[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

The Winners!

#1: Polar #2: Shark #3: Huy Fong

Sriracha taste test? What are you talking about? Is there even more than one brand of sriracha?

Yes, indeed there is.

As condiments go, sriracha is one of the great American success stories. Until David Tran, the 68-year-old Vietnamese immigrant who founded Huy Fong Foods, started marketing his familiar green-capped, rooster-emblazoned version of the Thai hot sauce (named after the coastal city of Si Racha), it was virtually unknown in the United States. Now, you'd be hard pressed to find a supermarket that doesn't stock it or a hipster restaurant that doesn't employ it in one dish or another.

Its allure is undeniable. It's more than just a simple hot sauce of fresh chilies—it has a light sweetness, a distinct vinegariness, and a bracing jolt of garlic.

But there are two sides to the story. Some folks (myself included) find that the Huy Fong version—the one that is almost synonymous with sriracha*—is geared toward the palates of American chili-heads who prize heat above all else, rather than the more balanced sweet-hot-sour balance that the Thai original goes for. Pok Pok chef Andy Ricker is a famous detractor of the stuff, preferring Shark brand, a more traditional made-in-Thailand version.

*(So much so that some folks consider it a brand name like Xerox or Kleenex)

How would our panel of tasters feel? Would we go for a thicker, spicier, bolder American version, or would our palates lead us to a thinner, sweeter, more vinegary Thai sauce?

We gathered together nine different brands and a panel of 16 tasters to find out. Apparently it's not hard to find volunteers for a Sriracha taste test.

The Contenders

Our search for srirachas brought us four brands from Thailand and five from the U.S.:

• Brand 1: Shark Brand Sriracha Chili Sauce (Thailand)
• Brand 2: Kikkoman Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce (USA)
• Brand 3: Huy Fong Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce (USA)
• Brand 4: Trader Joe's Sriracha Sauce (USA)
• Brand 5: Dragonfly Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce (Thailand)
• Brand 6: Sriraja Panich (Thailand)
• Brand 7: Thai Kitchen (Thailand)
• Brand 8: Polar Sriracha Chili Sauce (Thailand)
• Brand 9: Lee Kum Kee Sriracha Chili Sauce (USA)

The Criteria

We asked our intrepid tasters to rank sweetness, heat, and overall flavor on scales of 1 to 10, and requested detailed comments on flavor, texture, and any other salient facts.

In order to combat palate fatigue, tasters were asked to taste the srirachas in randomized sequences so that no two individuals would try the sauces in the same order. In addition, dumplings were provided for dipping, and fried rice and sparkling water were offered as a palate cleansers between brands.

The Results

I had some early theories going into this. Perhaps the thicker srirachas would fare better than the thin ones. Nope. No correlation there at all. Ok, maybe it's the ones with perservatives and thickeners vs. those without. Wrong again! In fact, after the rankings we found that numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 all had thickeners and/or preservatives, while all of the even numbers were preservative- and thickener-free.

Turns out that the only thing tasters really cared about was spiciness. With rare exception, the higher the perceived spiciness of the sauce, the higher the ranking.

#1: Polar (6.0/10)

A small Thai brand that actually seems more like a knockoff of Huy Fong than a true Thai sauce, Polar was the second spiciest of the sauces we tasted, with a vinegary heat that reminded some tasters of Tabasco sauce. It was praised more for its fresh, bright flavor than for any deeper, more fermented notes that some tasters liked in other brands.

We'd be happy stocking our pantry with this guy, who's available off of Amazon.

Ingredients: Water, red chilli, sugar, garlic, salt, stabilizer (xantham gum E415), thickener (modified corn starch E1422), acidity regulator (acetic acid E250), preservative (sodium benzoate), colour (paprika oleoresin)

#2: Shark (5.6/10)

Andy Ricker's sauce of choice and one of the more authentic Thai options, Shark is noticeably thinner than most other brands, with a distinct sweetness that helps to balance out its not-immodest heat. It has a "nice fresh aroma" that reminded tasters of "real chilies."

Some tasters found it too watery, saying "this would be a better coating, not a dip."

Ingredients: Chilli, water, sugar, garlic, salt, vinegar

#3: Huy Fong (5.4/10)

The familiar rooster sauce came in at a strong third, with tasters saying "sweet at the beginning, then hot at the end," and "tangy, sort of like puréed sambal oelek," or simply "fantastic!"

Other tasters weren't quite as happy, claiming it had a "musty and hot weird flavor," or that "the preserved garlic flavor is strong with this one."

Ingredients: Chili, sugar, salt, garlic, distilled vinegar, potassium sorbate, sodium bisulfite as preservatives, and xantham gum

#4: Kikkoman (5.1/10)

The sole exception to our spicier-is-better rule, Kikkoman beat out all the other sauces in terms of heat ranking, yet it only came in fourth, largely due to what many tasters called "off" or "preserved" flavors. "Nice heat, but yuck," about sums it up.

Ingredients: Chili pepper, vinegar, garlic, sugar, salt, water, natural flavor, xantham gum, less than 0.1% potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate as preservatives

#5: Lee Kum Kee (4.7/10)

The most out-there brand in terms of flavors (it includes fish extract!), it also had the grittiest, chunkiest texture. Some tasters liked that is "seems less industrial than the others," though others found that there are "strange flavors here, for no apparent reason."

In other words, it was a good sauce, one that we generally liked, but it tasted nothing like any sriracha we'd ever had before.

Ingredients: Red chili, sugar, salt, garlic, fish extract (anchovy), acetic acid, ascorbic acid

#6: Trader Joe's (4.1/10)

Trader Joe's Huy Fong knockoff has a moderate amount of heat, not too much vinegar, and a slightly watery texture. Tasters were completely divided on flavor. Some claimed it had "decent chili flavor," while another said, "incredibly disgusting old chili rancid nasty a$$ s&%t." Now there's a dichotomy.

One thing is certain: the flavor is strong, and you'll either hate it or find it mildly tolerable.

Ingredients: Ground red chili peppers, water, sugar, ground garlic, salt, contains 2% or less of garlic powder, cultured dextrose, vegetable extract, natural flavor, vinegar, citric acid, xantham gum

#7: Thai Kitchen (4.0/10)

Thai Kitchen is one of the more widely available made-in-Thailand brand of sauces available in the U.S., and while this sauce wasn't specifically named sriracha, it's clearly meant to be, based on its ingredients list and flavor.

Unfortunately, their definition of "spicy" didn't exactly coincide with ours. Thick and gloppy with a cloyingly sweet flavor, some folks likened it to spicy duck sauce, or said it was "more like sweet and sour sauce." Yet it wasn't as good as either of those other sauces, either.

Ingredients: Pickled chili pepper (rice vinegar, chili pepper, salt), pure cane sugar, garlic, water, rice vinegar, and salt

#8: Siraja Panich (3.8/10)

One of the most popular brands in Thailand, it had barely any heat at all, instead coming off as sweet and syrupy, with not enough actual chili flavor, and way too much garlic for our tastes. "Is this one made from nature?" said one taster, while another said, "whoah, off jarred-garlic flavor."

