. We learn
Speaker 3: a ton from that process.
Speaker 1: Forty thousands yeah wow, yeah, get who's sits through that.
Speaker 3: So we luckily have a survey system that like manages it.
Speaker 3: But so we look at a lot of things where
Speaker 3: like if someone couldn't find an ingredient, we'd like to
Speaker 3: know if something was awkward, But we always look for
Speaker 3: an eighty make again score, like would you make the
Speaker 3: recipe and add it to your repertoire. That's really our
Speaker 3: standard because that's how you change someone's life and actually
Speaker 3: incorporate into it.
Speaker 2: So that's that's sort of our process.
Speaker 1: That's been the most successful, that's been the most disastrous
Speaker 1: test you've ever done?
Speaker 3: Oh, disaster, We've had some. We have some big disasters here,
Speaker 3: I would say. So I worked on a macarone recipe.
Speaker 3: So the beautiful little French cookies for a very long time,
Speaker 3: probably much longer than six weeks, and I could never.
Speaker 1: Get them as good as Lade.
Speaker 2: Absolutely not. No, so I I we did, I would
Speaker 2: get it. You did.
Speaker 3: So we have a recipe now that is as good
Speaker 3: as lottera. But for me, I had so many variable
Speaker 3: variables and it would fail sometimes and work other times.
Speaker 3: I wasn't happy with it, and so our home testers
Speaker 3: never had success. So I put it away for years.
Speaker 3: When I took over as editor in chief of Cooks, iilltrated.
Speaker 3: I assigned it to someone and he did a much
Speaker 3: better job than I did.
Speaker 1: No, it can be done, yes, and it can't. They
Speaker 1: can be made at home.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: And and we we found that out, and we we've
Speaker 1: we've tried to demystify you know, difficult recipes like the
Speaker 1: best brioche. You know, it's hard to hard to do
Speaker 1: that brioche the way the way you really wanted to
Speaker 1: turn out. And I do little tests. You probably do
Speaker 1: the same thing. I mean, I did a cost test
Speaker 1: in New York City, who makes the best costal? And
Speaker 1: and well at the first the first time I did it,
Speaker 1: and this was quite a few years ago, and they
Speaker 1: don't exist anymore. Was the Petrosian Bakery? Oh really yep,
Speaker 1: right on fifteen ninth Street, I think, And they made
Speaker 1: the best costle and then they closed their bakery, so
Speaker 1: then I had to search and search again, and then
Speaker 1: I found that Laderie made the best according to our
Speaker 1: little independent survey, and they were very, very good. And
Speaker 1: now so many people are making good class on which
Speaker 1: is nice.
Speaker 2: It's true. And people make them at home too.
Speaker 1: Oh, of course I make them at home. I when
Speaker 1: I was starting, when I started catering, there was no
Speaker 1: place to buy costal sure, and so I had to
Speaker 1: make them. And I followed Julia Child's recipe and volume two,
Speaker 1: that twenty two page recipe, and I don't can't remember
Speaker 1: how many pages it were.
Speaker 2: I could always tell the challenge of her recipes.
Speaker 1: Basically, but they were delicious. My daughter still remembers that
Speaker 1: mine were the best costume she has ever tasted of them,
Speaker 1: which is nice. They were really Julia's, but they were
Speaker 1: I made them. But how interesting that that things have
Speaker 1: changed so much?
Speaker 2: It's true, it's true.
Speaker 1: So what motivated you to follow a career in culinary
Speaker 1: like this? And what is your background?
Speaker 3: Just briefly, Yeah, so I went to the culinary instead
Speaker 3: of America for culinary school.
Speaker 1: Actual he graduated first in his class.
Speaker 3: I read that my mom loves that back she loves
Speaker 3: She's also a Martha by the way, with a beautiful garden.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: So I worked in restaurants in Boston and New York.
Speaker 3: I spent a little time at Lebernon Dan and I
Speaker 3: loved restaurants for the sort of repetition and the speed
Speaker 3: and how fast you could get. But I've always just
Speaker 3: been incredibly curiou this person, and so the test kitchen
Speaker 3: really was a good home for me where I could
Speaker 3: have a big question about food and go after and
Speaker 3: chase it and they would pay for all the food
Speaker 3: and pay for my time. And then I love writing,
Speaker 3: so it gave me an outlet for that. It really
Speaker 3: brought together a lot more so. Food media for me
Speaker 3: was an extension of what I could learn in the kitchen,
Speaker 3: but just more broadly and not in the science part
Speaker 3: of it too is big And.
Speaker 1: You stayed in Boston, which is which has very excellent
Speaker 1: restaurant some very excellent developmental chefs up here, but you've
Speaker 1: never been tempted to come back to New York.
Speaker 2: So I love New York. My roots are really here.
Speaker 2: I have my family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my family is either from Maine or Massachusetts, and
Speaker 3: so I had my roots side, my friends, and honestly,
Speaker 3: the test kitchen. I fell in love with this place
Speaker 3: sixteen years ago when I got the job of test cook,
Speaker 3: and I haven't left.
Speaker 2: I just love it.
