In keeping with the spirit of procrastination that so clearly defines my generation, this week I thought I’d write about my next assignment: developing a birthday cake recipe that goes from mixing bowl to candles-lit in 30 minutes.

First of all, the notion that cake must be presented/consumed on one’s day of birth kind of infuriates me. Do you really need cake on your birthday? Probably not. But you usually get one anyway—whether you want cake or not. In fact, on my last birthday I politely requested a quart of cookies-and-cream ice cream; and naturally, my friends just had to get me an ice cream cake. Birthday cakes are a necessary part of our lives (necessary evil?). But if you think about it—unless you’re buying something pre-made—making a birthday cake is a lot of pressure. First, it has to taste good (and for that, I’m not above using the OG Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker mixes—they’re amazing, versatile, and anyone who says otherwise is straight up bougie) and, second, it’s got to look nice. But there’s also the time investment: Making a nice cake takes effort and time—at least a couple hours to bake, cool, layer, and frost it.

So, I got to thinking: How do you streamline the process? Would it be possible to make a birthday cake in less than an hour?

To me, the obvious answer was the microwave. And before you all start poo-pooing me with ideas about ionizing radiation and mutant broccoli, I’ll tell you this: I’m not your doctor, and I’m not going to tell you how to live your life. The microwave is a tool like any other, and we ought not to demonize its use. It’s a fast way to cook foods and—when used with discretion—an effective way to cook them as well.

Food typically requires heat to cook (or bake). At its essence, heat is the transfer of energy by temperature differences, and on a micro-scale, that transfer is seen as increased motion of molecules; hotter molecules move faster than cooler molecules. Most foods contain a good number of water molecules. Since water molecules are polar (they each contain a positive and negative charge), when they are exposed to the electromagnetic waves (microwaves) emitted by a microwave oven, they try to align with the radiation’s oscillating electric field, and begin to rock back and forth rapidly (up to billions of times per second), creating friction and heat.

What does this mean? You can cook things fast in a microwave, and, instead of cooking from the outside in as in a conventional oven, all the water molecules throughout the food heat up at the same time, inside and out.

Working in kitchens, I’ve only made two types of cakes in a microwave before. First, there are siphon cakes—a technique developed by Albert Adrià years ago and popularized at El Bulli. They are similar to sponge cakes, and used extensively in fine dining as a component of plated desserts. The process is simple: pipe an aerated batter through a siphon into a cup with a tiny ventilation hole in the bottom, then microwave it for a few moments until it’s done. The cake is light, airy, almost like seafoam. But it’s hardly sturdy enough to layer or frost, and would definitely fall apart in a birthday cake application.

The second type is the mug cake. I’ve made more of these than I care to admit. Take a bunch of ingredients, mix them into a large mug, and microwave for a couple minutes. Simple, quick, and dirty. They’re prized for their fudgy texture and their convenience. But these cakes dry out quickly, and they are under-baked on purpose, neither of which are ideal for a birthday cake, plus they, too, lack the structure necessary for layering and frosting.

I needed a cake that can stand up to layering, frosting, glazing, and finally slicing. Sponge cakes and mug cakes are both fragile by design, but—in theory at least—there’s no reason I couldn’t make a classic birthday cake in the microwave. So I looked to a handful of recipes that I knew worked well in the past in an oven, along with one cake recipe actually designed for the microwave. I figured chocolate was a safe option, so I went with chocolate cakes. I mixed the batters, poured them into oven-proof dishes, popped them in the microwave, and prayed.

And believe it or not, they turned out pretty well for a first try.

Overall, the cakes baked up in record time. The longest bake time clocked in at about 16 minutes, while the average bake time hovered around 12 minutes. For reference, a typical cake of this size would take 25 to 35 minutes to fully bake in a traditional oven. Not too shabby. As for the finished textures, all the cakes turned into clean rounds with even, tight crumb structures, though some were moister than others. Two cakes were particularly promising—they had a pleasing, moist texture and boasted solid chocolate flavor. I’m working on synthesizing aspects of our two favorite recipes into a finished product our team likes. And most importantly, figuring out the best technique for cooking the cake in the microwave in terms of timing, cooking vessels, etc. I’m also wondering if I can cut down on the baking time even further, since I’ve only been cooking at 50 percent power.

If I can get the baking time to 10 minutes or less, I might have a shot at coming in under 30 minutes from start to finish. Even then, I’ll still need to find quick ways to chill, layer, frost, and possibly glaze the cake. But I’m hopeful that the cake will work out. Who knows? Maybe I’ll inspire a generation of microwave Cake Bosses.

Do you have any experience with microwave cakes? Any tips for me? Drop a line in the comments. I’d love to hear what you think.

Photography by Kevin White.

Before I started working at America’s Test Kitchen, I never really gave too much thought to all the people who work to make food photos look so great, whether they’re on websites or in print magazines or cookbooks. Food stylists, art directors, and photographers are an integral (and very talented) part of our team here at ATK. Without them, we’d have to subject you to shoddy, over-exposed iPhone photography all over the Cook’s Science website. And no one wants to see that.

For most teams at ATK—from cookbooks to Cook’s Illustrated to Cook’s Country—whenever a recipe is developed, it’s handed off to the “Photo Team”: a dedicated team of cooks who meticulously prep and cook the recipes for photo shoots, making sure they look exactly as the recipe intended. But because Cook’s Science is the newest kid on the ATK block, and our web-only platform and weekly publication schedule means working on fast-paced deadlines, our photo shoot process isn’t quite the same. Since we started Cook’s Science last July, Sasha, Dan, and I have been involved with photo shoots for more than 72 recipes—resulting in thousands of photographs. Our role during photo shoots is mainly to cook the recipes we develop. Then, the food stylists make them look their absolute best, the art directors set the vision, style, and direction for the shots, and the photographers work their magic with angles and lighting. (Though, sometimes, Sasha, Dan, and I get to try our hands at food styling as well.)

