America's Test Kitchen is a real 2,500 square foot test kitchen located just outside of Boston that is home to more than three dozen full¬time cooks and product testers. Our mission is simple: to develop the absolute best recipes for all of your favorite foods. To do this, we test each recipe 30, 40, sometimes as many as 70 times, until we arrive at the combination of ingredients, technique, temperature, cooking time, and equipment that yields the best, most¬ foolproof recipe. America’s Test Kitchen's online cooking school is based on nearly 20 years of test kitchen work in our own facility, on the recipes created for Cook's Illustrated magazine, and on our two public television cooking shows.

Vinaigrette may be the most useful sauce in any cook's repertoire, because in addition to dressing greens, it can be used as sauce for chicken, fish, and vegetables that have been grilled, poached, or steamed.

The ingredient list is short and method is simple. So what's the problem? Basic vinaigrette doesn't stay together. By the time you pour it over greens and get the salad to the table, this emulsified sauce has broken and you end up with overly vinegary and oily bites of salad. Which is where our recipe for a foolproof dressing that won't break comes in.
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Larry Clinton of Bessemer City, North Carolina, has expressed a wish for his ashes to be buried in a Duke's mayonnaise jar. This is a sentiment behind which we can get.

Not only is the the best sandwich in the universe crafted expressly with Duke's mayonnaise - it also is a source of intense regional pride and identity, as we expounded upon in a mayoni-festo a while back.
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Perhaps you prefer mayo. Here - make some at home.

Nobody would think it’s smart to drink pepper spray, but trying this “almost non-edible” salsa may come close. It’s made with Trinidad Scorpion peppers, which are the same kind used in the spray. The Albuquerque, New Mexico restaurant El Pinto is attempting to create the world’s hottest salsa in a jar. They’re calling it “scorpion salsa” and they’re making it for the National Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show being held in Albuquerque this weekend.

Watch the brave (or crazy?) KOAT reporter try a spoonful. Would you eat a salsa that could cause burns when it makes contact with your skin? Let us know in the comments below.

Previously - Heat-seeking eater seeks nuclear noshes and 'Chili-heads' seek friendly fire from powerful pepper