Speaker 3: I keep taking on new and fun different jobs. But
Speaker 3: it's a really great place.
Speaker 1: And so Cook's Illustrated. It was one of my favorite
Speaker 1: magazines for a long time. Yeah, Kimball, he was my
Speaker 1: neighbor in Fairfield.
Speaker 2: Oh was he really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And I've known him for many, many years. And so
Speaker 1: how do they first notice you?
Speaker 3: So the application process to be a test cook involves
Speaker 3: recipe development. So you actually develop a recipe for a muffin,
Speaker 3: and then you submitted it along with a story, kind
Speaker 3: of in the style of Cooks Illustrated.
Speaker 2: So I did this.
Speaker 1: Even if you don't like muffins, I don't like.
Speaker 2: Even if you don't like muffins, you got a muffin
Speaker 2: rest me in your book.
Speaker 1: Huh, well, blueberry muffins.
Speaker 2: That doesn't count.
Speaker 1: But no, no, I put that in because it is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite muffins. But I still don't like I.
Speaker 2: Don't even Yeah, well, so I didn't.
Speaker 3: After this, I spent weeks working on a Cranberry U
Speaker 3: muffin and I submitted it along with a story, and
Speaker 3: I got a call from the editorial director and she said,
Speaker 3: we loved your story. Your recipe didn't work. I said,
Speaker 3: that's impossible. I had worked on it for weeks. I
Speaker 3: had gotten myself so tired of muffins. But she said,
Speaker 3: we're going to give you one more shot at fixing it.
Speaker 3: And I got this call when I was like driving
Speaker 3: home from the supermarket. I parked my car, I got out.
Speaker 1: Had you left out an ingredient when you sent it in?
Speaker 3: Well, so I figured out that one of the ratio,
Speaker 3: one of the measurements was off in the version that
Speaker 3: I sent them.
Speaker 2: But this is the crazy thing.
Speaker 3: So I parked my car, I got out, and I
Speaker 3: was walking to my apartment and there's a construction worker
Speaker 3: at the building next door and he goes, hey, your car,
Speaker 3: And I whip around and my car is cruising down
Speaker 3: the driveway at this steep grade and plows into the
Speaker 3: garage door of my neighbor. I forgot to put the
Speaker 3: car in gear and pull the emergency. It was so
Speaker 3: focused on the recipe and then he was looking at
Speaker 3: me like I was crazy. But I just turned around
Speaker 3: and walked inside and opened my laptop up to like
Speaker 3: fix the recipe. I just left the car because I
Speaker 3: wanted to do this. I want to do this so bad. Okay,
Speaker 3: and it worked, and it worked.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I sent the next version and it was fine.
Speaker 1: Well, you've held so many roles at America's Test Kitchen,
Speaker 1: Test Cook, editor in chief of Cook's Illustrated, on air
Speaker 1: science expert, creator of What's Eating Dan, and now chief
Speaker 1: content officer of the entire company? What role has been
Speaker 1: the most fulfilling?
Speaker 3: So this probably won't come as a surprise to you,
Speaker 3: but editor in chief of Cooks Illustrated it has been.
Speaker 3: I've been done that for the last seven years, and
Speaker 3: it's been so incredibly satisfying. Making a magazine is, as
Speaker 3: you know, this all all in sort of proposition, and
Speaker 3: I love that we can sweat over every word and
Speaker 3: every image and you can just see our fingerprints all
Speaker 3: over each issue of it. I work with an incredible
Speaker 3: team and we just asked really big questions about food and.
Speaker 2: Go and tackle them.
Speaker 1: What's been the most challenging job.
Speaker 3: Most challenging job I think is the same I think, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it is editor in cheap I love doing
Speaker 3: the stuff on TV.
Speaker 2: It comes pretty naturally to me.
Speaker 3: But the managing a team making something like that, it's
Speaker 3: been a big role, very satisfying.
Speaker 1: Though, And Cooks Illustrated has really garnered a lot of
Speaker 1: attention and an awful lot of fans. How many people
Speaker 1: subscribe to Cooks Illustrated.
Speaker 3: We have about seven hundred thousand subscribers right now, and
Speaker 3: we actually won a national magazine work for General Excellence
Speaker 3: two years ago, the first time in our history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's under your tutelage, under my tutelage. Yes,
Speaker 2: I'm pretty good, very proud of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's really fun. No, I miss having the
Speaker 1: printed magazine, and Martha Stuart Living is now you know,
Speaker 1: basically online. Sure, we're doing some SIPs special interest publications, yes,
Speaker 1: we do for six a year now, which are fun
Speaker 1: to do, but it's not the same as doing that
Speaker 1: monthly real difficult production of a beautiful magazine. It's true,
Speaker 1: and and but people's taste for magazines has really changed,
Speaker 1: so we're looking for information in so many different places.
