America's Test Kitchen Is My New Happy Place

(These posts about our week in Boston are in no particular order--kind of like my life right now.)

When I was in labor with our first Boy, Husband was my labor coach. At one point, in an effort to help me relax and save the fingers on his right hand (which I was in the process of crushing) he urged me to think of a happy place. "Vermont!" he told me. "Think of Vermont!" And the thought of the  cow-dotted New England landscape did help, although not as much as the epidural that came a bit later.

Anyway, after 32 years I have a new happy place: America's Test Kitchen.

Since this is my true confession medium, I admit that I am not one of those who have watched every episode of this public television show since it started in 2001. I didn't discover ATK (as we groupies call it) until Boy#3 found the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe, and even then I skirted around the edges of devotion. But then I discovered Cook's Illustrated magazine (one of ATK's publications), which may be the most beautifully practical magazine ever, and...well, I haven't been such a fan-girl of anything since Here Come the Brides. 

With the exception of my dinner rolls and chocolate sheetcake I have always been been a mediocre-at-best cook and sadly, one does not live on bread and cake alone. America's Test Kitchen made me not only feel like I could be a good cook, they made me feel like I wanted to cook.

So when I knew we were going to Boston, and knew ATK would be so close that I could practically wake up and smell the (scientifically engineered, perfectly brewed) coffee, I really, really, really wanted to tour that facility. Sadly, they do not give public tours. But I'd had occasion to be in contact with the lovely Kelsey, one of the moderators of the the ATK Facebook group, so I messaged her to ask if there was any chance we could come peek through the windows.

"Sure!" she wrote back "I have some time Thursday afternoon. Would that work?"

Commence fan-girl squealing.

The rest of this post is going to have a lot of pictures, so if you don't have the time to look at everything I found fascinating, this is the bottom line: America's Test Kitchen lived up to every hope and expectation I had. Kelsey and her sidekick, Sarah, were the perfect ambassadors for ATK, and along with every person we met there made me want to go live in that building on the seaward side of Boston.

I mean, check out today's beauty shot. That is Kelsey (in the pink) and Sarah beside the Take-Home Fridge. After recipes are tested and rated, leftovers are put in this refrigerator and anyone who works there can TAKE THAT WONDERFUL FOOD HOME. I used to take the stub end of notebooks home for scrap paper when there were no longer enough pages for story notetaking--imagine if those notebooks had been crab cakes, or brownies, or Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies. Aaaaaah.

Or there's this:

The recipe development area is a huge room with the kinds of equipment you'd expect to find in a test kitchen--walls lined with refrigerators, individual work stations--except this huge room had something not found in other test kitchens. Lan Lam.

Yes. This cooking star was RIGHT THERE developing a recipe for a better French toast! And as she saw our little group coming around the corner, she stopped and told us about her process. It involves finding five or so "old" recipes, trying them out to see what she likes and doesn't like about those recipes, modifying, cooking, comparing to previous versions, modifying some more, cooking again, comparing, repeat, repeat, repeat. The newest iteration was almost there--she liked its texture and taste, but she wasn't satisfied.

"Want to try some?" she asked. Uh, yes, we believe we would!

Those are my teeth-marks in the toast.

For the record, Lan's going in the right direction. Husband, Boy#2, Lovely Girl, and I agreed that the improved version is fluffier and richer-tasting, even though Lan didn't think it was perfect yet. When she gets done, she'll not only know the new recipe is better, she'll know why. Test kitchens, folks. It's science.

But all of our drooling at ATK was not over the lovely food. If you're a foodie yourself, take a look at this:

An entire rack of Le Creuset Dutch ovens. This piece of equipment won its category in the ATK equipment review, but is pricier than my occasional use would justify. I was delighted to see a more familiar friend:

Cuisinart 14-cup food processor. 

Just last week Amazon had delivered my new food processor, which replaced one I'd had for decades and finally pushed too far into a broken chopping blade. The one I ordered had been the top one in the ATK equipment review, and was far from the most expensive.

"We use the same equipment here that we recommend to home cooks," Kelsey told us. "We want them to be able to duplicate what we do and they can't do that if all we're using are commercial products."

As this rack of burned bread indicates, toasters are in the current test cycle. And what happens to the test equipment after the ratings are done? It goes into the Christmas party raffle, and whether you're a star or a dishwasher you could take home a high-end mixer or espresso machine. Ho, ho, ho!

Personally, I'd rather take home the staff. Three full-time dishwashers are responsible for keeping the pots and pans and other cooking accoutrements clean and organized. Also, full-time shoppers make sure all ingredients are purchased, bagged, and sorted for distribution to each tester.

Is this heaven?

"You can sometimes tell what they're working on by what's in the baskets," Kelsey told us.

And of course, the recipe and equipment testing is only background material for the real product--information distributed in three magazines (America's Test Kitchen, Cook's Illustrated, Cooks's Country), on television and YouTube, and in dozens of cookbooks.

We were practically still licking our chops from the delicious French toast when Lan was already preparing for a live question-and-answer session for online subscribers.

There were rooms filled with equipment and photo props, much the same equipment and photo props I have at home albeit not in the same multiples.

There were homey-looking studios and pristine pantries.

Better than the facilities or the food, though was the pride everyone we met seemed to take in their work. Kelsey will be transitioning to a different part of the company soon (she'll be working with a new initiative for kids) but it was obvious that she delighted in this work, including going out of her way to give these Kansas tourists a Boston highlight. Soon ATK hopes to make public tours a regular event, she said.

And when we left, she congratulated Two and Lovely Girl on their upcoming wedding--and handed them something for their new life together.

A week later Husband and I are still marveling at the people, the kindness, the calm, the beauty, the food of America's Test Kitchen.

It's my new happy place.