The Single Best Thing You Can Do When You’re Invited into Someone’s Home — How to Be a Grown-Up

Let’s say someone invites you (yes, you!) to their house for a dinner party. What are the main things you’d usually do in order to make sure you’re a good guest when you’re there? Typically, you’d offer to help with the prep in the kitchen. And clear the plates. Maybe even wash a few things, too, right?

Well, a new survey says those things aren’t all that important. According to the research, the gesture that hosts appreciate the most actually has nothing to do with manual labor.

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How To Poach Chicken Breasts — Cooking Lessons from The Kitchn

Banish all thoughts of stringy, tough, sad chicken from your mind. For our chicken salad sandwiches and quick weeknight meals, we want nothing but the best. And for that, poached chicken is definitely the way to go. This method is easy, fast, and foolproof. Totally tender chicken breasts that are as good for dinner as they are for lunch the next day? Not a problem.

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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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You Need to See Costco’s Amazing Pizza-Making Robot — Grocery News

Costco’s food court might be the perfect place, if it were not for two things. First, no one seems to be able to figure out how to stand in line at a Costco food court. And second, once you do get to the front of the line, you have to decide between the giant pizza slices and the $1.50 hot dog and soda deal. How can anyone choose? That’d be like having to pick a favorite child, or at least a favorite Kardashian.

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5 Burning Questions We Have About Ina Garten’s Pantry — Pop Culture

Kitchn recently conducted a very important and difficult investigation where we tried to figure out everything that Ina Garten had in her pantry based off a photo she shared on Twitter. It was hard work, but very rewarding in the end, because we finally know what we should be buying at the grocery store (white chocolate, apparently).

After all that hard research was done, however, we were left with questions. As Kitchn editors passed the story around and marveled in its execution, we realized we still had a lot to learn from Ina. Here’s what we wish we could ask the domestic goddess about her pantry.

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Nigella Lawson’s Favorite Cocktail Is Perfect for Summer — Pop Culture

It’s finally, finally starting to feel like spring out there, and that means it’s almost outdoor-dining season. Or maybe we should call it Nigella Lawson season, because her new show, At My Table, features one of the most gorgeous alfresco dining setups I’ve ever seen, with a walled garden full of twinkly lights and a heavy wooden table big enough to seat 20 if they squeezed in. (OK, it’s a TV studio, but so is the White House on Scandal, and you can’t convince me Olivia Pope isn’t real.)

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