Speaker 1: How else does America's Test Kitchen relate information and recipes
Speaker 1: to your members?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I love magazines, I love print, I always will,
Speaker 3: but our web membership, our digital subscription is really the
Speaker 3: sort of you know, it's the highest quality, the most
Speaker 3: polished version of our content. And we're imagining really cool
Speaker 3: and interesting ways to present recipes. I mean, obviously, when
Speaker 3: you have video and you have the ability to really
Speaker 3: break down steps for people, it's a much better tool
Speaker 3: for teaching and learning. So I love that we're putting
Speaker 3: a ton of effort into that moving forward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I go back to find a recipe, like
Speaker 1: I was making stuff peppers this weekend, it's so many
Speaker 1: stuff peppers in the garden and I had to pick
Speaker 1: them before the frost. Oh sure, And so I made
Speaker 1: two giant giant pots of stuffed peppers green peppers and
Speaker 1: two red peppers and one yellow pep. But I used
Speaker 1: ground turkey, And of course I don't have a recipe
Speaker 1: for that particular thing. But I love stuff peppers. I
Speaker 1: think it's the polish background. But I go to the website,
Speaker 1: I look, and I rarely go to other people's websites
Speaker 1: for things that I know I love that I probably
Speaker 1: have made in the past sometime and it was just
Speaker 1: it's just fun to go back and see and how
Speaker 1: easy it is to retrieve a recipe online. And that's
Speaker 1: what people are doing now totally so much.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, we have the ability to like save a
Speaker 3: recipe and you can come back to build these collections.
Speaker 3: It's much higher touch and yeah, yeah, it's the most
Speaker 3: kind of premium experience. I got stuff peppers too, I
Speaker 3: love them.
Speaker 1: You did. Yeah, And then some friends of mine made
Speaker 1: stuff my mother's stuff cabbage over the weekend and they
Speaker 1: sent me pictures of their stuff cabbage and they had
Speaker 1: gotten that recipe online also, So it's so funny. That's
Speaker 1: that's the way people are referencing information so so much
Speaker 1: more than ever before. It's true, it's true, And you
Speaker 1: have a lot of subscribers to to your information.
Speaker 3: We do, how many, Yes, we have over five hundred
Speaker 3: thousand web members, but we're everywhere, right, so we've got
Speaker 3: two and a half million on YouTube. Really some amazing
Speaker 3: original shows they are, including What's Tone and Techniquely with
Speaker 3: my colleague long Lamb, it's like all about technique really
Speaker 3: about teaching in that forum, and then you know, we're
Speaker 3: all over social media.
Speaker 1: It's Instagram and well the Instagram. Like this morning, I
Speaker 1: was in the car coming up to Boston and just
Speaker 1: just turned on just the stream, you know, just watching
Speaker 1: and watching reels on the way, and you learn so
Speaker 1: much in a few minutes of watching a few cooking reels,
Speaker 1: you learn so much. And it's you know, learn how
Speaker 1: to make a dumpling a different way, or you learn
Speaker 1: how to chop it onion in a different way, or
Speaker 1: so chase something a different way, and it's and there's
Speaker 1: so much information out there from all over the world,
Speaker 1: which makes it very interesting.
Speaker 2: Very interesting.
Speaker 3: I agree, and I think we love writing a lot
Speaker 3: about recipes, whether it's a fifteen hundred word article in
Speaker 3: the magazine. But I actually am like such an evangelist
Speaker 3: for social video because in forty five seconds and sixty seconds,
Speaker 3: we can teach you a technique.
Speaker 2: We can teach you how to cook a steak a
Speaker 2: certain way or whatever. And it's a cold steak that
Speaker 2: the cold steak.
Speaker 1: Yeah, your cold stake telling the audience what your full
Speaker 1: steak is.
Speaker 3: So we have a cold seared steak, which sounds a
Speaker 3: little bit crazy, but really it's throwing out everything you
Speaker 3: kind of learned about steak cookery. So instead of a
Speaker 3: ripping hot skillet and tons of oil, we use a
Speaker 3: cold pan and no oil, And instead of flipping one
Speaker 3: time halfway through, we flip it frequently, every two minutes.
Speaker 3: And so here's what happened to kind of steak. So
Speaker 3: we start with either a strip steak.
Speaker 2: Or a rabi. You want to good enough marveling.
Speaker 3: That some of that fat will render out right, So
Speaker 3: you start it cold and you turn the heat up,
Speaker 3: and as is cooking, you flip every two minutes, and
Speaker 3: you add browning on the outside the same way you
Speaker 3: would paint a house layer after layer. So by the
Speaker 3: time the inside is warm to that perfect medium rare,
Speaker 3: the outside is gorgeous and brown turns everything kind of
Speaker 3: on its head. But it makes sense when you really
Speaker 3: think about. You know, what the interior needs and what
Speaker 3: the exterior needs, but it's cooking in its own beef fat.
Speaker 2: So it's really wonderful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yummy. What dish do most cooks home cooks ask for?
Speaker 2: That's a good question.
Speaker 3: I mean one of the biggest questions is like chicken,
Speaker 3: Like what do I do with chicken? How do I
Speaker 3: add flavor or salmon or salmon. Salmon is a really
Speaker 3: big one.
Speaker 1: What's your favorite way to cook salmon?
Speaker 3: So this whe it's sound like a broken record, but
Speaker 3: we have a cold start method for that as well.
