Meet Christopher Kimball
Christopher Kimball is the founder of America’s Test Kitchen, Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country, and is the host of America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Country television (through 2016) as well as America’s Test Kitchen Radio. He has also written many cookbooks, including The Cook’s Bible. His latest venture, Milk Street Kitchen, a multimedia company, combines global cooking techniques with layers of flavor and fresh ingredients created for the home cook. Milk Street Kitchen will include a magazine, a public television show (airing in fall 2017), a digital platform, an online cooking school, cookbooks and more. Mr. Kimball lives in Boston and Vermont.
Christopher Kimball
Founder
Milk Street Kitchen
Boston, MA
Q & A with
Christopher Kimball
Q: What inspired you to create Milk Street Kitchen?
A: A few years ago, my cooking started to change, and it got a lot better. I was cooking out of a bunch of cookbooks from around the world. I thought, if you think about a couple in Mexico City at night: Are they cooking Mexican food? No—they’re just cooking dinner. The same goes for Istanbul or Marrakesh or Chengdu. So it dawned on me that there are lots of ways of thinking about cooking dinner.
We know a lot about Northern European cooking, but we don’t know much about how people in other parts of the world think about cooking. There are lots of ways to think about cooking dinner that are very different from the way we think, but many of those ideas actually translate extremely well to the American kitchen. So let’s go with them and figure out how to be smarter in the kitchen here.
Christopher Kimball's Kitchen Essentials
OXO Instant Read Thermometer >
"An instant-read thermometer is the best way to find out what's going on inside the food you're cooking. If you're cooking a custard, baking bread, doing a cheesecake, it's really indispensable. This one is very inexpensive."
Microplane Rasp Grater >
"Everyone needs one of these. You can use garlic, lemon, citrus and even ginger on it. I don't know what we did before this came out! It's really indispensable."
Ceramic Julienne Slicer >
"This slicer is fairly inexpensive, but it does a great job, and it's easy to store in a drawer. The ceramic is sharp, and it doesn't get dull."
All-Clad Measuring Spoons >
"The problem with some measuring spoons is the shape is such that it's hard to get an exact measurement. I like the simple design of these spoons. I buy four or five sets for my kitchen, because you can never find one."
Pepper Mill >
"Most pepper mills don't work. You get just a small amount of pepper coming out. This is one of the pepper mills that actually can produce a fair amount of pepper, and it's adjustable, too."
OXO Food Scale >
"You really need a digital scale for measuring flour in baking; if you don't, you can be off 15 to 20 percent in weight. If you use recipes from Europe, they always weigh everything, because sometimes volume is really hard to measure."
OXO Peeler >
"All of OXO's designs, in terms of the fit in the hand, are really good, and this is by far the most comfortable, easy-to-use peeler. I find the handle really exceptional."
Non-Slip Cutting Board >
"A non-slip cutting board's nice, because then you don't have to take a kitchen towel and fold it and wet it and put it underneath the board, which is what people do in professional kitchens. Nine times out of ten, I'll pull out a non-slip board that can be put in the dishwasher because that's the easiest."