Ingredients: Spur chili, sugar, acidifier, garlic, water, salt

#9: Dragonfly (3.0/10)

Our loser had a near fluorescent red color that turned off many tasters (it's the only brand with artificial coloring in it). "Very sweet and not much aroma or flavor," and "color is wrong, as is the flavor," were common complaints. We didn't find much redeeming about this jar.

Ingredients: Chili, vinegar, garlic, sugar, salt, potassium sorbate and sodium bisulfite as preservatives, xantham gum, FD&C red no.3

Our Tasting Methodology: All taste tests are conducted completely blind and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample 1 first, while taster B will taste sample 6 first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill out tasting sheets ranking the samples for various criteria that vary from sample to sample. All data is tabulated and results are calculated with no editorial input in order to give us the most impartial representation of actual results possible.

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

When I was in London a couple of years ago, I remember being surprised at the number of ready-to-cook meals that stocked the shelves of supermarkets. And I'm not talking heat-and-eat, I'm talking meal kits that included every single raw ingredient down to the oil, salt, and pepper.

Conceptually, I like the idea a lot. Your food is fresher, you can cook it to suit your tastes, and it still allows you some degree of freedom in the kitchen. It's also a great product for people who enjoy cooking but don't always have time to shop (I sometimes fall into that camp).

Blue Apron, a new food delivery service based out of New York takes this concept to the next level. Rather than buying your food in a kit at the supermarket, they deliver meal kits straight to your front door. All you have to do is open them and start cooking.

The subscription-based service costs $10 per person per meal (so $60 for a three-meal package that feeds two) and the ingredients get delivered to your door once a week. They currently ship all over the Northeastern United States, and to a great deal of the South as well. (Check their delivery map to see if they ship to your area).

Available in either vegetarian or meat-based service plans, the recipes are all relatively healthy, modern-looking, and tasty. At least on paper. We decided to test them out and ordered both a meat and a vegetarian kit.

The Taste Test

First things first. The kits they send to you are pretty impressive, and opening them is kind of like digging through your stocking at Christmas. What's this cute little bag of spices? Did someone really portion out exactly 12 capers? Ooh, look, the beef is from Pat LaFrieda! I wonder if that cod will really stay fresh for up to a week in its cryovack pouch as they promised?

One of the recipes—turkey sliders with an arugula salad—we tested in our own kitchens at the Serious Eats office. The other five recipes we sent home with members of the editorial and support staff, all with varying degrees of kitchen aptitude.

Each recipe comes with a well-designed recipe card that shows a picture of the final product, a description, and an illustrated ingredients list on one side, with step-by-step photos of the process on the reverse side. Each recipe also includes a calorie count (most hover around a reasonable 500 per serving).

Every ingredient is already measured out for you. Occasionally you'll get a little tub of a pre-cooked component, such as concentrated beef base or a mirepoix demi-glace used to flavor your dishes.

Cooking techniques are all pretty simple. They get about as difficult as sauteeing some meat and vegetables. Most recipes also seem to take only one or two pots and pans, which is a nice touch.

Our turkey burgers, for instance, consisted of mixing together a few ingredients for the patties (turkey, onion, breadcrumbs), mixing together some ingredients for a sauce (mustard, ketchup, mayo, relish), leafing half a head of lettuce, and crumbling some ricotta salata and toasted hazelnuts.

Despite the abundantly clear illustrations, I accidentally added my hazelnuts to my turkey patties. It was not a bad mix.

Cooking consists of forming the patties, frying them in a skillet, and toasting the buns. You toss your salad with the provided lemon juice just before serving.

Flavorwise, we were quite impressed. Even Ed, not known for his love of turkey burgers, took a bite, declared it to be "a good sandwich," and polished it off. In fact, all of the sandwiches were finished faster than the average sandwich lasts on our tasting table.*

*It must have been the hazelnuts.

Testers who took recipes home to cook in their own kitchens reported slightly more mixed results. While all agreed that the ingredients were fresh and the instructions simple, a few fell short in the flavor department. A cheesy baked cauliflower dish, for example, was made with a couple cups of milk with only a small block of provided cheese. We would have wanted a bit more flavor there. At least the portions were large enough to feed the advertised two people, along with leftovers.

Erin liked that her cod with caponata and a fregola salad was fast, easy, healthy, and colorful, though felt the caponata could use a few more capers and the directions could be tweaked ("They have you cook the fish before the veg so it gets a little cold and dry while waiting for everything else is cooking").

Other reviews were along the same lines—mostly positive with a few complaints here and there. The only real loser was the Beef Pho recipe that our developer Tracie took home and cooked with her husband, a chef. Despite a block of beef base and a pouch of aromatics, the broth was bland (it's difficult to make good pho broth without charring vegetables, using real bones, and finishing with fish sauce), while the meat—a flatiron steak from Pat LaFrieda—ended up overcooked by the time the broth and noodles were done.

Is it For You?

It may be coincidence, but it's interesting to me that the one dish with the most complaints was the one cooked by an actual chef. Having not personally tasted the broth, I can't comment on it, but it does seem odd that a pho broth would be missing so many key ingredients.

At the same time, one strike out of six ain't half bad, and if you're the type who often finds themselves without the time to go food shopping, it may well be worth the money for you.

Have any of you other home cooks tried Blue Apron? We'd love to hear your feedback.

Blue Apron meals can be ordered here »

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

[Top photograph: Joshua Bousel. All others: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

The Winner!

Muir Glen Organic Diced Tomatoes

The number of times I use canned tomatoes during the year versus fresh is at least 20 to 1. Why? For cooked tomato applications, canned tomatoes are not only easier (they save you the trouble of having to skin fresh tomatoes), but are in fact better, as canned tomatoes are allowed to fully ripen and develop in flavor on the vine before being picked and processed. They pack a flavor punch that fresh tomatoes rarely achieve, especially when we're not in peak tomato season.

Point is, I go through a lot of tomatoes, and am constantly looking for better options. The two brands I turn to most often—Muir Glen and Cento—are both nationally available, consistently sweet and acidic, and reasonably priced. Muir Glen is organic and grown and packed in the USA to boot.

Recently, Muir Glen introduced a series of "2012 Reserve" canned tomatoes, produced in limited quantities (apparently they are grown on only 13 acres), and available at Whole Foods. In their words, the Reserve series "represent the pinnacle of the tomato season each year." They're available in both regular and "fire-roasted" form.

Are they worth seeking out?

The Tasting

We tasted both forms of Reserve tomatoes against Muir Glen's regular tomatoes both plain and in a simple pizza sauce with olive oil, salt, and a touch of garlic. The tomatoes were tasted blind by a panel of tasters and rated on fresh tomato flavor, tartness, sweetness, and overall impression. The can of regular tomatoes we were provided for the taste test were "No Salt Added," so we made sure to weigh out and stir in the correct amount of salt to bring it in line with the rest of the tomatoes in the taste test.

The Results, Plain Category: Muir Glen Diced Tomatoes

Despite the Reserve's limited availability and high-end branding, we found the regular Muir Glen Organic tomatoes to actually be superior. In our scale, blind tasters rated the standard tomatoes as nearly twice as sweet as the 2012 Reserves. Whether this is consistently the case from can to can we can't know for sure.