Speaker 3: You know, farmery salmon nowadays is very fatty, has a
Speaker 3: lot of fat in its.
Speaker 1: We're not allowed to have it.
Speaker 2: You're not allowed to have it.
Speaker 1: No, that salmon has to be lined, caught.
Speaker 2: Lin caught, line caught wild. Well, even if you get
Speaker 2: like king salmon there.
Speaker 1: And a lot of it is not at all fatty.
Speaker 2: If you're in like a sock guy and it's a
Speaker 2: little dry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there, you probably want to use a little
Speaker 3: bit wiel But but starting its skin side down with
Speaker 3: a little bit of salt on the pan too, and
Speaker 3: letting it render out skin gets crispy. I love crispy
Speaker 3: fish skin. So not everyone good for you, I know,
Speaker 3: all those Omega THREESO. And cook it most of the
Speaker 3: way on that side and then just flip it over
Speaker 3: for a little kiss.
Speaker 2: On the other side.
Speaker 1: What about chicken? How do you how do you suggest
Speaker 1: people cook chickens just pieces of chicken or whole chicken.
Speaker 3: I think people want a lot of different things, but
Speaker 3: I'm usually suggesting a roast chicken because it's so much
Speaker 3: more economical. You get so much out of it. We
Speaker 3: have a wonderful recipe where you uh, you preheat a
Speaker 3: twelve inch skill it, drop the chicken in, and then
Speaker 3: go into.
Speaker 2: A four hundred degree oven. So you sort of.
Speaker 1: Jump it in like skin side, breast side.
Speaker 3: Up, breast side down, so dark meat is facing down,
Speaker 3: so you get a little jumpstart on that.
Speaker 1: Help trust or untrusted, just a little telling anybody anything
Speaker 1: you have to.
Speaker 2: Buy the it's all about it.
Speaker 3: No, so yeah, so you do a little trust just
Speaker 3: on just on the drums to keep them together but
Speaker 3: not wrapped around the whole bird. Tuck the wings, season
Speaker 3: it all over really well with salt and pepper. Preheat
Speaker 3: a twelve inch I'm doing the full recipe now, twelve
Speaker 3: inches skillet over over medium high heat and nice and
Speaker 3: hot little bit of oil.
Speaker 2: Chicken goes in dark.
Speaker 3: Kind of oil, dark oil, no using like a neutral
Speaker 3: high heat like a canola or vegetable oil. Chicken goes
Speaker 3: in and then goes into a four hundred degree oven
Speaker 3: and you roast for about thirty minutes and then we
Speaker 3: just kill the heat, totally turn it off, and let
Speaker 3: that oven slowly decrease down and it finishes really gently
Speaker 3: that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a beautiful It's like our weeknight roast chicken recipe.
Speaker 1: I hear you are a bit of well, I think
Speaker 1: you're more than a bit of a science scheek, a
Speaker 1: food science skik. What intrigues intrigues you most about the
Speaker 1: science of cooking.
Speaker 3: For me science And this isn't like the scary word
Speaker 3: science for me, it sort of gives you this X
Speaker 3: ray vision into your food that you wouldn't have otherwise.
Speaker 3: So I'll give you an example with cooking mushrooms. So
Speaker 3: you have a rest in your book form mushroom soup,
Speaker 3: and the mushrooms cook for a little over an hour
Speaker 3: in the soup, and you have some vegetables in there too.
Speaker 3: I'm sure those are like super soft and you know,
Speaker 3: almost silky in texture, like the carrots and the onions.
Speaker 2: The mushrooms are beautiful.
Speaker 3: They're tender, they're not overcooked and kind of tough, but
Speaker 3: they're not overly tender. And so mushrooms when we look inside,
Speaker 3: they don't have the same structure as vegetables and meat.
Speaker 3: They're made up of a polymer called kiten that is
Speaker 3: really heat resistant, so you can boil them for an hour,
Speaker 3: roast them for long periods of time, and they're really
Speaker 3: wonderful the whole way. I did an experiment here where
Speaker 3: I steamed a piece of zucchini, a piece of beef
Speaker 3: tender loin, and a piece of portable mushroom for.
Speaker 2: Forty five minutes.
Speaker 3: The beef was as you can imagine leather or zucchini
Speaker 3: like look at it and it would fall apart fish,
Speaker 3: but the mushroom is like perfectly tender, and so understanding
Speaker 3: that you can do really cool. It's called kiten. It
Speaker 3: makes up shrimp shells as well, and so it's very
Speaker 3: heat resistant. So we have a method for some saying
Speaker 3: mushrooms where we actually start them in water first, a
Speaker 3: little bit of water, and that helps collapse some of
Speaker 3: their cell structure so that they don't have all those
Speaker 3: air pockets in there, and those air pockets are what
Speaker 3: suck in so.
Speaker 2: Much oil when you're cooking them. To cook them, a
Speaker 2: little bit of.
Speaker 3: Water, evaporate it off, add a little bit of fat
Speaker 3: that's going to coat the outside, and then you can
Speaker 3: brom up yeah.
