NAKED ROAST CHICKEN AND OTHER WACKY RECIPE TESTS

Our test cooks will do almost anything in pursuit of the perfect recipe. No idea is too silly or odd to try—not if it will make a recipe better. Here are some notable recipe tests performed over the years. Each one was deemed promising but ultimately never worked.

• Removing the skin from a chicken before it goes into the oven, pulling the skin taut with toothpicks, and then roasting the skin separately from the chicken pieces to maximize crispness. Too Hannibal Lecter.

• Cooking a roast beef in a 130-degree oven for 24 hours to maximize juiciness. Most ovens don’t operate at such a low temperature, and it’s probably just as well; this is a perfect recipe for food-borne illness.

• Rubbing the skin off every single chickpea to make extra-smooth hummus. Peeling chickpeas? What were we thinking?!

• Flipping a steak every 4 seconds—for a total of 176 flips over the course of the 11-minute cooking time—to ensure absolutely even heat distribution. Only cooks with Olympic aspirations need to try this.

• Attaching a still (yes, like you might devise to make moonshine) to a covered grill to make our own liquid smoke. The cost for 1 teaspoon of liquid smoke? Fifty bucks. And it didn’t taste very good. Plus, this odd setup looked just a little suspicious (read: illegal) to our neighbors.