Additionally, we found the Reserve tomatoes to be highly acidic; Our tasters gave them an average score of 8 out of 10 for acidity. (For scale, the next highest acidity average was a 5). Acidity is a good thing in tomatoes—it makes them taste fresh and bright—but without sweetness to balance it out, they come across as bracing, rather than full-flavored.

Our recommendation for the plain tomatoes? Stick to the standard Muir Glen Organics—no need to go on a special mission to find the Reserves.

The Results, Fire-Roasted Category: Muir Glen Fire-Roasted Diced Tomatoes

As with the plain tomato taste test, tasters once again found the Reserve cans to hold tomatoes that were too acidic with not enough sweetness to balance them out.

In this case, the differences weren't so obvious—the Reserves scored nearly as highly as the regular. But there was still an overall preference for the slightly sweeter profile of the standard tomatoes over the Reserves.

We still heartily recommend Muir Glen as a top choice brand for canned tomatoes at the Supermarket, but the tough-to-track-down Reserve line? Don't worry about seeking them out; you'll do just fine with the regular cans.

Our Tasting Methodology: All taste tests are conducted completely blind and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample 1 first, while taster B will taste sample 6 first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill out tasting sheets ranking the samples for various criteria that vary from sample to sample. All data is tabulated and results are calculated with no editorial input in order to give us the most impartial representation of actual results possible.

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

"Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?"

"I think so, Brain, but how are we gonna get the pepperoni paste inside the cracker?"

It's only because we're used to them, grew up with them even, that Combos—those tubular, gunk-filled baked snacks—don't seem totally strange to us now. Like that one guy in your office* who you don't even notice any more, but if you were to bump into him on the street, you'd be all like, "Hey, get a load of this guy! Isn't he kooky?"

*We all know who I'm talking about

Created in the '70s, Combos have become a staple of rest stop gas stations. They're marketed as the perfect driving food—75% of all Combos sales occur in gas stations**—and those marketers may well be right. They're baked, so they don't get your fingers greasy the way potato chips do, allowing you to maintain proper grippage on the steering wheel as you maneuver through perilous long, straight, highways. They're heartier and more texturally varied than most bagged snacks. They provide just enough interesting structural and procedural challenges to keep you occupied until the next game of Mad Libs, while not so many that you get distracted from driving. They also come in over a dozen flavors that range from "That makes sense" to "WTF, buffalo?"

**According to the statistics I just completely made up

What structural and procedural challenges, you ask? Ah, you haven't been eating Combos for long, I take it. Obviously, separating the soft filling and the crunchy shell—wether it's cracker, pretzel, or its newfangled tortilla cousin—before swallowing is of utmost importance. It's a prize you have to work for with the painstaking precision of a safecracker. I like to employ a variety of techniques.

Keep your eye on the prize

Easiest is to break the cracker off the soft core like shelling an egg, using your incisors to prize pieces away in large chunks. It takes a bit more precision as you take off the inner layers that are touching the filling, but with a bit of patience, you'll be rewarded with a naked cheesy-paste tube that you can then dissolve on your tongue.

More difficult is the move I call the Tooth-Hold-Tongue-Tipper. You know, when you hold the tube ever so gently between your front teeth and gently scrape away the filling a layer at at time, your tongue working its way into the hole like an octopus squeezing into an empty soda bottle. There's an image for ya'.

Then there's the most difficult of all: The Hoover. When you suck the filling straight out all in one go. 7 out of 10 times, the cracker suffers from total structural collapse and you're forced to crunch it all together in your teeth, filling and all (the horror!). 2 out of 10 times, the filling shoots straight out like a cork from a pop gun, shooting into the back of your throat, the empty cracker flying across the room leaving a trail of crumbs as you cough for air.

But that 1 time out of 10 when the filling gently slides out and you get to taste both in all of their unadulterated glory. That, my friends, is what Combos dreams are made out of. Who's with me?

The Flavors

After all that, the flavors are largely incidental, but we went ahead and tasted them all for you, with the exception of Zesty Salsa. It seems that the entire Eastern seaboard is is out of Zesty Salsa.

Buffalo Blue Cheese

The blue cheese is unmistakeable, and the cover of the bag shows a piece of chicken dipping into a bowl, but there is not much hint of either chicken or buffalo sauce. Still, blue cheese and pretzel is not a bad... Combo.

Cheddar Cracker

The classic: salty cracker tube around a cheese-paste center. Despite the "made with REAL CHEESE" labeling, the "cheddar" tastes more like cheez than cheese, but that's not a bad thing for a car snack.

Cheddar Pretzel

The same cheezy filling inside a pretzel crust, which, of course, makes the whole thing vastly superior.

Jalapeño Cheddar Tortilla

The only one in the lineup I'd recommend avoiding. The jalapeño flavor reminds me of frozen microwaveable jalapeño poppers, but not the nice kind with whole japaleños stuffed with cheese—the poor man's version with dehydrated what-could-have-been-jalapeño-in-a-previous-life nubs of chopped jalapeño in grainy cheese product. The "STONE GROUND CORN" tortilla-esque shell is also pretty short on real stone ground corn flavor.

Nacho Cheese Pretzel

Like the cheddar, but a touch zestier. This may well be my favorite.

Pepperoni Pizza

"Open your mouth and close your eyes," I said to Carey, a pepperoni pizza Combo hidden in my hand. Is that something people say to their co-workers in a normal office?

Anyhow, her reaction: "This is pizza... Um, pepperoni pizza? But pepperoni in that way that pepperoni pizza snacks are identifiable, even though they don't taste anything like real pepperoni pizza."

I know what she's talking about. It's like the blue raspberry phenomenon. Doesn't taste like raspberry, but we all know that flavor anyway. I could see myself enjoying these on a long road trip.

We also found a single pre-emptied Combo in the bag, which made me picture a hungry Combos worker who missed his lunch fervently sucking paste-ified pepperoni gunk out of the cracker before he sealed the bag. Only one per bag so nobody catches on. Until now.

Pizzeria Pretzel

This is the one I was always excited by as a kid. It's pizza, AND it's nugget-sized? Like the pepperoni pizza, this one doesn't taste much like real pizza, but it's got that unmistakeable dried-herb and zesty sauce combo that all pizza-flavored-objects have.

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

[Photos: Robyn Lee]

Here's my stance on potato chips, Sun Chips, Chee-tos, and just about anything else in that snack category: I could take or leave the chip or chip-like snack. What I'm really after is the flavor powder. Whether barbecue, ranch, wasabi, salt and vinegar, fake cheese, or just about anything else. My favorite part of eating such snacks is licking my fingers in between bites. If it were socially acceptable, I'd be content with just a bag o' powder to lick, maybe Fun Dip style.

But since that's a little weird, I'm disposed to like just about any snack of the flavor-on-something persuasion, especially when it's at least a little bit healthier than potatoes in oil. So recently, I'm all about these Saffron Road crunchy chickpea snacks.

Ever roasted chickpeas in the oven? If so, you'll be acquainted with their appealing, nutty crunch. My favorite flavor were the Bombay Spice, which have the smoky-spicy-sweet flavor action of a barbecue potato chip, but heavy on the cumin and paprika.

