Now That's A Mouthful

It seems in today’s modern recipes, we’re required to make more than just one trip to more than just one grocery store or market.  What are these strange and difficult to find ingredients?  And how are we supposed to know where to find them if we don’t know what they are???

From bread doughs and pasta doughs to roasts and braises; to breaking down fresh ingredients so we can cook them up; slow-cooking and sous vide…, some of our recipes require a lot of our time.  What makes a cook want to invest so much time on a recipe, or for that matter, in the kitchen?  Is the investment ultimately worth it?

We used a lot of dough in our testing – for breads, for buns, and for dumplings, like pierogis!  Some testers had trouble, and some did not.  Whether you are a seasoned veteran or making your first attempt at a homemade dough, there’s a lot to think about.  So how do we level the playing field and give ourselves the best chance for success when our recipe calls on us to make a dough?

Time for clean, healthy eating and our testing roster was filled with 4 different salads. This got us wondering: what really makes a great salad?

Our testing community has been busy cooking from a number of cookbooks and providing insight into their cooking. Each month we recap our testing experience: find out what we are cooking from – what recipes we loved, what we learned and what sent us back into the kitchen in search of answers.

Based on the feedback we receive from our Testing Community, we’ve noticed that many of our testers are critical of the approach and voice of the recipes. In this episode we discuss who writes cookbooks these days and why they are all so different.

How to be more confident in the kitchen. It’s one thing to cook for yourself…but what about inviting guests over and ensuring every aspect of the meal is the right temperature when it’s time to eat?

If we learned anything from our first round of testing it’s that we LOVE to change or tweak recipes! So we ask, what makes for a good recipe? Are there any recipes that you don’t have to change? Why change it? How do you know to change it? Why write recipes if they’re going to be changed anyway?

In a lot of contemporary recipe writing, component recipes usually appear either as a side bar recipe or a quick addition that you make while the primary recipe cooks. They are the hidden gems of the dish. Typically, these recipes appear as sauces, dressings, seasonings, sides or accompaniments to the primary recipe. But, at least in our testing experience, it’s the component recipes that made us take notice.

In a lot of contemporary recipe writing, component recipes usually appear either as a side bar recipe or a quick addition that you make while the primary recipe cooks. They are the hidden gems of the dish. Typically, these recipes appear as sauces, dressings, seasonings, sides or accompaniments to the primary recipe. But, at least in our testing experience, it’s the component recipes that made us take notice.