In my experience, cooking for a photo shoot is not that unlike cooking on the line at a restaurant. The same mantra applies: Make it nice, or make it twice—or three times if you’re having a bad day. Standard operating procedure has us prep two versions of whatever we’re making for a shoot. In truth—and even though it takes a significant amount of our time—cooking for our own photo shoots is mostly a blessing. By the time one of my recipes is ready for its closeup, I will have cooked some version of that dish upwards of 20 to 30 times. I know the recipe inside out, and I know exactly how it should look and feel. I don’t have to rely on someone else to execute my ideas, and if anything goes wrong, I know how to fix it. Prepping your own recipes for a shoot can feel like a lot of responsibility, but, for me, I rest easier knowing that I’m doing things right. Plus, I kind of thrive on that pressure to execute.

Once I finish cooking a recipe for a shoot, it’s usually handed off to one of our food stylists. Contrary to what you might have heard about what happens during commercial food photo shoots, food styling for Cook’s Science doesn’t involve a lot of fake food, cosmetic additives, or painstakingly gluing sesame seeds on buns. We prefer to photograph things as they should look—unadulterated and natural; what we hope it will look like when you, the reader, cook it at home. When we do use additives, we do so with discretion, and usually so that we can extend the “freshness” of a dish during a longer photo shoot, saving time and minimizing waste. For instance, during the shoot for my hand-pulled noodle recipe, we tossed the cooked noodles in a wet, shiny xanthan gum slurry to keep them lubricated and fresh-looking throughout the hours-long photo session. But by and large, if we cook it properly, the food doesn’t need much help in order to look pretty fantastic. Our food stylists instead concentrate on how the food is arranged on the plate, height, perspective, and whether or not the composition shows all the proper elements of a finished dish.

I recently had a conversation with Marie Piraino, one of our food stylists and a fellow dog-lover (see photo below). She’s been in the food styling game for years, and we were reflecting on the 60-Minute Birthday Cake recipe we were shooting. She was reminiscing about the good (bad?) old days of food styling, when aesthetic perfection was the gold standard: The individual berries on a cake had to be exactly the same size, the cake had to be perfectly sliced, the frosting had to be smooth and seamless from edge to edge. She was over it. “That’s all out of fashion now,” she said. And, to be sure, my cakes for the shoot weren’t perfect in that conventional sense. The frosting wasn’t completely matte and smooth from end to end, the berries were different sizes, and the cocoa powder dusted on top was irregularly patterned. But Marie added, “I couldn’t have done a better job. The way you did it—it’s perfect. I wouldn’t change much.”

In Japan, there is a term in aesthetics derived from Buddhism called wabi-sabi. The idea is centered around the acceptance of transience, impermanence, and imperfection. In art and design, this aesthetic features roughness, asymmetry, and an overall simplicity that belies the integrity of nature. Sasha and I throw this term around a lot when talking about food, plating, and styling—often in the context of our photo shoots. In the modern restaurant kitchen, it’s no longer cool to spoon push some sauce on a plate, tweezer the hell out of microgreens so they’re just so, or quenelle three kinds of sorbet for a single dessert. Don’t get me wrong, those techniques and ideas have a place and time in the kitchen. But instead, we now celebrate imperfection in presentation. And that I can get behind.

Months ago, Sasha and I were playing around with different presentations for the Chocolate, Matcha, and Pomegranate Tart. Sasha dubbed it a “culinary Myers-Briggs test”. To finish my tart, I meticulously piped balls of cream in concentric rings over the chocolate, and dusted matcha powder over the top with reckless abandon. Sasha opted for a more laid-back approach—quickly spreading the cream in one (pretty even) layer before dusting it with matcha. Who did it better? Who’s to say. I think they both looked great. And neither of our tarts were perfect.

But I guess that’s the point: Perfectly imperfect.

What are your thoughts on the food photography and styling you see on websites and in print? Tell us in the comments.   

Styled Food Photography by Steve Klise and Daniel J. van Ackere

How do we develop recipes here at Cook’s Science? Well, most of our recipe development starts long before we set foot in the kitchen. It starts with ideas. Lots and lots of ideas.

This week I’ve had a lighter workload—which feels kind of weird, given our usual pace. Between editing recipes, writing this article, and playing fetch with the office dogs (I’m looking at you, Ollie), I’ve also been brainstorming new recipes. That got me thinking big picture: Where do the ideas for the recipes we develop come from?

From my perspective, our recipes have one of two main starting points.

A lot of them start with a technique or some really fascinating kitchen science. Sasha, Dan, and I often find ourselves fixated on a particular cooking technique that will drive our recipe development. This can be as simple as freezing egg whites for convenient use in cocktail recipes (see: Whiskey Sour and Aperol Flip) or as esoteric as making a ganache out of water and chocolate. For my hand-pulled noodle recipe, I spent considerable time—literally weeks—refining the technique for pulling the noodles as well as tweaking my formula for the dough. Most recently, I spent a month diving into the technique of curing egg yolks in salt and sugar—dry cures, wet cures, and both sweet and savory applications. This sort of recipe development allows for broad, deep exploration (for example, my first tests of cured egg yolk techniques resulted in Dan, Sasha, and I tasting 25 different samples to narrow down our preferences) and often provides insight into how small changes in a technique can affect the flavor or texture of a recipe. For our Caramel-Cured Egg Yolks, it turned out that just a few hours’ difference in curing time had a major impact on the texture of the yolks.  

For others, the starting point is a single ingredient or a specific dish. Sometimes these accompany a story or article (see: tortillas and cornbread to accompany our feature on nixtamalization; Brazilian cheese bread to go with our feature on manioc), but other times these recipes are driven by our own personal interests. This is my favorite kind of recipe development. From Sasha’s eggplant deep-dive to his upcoming beet recipes, these recipes demonstrate the broad range of an ingredient’s potential. We take an ingredient and ask questions like: “What can this food do?”; “How is it used?”; “How do you eat it?”; “How can you transform it?”; and “How can it transform other foods?” We get inspiration any way we can. For me, I have conversations with other test cooks here at ATK as well as experts in the field, thumb through cookbooks, scour the web, and scroll through Instagram for hours.

