Ask the Test Kitchen with Julia Collin Davison and Keith Dresser



Julia and Keith team up for a virtual version of Ask the Test Kitchen.

Get our recipe for meatloaf:
Get our recipe for carbonara:

1:18 – “I can never seem to get the beautiful crust on my cast iron steak”
4:47 – ” Can you blend onions for a dish? My husband hates to find them, but they are so important.”
6:46 – “Cultured butter in place of regular butter for baking. Yay or nay?”
9:21 – “My meatloaf tastes great, but it is crumbly, not a loaf. I use egg, breadcrumb or oats, milk.”
12:22 – “How to keep eggs from curdling in carbonara???”
14:39 – “Could you turn canned meat into a gourmet meal?”
17:05 – “How do you keep your knives sharp when you don’t have the skills to hand sharpen them?”
20:01 – “Best temp and time to cook bacon in the oven?”
21:10 – “How to heat up corn tortillas correctly? When I do they’re either too dry or too oily!”

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ABOUT US: Located in Boston’s Seaport District in the historic Innovation and Design Building, America’s Test Kitchen features 15,000 square feet of kitchen space including multiple photography and video studios. It is the home of Cook’s Illustrated magazine and Cook’s Country magazine and is the workday destination for more than 60 test cooks, editors, and cookware specialists. Our mission is to test recipes over and over again until we understand how and why they work and until we arrive at the best version.

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36 Comments

  1. About the "onion" question: I used to have to cook for a fussy onion hater. My first tactic was to not let that person see me putting in the onions, most of the time, once in the pan, they would cook down & melt into the dish anyway. My second tactic was to puree the onions in the food processor. these 2 methods worked 99.9 percent of the time. For those occasions where the onion was still discernible, my 3rd tactic was to tell my onion hater to pick out the pieces if you don't want to eat them.

  2. Keith-Your fluff can go anywhere! Need to get some soon for I recall keeping a ten pound weight loss off(many yrs ago) by instead of ice cream or chocolate bar cocoa with a dollop of good old fluff or a spoonful before dinner

  3. I find Keith Dresser to be making so many rookie mistakes in his cooking that I do not trust what he is trying to convey. Also, has zero TVQ but more than the Dan Souza, who is just another snooty elitist Christopher Kimball in the making. Stick to the women, they know their stuff and can deliver without 1 oz of cooking ability and 99 oz of ego.

  4. Regarding onions, the onion-averse crowd may just like onion/garlic jam, which is a chutney of onions with garlic added if preferred. It goes with EVERYTHING, and is worth making/keeping as a go to item. You can also make or buy the deep fried onions to use as a topping for everything.

  5. I was so surprised that neither of you seemed to be aware of the canned meats now available. You can get beef, pork and chicken in cans. They are precooked. I've only tasted the chicken and it wasn't bad. I suspect this is what your questioner was referring to.

  6. I was invited to a potluck and had little cooking experience, so I figured I'd go easy and bring Jell-O. I googled some pictures and found Jell-O desserts with bits of pineapple inside. After cooking the gelatin never set and I ended up with a green, chunky slurry cold soup with chunks of pineapple. 😮‍💨

  7. How nice to have your office in the kitchen! I'm 67 and fluffer nutters were always a nice surprise in our lunch bags. When I've asked anyone if they had fluffer nutters they always asked what it is!

  8. Love these shows, so informative! One add on that first question: dry the steak! Wet steaks seem to fight browning. Maybe it makes steam, but whatever it is, a quick daubing with a paper towel to remove excess water is a big help! I openly admit this was a repeated fail until I learned… from ATK!

  9. So one of you likes canned tuna, even though overfishing has pretty much extirpated bluefin (and the BPA oil spill was the final nail in their coffin lid because the bluefins had just returned to breed); and the yellowfin is almost gone, too. I thought it's become fashionable for chefs to take environmental impact into account when planning menus?

    And the other of you can't stand canned salmon because of the skin and bones? As someone who was a licensed NTS, Natural Therapeutics Specialist, for almost three decades, and who also worked for orthopedic surgeons, I can attest that the skin and bones of canned salmon are very valuable: the skin is where the luxurious fat and fat-stored vitamins are (ask any bear dishing in the summer through fall at Katmai in Churchill, Manitoba), and the bones are where the calcium is. And you, madam, are Caucasian, which means that statistically you were born with less bone to begin with, and you also eat a lot of dairy and meat products, which steal calcium from your bones. You should be making it your business to get as much dietary elemental calcium and phosphorus as possible because of that, not just whether it tastes good. The bones and skin of canned salmon are both very delicate. You should try to eat them, imhappen to like the entire fish. You can't just eat your favorite foods. One of the reasons so many Americans are deficient, is their penchant for oniy eating muscle meat and leaving other valuable parts behind. You of all people ought to know that. You're chefs. You should be making use of all parts of an animal, even just as a matter of respect for the animal who gave its life to sustain yours…. or you can also become vegetarian, as I've been since 1972. I'm dismayed, but not surprised. Typical mainstream American.

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