Jack Bishop of America’s Test Kitchen on Recipe Testing and a $600,000 Grocery Bill — Between the Covers

Almost every food magazine has a test kitchen where they develop and refine recipes. But there's nothing quite like America's Test Kitchen, the powerhouse behind Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country — along with, of course, the America's Test Kitchen cooking show on PBS, dozens of cookbooks, numerous radio shows, and an ever-growing collection of online content.

We've been fans of their work for more than a decade. In the nine years that we wrote our cooking blog, The Bitten Word, countless readers wrote us to recommend different America's Test Kitchen recipes that had become their "go to" for everything from meatloaf to chocolate chip cookies.

But what's it like to actually work in America's Test Kitchen? To find out, we reached out to Jack Bishop, the company's chief creative officer. Jack gave us a behind-the-scenes look at ATK, including how a recipe gets developed, what it's like to slice open a Yeti cooler, and why caramel is the bane of the test kitchen.

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