Speaker 2: We do finish with Yeah, we finished with a little
Speaker 2: bit of butter at the end.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's just an example of like, if you
Speaker 3: could see inside your food a little bit more through science,
Speaker 3: then you don't rely on the recipe quite as much
Speaker 3: and you can be a little more playful in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: If you were teaching the home cook just one recipe,
Speaker 1: which recipe would you choose?
Speaker 3: I think I would actually have them make potato and yoki.
Speaker 3: The reason I really like it is it's a simple
Speaker 3: ingredient list and you can sort of understand what each
Speaker 3: component is doing. There's a little bit of techniques to
Speaker 3: technique to it, but the payoff is so grand in
Speaker 3: terms of these beautiful little light pillows. And it's something
Speaker 3: that you might think only a restaurant can do, but
Speaker 3: is actually have you tried ricotta?
Speaker 1: Yes, I had a disaster with that.
Speaker 2: You did tell me about it.
Speaker 1: So I was making it for a big dinner party
Speaker 1: of the main and I didn't I didn't drain and
Speaker 1: it cost a long enough huh, So they completely disintegrate
Speaker 1: into the pan.
Speaker 2: What did what did you do?
Speaker 1: I made something else? I made some pasta real fast Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it was a disaster. But I describe your yoky
Speaker 1: how do you how do you make them? Because there's
Speaker 1: different ways there is Yeah, do you use the patashoe? Oh?
Speaker 3: So we do have Parisian recipes, but I like the
Speaker 3: potato one.
Speaker 2: I kind of fell in love with that.
Speaker 1: I do with potato, potato and pata shoe. Do you
Speaker 1: really Yeah, it's delicious.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever done that much.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's so good.
Speaker 2: So how do you incorporate the potatoes into that? Do
Speaker 2: you make a paste and then the potatoes.
Speaker 1: And not well ricet or just parade potato. Huh, it's
Speaker 1: really good.
Speaker 2: I would love to try that. A lot of cheese too, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I know of cheese.
Speaker 3: So we start with rusted potatoes, which are naturally drier,
Speaker 3: so you're not gonna have to use much flour and
Speaker 3: I jumped start them, roast them in the oven until
Speaker 3: they're nice and tender. I rice them. You know, you
Speaker 3: could use a food meal too, but you want ice
Speaker 3: and smooth. And then the key to the recipe in
Speaker 3: my mind, is weighing the mashed potatoes the rice potatoes
Speaker 3: before you combine them with the rest of the ingredients.
Speaker 3: That's where the flower, Yeah, and then and then flower
Speaker 3: and egg. But if you measure your potatoes, then you
Speaker 3: can use an exact amount of flour, so you're not
Speaker 3: constantly adding it in the process and making them a
Speaker 3: little bit tough.
Speaker 1: So is that recipe in your nude?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Try that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I want to try you or we gotta
Speaker 2: we gotta trade yolky.
Speaker 1: Resume and I just I love New York. I think
Speaker 1: it's so fun. I do not like them fried though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of recipes online now I've just been seeing
Speaker 1: them on Instagram. They're browning them so much. I don't
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: I know it kind of defeats the purpose. Like perfect little.
Speaker 1: Pillow Right, what's your favorite food site on? Like Instagram?
Speaker 3: A creator that I really like his His Instagram name
Speaker 3: is Another Day in Paradise is an American who lives
Speaker 3: in London and his videos are gorgeous. He's just making
Speaker 3: like the most appealing food and he and every single
Speaker 3: one totally.
Speaker 1: I feel like him or the food.
Speaker 2: I like his sort of esthetic, but the food looks incredible. Same.
Speaker 1: I haven't read Another Day in Paradise.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Another Day in Paradise. I think his name is Jesse.
Speaker 3: But that's I have not.
Speaker 1: Looked at that. And if you were going to write
Speaker 1: your own cookbook apart from your work here, what would
Speaker 1: the subject be.
Speaker 3: I don't know that it would sell very well. But
Speaker 3: this is the one that's like in my heart that
Speaker 3: I want to do. Is I'm like a huge seafood
Speaker 3: lover growing up here in the New England area. My
Speaker 3: mom's from Maine. We're in Maine, so my mom was
Speaker 3: born in like Rangely area, Rangely Lakes area.
Speaker 2: But I have a lot of family in Bangor as well.
Speaker 1: Oh so your neighbors to me, I'm in Sale Harbor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're in stil Harbor.
Speaker 1: Right, No, right, where all the best fishes, the best fish.
Speaker 1: I love it up there so much. Yeah. Well, my
Speaker 1: dad squid we went, he went jigging for squid last year.
Speaker 1: Is really Oh and then my granddaughter who's who at
Speaker 1: the time was you see, she was about ten when
Speaker 1: she she learned how to perfectly clean squid. That's so
Speaker 1: and they love to eat it too. I made them
Speaker 1: beautiful temp for us.
Speaker 3: Well, and there's nothing like fresh squid like that thing.
