The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

cook and editor at Cook’s Illustrated magazine, I not only
had the opportunity to start answering my questions, I was
also paid to do it! Here was a job that finally combined the
top three of my four greatest loves: tasting great food, the
scientific pursuit of knowledge, and the physical act of
cooking (my wife would be the fourth), and it was a truly
liberating experience. I discovered that in many cases—
even in the best restaurants in the world—the methods that
traditional cooking knowledge teaches us are not only
outdated but occasionally flat-out wrong.
Then I moved back to New York City with my wife and
discovered a job even better than the one I had at Cook’s
Illustrated. As chief creative officer at Serious Eats
(www.seriouseats.com) and the author of its popular “The
Food Lab” column, I was finally 100-percent free to do
exactly what I wanted to do, explore the questions I wanted
to explore, test the things I wanted to test, and cook the food
I wanted to cook. And the best part? Doing it for a
community of food lovers every bit as passionate and
thoughtful about what they put in their mouths as I am.
Sure, I earn my keep in a number of ways, and testing
and writing recipes is only a small part of it. I push commas,
I stick words together, I blab about pizza this or hamburger
that online, I fake my way through the occasional annoying
business meeting or schmooze-fest foodie event; heck, it
turns out that I even write a book now and then. But in the
end, I’m a cook, and that’s all I really ever wanted to be.