My biggest ingredient-driven recipe project to date was developing recipes to accompany the koji feature. I knew I wanted to grow koji on different grains and proteins, and make my own shio koji and amazake. But I also wanted to bring something of myself to the project. I tinkered and tested, shared numerous conversations with Jeremy Umansky, and suffered some hard-fought failures (R.I.P. koji French fries). In the end, my moment of inspiration came from a sacred place: my shower—because all my greatest ideas have come to me in the shower. Koji Fried Chicken became a hit, and to this day ranks among my team’s favorite recipes. (Not to mention, Koji Turkey.) This type of organic development allows for freedom of ideas and expression—which, for me, is the best and most important part about cooking. We’re just starting to think about potential directions for recipes to accompany an article about salt, and I’m excited to see what we’ll come up with.

I would be remiss if I did not mention a third—though no less important—pseudo-category of brainstorming: pun-driven recipes. If you haven’t noticed by now, our team loves a good play on words. It seems like we can’t go five minutes in our office without Sasha blurting out some absurdly phrased dish title, most of which I come to love. Some notable examples: Beet Wellington, Boo-dino (Romantic) Pudding, Koji-nita Pibil, Matzo-rella, and my personal favorite—Pigs in a Blanquette. In fact, our whole team has jumped on the pun-recipe bandwagon, as evidenced by this recent Harry Potter-themed Slack conversation:

Most of these ideas will live out the rest of their days on the whiteboard in our office, never to be published, forever to be cherished. But they serve as an important reminder for our brainstorming process—to let loose and get those creative vibes going. All ideas are good ideas. Alfred Hitchcock once said that “puns are the highest form of literature”. We’ve gotten this far punning around, so maybe Sasha’s on to something.

As you might have gathered, our team generates a lot of ideas for recipes. That whiteboard is pretty full. When it comes to deciding which recipes to develop and publish, the process is democratic. We discuss ideas as a team before moving forward. No idea is ever too precious, too stupid, too hard, or too easy. But, in the end, it must bring something enriching to our readers: A cool technique, a fresh way of looking at an ingredient, or simply a food that deserves more recognition. Above all, the final product has to taste good. But that’s our job, and as Sasha often says during our brainstorms, no matter what, “You’re gonna love it.”

Photography by Steve Klise

The first time I tried to laminate dough—outside of pastry school—was kind of a disaster. It was my first experience using a sheeter—a giant piece of machinery used to roll out large batches of dough–instead of doing it by hand. I hadn’t sprinkled enough bench flour, so the dough stuck everywhere, and what was supposed to be a perfect rectangle looked more like an amorphous Rorschach test. One of the other cooks shook his head and muttered in my ear, “If you can’t learn to do this, you might as well pack up and leave.”

It was 4AM. I was three days into my stage (the equivalent of an unpaid internship in the cooking world) at one of the most famous pastry shops in Basel, Switzerland—and I was getting schooled on the finer points of laminated doughs.

In case you’re unfamiliar, lamination is the process of folding fat into dough to create dozens, if not hundreds, of paper thin layers (the fat keeps the delicate layers separate). From Napoleons to danishes to cinnamon-laced morning buns, lamination is the key to producing all those flaky, buttery pastries that line the windows of Parisian patisseries and your local bake shop. But perhaps the best known application of lamination is in croissants. At Cook’s Science, we go pretty crazy for beautiful, buttery pastries. And after flipping through some old cookbooks, I stumbled across several recipes for laminated brioche—think buttery, eggy brioche in place of the much leaner dough traditionally used for croissants. That got me thinking beyond croissants, danishes, and puff pastry: What else could I laminate? Milk bread? Sourdough? A Pineapple Bun? What are the limitations of the technique? What kinds of shapes could we try? Drawing on some experiences from my stage and from a stack of cookbooks that read like textbooks, I decided to get to work developing a laminated pastry that our team could call our own.  

Before getting into the kitchen I wanted to break down how lamination really works. In classical French baking, any lamination begins with a smooth, elastic dough—the détrempe—that will be rolled and wrapped around the butter. This dough can be as simple as flour, water, and salt; or it can be leavened with yeast, or even enriched with butter, eggs, and milk. The degree of leavening and enrichment will dictate the finished texture and flavor of whatever pastry you’re making.

After mixing and resting, the dough is rolled out and a thin sheet of butter is placed on top. The dough is folded to enclose the butter and then rolled out into a thin sheet, which is then folded like a letter. This process, known as tourage, is then repeated to generate layers in exponential fashion. (And yes, you can laminate with pretty much any fat. I’ve seen black garlic butter, beef fat, even foie gras.) In order to keep up with demand, most bakeries use sheeters that can roll out large quantities of dough to exact thickness. Depending on the number of folds you do, you can produce drastically different levels of layering. For example, 3 sets of tri-folds (or letter folds) gives 27 layers, while 4 sets of tri-folds gives 81 layers. 5 sets gives 243 layers, and 6 gives 729 layers.

As you might imagine, there are many factors affecting successful lamination—dough temperature, butter temperature, resting time, rolling technique. But with a little care and patience during the process, the payoff is a unique lightness and airiness that results from the thin sheets of butter steaming in the oven and puffing the dough. In the case of yeasted laminated doughs, the payoff is even greater: Leavening with yeast results in an even airier crumb, with small, irregular pockets or “alveoli”—as François Payard puts it. 

For my laminated bread, I’ve been working toward something between a croissant and brioche. I love the richness and fluffiness of traditional brioche, but I find it a little dense and overly rich. On the other hand, I find most croissants too tough and bready. So I’m working with a moderately enriched dough—similar to Japanese milk bread—with more milk, sugar, and eggs than a traditional croissant dough, but with less eggs and butter than a traditional brioche. In my opinion, like the baby bear’s breakfast pastry, it’s just right.

My first tests had mixed results. I started by shaping the laminated dough into a braided loaf (kind of like challah). It baked up beautiful on the outside, with clearly visible layers peeking out—a sure sign of proper lamination. But when I sliced into the loaf, the crumb was denser than I’d hoped. I suspected the problem was in proofing: I wasn’t allowing enough space in the loaf pan for the dough to rise properly, resulting in layers pressing against each other. I scaled down the amount of dough for the pan, and the crumb was better, but I think I need to re-evaluate the shape of the loaf itself—maybe consider just a straight roll to give a better cross-section when you cut into the loaf. After a recent team tasting and discussion, I think I’ll be looking into two different shapes. The large sandwich loaf basically eats and slices like a giant, richer croissant with a beautiful crumb that would be perfect for grilled cheese or French toast. The other shape we’re considering is a pull-apart monkey bread shape—something we could spoon a little cheesy sauce over. Sasha’s pushing hard for this shape, most likely in a bid to win the hearts of brunch fanatics everywhere.