Speaker 3: They got dirty squid that still has all the purple
Speaker 3: and yeah, but you've that all out. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 3: so fresh. And then my dad's side is from the Azors,
Speaker 3: the Portuguese Islands, so I come. I come to it
Speaker 3: honestly from the different directions. But I think like it
Speaker 3: would be a ton of clam recipes and just all.
Speaker 2: The fish that I love.
Speaker 1: I'd like that. I'd like that cookbook.
Speaker 2: Well, as long as you buy it, I'll make it.
Speaker 1: I will. I will definitely buy it. And so back
Speaker 1: to real work. What's some of your goals here at
Speaker 1: at America's Test Kitchen as the chief content Officer.
Speaker 2: Yes, which a big title, very big title.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So one of my big goals is to really sort
Speaker 3: of open the doors. We've been established here for over
Speaker 3: twenty five years. We have a beautiful test kitchen, and
Speaker 3: a lot of times were like heads down testing recipes developing.
Speaker 3: But I really want to open the doors and bring
Speaker 3: more folks in. I think we have so much to
Speaker 3: learn from creators all over the place. So that's gonna
Speaker 3: happen in a few different ways. So I say about that,
Speaker 3: and then also really our digital product, our digital all
Speaker 3: access web membership, being able to tailor it to folks
Speaker 3: to help them cook incredible food is really where I
Speaker 3: want to put a lot of focus. But we've got
Speaker 3: some cool keep shows in development, really just expanding.
Speaker 2: Out and meeting people where they are. It's some angle.
Speaker 1: What do you think is the future of food on television?
Speaker 1: Is it going to stay on television, Is it going
Speaker 1: to be streaming, is it going to be only online?
Speaker 1: What do you think?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's going to maintain kind of its
Speaker 3: footing in a lot of these different places. I think
Speaker 3: the distinction between TV and video is so blurred now
Speaker 3: if we look at like YouTube, for instance, which is
Speaker 3: the largest streamer on television, So you're you're whether you're
Speaker 3: watching it on a computer screen or your phone or
Speaker 3: on TV. It's how you want to consume it. But
Speaker 3: I don't think it's going anywhere on any of these platforms.
Speaker 3: Our take is that we still always want to be teaching,
Speaker 3: and so our PBA shows are instructional cooking. And you
Speaker 3: know my YouTube show is it's a YouTube show. It's fun,
Speaker 3: it's a little bit of reverent, but it's still all
Speaker 3: about teaching you something. If you nition episode, you won't
Speaker 3: think about that ingredient the same way you did at
Speaker 3: the beginning, but with a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And what are you most proud of since you
Speaker 1: took over here at America's Stess Kitchen.
Speaker 2: My whole time here. Wow, that's a big one.
Speaker 3: I would say winning the Magazine Award for Cooks Illustrated
Speaker 3: was a was a real point of pride. You know,
Speaker 3: growing up with magazines and food magazines, it's always been
Speaker 3: so near and near to my heart that to get
Speaker 3: that recognition from outside was really really wonderful. Also, getting
Speaker 3: that macaron recipe in the magazine.
Speaker 1: Some of the small challenges that we faced, Yeah, so fun.
Speaker 2: Can I ask you some questions about your book?
Speaker 1: Oh, that would be why have you Okay? Why not?
Speaker 2: So it's one hundred recipes?
Speaker 3: So our rec our book is a five hundred recipes
Speaker 3: is very hard to call it down to that. You've
Speaker 3: done one hundred cookbooks and you've been.
Speaker 1: Doing no, no, no, forty eight cook forty eight cookbooks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the rest of the there are other books I write,
Speaker 1: I write on through subjects, all other subjects.
Speaker 3: So you're you're you're one hundredth books. Yes, yes, and
Speaker 3: you've been doing this for so long. How did you
Speaker 3: nail it down to one hundred recipes. Was it painful
Speaker 3: process or it's hard?
Speaker 1: I had? I had reams of realms of pages of recipes,
Speaker 1: and and I worked with a woman called Suzanne Rupert
Speaker 1: who kept saying, you can't have that many. It's one hundred. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's one hundred. So I kept crossing all
Speaker 1: recipes and thinking, oh, then I would add a couple more,
Speaker 1: and I finally got it down to one hundred.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there are a.
Speaker 1: Few that I miss that should have been in the book,
Speaker 1: but then I didn't know what to take out. So sure,
Speaker 1: but it's a nice number. And the backstories that go
Speaker 1: with each recipe are fun, and they were so much
Speaker 1: fun to write. I think I wrote all the essays
Speaker 1: in a couple of days. Really, yeah, I just sat
Speaker 1: down and wrote them.
Speaker 3: What I love about your your essays and your sort
Speaker 3: of head notes is you're able to be both very
Speaker 3: practical and sharp in terms of the feedback, and you
Speaker 3: know what you should be doing, but then also wrap
Speaker 3: a story around it so nicely in a very short
Speaker 3: amount of space.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's and that's fun for me. I like
Speaker 1: doing that. And it also keeps your memory very sharp
Speaker 1: because you can't if somebody in my family reads something
Speaker 1: and it's not accurate, Oh boy, do I have to pay?
Speaker 2: You'll hear about that?
