HELP! MY RECIPE DOESN’T WORK!

It happens—even in America’s Test Kitchen. Once in a while, we get a call from a viewer or reader that a recipe isn’t working for them. And every time, our hearts sink. What did we do wrong? We not only test our recipes very carefully (as many as 100 times), but we also have our recipes vetted by a professional cook, and THEN we send them out to home cooks to test-drive our recipes. So why do recipes sometimes fail? The answers fall into three broad categories: substitutions, flawed equipment, or ingredient variables.

Substitutions are common (everyone does it), but if you decide to replace a key ingredient or piece of equipment, all bets are off. If you’re on a diet, don’t try making our crème brûlée with milk rather than cream. And don’t sear four steaks in a 10-inch skillet when the recipe calls for a 12-inch pan—that is, unless you want them to taste steamed and bland. Our advice: Make the recipe once as it’s written, then improvise.

Flawed equipment is harder to predict and control. Many home ovens are not properly calibrated and an oven that runs hot by 50 degrees (which is fairly common in home kitchens) will ruin many recipes. Always, always pay attention to the visual clues in our recipes, not the clock. And invest in an oven thermometer. It’s cheap and will save you much frustration when cooking.

Ingredient variables are the hardest thing for us (or you) to control. Produce varies in sweetness and moisture content. The same cut of meat can have more or less fat. And brands of manufactured products are not all the same. In fact, we had trouble with a chocolate frosting recipe several years ago and realized that our recipe worked with the test kitchen’s top-rated bittersweet chocolate (with 60 percent cacao) but failed when readers tried to use gourmet brands with a higher cacao content. We test all of our recipes with the ingredients that have won our blind taste tests (see “SHOPPING FOR INGREDIENTS”). We suggest you do the same. Not only will your food taste better, but sometimes choosing the right brand can make the difference between a successful recipe and a failed one.