Chris Kimball Is Leaving America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Illustrated
Forced out of the company he started. Hope they don’t make too many changes to the format. Time to start downloading and archiving all the recipes. I’ve been using Serious Eats more for the last few months, but they don’t have the history yet to rival ATK.
Okay, but I think the question many of us are asking is: Does this mean Yvonne will get more air time? She could take over the show, even.
Why don’t we have a leering emoji? Do I blame Ed or Jerry?
Yvonne, whipped cream, say no more.
Ooooh! The way she puts half her finger in her mouth when she tastes it? Who the hell is Chris Kimball, anyway?
It’s a schism within the bow tie community, the non-geeks are trying to drive out the geeks in positions of power. Look out, Bill Nye!
Nah, Bridget.
I am not involved in food culture, but know of him from a profile in the New Yorker and other media references. A couple of questions: has something like this been expected and discussed openly amongst food folks? Is there a general consensus about one party being in the right, or both are being petty, or something else…?
It was the first I heard of it, but I’m not a media junkie. If the story didn’t come across my NPR RSS feed, who knows when I might have learned it. But supposedly those in-the-know knew something was up when the publisher put a boss in place above Kimball back in September. From a few articles I’ve read on Kimball, he doesn’t seem like the sort of person who likes reporting to anyone while the publisher just wanted to be an on-air ambassador. But don’t weep for Kimball; despite the homesy Vermonter he likes to portray himself as, he drives some ridiculous Italian sportscar and his stake in the company is enough that even if he retires, he’ll live quite comfortably.
About time. Now maybe they can do recipes that involve more spice than black pepper.
I was about to say! For someone who describes himself as a foodiee, he is extremely adverse to flavor. Finding out he started the company explains why he was even there in the first place.
Yes, yes, that’s all well and good, but it doesn’t settle the question of Yvonne getting more air time. Preferably in a teeny French maid outfit.
I thought I made my feelings on the matter clear.
First, I think Yvonne has moved over to SeriousEats.com. Second, this fawning is making me uncomfortable, and I’m a heterosexual male. How do you think it makes any women reading this thread?
Biggirl and silenus, Kimball’s dislike for spicy foods made me really enjoy when they did the buffalo wings, Nashville hot chicken, and hot sauce tasting episodes.
Ditto. Serious Eats and Saveur is much better for recipes, but I do like ATK and Cooks Illustrated for learning new tips and tricks in technique.
They did a Nashville chicken episode? Oh, I would have loved to have seen that. That shit is hot if you order it hot. One of the few regional spicy foods that did not disappoint in terms of heat.
Dang, I like Chris Kimball. As we’ve discussed before, he looks like Sheldon Cooper’s dad.
I picked up an ATK online membership for the science based cooking and the reviews, which I’ve found to be very solid. The celebrity and TV program aspect of it is very much a sidebar for me. There are some useful videos I’ve seen, but the recipes I’ve seen them do are pretty mediocre. They did a Chicken Biryani that totally ripped the heart out of this dish. They didn’t cut the chicken(to expose the marrow) and simmer it in an onion sauce. They basically made tea out of the whole spices that would normally be in the dish and cooked the rice in it. Every authentic biryani I’ve ever had included spices sprinkled throughout the dish.
Their recipe just felt so, Uncle Ben.
I’m not sure if that was Kimball or not, but if they start doing justice to some of the more complex recipes they feature that would be nice.
I’ll still do ATK for their science and equipment reviews, but I think I’ll stick to allrecipes for my actual recipes.
Enjoy,
Steven
Vaguely irritated and frustrated, for this one. Contributes to the “death by 1,000 paper cuts” that has me visiting the boards much less.
And I know for a fact that it’s exactly this crap that’s caused quite a few women to quit the boards.
You have to keep in mind that a couple of the major goals (THE major goals?) of their recipe development is to make the recipes accessible by everyday home cooks of average skill, and to use ingredients that are readily available in supermarkets across the country.
They’re not going for strict authenticity or ultimate flavor necessarily, but as authentic and flavorful as they can get within those two constraints I mention above.
So it’s not surprising that they’d take a notoriously laborious dish and simplify it and make a dish that’s most of the way to chicken biryani but a lot easier for a home cook to produce.
They’re not the place to go if you’re looking for authentic recipes; they’re the place to go if you want a new science-based slant on an old classic, or where you go when you want a classic recipe from elsewhere adapted for American ingredients, cooking methods and typical skill levels.
Does this mean the show will now have some sort of idiotic, forced drama and that no camera shot will last more than a millisecond?
A good portion of the time, though, I actually find their recipes overly fussy and complicated. (Well, this is speaking of Cooks Illustrated recipes, and from what I’ve seen of ATK, it seems to be the same thing, right?)