Speaker 1: I do indeed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have a pumpkin pie recipe.
Speaker 1: I say you made it over here.
Speaker 2: We have made over here that I am. I am
Speaker 2: so fascinated with. Can you can you talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about what makes it?
Speaker 1: Well, it's a philo crust, so you do not have
Speaker 1: to master the art of patrese. And many people still
Speaker 1: have trouble with pepreez a. I know, even after I
Speaker 1: wrote my Pies and Tarts book and made that the
Speaker 1: easiest recipe on earth and showed that if you use
Speaker 1: a food processor you can do it in about thirteen seconds.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: And I had a contest with one of my nieces
Speaker 1: who wanted to make it by hand with a pastry cutter,
Speaker 1: and I kept saying, so much easier in the food
Speaker 1: processor and just as good. Yeah, if the butter's cold enough,
Speaker 1: the flower is cold. And I have a rule for
Speaker 1: pastry making. Make it cold, bake it hot.
Speaker 2: Oh, I love that, that's my rule. Yeah. Easy to manage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very easy. And if you do that, you
Speaker 1: usually get a good crust. But anyway to make a
Speaker 1: crust like this, I love filo, and to incorporate philo
Speaker 1: as a crust with a delicious, flavorful pumpkin puree. It
Speaker 1: just turned out perfectly. We worked on the recipe for
Speaker 1: quite a while at the magazine before before it was perfected.
Speaker 1: And the crust is not wet and it's not soggy,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't fall apart. Look, you can unmold it.
Speaker 1: Look out nice.
Speaker 2: It's so cordious.
Speaker 1: You can mold it out of the out of the
Speaker 1: spring form pan. Yep. And it's a it's a gorgeous pie.
Speaker 3: What I love about it, and it was mentioned to
Speaker 3: you is tart tart. It's more like a tar, more
Speaker 3: like a tart. But like pumpkin pie is one of
Speaker 3: those things like if you don't have it for Thanksgiving,
Speaker 3: people are upset.
Speaker 2: But it's never a looker. It's never a crowd pleaser
Speaker 2: in that way.
Speaker 3: But this is stunning. Oh yeah. The edges of the filo, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it turns it into a set.
Speaker 1: And you have to make it thick enough enough layers
Speaker 1: of filo, enough really good butter to make sure that
Speaker 1: it's crunchy and nice. But The filling is very important too,
Speaker 1: and this has a very flavorful filling in it.
Speaker 2: Do you have a little bit of five spice powers?
Speaker 1: Oh yes, right, ye, a little bit of the Asian influence.
Speaker 3: I love that because it's it's hitting on all those
Speaker 3: warm spices that are traditional, but you have a little
Speaker 3: more interest.
Speaker 2: Than an intrigue.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love that vibe. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: see you made my turkey.
Speaker 2: Yes, we made your turkey deparchment.
Speaker 1: Yes, what'd you think?
Speaker 3: I think it's wonderful. Oh good, I'm amazed that. I
Speaker 3: wish people could see this as a podcast. But the
Speaker 3: color on it is absolutely orgeous color.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's clean. Didn't did your kitchen say that?
Speaker 1: Nice and clean? It is a bake and.
Speaker 2: Parchment, Yes, yeah it is.
Speaker 1: I was shocked. You know, I'm been doing the one
Speaker 1: oh one turkey or one on one that we I
Speaker 1: think we did something like eighty two turkeys when we
Speaker 1: were developing turkey one on one with cheese cloth soaked
Speaker 1: in butter and white wine and you know, just wrapped
Speaker 1: the turkey. Then you pull that off and you're just
Speaker 1: brown for a few minutes in the oven at the
Speaker 1: very end, and it's a mess because of the cheese cloth,
Speaker 1: the cheese clad and the liquid the butter, so much
Speaker 1: butter and so much wine, and you know it's just
Speaker 1: and it splatters all over your oven. And wrapping that
Speaker 1: buttered turkey in parchment with a big clips, I use
Speaker 1: a staple gun.
Speaker 2: You do, okay, Yeah, I use yeah.
Speaker 1: And you have to get the big sheets of parchment,
Speaker 1: so make sure you get the big sheets, so big
Speaker 1: professional boxes. It just is so neat and so clean
Speaker 1: and and renders that I think the juicy is turkey.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really juicy.
Speaker 3: Well, so it's so well protected during that initial cook No,
Speaker 3: I really, I really love it.
Speaker 1: So I was happy. I was happy and that turned out.
Speaker 1: That turned out well, and I had to include it
Speaker 1: in the book New Recipe, but it was included.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It feels like seminol and important having there. We also
Speaker 3: have your your mashed potatoes, which are big Martha's mashed potatoes.
Speaker 3: So my mom is also a Martha and she makes
Speaker 3: with potatoes that I love that always she.
Speaker 1: Whips them with what and the like the like chen
Speaker 1: eideah in a kitchen aid. I confess my mom did too,
Speaker 1: and I just don't like.
Speaker 2: Them with you don't like them.
