Cookbook Club: Thank you for your dedication in the test kitchen so far! (Patreon)

Hey Cookbook Club Frienjis!

It’s been just under three weeks since we sent out our first recipe. I am both blown away and honored by the thought and care this community is already putting into this project. Food nerds, unite!

If you haven’t yet, please fill out your introduction survey. This will help me and the Cookbook Club Team better understand how you function in the kitchen and get to know you as a chef. 

We shared some initial results earlier this month. What’s changed since?

Now, a whopping 158 of you—up from 60 in the first week alone—have tested and provided feedback on the crunchy roasted chickpeas and carrots with chili butter. Since those initial results, your feedback has been shockingly consistent. Still over 80% of testers said the ingredients were easy or very easy to find; most of you were plenty stocked with pantry staples; and the vast majority enjoyed the experience of both cooking and eating the final dish. 

That’s not to say you didn’t provide constructive criticisms, which is more than welcome, I promise! Some common themes that appeared throughout include:

There were some requests for more specificity in the instructions (salt amount for the yogurt, cut size for the carrots, etc.)

And lots of people said there wasn’t enough yogurt to balance the veg.

Many of you ended up with steamed, rather than crunchy, chickpeas. Consider it noted!

The cooking time varied—especially for the dedicated-to-the-crunch crowd who upped their roasting time to account for the steamy chickpeas. 

On that note—here's a question: How many of you have oven thermometers?

One of the biggest inconsistencies from kitchen to kitchen that recipe writers have to account for is oven variation. Many home ovens are poorly calibrated—that is, while the dial may say 350°F, the actual oven temperature may be significantly lower or higher. This is compounded by the fact that different ovens behave differently. Those that rely on old-fashioned thermostats can fluctuate up and down throughout a cook by up to 50°F or more as it continuously overshoots and undershoots that actual set temp. Some ovens have electric heating elements on both the top and bottom, while others may have a single element on the bottom or in the back. Gas ovens vent moist air, while electric ovens are more thoroughly sealed.

It's a lot to try and account for, so I appreciate all the comments to make sure that the recipe will work regardless of equipment!

Much like the recipes themselves, the Cookbook Club Team and I will continue to test and improve on these feedback surveys. Shoutout to Pyromaniacal who recommended adjusting the survey to include feedback on the texture(s) of the final dish. If anyone else has suggestions for feedback that you’d like to provide in the future, please let us know in the comments down below!

Dispatches From the Frienji Frontier

Hearing stories from the kitchen has been a true joy of the Cookbook Club thus far. Connection is at the heart of cooking, and seeing how some of you are building new traditions this winter with a monthly recipe to test or gathering family members of all ages in your test kitchens is truly inspiring. 

Jane paints a heartwarming picture of generations converging in the kitchen: 

"I made this on the first snowy day of the season and the smell of the warm spices and roasting veggies was really cozy. I had to work around teenagers grabbing snacks, making hot chocolate, and baking spontaneous ginger cookies, but it was an easy enough recipe that I could. The kids were curious and asked what I was making, saying it smelled great. They all tried it, which is unusual for a new dish. Even my mint-hating 16 year old raved about the finished dish, going so far as to declare that the mint might even make it better! And she asked if it was hard to make, or if she might be able to make it for herself again. Success!"

Michlieberson is truly adopting the test kitchen spirit:

"I wanted to try both pepper flakes so I made some butter with each of them and put half on each side of the plate. I like the Aleppo better, but the other was interesting."

While Deven brought their father into the fold…

"My 81 year old dad wants to participate in this culinary adventure with me. So I altered the serving plan to accommodate his abilities: tossed the butter with the chickpeas and carrots because he would not reheat 2 items separately, crossing my fingers he will be motivated to toss in fresh mint after he nukes the carrots, etc. I also soaked sliced red onion in ice water for 10 minutes to be kinder to his digestive system :)"

… Dave got their whole family in on it!

"I put 'Kenji Test' on our meal calendar and my family kept trying to guess what it meant. Everyone was excited when I finally revealed the cookbook club and my wife and son were really excited about the dish when I served it!"

And a special shoutout to Club members Tracy M. and Michael R. who teamed up to test this month’s recipe together!

Recipe #2 Loading

Test recipe #2 lands in your inbox on December 6. If you're crammed for time before then, don't fret! You can always return to previous recipes on Patreon and are welcome to continue filling out their feedback forms to help inform the final recipe. While I'll be implementing your feedback as I finalize these recipes, there's no hard deadline just yet.

See you in the test kitchen soon, 

Kenji & the Cookbook Club Team