Falafel are tasty enough, but don't really say falafel to me—more like garlic powder and, weirdly enough, black beans. (For some reason, it's on their ingredient list.)

And the wasabi? They've got a good heat balance, neither kill-your-nasal-passages nor barely-there. The hint of horseradish is a little unusual, but works pretty well. A more-than-satisfactory alternative to wasabi peas.

Anyone tried Saffron Road chickpeas? Or are there other crunchy chickpea snacks you favor?

[Photographs: Robyn Lee]

The Winners!

• #1: Tostitos Simply Natural
• #2: Tostitos Original
• #3: Santitas

It was a few days before the Super Bowl when I suddenly realized, "Holy crap, we haven't done a tortilla chip taste test?!" Shocking, given their popularity and my personal love of them. Nearly every major manufacturer of snack products has their own line of tortilla chips that range in shape from traingles to circles to strips to custom shapes designed to enhance the scooping and dipping experience. It's amazing what new innovations they come up with each year.

But when it comes down to it, aren't we all just after a little bit of corniness? I say, let's forget the strange synthetic lime-dust powders or the neon-orange glow of Doritos. Give me a good, crunchy, sturdy, salty chip that tastes of corn, and let your choice of dip do the flavoring for you.

The Contenders

We picked 12 nationally available brands of tortilla chips for our taste test. For this test, we left out baked chips, as well as any specially-shaped chips (some brands are available only as strips):

• Snyder's of Hanover
• Bachman
• Herr's
• Utz
• Trader Joe's Organic
• Santitas
• Tostitos Simply Natural
• Tostitos Original
• Green Mountain Gringo
• Garden of Eatin'
• 365 Everyday Value (Whole Foods)

The Criteria

Tasters were asked to judge chips based on overall preference, crispness, corn flavor, and saltiness. Salsa was provided for tasters to do a "dip test." Does the chip complement the flavor the salsa well? Does it snap or break as it enters the salsa? Can you use it to scoop?

We've recently had a bit of trouble with certain un-named (or perhaps soon-to-be-named) brands of fancy tortilla chips that are so frustratingly thin that you can't possibly scoop any real dip onto them. Luckily, none of the brands we tasted for this particular taste test suffered from that sort of bad engineering.

The Results:

Turns out that Frio-Lay is the king of tortilla chips. The two versions of Tostitos we tried (both Tostitos Simply Natural and Tostitos Originals) took first and second place, respectively. Third place went to Santitas, Tostitos' more inexpensive line of chips.

What did our tasters like about them? First and foremost, big corn flavor. There was no indication in the ingredients list as to what might make Tostitos chips stand out from the pack, but all three of them ranked high on the corn flavor meter.

That said, corn flavor wasn't enough to win over our tasters on its merits alone. Without a good salt level to draw that flavor out, overall scores were docked. For instance, while Whole Foods' 365 brand was our second highest scoring chip on the corn flavor meter (between Tostitos Naturals and Santitas), a lack of salt brought its overall score down. The Frito-Lay brand chips took the three of the top four scorers in terms of saltiness (Mission took the fourth).

Moral of the story? When snacking, we want big flavor and salt. Who woulda' thunk it?

The good news: It's tough to go wrong with tortillas chips. Though we've broken down our lineup into the usual recommended/good in a pinch/not recommended categories, to be quite honest, even the worst of the chips were not so bad that we wouldn't try and cover up their flavor with a bit of salsa if we were invited to watch the game.

Here's the complete breakdown of our taste test:

Recommended

#1: Tostitos Simply Natural (7/10, $.31/ounce)

Tasters praised its salty crunch, good structure, and corn flavor. At least one taster could pick it out of a blind lineup, saying "That's a Tostito." They are "a little oily, which is nice." The one drawback? Its size. "This is three bites," said one taster. You might have trouble dipping it into a regular salsa jar without dumping it out into a bowl first.

#2: Tostitos Original (6.3/10, $.31/ounce)

Like their Simply Natural version, the Originals are also a salty bunch with a good amount of corn flavor (though not quite as prominent as in the naturals), and a touch of oiliness. "Good crunch!" These ones, made with white corn, are even larger. "This is the size of my palm." Some tasters noted toastiness, almost like popcorn.

#3: Santitas (6.1/10, $.18/ounce)

At nearly half the price of our winning brand, Santitas takes the win for best value brand. The size of the chips is a much more reasonable 2 bites per triangle as well, making them ideal for grabbing and dipping. "Corny and yum"..."Goes well with salsa."

Good in a Pinch

#4: Mission (5.4/10, $.25/ounce)

The second saltiest chips of the bunch, they were good, but lacked the deep corn flavor needed to bump them into the top ranks. Their flaky texture makes them seem like they were fried from real honest-to-goodness tortillas, and they were crisp and crunchy without being dry or tough, making them great for salsa.

#5: Garden of Eatin' (5.2/10, $.29/ounce)

Excellent corn flavor—coming in at second place just under our Tostitos Naturals—but seriously lacking in seasoning. A touch of salt would have done wonders, enough that it may have even taken first place. Some tasters complained of a slight dryness.

#6: 365 Everyday Value (5.1/10, $.17/ounce)

Another low-salt brand with decent corn flavor, tasters noted a distinct toastiness to the flavor, though the biggest complaint was texture: They were dry and a little tough. Some also noted that they are a bit small for scooping a good amount of salsa.

#7: Green Mountain Gringo (5.0/10, $/ounce)

A mixed bag here. Some praised their scoop-happy strip shape and good corn flavor. Others noticed a distinct old oil flavor. Some called them "very crunchy," while others noted a certain staleness. The most damning comment? "Tastes like gasoline."

#8: Herr's (4.7/10, $.31/ounce)

A middling brand with no distinct flavor, a little lacking in crispness. The thinnest of the chips we tried, though still thick enough to stand up to the salsa.

#9: Utz (4.3/10, $.42/ounce)

A little oily in that "tastes like a Chinese restaurant" kind of way, if you know what we mean.

Not Recommended

#10: Snyder's of Hanover 3.9/10, $.22/ounce)

An example where all the salt in the world couldn't help a lack of corn flavor and a strange "almost honey-ish" sweetness.

#11: Bachman's (3.8/10, $.40/ounce)

Nearly every taster commented on the flavor of the oil, some calling it "strange", others "rancid," and still others simply "nope."

#12: Trader Joe's Organic (3.3/10, $.17/ounce)

"Yuck, like crunchy cardboard." These chips scored lowest in saltiness, and second from the bottom in corn flavor. We wouldn't pick this "bland, round thing."

Our Tasting Methodology: All taste tests are conducted completely blind and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample #1 first, while taster B will taste sample #6 first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill out tasting sheets ranking the samples for various criteria that vary from sample to sample. All data is tabulated and results are calculated with no editorial input in order to give us the most impartial representation of actual results possible.

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

[Photographs: Renata Yagolnitzer]

We like to stay on top of our yogurt news here. The latest: new Chobani flavors were released in select stores in January. Maybe you've spotted them? Not only have they introduced new flavors (fig! pear!), but also some new sizes, shapes, and granola receptacles.

