Testing Food

Many people think that cooking is a mystery, but if you break it down, cooking is only a mixture of ingredients, made hot by heating in different ways. Maybe that is the mystery. What if I put the wrong amount or what if I put a wrong ingredient into the mixture?

I was talking to a friend and he told me that on Thanksgiving, he is responsible for eating. I think that's true for most family members. Eating is a very important responsibility, but I think cooking is a huge responsibility too. If the food isn't good, then the eating is hard. If the food is good, then the plates will be empty.

Either way, making food is a skill all in itself. That's why I requested this book. As a college student, ramen noodles is a staple in the menu. Everything stems from ramen noodles, pizza, or mac & cheese. This book takes 125 common foods and elevates it to a higher standard. No more are we eating ramen noodles. We are instead eating an Asian salad with ramen noodles.

See the difference? The author, Tyler Florence takes a common thing and makes it uncommon. The pictures and illustrations are in color, so you don't have to guess what the result would look like. Also, there are step by step directions along with a few pictures so you know what each step is supposed to look like when it is finished.

Have you ever wondered which cheese, exactly, will make the stretchiest, cheesiest mac and cheese? Or if you can make Hollandaise sauce without fear, a double boiler, or even a whisk? Or if, instead of having to choose between onion rings or French fries, you can make onion rings crusted with French fries? Tyler Florence has. These are the kinds of questions he obsesses over when he thinks about how to make cooking both easier and more exciting.

For years, while shuttling between his restaurants and TV shoots, Tyler's kept a notebook of ideas to push his own recipes out of their comfort zone. Now, for the first time in his career, he’s established a culinary lab where he can dive deep into the hows, whys, and why-nots of his cooking. He brings you Inside the Test Kitchen to see his experiments, the wins and the fails, and of course, the delicious, foolproof, and surprising recipes that come out of it.

Go from tricks to make basics brilliant—like saucing Double-Creamed Spinach with pureed spinach, or using boiling-hot brine to make a Super-Crisp Roast Chicken— to simpler ways to make the classics, like a nearly no-stir Time Saver Risotto and a Three-Minute Hollandaise, to pure reinvention, like Fronion Rings and almost-instant Modern Burger Buns.

Through these 120 recipes, Tyler invites you to question culinary sacred cows, push your skills to the next level, and make food more delicious than they would have thought possible.