As for the lamination itself, since I’m working with a leavened dough, I’m finding that I don’t need any more than 27 layers to produce even layering and a light, open crumb—thanks to the extra lift from the yeast.

I’m still working the kinks out of this project. Getting the plasticity of the butter and dough to equalize is a big challenge. And of course, streamlining the recipe for the home cook is the greatest challenge—deciding where I can save time, where I can make things easier in a process that can take up to 3 days from start to finish. Hopefully I’ll have something good within the next week. Whatever I come up with, I hope it does justice to all the beautiful work those cooks are doing in Basel. (And I’ll be sure to keep my rectangles straight this time.) For now, my butter consumption is going to stay a little on the high side.

Do you have any experience with lamination? Any tips for success? Drop a line in the comments below.

Photography by Steve Klise. 

Over the last several weeks, Dan, Sasha, and I have been working on recipes to accompany our upcoming feature story about salt. As we develop recipes, we’ve been up to our eyeballs in all kinds of salt—from big, flaky finishing salts, to black lava salt, Himalayan pink salt, even sea salt harvested from the coast of Massachusetts. We’re exploring a few of the many culinary applications for this humble mineral. Most people think that salt is just salt; that it’s nothing more than sodium chloride (NaCl) and it makes your food taste salty. But beneath the surface, salts—especially unrefined salts—can differ drastically in their composition, containing trace minerals, such as calcium and potassium, and even bacteria. More on that in a minute.

One idea I’m investigating is whether these different salts affect lacto-fermentation. Lacto-fermented pickles—or lacto–pickles, as they are colloquially known in many modern kitchens—are having a trendy moment. But nearly every cuisine has lacto-fermented products, from kimchi to half-sour pickles to sauerkraut: It’s very popular because it’s both transformative and surprisingly easy to do. Cut up some vegetables, put them in a salty brine at room temperature, and wait about a week. The brine staves off the growth of harmful bacteria, and in the absence of oxygen, good bacteria, such as Lactobacillus, thrive, converting sugar to lactic acid that pickles the vegetables, making them crunchy, sour, and delicious. (To give the process a try, check out Sasha’s recipe for Fermented Beets and Beet Kvass.)

When we first started talking about the science of salt, Dan pointed me in the direction of Ben Wolfe, Assistant Professor at Tufts University. Ben and his team study the microbiology of fermented foods—from cheese and kombucha, to salami and kimchi. They aim to understand the ins and outs of the fermentation process and even run a website devoted to the subject. (We interviewed one of the Ph.D. candidates in Ben’s lab, Esther Miller, whose research focuses on cabbages.) In one article, Ben highlights surprising microbes found in the rinds of 137 different cheeses. His team discovered the presence of bacteria commonly found in the ocean (among them Vibrio, Halomonas, and Pseudoalteromonas) on the rinds of these cheese samples—even though these cheeses were made nowhere near a body of water. He hypothesizes that these bacteria made it onto the cheeses via sea salts used during the cheesemaking process. And in a cool, damp environment—like a cheese cave—these bacteria tend to thrive.

I immediately wondered if this idea extended to other fermented food products: Could different bacteria grow in a batch of pickles based on the type of sea salt used? And more to the point, could this also affect the flavor of my final product? As a preliminary test, I used a few different brands of sea salts to make separate batches of shio koji and compared them to a batch made with kosher salt. The results were more pronounced than I expected: The samples made with sea salt all tasted different, and overall were much more aromatic and complex than the batch made with kosher salt. For instance, one batch made with Diamond Crystal sea salt was much funkier and sweeter-smelling than all the other samples. By comparison, the batch with kosher salt tasted bland and uninteresting. At least anecdotally, I was onto something.

Scientifically speaking, Ben’s team hasn’t yet been able to directly link the microbes from certain salts with sensory impacts (e.g., flavor, aroma, texture) on fermented foods. But he’s hopeful that there could be links between sea salt used and fermentation outcome. He points to some research from Korean scientists demonstrating that certain sea salts contain lactic acid bacteria that can facilitate kimchi fermentation.

Right now I’m testing this same hypothesis with simple pickled cucumbers. I’ve set up several ferments using different sea salts, and am eagerly waiting while they do their lacto thing. They should be ready by the end of this week. Our team will do a tasting and we’ll see if the different salts produce different pickle flavors and textures. Who knows, maybe I can get Ben to plate out some samples from our pickles to see if we’re onto something? We’ll share our findings on Cook’s Science soon.

Do you have experience with lacto-fermentation? Any cool thoughts about sea salt? Drop a line in the comments below.

Photography by Kevin White.

Spring is here. The air is getting warmer. The trees are budding. For most people, that means shorts, sundresses, patio drinking, and maybe dusting off the old one-speed for a weekend joyride. For those who cook, spring means green garlic, green almonds, green strawberries, asparagus, morels, fresh peas, ramps, and rhubarb. Chefs lose their minds over spring, and for good reason: It’s a time to break free from the winter purgatory of root vegetables and citrus and to jumpstart creativity and celebrate nature’s bounty. And you can bet Sasha and I are all about that spring hype.

Lately I’ve been working with rhubarb, exploring some uses beyond pie. I’m working toward two dishes—one sweet and one savory—to showcase rhubarb’s versatility. And while I’ll touch on the specifics of some of my testing, this week has been more of a lesson for me in the development process—in imagining a dish and then creating it.

Rhubarb goes on the ever-growing list of things in the plant kingdom that could put you in an early grave. Its leaves contain about 0.5 percent oxalic acid—the same stuff that’s in Bar Keeper’s Friend—and if you ate enough of them (say, 17 pounds of the leaves for the average adult male), the acid would have a toxic effect on your kidneys and potentially kill you. So it’s a good thing no one eats the leaves. Plus, they’re bitter, fibrous, and gross. So we’ll stick to the stalks, which have negligible concentrations of oxalic acid, and are delicious! In their raw state, they have a crisp, tart flavor—reminiscent of lemon—that mellows when cooked with sugar.