Let's start with the Chobani Bites because, well, they might be the cutest. Only 3.5 ounces of yogurtness compared to the usual six. These munchkin tubs come in four flavors: Fig with Orange Zest, Caramel with Pineapple, Coffee with Dark Chocolate Chips, and Raspberry with Dark Chocolate Chips.

Clearly Chobani is going for a sweeter, semi-indulgent line here, but they've kept it a "mindful" size, so unless you eat four of these in one go, it's still considered a snack. The least sweet of the four, and also my favorite, was the Fig and Orange Zest with its jammy fig bits and tartness from the orange zest. Warning: it's a bit sad when it's already over in just three spoonfuls.

Coffee yogurt might be a completely separate conversation we need to have—should it be real-coffee-tasting or more ice-cream-sweet? Is it just coffee ice cream disguised as yogurt? Given the Greek yogurt tang present in the Coffee with Dark Chocolate Chips, it kind of tastes like a splash of sour milk fell into your morning coffee. The coffee flavor is faint though, and the dark chocolate chips add a nice textural element, so we're mostly fine with this existing.

Let's move onto the Chobani Flip; what the flip, you say? A new structural design featuring portion-controlled toppings receptacles! Toasted almonds, raspberries, honeyed oats, and other stuff is hanging out on the side.

"Honey Bee-Nana" is Chobani's classic honey yogurt paired with banana mush. Though strange-tasting on its own, the 'nana mush is a pretty reasonable banana facsimile once it's all stirred in. Still, we'd prefer a fresh banana sliced on top.

Vanilla Golden Crunch is a vanilla yogurt with cornflakes, honey oats, and pecans—very Honey Bunches-esque topping but sweeter and crunchier. Good for people who need to doctor up their yogurt, though it veers into dessert territory. Key Lime Crumble is another one that's very desserty, though in fairness it is inspired by a pie. Key lime and graham cracker crumbs is a classic combo, and Chobani adds tiny, chewy white chocolate chips.

Almond Coco Loco tastes richer than low-fat yogurt usually does with the addition of shredded coconut, chocolate chips, and almonds. One advanced feature here: not one but two receptacles to keep the almond and chocolate bits separate from the yogurt, maintaining the integrity of the crunch. Anyone who's had a soggy pre-made yogurt parfait knows how clever this is. Strawberry Sunrise is pretty straightforward: some strawberry yogurt with honeyed oats (loose oats, not clusters). Satisfying without any fake-fruit flavors.

Finally, two flavors that Chobani created as a response to fan requests: non-fat pear (o%) and low-fat banana (2%). Like most Greek yogurts, the low-fat version is substantially richer-tasting than the nonfat. Banana and pear bits are swirled in and, once again, they aren't a bad facsimile for the fresh stuff if you don't have some fruit lying around to slice up.

Greek yogurt addicts out there, what say ye?

Related Taste Test: Every Other Flavor of Chobani Greek Yogurt

(Side note: if you're more of a savory toppings on yogurt person, the Chobani Soho store is now offering one with smoked salmon and dill.)

VIEW SLIDESHOW: Serious Eats Guide: How To Buy Caviar

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

As a half-Japanese American, salty preserved fish products are in my blood. I grew up eating tarako, the salted, cured roe of Alaskan pollock, served inside rice onigiri, or grilled up for breakfast. But it wasn't until I started working at fancy-pants restaurants that I first tasted real caviar. The first bite I had was a small dollop of Iranian ossetra that I ate off of a plastic spoon the chef handed me in the walk-in refrigerator. Subtly salty with a distinct minerality and an aroma of the sea. The beads of sturgeon roe rolled across my tongue, popping against the roof of my mouth in little saline bursts. It was mind-blowing stuff, and I relished every opportunity to work with it and taste the many varieties available.

Caviar is technically the salted roe of sturgeon, a prehistoric, scale-less fish that ranges in the Northern hemisphere from North America to China. At the market, you'll also find cured eggs from other fish that are occasionally referred to as caviar, but their labeling will always indicate the type of fish they came from, such as "American spoonbill caviar" or "Salmon caviar." Depending on the species of sturgeon, area of harvest, and treatment of the eggs after harvest, caviar can vary in texture, flavor, and appearance.

What was once largely a wild-harvested product is now largely farm-raised. During the Soviet era, the harvest and production of wild caviar was a tightly controlled, highly lucrative industry in the Caspian and Black seas. But this all changed with the dissolution of the USSR—everybody wanted a piece of the pie. The ensuing over-fishing of sturgeon has been devastating to the ecosystem and the industry. The sale of Beluga caviar—the most highly prized of the three most famous sturgeon species—has been banned by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service since 2005. Wild ossetra sturgeon have likewise been harvested to near extinction. Their caviar is currently unavailable.

These days, most of the caviar available in the U.S. comes from farmed fish around the world—the United States, China, and Israel being some of the largest producers. So what does this new market look like, and more importantly, how can you buy it with confidence?

Alexandre Petrossian outside the eponymous New York restaurant.

We sat down with Alexandre Petrossian, 30, the third generation Vice President of Petrossian, to talk about the salty fish eggs. The famed Paris caviar house has an online boutique as well as a shop and restaurant in New York. "They say that a good caviar should have at least 15 different flavors in it," he starts. "Each time you take a bite, you should taste something new. It should develop on your tongue and the aftertaste should linger for a very long time."

"Surprisingly, the Chinese farms are some of the best," he says. Petrossian currently offers several varieties of Chinese caviar, including their Imperial Shassetra and Kaluga, which is amongst the more expensive in their line-up. "They actually came to us before they started designing the farms, asking for details about every step of the process, and how we like our caviar to be raised and harvested. They were really determined to do it right." Because of this, the Chinese caviar is among the most consistent.

I brought back five tins of sturgeon caviar to Serious Eats World Headquarters where we had a blind tasting. The caviars ranged in price from $113 to $481 per 50 gram tin. But our favorites were not the most expensive. Take a look at our tasting notes in the slideshow above.

"Good caviar should have distinct eggs that separate when you roll them on the roof of your mouth," says Alexandre. "They need to pop," rather than taste mushy. When you open a tin, the caviar should be shiny, each egg glistening, not oily or murky. "Good caviar sparkles like diamonds," says Alexandre. "It makes it quite difficult to take photographs."

How To Taste And Serve Caviar

The traditional accompaniments to caviar are Champagne or ice cold vodka. "Avoid a heavier red or white wine with caviar," advises Alexander. "It will compete with the flavor." If tasting a variety of different caviars, drink water or sparkling water between varieties to cleanse your palate.

I prefer to taste caviar straight out of the tin using a spoon. Mother-of-pearl is pretty and the traditional choice, but you don't need a fancy spoon to eat it. "I taste my caviar from a wooden spoon, because that's how I was taught to taste it growing up," says Alex. I like to use plastic spoons. The only material to avoid is silver, which can react with the caviar to give it a metallic flavor.

If you want to put a little more work into the presentation, toast, cold boiled potatoes, or blini are all excellent, relatively bland backdrops that will give you some body, but not compete with the caviar for flavor. Sour cream and chives also work well.

