I stumbled upon an interesting request a couple of weeks ago. Seems the editors of Cook's Illustrated have home cooks test out some of their recipes before they make the final publication choices. (See here for details). This is a great idea and its too bad more magazines don't do this. How many times have you cooked something and said hmm I think that's got a bit too much lime juice? Or what about "wouldn't that taste awesome if only it had some mushrooms in it? Now Foodies can give feedback so magazine subscribers have a better recipe and cooking experience.

But content isn't the only thing Cook's Illustrated is looking for. They also want to be sure that a home cook can make the recipe. Hopefully that means when a test recipe arrives with some archaic ingredient that only people on the moon have access to the Editors will take note of the tester comments and change it. Of course Cook's Illustrated is one of the most thorough cooking magazines available so it’s not surprising they are recruiting home cooks. Frankly, many other magazines have a much stronger need for such testing such as the authors of the Tortilla Recipe From Hell. Had that recipe passed through home kitchen testers one can only imagine the comments they'd have gotten and hope that the published article would have been amazing!

How does the test cooking work? Every week or so Cook's Illustrated sends me a mail message with a link to a recipe to try, a link to a survey to take and a deadline. They typically want you to cook the recipe within a week and then take the survey. But the understand that not everyone will make every recipe so if you don’t have time or are not interested in the recipe they send then you just ignore the message. I’ve only been signed up for about 2 ½ weeks so I can’t provide any hard facts on the frequency of the recipes but so far I’ve gotten 3 recipes to try. We cooked one (Garlicky Shrimp). The recipe format was typical Cook's Illustrated but a few details were lacking (which I commented on in the survey). And while the dish tasted OK it wasn’t something I’d make again because it seemed a bit plain. However, the process was really neat and Husband and I are looking forward to trying more recipes.

So if you’d like to provide direct feedback on recipes before publication then sign-up home kitchen recipe tester. And contact other magazines to suggest they set-up a similar program! Or if you know of other similar programs letemail me and I’ll list them on Project Foodie so more people can participate!