Cook's Illustrated

Growing up, we had a gnarled crab apple tree in our backyard. It was the first tree I learned to climb, with low, generous branches that made it easy to hoist myself up and swing a leg over to gain purchase. When my sister and I got a bit older, my dad transformed it into an elaborate tree house, complete with a trap door, and I reveled in bringing toys and games up to my lofty “second bedroom.” Every late summer the tree became flush with equally gnarly-looking fruits the size of fresh apricots, and right when the humidity quit, it dumped them in huge numbers on the lawn. In something of a mutual dare, my sister and I would each pick one up and take a bite. As the…

Keep Ice Cream Cool at the Table When Julia Loughlin of Park City, Utah, is serving ice cream for dessert, she places the store-bought half-gallon container in the freezer insert of her ice cream maker. The insert, which she freezes beforehand, is the perfect size for the container, and it keeps the ice cream cold at the table until everyone has served themselves. Soy Sauce Bottle Turned Olive Oil Cruet Rebecca Kelley of Portland, Ore., has found that soy sauce, Worcestershire, and hot sauce bottles with narrow plastic spouts make perfect cruets for oils. After she’s used up the product, she washes out the bottle and removes its narrow plastic spout, then fills the bottle with oil from a larger jug. The small spouts produce a controlled flow of oil…

Before a recipe is printed in the pages of this magazine, it is first sent to a panel of volunteer at-home testers around the country. When we survey home cooks on their experience with our working recipes, we gain valuable insights—maybe a direction is not written clearly or an ingredient isn’t as widely available as we thought. In the case of this recipe, the survey immediately made one thing clear: Everybody wants to cook pasta alla vodka. More than double the number of testers we typically expect to participate made the dish—and they were swooning over it. I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised. There’s something that’s just magnetic about the combination of punchy tomatoes and voluptuous cream. Chalk it up to its fluorescent hue, its unapologetic decadence, or…

Abowl of sopa de tortilla should be garnished with exuberance. So much of the joy of this Mexican soup comes in the customization: the sprinkling of white onion or avocado, the swooshing of crema, the spritzing of lime. From the raisiny musk of crumbled fried pasilla chiles to the patters of golden tortilla strips and plunks of meaty cubes of queso fresco as they enter the bowl, it’s a feast for the senses, even before you’ve dipped your spoon in. Cooking the soup itself, on the other hand, is an exercise in restraint. Beneath that trove of garnishes is a broth made from a stunningly ordinary ingredient list—usually some combination of chicken broth and a fried puree of tomatoes, onions, garlic, and epazote. There are no shreds of chicken, kernels…

When I emailed renowned Indian restaurateur and cookbook author Asma Khan about aloo gobi, India’s iconic dish of softened, spiced potatoes and cauliflower, she distilled its essence down to just three words. “Healing, warming and comforting,” she wrote. As the author of titles such as Ammu: Indian Home Cooking to Nourish Your Soul (2022), Khan is an expert on India’s coziest fare, and she cites aloo gobi as one of the most traditional recipes of that canon. To make it, Indian cooks bloom fragrant spices in oil; soften a melange of onions, ginger, and garlic; and then toss bite-size pieces of cauliflower and potatoes in the flavorful mixture. For many, aloo gobi symbolizes childhood and home, its comforting flavors and distinct aroma unlocking deeply rooted memories. But one needn’t have…

Graze your way through one of the many night markets in Taipei, the alleyways bright with neon, the humid air thick with the mouthwatering aromas of o-ah jian (oyster omelet), chou doufu (stinky tofu), and sian su ji (popcorn chicken with fried basil), and you’ll spot stalls for gua bao (the name is Mandarin for “cut bun”). These palm-size breads are steamed in a folded shape to cradle unctuous red-cooked pork belly. Take a spot in line and watch as the merchant deftly cuts an outsize slab of the braised meat; tucks it into a downy bun; and tops the parcel with tangy fermented mustard greens, cilantro sprigs, and sugary peanut powder. Clarissa Wei, author of Made in Taiwan (2023), joined me on a video call from her home in…