When the caviar is in your mouth, let the individual eggs spread on your tongue first, gently rolling them against the roof of your mouth while you breath in through your nose to get the initial aroma. Once you've got it, crush the eggs gently, feeling them pop against your soft palate, releasing their buttery contents. This is where the primary flavor of the caviar should come out. Try and identify as many flavors as you can. Buttery, rich, nutty, earthy, salty, fishy are all common descriptors for caviar.

Finally, swallow the caviar, continuing to breathe in through your nose to allow its aftertaste to linger as long as possible. Take a shot, clear your head, lather, rinse, and repeat.

How To Buy Caviar

Alverta President, Royal Transmontanus, Tsar Imperial Shassetra, Tsar Imperial Kaluga, and Tsar Imperial Ossetra caviar from Petrossian

Sopping for caviar can be intimidating. Here are five tips to make sure that you get your money's worth.

#1: More Expensive ≠ Better

Ok, let's face it: even the most inexpensive sturgeon caviar is still going to be expensive. You should expect to spend at least $50 to $75 for 30 grams (1 ounce)—enough caviar to make a few good bites for two people. But the prices can get astronomically high. The Special Reserve Ossetra from Petrossian runs at $12,000 a kilo, or $378 for a 30 gram tin.

Does paying more guarantee better caviar?

"No, not at all," says Alexandre. "The main factor that determines the price of the caviar is its rarity, but that does not mean that the more rare caviar tastes better to all people."

Caviar is generally graded by the size and texture of its beads (larger, firmer beads that pop in your mouth are more rare, and thus more expensive), and by their flavor—as a general rule, more mildly flavored caviars tend to be more rare. However, the species of the fish, how it was raised, and how the caviar was treated and matured can vastly affect the final flavor.

Just as with wine or whiskey, many tasters—even professionals—prefer the flavor and texture of less expensive, more common offerings, so long as they are tasted blind without knowledge of pricing.

In a completely blind taste test at our office, many tasters picked out Petrossian's Royal Transmontanus ($69/30 grams) as their favorite, beating out caviars over four times the price.

#2: Start at the low end

Caviar can be an acquired taste, and like many expensive foods prized for the complexity, there is a learning curve when it comes to appreciating their subtlety. Dive right into the deep end with the more expensive caviars, and most likely those more delicate flavors will be missed on you, and your money will have been wasted.

A better approach is to start with a relatively inexpensive—but still high quality—caviar. Taste it carefully and thoughtfully, figure out what it is you like about it. Do you like buttery richness and nutty flavor? Or perhaps a more pronounced fishiness and saltiness? Once you can answer these questions, you'll be better equipped to talk to the salesperson and help them pinpoint a caviar that is custom-suited to your personal preferences.

#3: If they don't let you taste it, shop somewhere else

When shopping for caviar, make sure that you taste the product before you buy it. You wouldn't buy a $125 pair of shoes without trying it on; why would you drop that kind of cash on caviar if you aren't sure you're going to like what you're going to get?

Caviars can vary from batch to batch or tin to tin, even when they're coming from the same farm or same species of fish. For this reason, past experience is not a reliable indicator of future performance. Indeed, Alexandre suggests you take it one step further: insist on tasting a sample of caviar from the actual tin you are planning on buying. An unscrupulous caviar salesman is not above the old bait-and-switch, swapping out a tin of dry or sub-par caviar.

#4: Make sure you buy enough

Whether it's knowing the value of what they're about to taste or fear of the unknown, first-time caviar tasters often go in for a tiny nibble, placing a half dozen eggs on their tongue. "It is impossible to taste caviar in this way," says Alexandre. "You must have enough to roll on your tongue to understand the texture and aroma." 5 grams (a heaping half teaspoon) is a more reasonable size for a taste.

For this reason, a 30 gram tin (about 1 ounce) should be the absolute minimum you purchase when shopping for two people. Those cute little 10 gram tins may be tempting—and their relatively low price makes them even more so—but unless you plan on tasting by yourself and having only a couple bites, they are essentially useless.

#5: Be careful when you buy online or black market caviar

Given rule #3, this one goes without saying. There is no guarantee of quality for any caviar you cannot taste yourself, so buying from an online source is an almost guaranteed way to get sub-par product. If you must buy online, shop at a reputable source who is committed to keeping that good reputation. Dean & Deluca, Russ & Daughters, and of course Petrossian are all good places to start.

"With caviar, if it the price seems too good to be true, then it is," says Alexandre. Similarly, black market caviar has not guarantor, no culpability for sub-par product, and even worse for some, no accountability for the environmental damages caused by illegal poaching of severely depleted wild sturgeon stocks.

#6: Only buy as much as you need and eat it fast

Like a good cheese or high quality cured ham, good caviar is cured and matured by experts for a specific amount of time to maximize their flavor. Once it is sold and the tin is opened, it can very rapidly change in quality, developing fishier aromas, the eggs softening, turning stickier or oilier, liquid weeping out into the tin. Once you've bought the caviar keep it refrigerated until you open the tin, which should be done within a few days of purchase. Once opened, the caviar should be consumed within a day.

Petrossian Boutique and Cafe

911 Seventh Ave New York, NY 10019 (between 57th and 58th, map); 212-245-2217; petrossian.com/

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

VIEW SLIDESHOW: Taste Test: We Taste Every Instant Indian Bite from Tasty Bite

[Photographs: pouches, Tasty Bite; bowls, Robyn Lee]

I wish I knew about Tasty Bite in college. A microwavable, totally vegetarian, and actually tasty convenience food that doesn't even require a fridge? Yes, this would have made those long work nights far more pleasant. And with takes on Indian classics like dal and vegetable curries that don't shy away from genuine spicing, they're among the tastier pouched convenience foods out there.

At about $3.29 each, a single-serving Tasty Bite pouch is pricier than packaged ramen. But it's even easier to prepare, and tastes nourishing, not just like a cocktail of salt, flavor chemicals, and preservatives. Tasty Bite ingredient lists are easy to read—for the most part they're just vegetables, legumes, spices, and the occasional dose of dairy.

The Connecticut-based company currently offers about 30 pouched products, mostly heat-and-eat "entrées," but also microwavable grain dishes and "meal inspirations," mildly seasoned ingredients like chickpeas that are fully cooked and ready to add to a larger meal. So which ones are the best? We found out the only way we could—by trying them all.

You can see our tasting notes for every pouch in the slideshow above, but here are our general findings to keep in mind:

• Good grains: There are more cost-effective ways to buy grains like rice and millet in bulk, but we were impressed by the texture and earthy flavor of the grain-based pouches.
• Lentils, chickpeas, and peas win: Score one for legumes—all three are generally well flavored with creamy textures. We didn't love every pouch based on these ingredients (there are many), but it's a decent indicator of success.
• Paneer and spinach, less so: We're big paneer fans, and were saddened by the mostly bland and/or rubbery iterations we encountered here. The spinach dishes, for the most part, are overwhelmed by the vegetable's mineral flavor.
• Thick sauces are preferable to thin: Thin curries have their places, but not with Tasty Bite. Thicker sauces were more flavorful, and had a more pleasing texture than the thinner ones.
• Tastiness has no correlation to calories: Tasty Bites range from 200 to 500 calories per pouch.* I was half-expecting our favorite pouches to align with the fattiest of the lot: the ones with doses of oil, nut pastes, or cream. But that just wasn't so. Generous spicing and clean-tasting grains won us over more than anything else.