Rhubarb’s pucker and fibrous texture make it challenging to work with if you’re making anything other than compote, jam, or pie. Eaten raw, rhubarb can be stringy and, to some, overwhelmingly sour (akin to eating raw lemon wedges). When cooked, it goes from intact and fresh to mushy and jam-like in a matter of minutes. This sensitivity to heat makes rhubarb more suited to gentler cooking methods like poaching or lightly simmering if you want to keep the stalks intact. That means it’s a good candidate for sous vide cooking.

Initially, my idea was to serve bigger pieces of crimson, gently cooked, sweetened rhubarb stalks over some sort of yogurt-y element—a riff on berries and cream, if you will. I ran into two problems out of the gate. First, it was nearly impossible to keep the stalks an even, deep red through poaching. Anthocyanins, the same pigments found in red onions, raspberries, and red cabbage, give rhubarb stalks’ exteriors their distinctive crimson color. But because rhubarb has so much water, when cooked, the pigments leach into the water and the stalks turn a pale, anemic pink. I tried everything to solve this problem—adding beet juice, hibiscus flowers, even red food dye to my poaching bag—and while some methods produced redder results, they distracted from the delicate rhubarb flavor. I wasn’t about to sacrifice flavor just so I could have some pretty-looking rhubarb. In a restaurant kitchen, I would have used a vacuum chamber to compress the rhubarb with a small amount of beet juice or other red liquid to impart color. But without resorting to such fancy equipment, keeping rhubarb red proved more challenging than I anticipated.

The second problem was texture. I had envisioned 3-inch-long, uniform batons of poached rhubarb. But no matter how long or at what temperature (short of boiling) I cooked the rhubarb, it was still stringy and made for an unpleasant eating experience. Even peeling didn’t solve the problem entirely. Sixteen tests in, and I still didn’t have anything I was happy with. I was hitting a rut, frustrated, and I almost abandoned the idea entirely.

But then Sasha reminded me to just make the dish. It’s easy to get bogged down in the minutiae of a particular technique and miss the forest for the trees. After all, my goal is always to make something good, something tasty. Up till now, I hadn’t presented my team with a complete dish—just one element, failure after failure. So I stepped back and made a few adjustments. I sliced the rhubarb smaller, I abandoned the idea of crimson rhubarb, and made an intense, deep red syrup to glaze the rhubarb. I whipped some skyr and cream to make a base for my dish. Then I called another tasting. This time, my team finally came around to the concept. And while the dish wasn’t perfect, I had finally communicated my idea on the plate. Armed with a more cohesive concept, I have more confidence in the direction of the dish. And we’ll see how it evolves over the coming days.  

In any craft, they say that God (or the Devil, depending who you ask) is in the details. And it’s true. You can’t succeed as a cook without paying careful attention to the little things. But it’s also important to see and paint the big picture, to communicate your greater vision. Working (and failing) with rhubarb was a solid reminder of that.

Do you have experience with cooking rhubarb? Any fun tips, techniques, or favorite ways to prepare it? Drop us a line in the comments below.

Photography by Steve Klise and Kevin White.

A couple months ago, Sasha shared some of his insights into staying organized and working “clean” in the kitchen. If you didn’t catch the hint the first time around, to cook is to control chaos. And in this constant battle against entropy, organization and cleanliness are integral to being a good cook—whether at home or on the line. Sasha did an excellent job of outlining his general approach in the kitchen. But this week I thought I’d elaborate on more of the nitty-gritty. A lot of you probably have a good idea of what basic equipment you need in your kitchen: a sharp knife, a cutting board, maybe some good pots and pans. But beyond that, there are certain items that can take your cooking to the next level. So without further ado, and in no particular order, here’s a list of things that help keep me working lean, mean, and clean in the test kitchen:

Towel
A towel is the great equalizer. I wouldn’t survive a day in the kitchen without one. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a towel is even listed as the single most important item an interstellar hitchhiker can carry. Beyond cleaning up general spills, messes, and wiping all the flour off your face, towels are perfect for handling hot pans, pots, and roasting racks. And in a pinch, you can even use a towel to hold a bowl steady, as a makeshift bandana, or even as a facemask when the fumes are getting too intense. So get yourself a towel, neatly fold it, and keep it next to you as you work, tucked in your back pocket, or hitched to your apron. Better yet, get two or three.  

Tape
Professional cooks have an unhealthy obsession with labeling. In one kitchen I worked at, we had to label, date, and initial everything we made, from stocks to sauces to ice creams to perfectly portioned slices of hamachi. The tape edges had to be squared off and always affixed one inch from the top of the container. If anything went wrong with a dish, my chef would know exactly who to set his sights on based on the label. Here at the test kitchen, the stakes aren’t quite so high (or scary). But we still label and date everything so we can keep track of our projects. And you’ll find that it’s a useful way to keep track of leftovers and ingredients at home. I recommend masking tape, or even better, blue or green painter’s tape since it peels right off without leaving any residue.

Permanent Markers and Pens
What else are you gonna use to write on your tape?  

Notebook
Like Sasha said, a notebook is an old school method of note taking. But it sure beats getting chicken fat all over your laptop. And when I’m just sketching out ideas, a notebook allows for a little more freedom. Sasha and I both have stacks and stacks of small notebooks from our time in kitchens. They’re chock full of recipes, sketches, and general chicken scratch. These notebooks serve as record of accumulated knowledge and help inspire our recipe development. For any home cook who hopes to develop their own recipes, copy down recipes, or otherwise track progress, a notebook is essential.

Spoon Bain
Originally designed for slow cooking of delicate foods in a bain-marie system, these are cylindrical, stainless steel containers that come in a range of sizes. They can hold spoons, spatulas, and all of your small tools in one place without taking up too much space on your counter. Keeping one right next to your stove allows for easy access.

Kitchen Scissors
A good pair of small kitchen scissors can be indispensible—especially when you don’t have a knife handy. They are good for jobs both big and small. You can make quick work of delicate herbs by snipping them to exact size with no fear of bruising them. Or you can break down tough lobsters and crabs in a flash. They even work for small poultry like quail and guinea hen. Cut cheesecloth, parchment circles, cardboard, you name it. Plus, it’s the best way to cut all the tape that Sasha and I go through. You can’t go wrong with a pair of Joyce Chen scissors. Sasha also swears by the sleeker Mac brand.