Speaker 3: For me, it's like a taste memory that I'll always
Speaker 3: always be connected to. But these have cream cheese in them,
Speaker 3: which I don't think I've really seen in many mashed patatos.
Speaker 1: Mom. Mom loved cream cheese or cream cheese, heavy cream, milk,
Speaker 1: and butter. And they are really four kinds of dairs.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so good and so fattening and delicious.
Speaker 2: That's what they should be though, and good potatoes.
Speaker 1: She always used Idahos, but I've I have a house
Speaker 1: in Maine, so I use Maine potatoes. But I growed
Speaker 1: my own potatoes.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: We just harvested so many bushels of potatoes in my garden.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, and Bedford, New York, and I've been cooking them.
Speaker 1: We had one potato that I weighed, its two point
Speaker 1: two pounds, what yeah, and you know what, it was
Speaker 1: horrible because it was too big.
Speaker 2: It was too big, yeah, didn't have like bad spots.
Speaker 1: And oh no, no, it's a perfect It looks like
Speaker 1: a giant Idaho potato. So I put it in on
Speaker 1: a steamer basket in a pot of boiling water to
Speaker 1: see After two hours, it still wasn't cooked in the middle,
Speaker 1: and it was too big. So forget those big potatoes.
Speaker 1: Dig the potatoes on time. If you're growing potatoes, we
Speaker 1: left them a little long.
Speaker 2: You did so on Instagram. I'm friends with Ryan your
Speaker 2: hell you are? Yes? Was it his fault that we
Speaker 2: didn't dig the potatoes?
Speaker 1: Really? Definitely Ryan's Anything that goes wrong in the garden
Speaker 1: is Ryan.
Speaker 2: And any successes, of course, are yours.
Speaker 1: Of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He said for me to ask you how the
Speaker 2: maze is coming.
Speaker 1: The maze is so beautiful. Yeah, oh my gosh, wait
Speaker 1: should you see it? Next year it will be unveiled.
Speaker 1: I think we're about I would say about three quarters done. Okay,
Speaker 1: and that's only in three years.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's two and a half acres. What. Yeah, it's too big.
Speaker 1: And it's looking so good. I saw an aerial shot
Speaker 1: of it on just the other day. It looks amazing. Really,
Speaker 1: that's what it amaze is supposed to amaze.
Speaker 2: Yes, it should where that comes from?
Speaker 1: Right? And so it's it's looking good.
Speaker 2: Oh that's awesome. I love that.
Speaker 3: I feel like I connect with you obviously on food,
Speaker 3: but on the on nature and plants and trees so much.
Speaker 3: I brought something a little bit funny that if you
Speaker 3: if you're game for it. So I lived next to
Speaker 3: this huge arboretom that's owned by Harvard.
Speaker 1: I're been there many time, Yes, yes.
Speaker 3: So there's a very special tree there that drops these leaves.
Speaker 3: And I think they're a little bit like three weeks
Speaker 3: ago they would have smelled perfect. But I have them
Speaker 3: in a little bag here, and I'm wonder if you
Speaker 3: could take a big sniff and see what they smell.
Speaker 2: Like to you.
Speaker 1: Not much.
Speaker 2: I think a month ago they would have smelled even more. Yeah, Wow,
Speaker 2: you're so good. I was like, I wonder if I
Speaker 2: could teach Martha something. This is it's cut Well.
Speaker 1: I have weeping cutsuras right outside my back doors. I
Speaker 1: have two giant ones that I planted twenty years ago
Speaker 1: and they have grown as tall as my house in
Speaker 1: twenty years. Really, they were little when I planed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I have one on the other side of the house.
Speaker 1: They're the most beautiful tree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they are, absolutely.
Speaker 1: And they look like rain just falling down.
Speaker 2: Oh, these are beautiful.
Speaker 1: Thank you for bringing me cut early.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just love when it is the right time.
Speaker 1: Do not have any scent nothing, So they're they're.
Speaker 3: Supposed to be like cotton candy, like right when, and
Speaker 3: it's amazing, But I wish we were talking.
Speaker 2: Like a month ago would have been like of course
Speaker 2: you know it though.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for joining me today on
Speaker 1: my podcast, man, thank you and letting me record it
Speaker 1: here at your kitchen anytimes. So much fun. And please
Speaker 1: let our listeners know where they can follow you at
Speaker 1: America's Test Kitchen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you can follow me personally at Test cook everywhere,
Speaker 3: but come visit us at America's Test Kitchen dot com
Speaker 3: for all of our fourteen thousand recipes and you know,
Speaker 3: all of our equipment reviews.
Speaker 1: And Instagram addresses at Test Kitchen. Yes, yeah, you know
Speaker 1: you look for America's Test Kitchen. It's not there.
Speaker 3: Yes, come find us at Test Kitchen and that's on
Speaker 3: Instagram and we're kind of.
Speaker 2: Across all the platforms there.
Speaker 1: And good luck with your book. It's a beautiful book,
Speaker 1: encyclopedic and in us in size and nature and I
Speaker 1: can't wait to peruse it.
Speaker 2: It is and try your yakee
Speaker 1: Yah h m hmmmmh mh