Cook's Illustrated

This one is in cooking.

Cook's Illustrated defines this seven-letter word as a small, cylindrical, heavy-duty ceramic or stoneware baking dish designed for single-serving recipes.

Oh, no. I'm making [laughs] it too hard again.

Oh, I know.

Um, all right.

I'm gonna repeat the question.

Cook's Illustrated defines this seven-letter word as a small, cylindrical, heavy-duty ceramic or stoneware baking dish designed for single-serving recipes.

Oh, God.

... or stew meat, um, which you sell for less money.

Yeah, so if you were gonna make a boeuf bourguignon, uh, you know, it's funny, like, in the States, Cook's Illustrated would tell you to buy, you know, a chuck roast and cut it yourself, and blah, blah, blah.

Here you buy, like, boeuf bourguignon meat, and it's just already cut up-

Yeah

Okay.

So this was, this was a Cook's Illustrated recipe which, uh, I figured would work w- you know, it would be successful in my kitchen, and it was.

Now that I've made it and it came out pretty well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna look at other, like, naan, just, not just Cook's Illustrated naan recipes from, like, uh, you know, actual Indian cooking blogs, 'cause I would like to make it again.

It was really good.

I made a simple dough.

... surface.

[laughs] So Matthew, how long did the dough have to rise?

They have two methods in the, in the Cook's Illustrated article, um, for, like, doing it, like, same day, like letting it rise for like a couple hours at room temperature.

And so we said, sure.

And the whole idea was that it was kind of a nod to this old house in a way, you know, see if Cooks Illustrated would make its way.

onto a PBS show.

So we had to know the science behind the food.

I would like really, really look at them, look at them.

Cook's Illustrated, things like that.

I actually did a lot of ripping out of advertisements and putting them on my wall that looked cool.

I was obsessed with the Absolute ads back in the day far before I could drink.

I'm Dan Souza from America's Test Kitchen.

As editor-in-chief of Cook's Illustrated and host of What's Eating Dan?, I've spent my career figuring out why recipes succeed or fail.

Oh, no.

Mm-mm.

There's an entire section on baking soda alone that's crazy interesting, and the next time I make meatballs, thanks to Nick, I'll be adding baking soda to them, which you will understand why after you listen to this interview.

Nick is also an editor-in-residence at America's Test Kitchen, formerly Cook's Illustrated, formerly Cook's, right? Which I believe you were one of the first editors at.

So if I'm correct here, this is, like, a real full circle moment.

It's a little more complicated than that.

The original Cook's, which I was the editor of, went out of business, and then Chris Kimball launched Cook's Illustrated, and I was the editor of that, and then left, and then it became America's Test Kitchen.

Chris left at some point also.

So, um, but yeah, it... there's definitely a relationship there.

I love him so much

We put an enormous amount of time into the edit and the layout that originally it felt like art.

And in fact, I had noticed, being a fan, Seth will appreciate this, I was a fan of Cook's Illustrated, and I noticed that whenever they showed process, it was always a black and white drawing, pen and ink drawing, for like stitching a turkey or cutting something up.

That was always, always a drawing.

And presentation was always a photograph.