* The nutritional information lists a serving as half a pouch, but let's be real: a single pouch is a single serving.

Our favorites of the bunch? A gentle but assertively spiced Chana Masala, creamy Punjab Eggplant that balances its slow-burn heat with onion sweetness, mild and sweet Vegetable Korma, and nutty Jaipur Vegetables. Pair any of them with Ginger Lentil Rice, Barley Medley, or Zany Multigrain (we know) and you have what we're happy to call dinner.

See all the bites in the slideshow. They aren't ranked, but run generally from more to less recommended.

About the author: Max Falkowitz is the editor of Serious Eats: New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.

[Photographs: Robyn Lee]

The Winners!

• #1: Cabot (7.3/10)
• #2: Land O' Lakes (5.7/10)
• #3: Boar's Head (5.6/10)

First produced by Mexican Franciscan monks of Monterey, California, Monterey Jack cheese is one of the true original American cheeses. The vast majority of Jack cheese (named after entrepreneur David Jack, who first started marketing and selling the cheese in the 19th century) is sold as a young, high moisture, melting cheese, with a nutty tang, and a rich, buttery flavor. Add to that cheese bits of chopped hot peppers (usually jalapeño), and you've got yourself pepper jack, a cheese that's pretty much custom-made for snackfoods.

Any time you've said to yourself, "Gee, this super oozy, melty, mild-mannered cheese is great, but I sure wish it packed a little more heat,"* what you were really saying was, "I gotta go get me some pepper jack."

*Carey claims that she's never said this to herself. I claim that Carey needs some more excitement in her life. By which I mean jalapeños.

Perfect in jalapeño poppers, bang-up on burgers, crazy-good on crackers, top-notch at topping nachos, and, uh... inquedible in quesadillas, it's the snackers' cheese par excellence.

So who makes the ooziest, tangiest, hottest of the bunch?

The Contenders

We picked eight widely available brands for our taste test:

• Kraft
• Land O;Lakes
• Trader Joe's (available shredded only)
• Cabot
• Boar's Head
• Organic Valley
• Maple Leaf
• White Rose (available on the East coast only)

The Criteria

Aside from the odd chain supermarket cheese platter or church potluck, pepper jack cheese is normally eaten melted. As a young, high moisture cheese, it's what it does best. Whether oozing out from a quesadilla, blanketing a burger, or melted over nachos, good meltability is a top priority.

Flavor is also important. Does the cheese portion of it taste like real cheese? Is it sufficiently tangy and nutty?

And what about those peppers? Most often they're jalapeños, though some brands will incorporate bell peppers or even habañeros to the mix. No matter the precise variety, what we want is a balanced bite, as well as some fresh, vegetal notes.

The Results:

We tasted all eight brands melted into plain flour quesadillas, as well as at room temperature. Not surprisingly, the winning brands corresponded with the brands that the tasters found had the highest heat levels, as well as the best melting texture.

Recommended

#1: Cabot (7.3/10, 60¢/ounce)

The runaway winner, this is the only brand we'd heartily recommend with no reservations. It melted like a dream, with a creamy, oozy texture and a tart, well-developed flavor that resembled a good cheddar. "Plenty of spice," and "best flavor by a mile" were some of the comments. It had the highest spiciness rating by a good margin.

Good In A Pinch

#2: Land O'Lakes (5.7/10, 31¢/ounce)

Milder in heat than the Cabot, but still a good melter. "Very oozy," said one taster, "mild, but good texture," said another. At 31 cents per ounce, it was the cheapest cheese in the lineup, making this our best buy.

#3: Boar's Head (5.6/10, 75¢/ounce)

The priciest of our non-organic entries, but the favorite of quite a few of our tasters. After the Cabot, it was the second highest rated on the spiciness scale. It had a few points knocked off for its lack of stretchability. "Smooth texture, but not stretchy," said one taster. "Spicy and flavorful!"

#4: Trader Joe's (5.4/10, 33¢/ounce)

Trader Joe's was available only in pre-grated form, and thus came with the addition of powdered cellulose and potato starch, added to the cheese to prevent the shreds from caking during shipping and storage. Luckiily, most tasters did not notice any ill effects of pre-shredding in the quesadillas—it had our second highest score on the texture scale ("this one stayed melted longest"), which makes sense, given its starch-enhanced properties.

If it only had more flavor, it could have been a frontrunner.

#5: White Rose (5.2/10, 36¢/ounce)

A East coast-only brand, it lost marks for a somewhat rubbery texture and a spiciness that appeared only after some serious tasting.

#6: Maple Leaf (4.7/10, 44¢/ounce)

This nationally available Canadian brand had "good pepper flavor," but "no real heat." Lack of flavor was its downfall.

#7: Kraft (4.6/10, 62¢/ounce)

"Kinda rubbery" and "why does the flavor disappear so fast?" were comments here. They are the only brand to enhance their peppers with acetic acid, as opposed to using plain peppers, which might explain an initial tart jolt that quickly dissipates into milky blandness.

Not Recommended

#8: Organic Valley (3.8/10, 87¢/ounce)

Our only organic brand, our most expensive, and unfortunately, the only one we'd advise avoiding. With rare exception, tasters ranked this at the bottom of the barrel, calling it greasy with little flavor and barely any heat.

Our Tasting Methodology: All taste tests are conducted completely blind and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample 1 first, while taster B will taste sample 6 first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill out tasting sheets ranking the samples for various criteria that vary from sample to sample. All data is tabulated and results are calculated with no editorial input in order to give us the most impartial representation of actual results possible.

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

I go through a lot of canned chipotle chilies—those are dried, smoked jalapeño peppers, usually sold packed in a vinegary sauce—at home. I use them in most chili-based braised meat dishes I make, like Carne Adovada or Beef Barbacoa. I'll use them in regular chili to add some depth. I'll fold them into my Quesadillas Fritas, or just blend them up with some mayo for an awesome spread.

Point is, I personally don't have much of a problem with working through a can before they start to expire. It takes a long time for that to happen; I mean, by their very nature, chipotles are designed not to go bad. They're smoked, which is a powerful preservative, then packed into a salty, vinegary sauce, which further inhibits bacterial growth. That said, there have been, on occasion, a few instances in which my opened cans of chipotle chilies languishing under wraps in the back of the fridge have become accidental science experiments over the course of a few months, and I can certainly imagine a home cook who only uses them on occasion asking, "Why should I buy a whole can when I only need a couple of chilies?"

Fair question. Enter Olo Foods' Chipotle Paste, a pureed chili paste made with real chipotle chilies that comes in a vapor-proof metal tube. Created by Tessa Lowe in Seattle, she promises that it's the solution for those who want "smoky chipotle flavor on hand at all times." It's available on Amazon ($6.99).

I used to have the exact same problem with my tomato paste, until I started buying it in tube form. Now it sits in my fridge with a nearly indefinite shelf-life.

If Olo's chipotle paste could stand shoulder to shoulder with canned chipotles in food, it may well be the solution you folks are looking for. I put it through a few paces to find out.

