Page 44 - Food Network Magazine ( PDFDrive )_Neat

K

WELCOME
TO THE

TEST

KITCHEN

Meet the team of culinary pros
behind the recipes in our magazine.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK PETERSON

Drop by Food Network’s test kitchen in
New York City and you might think you’ve stepped
onto the set of Chopped. While the chaos is more
controlled—and the ingredients are way less bizarre—
the hustle and bustle looks a lot like what you see on
TV. Chefs dodge each other on their way to the pantry,
blenders whir nonstop, and every so often, someone
shouts, “Hot! Watch out!” The staffers here aren’t
cooking for a $10,000 prize, but the stakes are still
pretty high: They have to come up with recipes that
our readers are inspired to make at home—and
that they’ll love enough to make again.
Five full-time chefs and a handful of freelancers and
interns, overseen by Food Network’s culinary senior
vice president, Katherine Alford, are the ones who
make it happen. Most of the staff worked in restaurants
before joining the test kitchen—experience that
surprisingly doesn’t always come in handy: “In a
restaurant, you make everything in big batches, often
using complicated techniques,” says recipe developer
Stephen Jackson. “Here, we try to keep things
manageable because our focus is on dinner for four.”
Each recipe in the magazine (more than 100 every
month) goes through multiple rounds of testing. And
the team will remake a dish 10 times if necessary. It’s a
lot of work, but this is the only way they can make sure
that everyone—regardless of cooking skill—will be
able to succeed with each recipe. Read on to see how it
all happens….

40 FOOD NETWORK MAGAZINE ● SEPTEMBER 2016