American's Test Kitchen-Trustworthy or Not?

Cafe Society
1

A friend loaned me her DVDs of the first like 5 or 6 seasons and I’m pretty :dubious: about them.

  1. The thin, smarmy, wimpy guy (I hate how smarmy he is towards the chefs who actually do all the work) who’s the host is such a sissy that he can’t be trusted. One half of one fresh jalapeno in Texas chili might make it too hot? C’mon. Jalapenos have been bred for wimpy heat but lots of flavor over the last 10 years or so. Getting a hot jalapeno is a hell of a chore. How can I trust his opinion given that? It’s not a matter of “This is my preference”, it’s “This is would be too hot”. They made a Denver Omlette with no (no!!!) actual chilies, just bell peppers. That’s not a Denver Omlette. Can their other recipes be trusted given that?

They refuse to use green bell-peppers even in dishes that require them. I like red peppers better to, overall, but say for sausage and peppers, you have to use green peppers–the dish counts on the vaguely sour flavor of the green peppers.

Hell, even scallions–the geek has a tantrum every time one of the (cute) chefs uses the green part towards the top because it’s “too tough and too harsh. Whaaa.” When my nephew and niece went through the “eat only hot dogs and peanut-butter and jelly” phase that most kids go through, they weren’t as fussy as this wimp.

  1. They’re just flat-out factually wrong on oh-so-many points of barbeque.
    A) You never, ever, EVER “soak” the wood. There’s a debate on getting the wood wet, but they’re talking about soaking it in water for an hour or two. You’ll get steam and the wood will smoulder, not smoke. This is bad. Even people who believe in getting the wood wet first* don’t want it soggy. They’re wrong. Flatly, objectively wrong.

B) Ditto their pronouncements that you should bbq using briquettes rather than hardwood “lump” charcoal because “lump burns too hot and too fast”. This is insanely wrong. It’s like saying “Kerosene would be better for a car than gasoline if speed is the objective”. Seriously–I’ve done 18-20 hour cooks at about 225[sup]o[/sup] with lump charcoal and haven’t had to refill. You can use briquettes if you want–they’re neater, easier to stack, etc, but they don’t burn lower or “cooler”(?) than lump

They keep making dumb-ass mistakes like “Tips=To Insure Proper Service”. C’mon. That was debunked decades ago.

The product testing segments seem solid (and I got a great peppermill as a result of their recommendations) and the food tasting segments are ok, except for the doubt I’m having about how up-and-up they are. Can they be trusted (like, say, Consumer Reports)? All the “beauty shots” of varioius brand-name products all over their sets make me wonder.

Plus the obnoxious the skinny geek keeps freaking out about everything. You can NOT get a really high-quality skillet for under about $80.00. The tester said it, I’ve read it elsewhere, the professional chefs I know all agree “You get what you pay for with regards to a skillet/saute pan”. The geek had a hissy-fit about it being so expensive. Ditto with the food tasting: the geek is oh-so-obsessed with “winning” the tasting that everything he says is suspect.

If they’re wrong about all this stuff…what else are they wrong about? Has anyone else seen this show? Can they be trusted? Can most of their recipes be trusted? Anyone else seen this show and felt this way? Has anyone tried their recipies and are they as “Ooh! Look Mildred! They put a red pepper flake in the sauce. It’s going to be so hot and exotic!”-ish as they seem?
*I’m in the middle on this–I like to give the wood a good solid rinse–get any bugs off, etc. so when I put it on the coals, it’s damp to the touch and that’s all. They want you to soak it for hours. Again–objectively wrong. It’s called “smoking” not “steaming” for a reason.

2

You know that, “Test” word in their title? They test. A lot. Really, really a lot. They base their recommendations on the results of their tests, not conventional wisdom. Consider the fact that YOU may be wrong on your conclusions and biases, and preconceived notions.

The flavor preferences may be different than yours, and yes, they do tend to skew toward mild on most things. That can be compensated for, but it doesn’t make them less trustworthy.

3

The skinny geek is from Maine, IIRC. Of course he’s a pansified wimp when it comes to heat, and is genetically unable to process BBQ in any form. But on most things they are dead-on. Their test on bean-soaking and salting totally blew away what my grandmother always told me, for example.

4

I don’t really get the difference between smouldering and smoking. But I’m no real expert on the art. My electric smoker recommends soaking, and that’s what I do. I’ve always been pleased with the results.

I’ve never seen Christopher Kimball have any kind of ‘freak out’ or ‘hissy fit.’ I think you’re projecting a bit based on this persona you’ve given him. He’s a magazine editor (Cook’s Illustrated) and a recognized expert in the field. His opinions are his own, though, and he always defers to the testing people. He may say something about the tasting or the equipment, but you want to listen to the guy telling you the results of their more rigorous tests.

Their recipes are often altered from the ‘original’ for the purposes of easier preparation for home cooks. They aren’t shy about saying so.