Spoons
An extension of the hand. Stir, scrape, flip, baste, sauce, spread—spoons can do it all. Use them for tasting, use them for plating, use them when you’re not really sure which tool to use, but when you still gotta use something. Find spoons of all sizes and shapes: flat, deep, wide, perforated, big, and small. Restaurant cooks swear by the oversized, well-balanced spoons designed by chef Gray Kunz for use in the kitchen, but I’ve found some of the best spoons at thrift stores and antique shops.

Teeny Tiny Itty Bitty Rubber Spatula
A mini rubber spatula comes in handy for stirring small pots, scraping the last bits of cream out of a bowl, or getting sticky stuff out of jars. Its thin profile and lightness make it an easy inclusion in any cook’s toolkit.

Small Metal Offset Spatula
If a spoon is an extension of the hand, then the small metal offset spatula might be an extension of the finger. While it’s great for more detail-oriented work like spreading a fine layer of frosting on a cake, it’s also good for more unconventional uses like scooping out small amounts of salt, flipping steaks, and picking up really small, delicate garnishes or cookies. In case you were wondering, it also doubles as a solid alternative to a flathead screwdriver: I’ve used it countless times to repair Kitchenaids and refrigerator doors. I’ve even heard of cooks sharpening one side of the spatula for use as a makeshift paring knife (though I don’t recommend this).

Bowl Scraper/Bench Scraper
Sometimes you don’t want to dirty a towel or use your knife when you’re cleaning off your cutting board. A plastic or metal scraper does a fine job of corralling all those bits of mirepoix into a bowl, and makes cleaning up a breeze. Use it to scrape scraps from your cutting board directly into the trash, or for transferring prepped ingredients into a bowl or pot. Plus, it’s oh-so satisfying when you can get everything off the table in a couple clean swipes.

Timer
How will you know when to pull those buns out of the oven? A small timestick or digital tabletop timer will take you a long way, especially if you’ve got multiple pans in the fire at once.

Cake Tester
I can count the number of times I’ve actually used a cake tester for testing cakes—though make no mistake, they’re great for that. I’m seldom without one in the pocket of my chef’s coat. Yes, they’re useful for checking whether cakes or brownies are done, but they can do so much more.  You can use one to test the doneness of many other foods in a relatively non-invasive way. You can get a quick-and-dirty temperature reading on a steak (by inserting, removing, and comparing the temperature of the metal to your finger or lower lip), and easily test the doneness of potatoes or carrots. The ones I use are super inexpensive.

And there you have it. Those are some things that help me stay organized and sharp in the kitchen. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it’s a great starter toolkit for those who want to take their kitchen OCD to the next level.  

What are your must-haves in the kitchen? Have you come up with alternative uses for kitchen tools? Tell us about it in the comments.
And in the immortal words of Towlie, don’t forget to bring a towel. 

Photography by Steve Klise

From Sasha:

Tim and I are often asked by friends and family what exactly we work on all day in the kitchen. In fact, even our colleagues here at America’s Test Kitchen ask us the same question, often with raised eyebrows as we are setting up incubators or dehydrating tapioca slurry, the appearance of which could best be described as non-radioactive Ghostbusters slime. Our days are mainly consumed by failed experiments, bad food puns, tasty snacks, and the odd culinary eureka moment. We thought it would be fun to start documenting and sharing some of these moments to give a better sense of what our day to day experiences are like in the test kitchen of Cook’s Science.

I started working at Cook’s Science this past summer after spending two years in Chicago as a sous chef at Parachute Restaurant. One of the things I was most excited about when I transitioned from the grind of the restaurant schedule to a more normal 9-to-5 life was the possibility of cooking more at home for loved ones and myself. Alanis Morissette would agree that one of the tragic ironies of cooking in restaurants is that you rarely, if ever, have the time or energy to cook at home. I think I hit rock bottom working the wood oven station at a restaurant in Maine where I would make awesome Neapolitan pies all night and then go home and order Papa John’s. I’m glad those days are (hopefully) behind me.

At Cook’s Science we’ve been developing some quick, simple, and delicious recipes for mid-week dinners that call for something a little more approachable than our more project-heavy, impress-your-Tinder-date recipes (just being able to pronounce nixtamalization should get you a second date). For my first mid-week dinner recipe the team and I decided that I would tackle something pasta-related. I was totally down with this, mainly because I am always craving pasta, and if I can disguise my need for bucatini as recipe research and development, why not? We had some extra corn kicking around in the test kitchen, so I got to work on cobb-ling (I’m going to try to sneak as many food puns past our editors as possible) something together. The result: Creamy Corn Bucatini with Corn Ricotta and Basil.

During our early brainstorming, I had joked about making a “cornbonara” pasta dish and I decided to run with it. I was quickly able to develop a corn puree that mimicked the rich, egg yolk texture of a classic carbonara. An early version that mixed the corn purée with pancetta was tasty but struck me as a little too cute and gimmicky. I decided to ditch the pork and focus on the corn. Ricotta struck me as a another way to bring some needed fat to the dish—it’s unbelievably easy to make at home, and  By steeping corn in the milk used to make the ricotta, I was able to bring even more corn flavor to the party.

From this point, the dish came together quickly (not something that happens very often, as I soon learned—stay tuned). Even though we were developing the recipe in summer—peak corn season—I wanted to see if it would work just as well if someone wanted to make it in February (read: NOT peak corn season). I tested the process with frozen corn kernels in lieu of fresh and had my team do a taste test of one recipe made with fresh corn and one made with frozen. They, lucky for me, weren’t able to detect a difference. After some additional testing and tweaking, we sent the recipe to a panel of home cooks to try it out and give us feedback on both the process (the recipe) and the finished product. A few more adjustments to the consistency of the sauce, and we were ready to call it a day.

