A Tour of America's Test Kitchen — Professional Kitchen Tour | The Kitchn

Name: America's Test Kitchen

Location: Brookline, MA

It's fitting that you enter America's Test Kitchen in the library. The 3,000+ cookbooks on-hand is where each ultimate recipe begins. Julia Collin Davidson, executive food editor for the cookbook division and a familiar face to viewers of America's Test Kitchen Live, descends the spiral staircase from the office level to take me on a tour of the space. And like each test cook, we start with the books.

I arrive shortly after the groceries, and I watch the interns swiftly break down the piles of produce and after double-checking the order list on their clipboards, transport them to each cook's dry and cold storage areas. There's a photo shoot going on in the small kitchen (if you can call a kitchen with 8 wall ovens small). The test cooks start to arrive from a meeting and soon enough, the sizzle of oil and rhythmic tapping of knives fills the air. Working on recipes for either Cook's Illustrated, Cook's Country, the book team, or the photo team (finalized recipes being prepared to be shot), everyone works solo. That is, until there's a tasting.

In one corner of the kitchen, the book team is testing variables for beans: mainly, the difference salt makes in the soaking water. Not sure what they decided, but both dishes of black beans were creamy, and the salty spice from the chorizo definitely had me devouring my portions.

On the opposite end, the cooks are pitting sauteed Brussels sprouts against each other. The battle between shredded and halved has a no-contest winner for me, but everything at America's Test Kitchen is put to a vote.

In a space that heralds the scientific approach toward cooking, it's surprising that it also feels a little magical. It surely seems to take a bit of the supernatural to keep it all running. Kitchen director Erin McMurrer assures me it's all in the organization.