What "Test Kitchen Approved" Really Means for Our Recipes (2024)

Our Test Kitchen puts every Taste of Home recipe through a rigorous approval process. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at how recipes go from submission to publication.

At Taste of Home, almost all of our recipes come from home cooks—we get around 10,000 submissions every year.

But before we publish a recipe on our website or in one of our magazines or books, our expert Test Kitchen team must approve it. We put every recipe through a rigorous selection, testing and evaluation process to ensure we’re sharing the best recipes that work every time.

Here’s how the process works in our Milwaukee Test Kitchen.

1. Home Cooks Share Their Recipes

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We believe the best recipes come from real home cooks like you because your favorite dishes have already passed two important tests: You can make them successfully at home, and family and friends request them over and over again.

Every year, home cooks—including our trusty squad of Community Cooks—share thousands of recipes with us. We’d love for yours to be next! Here’s how to submit a recipe.

Taste of Home Executive Culinary Director Sarah Farmer leads the teams responsible for recipe selection, prepping, testing and food styling for print, digital, video and social media production.

2. Food Editors Sort Out the Best

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Our team of knowledgeable food editors reviews each recipe we receive. They look for fresh ideas, new spins on old favorites and dishes that just sound plain irresistible. They also consider practical factors, like whether a recipe uses readily available ingredients and is simple enough to make at home.

Recipes that make the cut move along to the Taste of Home Test Kitchen, which typically tests about 25 to 30 recipes each week. Every member of the Test Kitchen team has a professional food background, with specialties ranging from pastry to food science.

3. Prep Cooks Assemble Ingredients

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Our Prep Kitchen team, led by Prep Kitchen Manager Catherine Ward, gets all of the food ready for our recipe testers and associate culinary producers. Later, the team also prepares recipes for our food stylists to shoot in our photo and video studios.

The prep team uses a technique called mise en place, which means they gather, chop and measure all of the ingredients ahead of time. This helps the cooking process go smoothly—and it’s something you can do in your own kitchen!

Speaking of ingredients, the prep team also helps with groceries. Our recipe management system creates grocery lists based on our recipe schedule, and our prep kitchen team places orders for delivery or picks up groceries locally. (They drive our shopping van, which has the Taste of Home logo on it!) In a given year, we go through mass quantities of cheese, flour, butter, milk, eggs and olive oil, plus thousands of other ingredients.

4. Expert Cooks Test Each Recipe

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Next, test cooks meticulously prepare each recipe. They ensure that the amounts, equipment, temperature and method are accurate. If something doesn’t work or could work better, they make adjustments until the recipe is right.

We have three on-site kitchens: the prep kitchen, the test kitchen and the stylist kitchen. We also have a media kitchen, which is a set that we use to shoot videos for our website and social media. These facilities are a big upgrade compared to the early days of Taste of Home: In the 1970s, our first test cook, Annette Gohlke, had to drive 30 miles from her home kitchen with completed dishes to reach her tasting panel.

Our Test Kitchen tests more than just recipes—they test pantry items and cooking gear, too. Learn more about Taste of Home’s product-testing process.

5. Taste Testers Weigh In

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On a typical day in the office, the Test Kitchen hosts a tasting panel to sample around five prepared recipes. A group of taste testers evaluates them according to flavor, texture, appearance and more. Putting themselves in readers’ shoes, they think about the difficulty of the cooking method and whether it’s a dish that readers are likely to make again and again.

The tasters also discuss practical considerations like how well a recipe will freeze and how to reheat it; whether it can be pared down for small families or scaled up for entertaining; how it could be modified for healthier versions; and how it could be prepared in popular appliances, like Instant Pots or air fryers.

Food editors and test cooks take careful notes and adjust the recipe as needed. In some cases, the test cooks make the recipe again until they’re confident that it’s ready for readers.

6. Recipes Are Edited for Precision and Ease

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Once a recipe has impressed our food editors, worked well in the Test Kitchen and won the approval of our taste testers, our recipe editors carefully review and revise the recipe’s directions to make sure they’re clear and concise.

After all, we understand how important it is for recipes to be easy to follow. When hungry kids are calling for dinner and to-do lists override free time, nobody needs the hassle of a confusing recipe!

7. The Photo and Video Teams Take Over

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After a recipe is finalized, it’s ready for the Taste of Home photo studio. In the age of social media, this is a very important step. Perhaps now more than ever, people eat with their eyes first.

The Taste of Home photography teams include a photographer, an art director, a set and prop stylist and a food stylist. Together, they select color palettes, lighting, backdrops, dishes, linens and more. The goal is to make each recipe look as delicious as it tastes.

We also shoot about 12 recipe videos per week. Each video takes roughly one to three hours to shoot, depending on the recipe’s complexity. Our Giant Cinnamon Rolls video took longer than our Flavorful Chicken Fajitas video, for instance, because we needed time to let the dough proof, bake and cool—we go through all of the steps in the recipe! Then, our video editor spends about two hours editing each video before we review it for accuracy.