Also, on the subject of spicy heat, remember that they are from Boston, not El Paso. Up there, a lot of stuff you like is probably considered too hot. So add some more chiles if you prefer it that way.

5

No. The stuff I mentioned is simple fact. Red and green bell peppers have a completely different flavor and are no more interchangible than substituting cilantro for coriander seed–even though they come from the same plant. The flavors are very different.

Ditto with their barbeque stuff. They’re just wrong about some of their pronouncements from on high. The often repeated comment about lump charcoal is only good for really hot fast cooking is so objectively wrong as to be embarassing for them.

There are legitimate differences in taste, flavor preferences and so forth–that’s not what I’m complaining about.

6

Thanks! This really helps.

Many of their recipes sounded good (I really want to try their clam chowder and there’s a lasagne recipe early on that sounded good), but as horribly wrong as they were on the stuff that I knew, I was dubious.

So much appreciated! :slight_smile:

7

Chris Kimball, the host, is also the big boss of the show. He has very bland tastes, and I find that when using hot spices or garlic, I need to double the amounts at a minimum, as the test kitchen chefs work to his tastes, especially for the TV segments.

For the taste tests, he has no say in the verdict. For example, when taste testing hot sauces (which he hated doing as he doesn’t like hot), he picked Tabasco as his favorite, which they said was fairly low on the panel, which was won by Frank’s.

For equipment tests, they purchase all their items off the shelf, like consumer reports. That’s why he throws a hissy fit. It’s “his” money they are spending when they drop $200 on a pan. If I remember the pan test, they had a best overall and the best buy. They know not everyone will spend $200 for LeCreuset dutch ovens, which was their best, and give options for those of us (like me) who only want to spend $70. However, they don’t always get it right. I was looking for a new garlic press recently, and was about to purchase their best buy until I read the many many negative reviews on Amazon. It seems that after a few months use, it would fall apart.

Most of the recipes on their website are quite good. They go into detail about what works, what doesn’t work, and why. As I use a gas grill and wood chips for smoking, I won’t comment on that. I recently watched a behind the scenes segment, and got a laugh at the chefs grilling and smoking out in back of the facility in the Vermont winter (which roughly lasts from mid-September to mid-June).

I am a subscriber to their magazine and to the website, and highly recommend them to most amateur chefs.

ETA:

Vermont.

8

I would never take cooking advice from a skinny, sissy, geeky, smarmy geek. I only watch cooking shows hosted by shirtless men with oiled, rippling muscles.

I have no idea how the food tastes, though.

9

Smouldering probably isn’t the right word–more “steaming”. I’ve never used an electric smoker, so it might be totally different, but for a charcoal smoker, you put the (mostly dry) wood on the fire and then mostly close the vents so that the wood is just barely burning–if you’ve seen a really banked coal,

Professional chefs should have a broad enough palatte that they can at least cook for a variety of tastes–that Chris guy however seems to try to make everything as bland as possible. Luckily the two female chefs (who are wonderful) seem to ignore him except for coddling him on the “no greens on the scallions and no green bell peppers” thing.

10

Anything Northeast of Charlotte is “Wimpland.” :stuck_out_tongue:

Fenris, you really need to subscribe to Cook’s Illustrated. Best food magazine in the world.

11

That helps too. I kept looking at their pasta sauce recipes, most of which had one small garlic clove for about 36 oz of tomatoes. Um…you wouldn’t be able to taste the garlic in those proportions. (Not that the Emeril extreme of “If one is good, 800 must be great! BAM!” thing is much better.)

Cool–but that’s where he has his hissy-fits (to me). It may be a put-on, or he may really be a completely emasculated wimp, but really, if I was in a blind taste test and my opinion was different than 20 other people’s, my reaction would be either “Huh. It’d be a funny old world if we all had the same tastes, wouldn’t it?” or “Huh. Whooda thunk that 20 people could be so wrong. ;)” depending. I certainly wouldn’t keep threatening to quit my job over and over.

Yeah–I just saw those reports too when I went to buy their best-buy garlic press earlier this week–it really does look like it does a good job (or he’s just got super-strong hands)

12

I know nothing about proper barbecue technique, so I can’t speak to that part. But most of their recipes are excellent.

The show is produced/hosted by the same people who do Cook’s Illustrated magazine, and that’s where all the recipes come from. I’ve probably made about 50 different recipes from their magazine over the past several years, and I can only think of 3 that I didn’t end up liking. I know a lot of people don’t like the show/magazine because many of the recipes are time-consuming or just have a lot of steps/effort. But damn if they don’t turn out excellent!

It sounds like the only reason you don’t like Chris (the host) is because he’s skinny and doesn’t like spicy food? As the editor of the magazine, he knows plenty about cooking, but I think he sometimes “plays dumb” about things he actually knows about, so that he can be a stand-in for the audience, asking the chefs why they do things a certain way.

