Lots of tools and gadgets have come through the Cooking Light Test Kitchen. Recently I have tested a 15-pound solid steel baking stone (which was awesome), a less-than-impressive slow cooker, and some worthless microwave potato chip makers. Our most recent toy was the most amazing $2000 stand mixer you have ever seen. The Kenwood Cooking Chef Food Mixer is a blender, food processor, […]
Recent Posts By Adam Hickman
The Minimalist Cook: Why You Need a Mandoline
Getting straight to the point: if you are serious about cooking, you should own a kitchen mandoline. This wonder tool has been around a long time and is a favorite of everyone in the Cooking Light Test Kitchen. We use our mandolines all the time, saving ourselves the frustration and time it takes to get the same results with a […]
How to Buy Real Honey
There’s no need to go into the wonderful health benefits of eating honey here; most people have heard how great honey is for our various health systems. Most everyone also knows honey is flavored by the region it is harvested, in the same way wine grapes are changed by their growing environment, or how an oyster’s flavor is altered by […]
Gold Star Cookbook: Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast
Months before Ken Forkish’s bread book, “Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast“, became public, an advanced edition came across my desk. The perfect simplicity the title embodies screamed for my attention; beckoning me to conjure up the powers of natural leavening within those four ingredients. Taking it home, I set my sights on the hybrid-leavening breads (breads that use a combination of Fleischmann’s style instant […]
Getting the Perfect Sauce
It’s a tight rope to walk to try and get a sauce to the perfect consistency. All of the following will affect the final thickness of your sauce: temperature of the liquid, type of thickener used, how long the sauce is cooked after thickening, the natural thickeners in the sauce, the type of dairy added at the very end of […]
Beginning to be a beekeeper
A long-time goal of mine was to keep my own bees, and I finally started in early April of this year. The venture has been fairly successful so far (fingers crossed), and I was encouraged to share the adventure with our Simmer and Boil readers. After all, bees make honey, and Cooking Light staff and readers both love honey. I […]
Keeping Your Knives Sharp
Working with dull kitchen knives can demotivate any cook. Knives don’t have to be Iron Chef-ready to make cooking easier, but knives do need some resemblance of a cutting edge. The cutting edge is microscopic though, and can be hard to see with the naked eye. An experienced cook can run their thumb across the blade, feeling the edge as […]
Inside the Test Kitchen
When people discover I work for Cooking Light as a Recipe Tester and Developer (unofficially known as a TKer or a culinary elf), an assortment of questions are always sure to follow. The questioner is always really interested in the details of the work, and I don’t mind sharing because it’s a really cool job in a great place. So to […]
Trusting a New Cookbook
Here at Cooking Light we have been working on a project called “The Cookbook Awards.” So far, we have chosen and published our favorite cookbooks in the general, baking, healthy, and Asian categories. We have a lot more to go, and right now, we are working through our quick-cooking category. I am evaluating and testing recipes from The Bon Appetit […]