However, recipe writing was not as much of a breeze for me. This was the first recipe I developed and wrote at Cook’s Science and I had been warned by our Executive editor Dan Souza that it’s a pretty steep learning curve. He was right. I was coming from restaurants where recipes are, at best, a list of grammed-out ingredients followed by shorthand instructions: “slice and sweat veg, blend on high, pass through chinois, chill.” Not exactly something we could publish and guarantee home cooks’ success. Now I had to step back and really examine all of the steps I was taking during cooking. Exactly how many seconds did I blend the corn purée? Precisely how much pasta water did I add to the sauce? Did I need to strain the ricotta through cheesecloth or would a fine mesh strainer suffice on its own? Answering questions like this meant going back to the test kitchen to cook through the recipe again and again, recording measurements, and paring out unnecessary steps. It’s a lot of work. A lot of delicious work.

From Tim:

I spend a lot of time in the kitchen failing. And coming from the restaurant world, where failure can mean getting pulled off the line and being ridiculed by my chef—or worse, resulting in my own unemployment—the notion of failure is unsettling. But, since landing at America’s Test Kitchen a year ago, first on the book team, and now on the Cook’s Science team, I’ve found that sometimes failure can be a gateway to discovery. Sometimes failure encourages me to explore things that might otherwise never have seen the light of day here at Cook’s Science—but that nonetheless make our lives mildly more interesting.  

I was playing around with different variations on the Butternut Squash Gnudi recipe I’d been working on, and thought that sun-dried tomato might be a cool flavor base as a substitute for butternut squash. Traditionally, gnudi are dumpling-like pillows of ricotta and semolina flour that are a close cousin to gnocchi. Instead of ricotta and semolina flour, I opted for a non-traditional approach using egg white powder and tapioca starch to bind the filling and create solid little bite-size gnudi with maximal squash flavor. The egg white powder helps form a stable gel via the coagulation of albumin proteins in the egg white and also contributes to the gnudi’s custardy texture. The tapioca starch is there to bind water and help with gelation, working in combination with the egg white powder to form an even more stable but creamy gel.

My first attempt involved rehydrating a jar of sundried tomatoes by gently simmering them in crushed tomatoes to maximize the tomato flavor, blending them up, and incorporating them into my working gnudi formula in place of the butternut squash. The results sucked. The gnudi never set up properly, so I was left with a hot mess of egg white- and starch-thickened tomato purée. I tried bumping up the proportion of tapioca starch to increase the gelling potential of the base. This time, the gnudi properly set up, but the texture was pretty appalling. I ended up with fire-red hot dog-looking logs that had a bizarre, crumbly texture—nothing creamy at all.

I made a few more tweaks to the amounts of tapioca starch and egg white powder, but after a particularly harrowing team taste test, we agreed that this recipe idea was a non-starter. But I had all this tomato-y goodness left over from my last failed gnudi attempt. Sasha suggested that we spread it on large sheet pans and dry it out in our dehydrator. We basically ended up with tomato-flavored fruit leather—pliable, twisty, and reminiscent of a Totino’s pizza roll. Since we’re tight on space in the test kitchen these days, we keep our dehydrator in our office upstairs next to the marketing department. The whole floor smelled like a pizza shop for a solid week.

Photography by Steve Klise and Daniel J. van Ackere. 

Amidst the chaos of TV filming that Sasha is experiencing for the first time, I have been quietly frying my way through pounds and pounds of chicken. But not just any chicken: I have been developing a recipe for a spicy fried chicken to accompany our upcoming feature about spiciness. And since the departure of ATK’s undisputed, all-time greatest fried chicken queen, senior editor emeritus Diane Unger, the mantle of fried chicken warrior seems to have fallen to me. Diane’s chicken was famous for, among other things, its supremely crispy crust. In her last days here at the company—at the peak of my testing for Koji Fried Chicken—Diane left me with this cryptic (chicken) nugget of wisdom: “There’s so much more to explore . . . If you really want crispy fried chicken, cornstarch is just the tip of the iceberg.”

For years, Diane had championed wheat flour only, or a blend of wheat flour and cornstarch, for the dredges in her Southern-style fried chicken recipes. More recently, she had developed a Hawaiian-Style Fried Chicken recipe using potato starch to good effect. But that’s as far as she went. She never officially published a recipe incorporating alternative starches (tapioca, rice flour, etc.) into her dredges.

For this recipe, I needed a super crunchy coating that would hold up well to being lacquered in a flavorful chili oil without sogging out. So I thought I would rappel down the rabbit hole of dredge blends, in hope of finding a coating that would deliver crispier, crunchier fried chicken.

Classic southern fried chicken recipes call for dredging in 100 percent all-purpose flour. But the companies and restaurants that make fried chicken professionally rely on a tailor-made mix of  alternative starches to get specific results. While a portion of classic wheat flour contributes important flavor, they may add other starches to create crispier, crunchier products, with long shelf life, or perhaps a thinner, more delicate coating that shatters like glass. And there are starches specially engineered for that.     

Taking a cue from “big fried chicken” I set up four different dredge blends in a ratio of 5 parts all-purpose flour to 3 parts alternative starch—the standard ratio of starches for many of Diane’s delicious fried chicken recipes. In this case, I chose cornstarch, tapioca starch, rice flour, and potato starch. I seasoned the dredges lightly and fortified them with baking powder for added crispness and browning. After a quick brine to ensure juicy meat, I dipped the chicken in buttermilk, dredged it, and let it hydrate overnight until the coating was mostly wet-looking. Finally I fried all of the batches in 325 degrees F oil and we tasted them blind, next to a control batch dredged in 100 percent all-purpose flour for comparison.

Here’s how it all broke down, with some cursory team tasting notes:

All-Purpose Flour Only
This coating was decent. These pieces were crunchy and crispy out of the fryer, but a bit delicate. There was a slight toughness to the coating, likely due to too much gluten formation in the hydrated dredge (all-purpose flour is 10 to 12% protein). After thirty minutes, the coating was getting soggy and unappetizing.

All-Purpose Flour & Rice Flour
This crust was much more substantial than the control sample—in a good way. But tasters noted a slightly sweet flavor, a bit like stale cereal. Overall, we felt like this wasn’t the best direction for this particular application.

All-Purpose Flour & Cornstarch
This had more crunch and crispiness than the control, but the coating seemed to flake off when we bit into the chicken moreso than in the other samples. Overall, this was a solid coating, and I can see why so many recipes at ATK employ this blend. After thirty minutes, the coating appeared to stay decently crispy, with only minor patches of sogginess.