As for the tasting lab part, it’s been sort of a running joke for years that Chris’ personal opinion will often differ from the tasting panel. I’ve never seen him complain about not “winning” at anything. He simply jokes about the fact that, “Oh well, looks like I picked the wrong one again, etc.” And at the end of the segment, he will always summarize the results by referring to the tasting panel’s winner.

This is a favorite show of me and Mr. Ipsum. It helps bring a lot of the magazine’s recipes “to life” by seeing the steps and the end result.

13

They have the best Fish and Chips recipe I have ever tried. Reading about how they tried, failed, changed some stuff, tried gain until deciding on the final recipe is great stuff. ( I have never seen the show)

14

Cool! I’ll get a couple of issues and try it out! :slight_smile:

15

Fenris, if you go to Cook’s Illustrated’s website, you can get a free preview issue. I join in recommending the magazine.

I like Chris Kimball, but I talk back to him a lot. “Oh just try it, ya big baby! A little cayenne won’t kill you.”

One thing America’s Test Kitchen does really well is show you how to do things every other cooking show/cookbook assumes you already know how to do, like cook a moist and crispy boneless skinless chicken breast, or make a beef roast, or choose a cut of meat. They understand that some of us weren’t taught to do these basics (or learned to do them the wrong way) and they’re not at all supercilious about it.

16

If they recommend soaking your wood, it’s because they’ve tested it totally dry, briefly rinsed, soaked for half an hour, soaked for an hour, soaked for 2 hours, soaked 4 hours, soaked overnight, soaked in saltwater, and probably 10 other variations and found that one way gave better results than the other. And if you read the article about that recipe, they’ll explain what results they got with each attempt and why they felt it needed further adjustment.

17

Them’s fightin’ words to this NYC native (with Southern roots on my maternal side).

There may be a misunderstanding in what I wrote. ATK said that the Trudeau Garlic Press was a best buy. Reviews on Amazon, however, had a LOT of unhappy customers complaining that the press fell apart after a few months. I ended up going with the Kuhn Rikon Easy-Squeeze Garlic Press. (Also, I love garlic so Emeril’s 800 must be better works for me) :cool:

One of my favorite found recipes on their site was the easier french fries. I love french fries, but was too lazy for the two-fry method, especially when managing other dishes. They came up with a single fry method that works wonderfully with much less oil, and despite my worry about greasy fries with their method, these fries were the best I’ve ever done homemade.

He can’t quit. He’s the boss. Though I’d be curious to find out what PBS would do if he did quit. Without TV, I don’t think they could afford the Test Kitchen facility, even with magazine, website subscription, and cookbook sales.

18

If you think Christopher Kimball is annoyingly wimpy, white, and condescending, on TV, wait until you read his little editorial hellos in Cooks Illustrated. On and on about how close to the land he feels because he has a farm in Vermont. And he even helps out the guys who run it once in a while!

On the other hand, Cooks Illustrated is a great magazine, and their Best Recipes cookbook is our standard go-to cookbook. Of course, not everyone’s tastes are the same, so you might not like what they’re trying to do, but they’ll usually do it well. They sometimes tend to use three steps when two steps might do, and don’t believe in any of this low-fat nonsense, but generally very good.

P.S. the test kitchen is in Brookline, Mass., essentially Boston.

19

This.

I’ve subscribed to Cook’s Illustrated since it was reborn in the early 90s, and have learned an immense amount of stuff from it. I can count the recipes I’ve made from it that I didn’t like on one hand, and I don’t think I’ve ever found one that simply doesn’t work. Anyone who’s cooked from magazines/cookbooks very much at all understands what that means - it seems like very, very many published recipes weren’t tested, or weren’t tested in a home kitchen, or had some very bad print errors, or for whatever reason, simply don’t work. Never with Cook’s Illustrated.

That said, their ethnic recipes are bland. You do need to up the spices on just about all of them (and that’s an easy fix - I’ve had Texans proclaim Cook’s Illustrated Texas-style Chile as the best they ever tasted once I adjusted the spices). Chris Kimball is smarmy and annoying; I’ve been tempted to send some of his editorials to the Bulwer-Lytton contest.

So yeah, they’re trustworthy.

20

A smoldering fire tastes different and more bitter than a clean fire. To me, liquid smoke tastes like a smoldering fire, which is why I tend to avoid any products with “natural smoke flavoring” in them. I discovered the difference through experimentation.

For me, ATK and Cooks Illustrated are great for picking up techniques and getting ideas. There’s a lot I’ve learned from them that have completely changed my cooking, like the reverse sear steak method or salted water soaked beans. That said, there’s also a lot I disagree with them about. I don’t really like their ethnic recipes and their product reviews are all over the map in terms of my taste. That said, for the handful of useful ideas I get from them each year, they’re worth checking out. When they hit on advice, they do make a real impact in how I approach cooking.

Put it this way, the contribution they make to my technique is worth it. Their recipes, I don’t generally keep, at least not as-is.