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8. Recipes Are Approved and Published

Once a recipe has cleared all of these steps, it’s ready to be printed, posted and shared across all of our platforms. You can find recipes on our website, Instagram and Facebook, and in Taste of Home books and magazines.

Back at the Taste of Home headquarters, a recipe’s completion means it’s time to eat! After the Test Kitchen and visual production teams are finished, the dishes go to an area of our office called the food bar. It’s a magical place where staffers can nosh on the leftover food. At any one time, you might see eight different kinds of cookies, some grilled pork chops and a pan of Pizza Monkey Bread. It’s no wonder this hallway is the most-traveled space in our office!

What "Test Kitchen Approved" Really Means for Our Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What is the purpose of a test kitchen? ›

A general overview: a test kitchen is a kitchen most often equipped with multiple cooking stations where test cooks and chefs research, test and develop recipes for home cooks. Recipes are often testing multiple times and critiqued by many people.

Can you get free recipes from America's test kitchen? ›

Your email address is required to identify you for free access to content on the site. You will also receive free newsletters and notification of America's Test Kitchen specials. Your email address is required to identify you for free access to content on the site.

What does America's test kitchen do with all the food they test? ›

We've been composting in the test kitchen since January of 2019. Currently, we work with Agri-Cycle, a Maine-based food-waste collection service that breaks down the organic matter with enzymes and converts it into renewable energy.

What is the test kitchen approach? ›

Test Kitchen comes at the process of software development with an approach that embraces the idea that writing the tests first, watching them fail, and then writing the code to make them pass is a great way to go. Also known as red, green, refactor, it's a great way to write quality software.

What are the alternatives to test kitchen? ›

Best Paid & Free Alternatives to Test Kitchen
  • Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
  • DigitalOcean.
  • VMware vSphere.
  • Mirantis Kubernetes Engine (formerly Docker Enterprise)
  • Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
  • Akamai Cloud Computing (formerly Linode)
  • Google Cloud Run.
  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.

Why is it important to test the recipe? ›

Why is recipe testing important? Instead of making a recipe just once before posting it on your blog, thorough recipe testing ensures that your readers will get a consistent, delicious final product every time they make your recipe (as long as they follow the recipe closely!).

Is America's Test Kitchen unbiased? ›

Our team strives to find the best tools and ingredients for your kitchen. Whether you're looking for a reliable chef's knife or the best olive oil, you can count on us to thoroughly test every product in our reviews and give you an unbiased assessment.

Is subscription to America's Test Kitchen worth it? ›

I have only been subscribed for a few weeks and have enjoyed it so far. I also like the access to some of the other related web sites like cookscountry.com . If the subscription can help me be a better cook/baker or I can get a half dozen good go-to recipes, it will have been worth it.

Who pays for America's test kitchen? ›

Why we have sponsors. We are thankful to the sponsors of our public television series, who make it possible for us to bring you the America's Test Kitchen series. Their financial support covers the costs of filming, editing, and distributing the series to your local public television station.

What brand appliances does America's test kitchen use? ›

The test cooks who develop recipes at America's Test Kitchen work with Sub-Zero and Wolf appliances every day, so they've learned about the unique features that produce great results.

How much do the chefs on America's test kitchen make? ›

Get feedback on your pay or offer

The estimated total pay range for a Test Cook at America's Test Kitchen is $48K–$87K per year, which includes base salary and additional pay. The average Test Cook base salary at America's Test Kitchen is $64K per year.

Who is the owner of the Test Kitchen? ›

when Luke Dale-Roberts opened The Test Kitchen there. The Test Kitchen itself represented something new and maverick in its menu and approach. Luke is known for statements of this nature: “My team and I can spend the whole day creating.

Does America's test kitchen still exist? ›

America's Test Kitchen is a very real kitchen located in the Seaport neighborhood of Boston. It is the home of Cook's Illustrated magazine and Cook's Country magazine and is the Monday-through-Friday destination for more than four dozen test cooks, editors, food scientists, tasters, and cookware specialists.

How does a test kitchen work? ›

A test kitchen is a kitchen used for the process of developing new kinds of food. On the largest scale, they are run by the research and development departments of large companies in the food industry. Other test kitchens are owned by individuals who enjoy the craft of developing new recipes.

What do you do in a test kitchen? ›

Test kitchen jobs focus on the preparation and use of ingredients, particularly when trying to create a new recipe for others to follow. These positions typically involve a significant amount of culinary expertise, and you may be asked to taste and cook a wide variety of new or unfamiliar foods.

What does America's test kitchen do? ›

Welcome to America's Test Kitchen

We are passionate about cooking—discovering why recipes work and why they don't—and sharing what we learn to help everyone cook with confidence. We test cookware and supermarket ingredients to find the best quality products for home cooks. We don't accept advertising.

What is the mission statement of America's test kitchen? ›

America's Test Kitchen's mission is to investigate the fundamental principles of cooking to provide home cooks with the recipes, techniques, tools, and ingredients needed to succeed in the kitchen.

What is the purpose of a test table? ›

Test tables are used to provide a structure to testing. Programmers will often create a table with a selection of normal, extreme and exceptional data that they intend to use during testing. The table will include: a column for the expected result.

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