How To Run Your Own Kitchen Experiments To Find The Best Way To Cook Anything, According To A Pro

For Ella Quittner, excellence is ne'er excessively acold away. Researching her newly-launched book, Obsessed With The Best, she knocked connected the doors of Italian nonnas, Alabama biscuiteers, and adjacent a “bacon Jesus” successful Japan.

Back astatine her 85 square-foot room successful NYC, Ella channeled this probe into rigorous head-to-head tests. Her publication identifies “the best” ways to navigator 24 mundane dishes, from meatballs to whipped cream. For anyone craving a definitive answer, Ella has been there, done that, and got the t-shirt. Exactly what a panicked “home chef” wants to perceive arsenic they scope for reassurance successful a cookbook.

We caught up with this culinary queen to larn the secrets down her experiments.

Growing up, Ella’s caput was ever racing with questions.

“I was ever obsessed with something,” Ella admits. The nutrient writer began investigating cooking methods aft stumbling crossed commenters butting heads nether an nonfiction proclaiming the “best way” to navigator bacon. Bingo. Spotting the contention down an innocuous topic, Ella launched a regular “absolute champion test” file for Food52, and experiments went wild.

Obsessed With The Best was an enlargement connected those archetypal trials. By which point, she had already established a polished process:

Variables are the breathtaking part. Switch 1 constituent of a look — beryllium that temperature, mixing methods, oregon constituent ratios — and everything changes. Ella sought inspo from globetrotting, endless cookbooks, viral reels, and idiosyncratic life.

Take her flourless cocoa cake, for instance. “I wanted to bash the classics,” she explains (quickly reeling disconnected “standard” variations similar almond and oat flour). Then she nods to a viral two-ingredient TikTok recipe. “There's besides this Lori Coleman cocoa barroom from an aged contented of Gourmet, my ma utilized to marque erstwhile I was a child, truthful I looked that up,” she adds. Dozens of variables, close disconnected the bat.

2. Keeping conditions controlled.

Globetrotting successful pursuit of excellence tin beryllium chaotic, but astatine location successful NYC, Ella’s obsession took a rigorous turn. Controlled conditions support tests just — successful different words, making definite you’re investigating the close variable. Nobody wants to crown the incorrect winner.

“Say I’m investigating roast chicken,” she explains, “I would navigator each the chickens the nonstop aforesaid mode and play them each the aforesaid way.” It’s a strict approach: “the lone origin that's changing is whether it's getting a bedewed brine, adust brine, nary brine, et cetera.”

3. Picking “the best” from her spreadsheet.

These results trickled consecutive into spreadsheets. “I person a bid of columns wherever I grounds everything from the trouble of this technique, magnitude of clip it takes to cook, benefits, disadvantages, who I would urge it for, and what it tastes like,” Ella says.

For Obsessed With The Best, she analyzed these sheets to grant the victor for her "mother recipes."

Spoiler: Objective “bests” don’t ever exist.

As a large believer successful whipped cream’s imaginable arsenic a standalone dish, Ella dedicated an full probe to this saccharine staple.

Her attack was nonsubjective and subjective: signaling mouthfeel and taste, portion besides measuring measurement and stableness — i.e., however it held signifier and whether it wept — and switching methods. Think whipped successful martini shakers, whisked by hand, oregon whirred successful basal mixers.

Here’s wherever it got interesting. Swapping variables created wildly antithetic creams, but each quality served a purpose. “I deliberation that there's the benignant of whipped pick you conscionable privation to devour retired of a sundae cupful with a spoon,” Ella smiles, “then there's besides whipped pick that needs to beryllium a barroom filling, truthful it needs to clasp its signifier and beryllium sturdier.”

“I judge there's nary specified happening arsenic 1 nonsubjective best,” she summarizes thoughtfully.

And if you privation to get funny astatine home?

Curiosity doesn’t request to outgo an limb and a leg. “There are often ways erstwhile you're cooking and baking to conscionable experimentation a small for amusive without having to treble the recipe,” Ella says.

“Say you marque 1 batch of your favourite chocolate spot cookie dough,” she explains, “You could instrumentality that 1 batch, disagreement it into quarters, and navigator those quarters astatine 3 antithetic temperatures.” Alternatively, trial antithetic ways of chilling the dough: refrigerated vs. frozen, oregon 2 hours vs. 3 days.

“You're not making aggregate types of dough. But close away, you're giving yourself much accusation astir however the refrigerator affects a baked bully dough,” Ella says.

Don’t beryllium acrophobic of loosening the reins.

“Mealtimes were the lone benignant of infinitesimal successful our household erstwhile everyone was arsenic soothed and relaxed,” Ella reflects connected her childhood. “When I navigator for pleasure, astir radical are amazed to larn I don't truly navigator from recipes,” she laughs, “I person a precise balanced beingness successful the room wherever I fto myself conscionable beryllium escaped and originative and silly.”

“It's similar culinary downtime,” she says. Ironically? Imperfection is the quickest way to amended cooking. Drop the fearfulness of nonaccomplishment and pursuit “variables” instead. You mightiness find excellence quicker than you think.

If you're besides obsessed with uncovering the champion recipes, you tin bid Ella's cookbook here.