All-Purpose Flour & Tapioca Starch
This was our runner-up for favorite blend. The coating was thin, even and shattered a bit when you took a bite. After thirty minutes, this coating stayed moderately crispy, with no patches of sogginess.     

All-Purpose Flour & Potato Starch
This blend was the team’s favorite for two reasons: exceptional, satisfying crunch and crispiness, and unmatched staying power. For some, the crunch factor was a little over the top. And even after two hours, this coating stayed crispy. While a few blends produced satisfactory results, this was our clear winner in this application.

Based on this testing, it seems like I found my ideal blend for this recipe’s chicken dredge in all-purpose flour and potato starch. But what’s the reasoning here? After lots of reading—and lots of back and forth with senior editor Paul Adams—the answer is pretty complicated. (And in case you were wondering, fried chicken scientists—and even better, tempura scientists—exist.) Here is what I can gather so far: The starchy dredge absorbs water during the overnight hydration period, but it doesn’t soften up until it hits the hot frying oil.

All starch is made up of granules, and the granules are composed of two kinds of molecules, amylose and amylopectin. When it comes to a crispy coating, it’s the amylose content that really counts.

When they’re in a moist, hot environment—like a hydrated dredge that’s being deep fried—starch granules swell up allowing the amylose starch molecules to move about and separate from one another. Then, as water is evaporated during the frying process, these separate starch molecules lock into place, forming a rigid, brittle network with a porous, open structure that’s crispy.

Both cornstarch and potato starch are relatively high in amylose, at 25 percent and 22 percent, respectively. Tapioca starch is 15 to 18 percent amylose, and rice starch can be even lower. But given that we repeatedly found the potato starch sample to be crunchier than the rest, it’s clear there is more to the crispy equation than the percentage of amylose. What’s making the difference?

Of all the starches I used, potato starch has the largest starch granules (up to 75 microns compared to 5 to 20 microns for cornstarch), and accordingly, the longest amylose molecules. According to starch researcher Peter Trzasko, quoted in Food Product Design magazine, smaller molecules rapidly form a starch gel when exposed to moisture and heat, as our dredges were. Larger molecules cohere but don’t gel as readily: “[p]otato and tapioca have a molecular weight so much higher than that of corn that it actually makes it more difficult for the molecules to associate.” It seems likely that the water is more easily and thoroughly evaporated from a potato-starch dredge during frying, since it’s not trapped in a gel. The result is a denser coating with brittle crunch, and one that is less quick to retrograde and become chewy or soggy.

This paper corroborates that granule size appears to correlate positively with the perception of crunch. But it’s complicated.

I now understand the need for starch scientists. I’ve been buried in many contradictory findings after reading one too many independent studies. Part of the issue is the specificity of my recipe: I can’t find many studies that mimic or even loosely follow my exact testing conditions. Unlike a lab or academic setting, cooking doesn’t happen in a bubble. I can’t control every single variable in such a complex system as cooking. Instead, it’s useful to use scientific research to inform and guide my testing. In the end, we have to trust our palates and ask as simple question: Does this taste good? As for my fried chicken, for now I’m happy I’ve found a coating that’s undeniably crispy, crunchy, and long-lasting.

Do you have experience with alternative starches and fried chicken? Any tips or insights into the test results? Let us know in the comments below.

[Editor’s Note: Be sure to check back next week on Cook’s Science to see Tim’s final fried chicken recipe!]

Photography by Steve Klise.

I value simplicity in my life. And in my cooking, that’s no different. But sometimes, arriving at the best version of a simple technique—with precision and elegant execution—is harder than making a perfect Jacques Pépin chicken galantine. This week I started a project on cured egg yolks. Cured yolks are popular on the menus of many modern restaurants: salty, deep orange gems that can be grated over meats and vegetables to add richness and seasoning, or served in a sweet preparation, like with yogurt meringue. But their favor with chefs hides the fact that they are not difficult to make at home, nor is curing yolks a new idea. Curing is one of the oldest food preservation techniques known to man, and humans have been curing and enjoying cured (fish) eggs in the form of caviar for centuries. But the technique is still relevant today, and it’s still fun and enriching to do it yourself. However, developing a simple recipe does not always translate into easy testing—and as you’ll see, projects like this can be a huge pain in the ass to organize in the test kitchen.

The basic yolk-curing process involves burying raw yolks in salt, sugar, or a combination of the two and leaving them to dry out (for several days, in some cases) until they achieve textures ranging from jam-like to crumbly cheese. The yolks intensify in flavor as they cure, becoming salty and savory. When I began working on my version of this technique, it was clear that there are three major variables to consider: Salt concentration, sugar concentration, and curing time. To get some preliminary information, I designed a test involving five different cure mixtures set for varying curing time intervals (e.g., a 50/50 salt/sugar cure mixture for 2 days, a 25/75 salt/sugar cure mixture for 5 days, etc.). I staggered the starting dates for the cure times so my team could taste all the samples on the same day. In the end, I had twenty samples to taste—plus five extra samples involving some less traditional cures.

Tasting twenty-five samples of the same thing in one sitting is a labor of love. For one thing, Dan, Sasha, and I were tasting twenty-five egg yolks—enough cholesterol for weeks. For another, tasting in this format was a bit like playing Russian Roulette. We never really knew what we were gonna get flavor- or texture-wise, so it was exciting when things tasted good and discouraging when you found something straight up disgusting. But by the end of the tasting, we had a much better idea of (1) the type of cures we liked, and (2) the finished textures that we enjoyed. A 50/50 cure seems promising for a grated or shaved preparation, while a quicker cure in flavored sugar syrup opens avenues for sweet dishes (think like a sweet poached yolk).

I’m still working on this project. We’re exploring a few different directions with the yolks involving cure types and timing—as well as various flavor variations. Miso, sugar syrups, soy sauce, kombu, and even shio koji are all fair game. And be sure to look for the upcoming recipes on the site. For now, I think I need to eat a bunch of kale salad (recipe also coming soon) and work on my LDL level.

We’d like to hear from you, too. Have you ever eaten cured yolks? Made them yourself? Any cool or quirky applications? Tell us about your experience in the comments.

Photography by Steve Klise.