Side-by-Side Comparison

To test it out, I tasted it side-by-side with chipotles in adobo in four different ways: plain (straight out of the packaging), blended into a chipotle mayo, folded into the cheese for a quesadilla, and stirring into some chili.

The primary difference between the two, I discovered, is ingredients. Canned chipotles come packed in an adobo sauce—that's a rich sauce made with onions, garlic, spices, and vinegar. It adds a bit of acidity, a bit of sweetness, and a rich complexity to the chipotles. Indeed, I'd say that the flavor of a canned chipotle has as much to do with the sauce as it does with the chipotle itself.

The Olo tube, on the other hand, is a much more spartan affair with nothing in it but chipotles, water, salt, and Citric Acid.

Tasted side-by side unadorned, the Olo stuff is a little waterier, without the complexity and sweetness of the canned version with the adobo. Citric acid—a natural product used in processed foods to either add flavor, act as a preservative, or to help canned foods keep their texture—adds a bit of brightness, but it's not the same sort of clean flavor you find with the vinegar-spiked canned chipotles.

Short answer: the food made with the Olo product tastes different than that made with the canned chipotles. Not necessarily worse, mind you, but just different.

For the chipotle mayo made with Olo, I found I needed to add both a bit of extra lime juice, as well as a pinch of sugar to get the balance I was looking for that came straight out of the jar in the canned chipotles. Once those adjustments were made, however, the chipotle mayo was awesome.

For chili, the differences were less noticeable. Both added heat and smokiness to the background, without overpowering the rest of the ingredients.

In a quesadilla, the canned chipotles came out on top again, mainly for textural reasons. When I fold them into a quesadilla, I like to chop them by hand so that they stay in small pieces. The pureed chilis end up coating all the cheese, making the quesadilla a bit runny. I'd stick to using the stuff in more liquid-based dishes where texture is not an issue.

Is It Worth It?

So is it worth it? Depends on who you are and what your cooking style is like. Personally, I don't need it, as I go through my cans fast enough. If you are looking to use it simply for adding smoky heat to soups, stews, and sauces, but don't generally cook very often with canned chipotles, it might be the product for you.

I have to admit, I did find myself using it in places where I wouldn't normally use chipotles—a few dollops drizzled onto pizza, a little squirt in my chicken soup—the convenience factor alone will incline you do do it.

Olo Chipotle Paste is available on Amazon for $6.99.

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

[Photographs: Carrie Vasios]

The prepackaged shredded Mexican cheese blend has been a staple of my life for as long as I can remember. Taco night? Mom always picked up a pack for the toppings bar. Late-night nachos in college? All we needed were some tortilla chips and a bag of blend. Same with the most basic of "quesadillas". It might not be authentic, but when I need a quick snack, a tortilla microwaved with some cheese blend inside has never steered me wrong.

Considering the frequency with which I consume this product, I've occasionally wondered whether or not I'd been doing myself a disfavor by never considering either the low fat, or the organic versions. So I picked up the three brands available at my grocery store—Sargento (one of the most popular supermarket brands), Organic Valley (one of the largest organic dairy producers), and Weight Watchers (who need no introduction)— and put them to the test.

The Criteria

So what makes a good Mexican cheese blend? In my view, it's a delicate balance between taste, texture, and ability to melt. You want a cheese blend that tastes, well, if not "Mexican"—authenticity doesn't seem to be the primary concern here—then still not simply like cheddar. Accepting that they mean Tex-Mex cheese blend, I'd say that it should be salty, with the lightly tangy yet smooth taste of most quesadilla filling cheeses.

From left to right: Sargento, Weight Watchers, Organic Valley

The cut should be fine enough that it easily incorporates itself into the toppings on a taco or into the bean-y fabric of chili, but not so fine that the blend is grainy or sawdusty. On the other end of the spectrum, the blend shouldn't be too thick cut, the kind that forms into a hard, plasticky shell on whatever it tops. Above all, it must melt well, staying creamy and gooey, not broken or greasy.

The Results

I tasted all of my cheese both straight out of the plastic, and melted in the microwave. First, the plain tasting.

Sargento

This blend had the most white cheese in the mix as well as the thinnest shred. In the ingredients, monterey jack is listed first, then cheddar, queso quesadilla, and asadero cheese. These last two are presumably where the "real Mexican" flavor is supposed to come from. Queso quesadilla is an easy melting cheese from Northern Mexico named after the melted cheese sandwich. In most parts of Mexico, queso asadero is a white, semi-soft cheese used for melting. Taste-wise, this blend is salty with a prominent Monterey Jack flavor. When eaten plain, straight out of the package, it has a dusty texture that catches in the back of your throat.

Most pre-shredded cheeses come tossed in some sort of moisture-absorbing starchy coating to prevent them from forming a single large blob in the pack. It's not good to eat them without heating them first to gelatinize that starch.

Weight Watchers

This blend is made from reduced fat cheddar, monterey jack, asadero cheese, and queso quesadilla. It has a hard, plasticky texture and a thick cut. On its own, it doesn't taste like much, and comes in at about half the calories of Sargento.

Organic Valley

This is a blend of sharp cheddar, colby, and monterey jack cheeses. Yup. All three of those cheeses are American. (Colby is a cheddar-like cheese that was invented in Wisconsin.) Where's my asadero? Where's my throw-away pinch queso quesailla? Not surprisingly, this blend tastes just like cheddar cheese. It also had the dusty texture when eaten plain.

But the biggest question is, how well do they melt? By "well", I mean they melt easily and uniformly. They shouldn't turn into a puddle of grease but they also shouldn't stay locked together like a cheese shield. I also want something that's going to melt in time with my tortillas and chips heating. I decided that 20 seconds was about the average time that I'm melting cheese over chips—any more and the chips will get soggy, any less and most cheeses won't melt.

From left to right: Sargento, Weight Watchers, Organic Valley

After 20 seconds in the microwave, the Sargento melted nicely. There were a few intact threads, but most had spread just to the point of being soft and melty. On the other hand, the Weight Watchers cheese didn't really melt at all, due to its low fat content.

At 19 seconds, I saw that the Organic Valley blend was bubbling to the point where I was afraid is was going to burn, so I made sure to pull open the microwave door as soon as the timer began to beep. In fact, I was so sure that I had saved it a nanosecond from a molten state that I tried it again. This time, after a full 20 seconds, I got this:

Organic craters

The Organic Valley blend had quickly formed the dreaded cheese craters. The once bouncy cheese threads had become the sad, hard, pocked landscape of over-melted cheese. Flavor-wise, the heavy cheddar now resembled a generic pumped nacho sauce. Which, I suspect, is some people's preference.

My bottom line? Weight Watchers is definitely not worth the purported health benefits. It seems silly to try to shave calories off homemade nachos/quesadillas in the first place, but I'm sure plenty of people do it. My advice? Just use a regular cheese blend and a few less chips.

Organic Valley will also be staying out of my cart. I'm not looking for authenticity when I buy my Mexican cheese blend, but if I want preshredded cheddar, there are much better options. Sargento, on the other hand, will easily become my go-to blend. I've reminded myself why I never want to eat it plain—I might choke on the cheese dust—but for melting purposes, it's got everything I need.

What about you; what's your preferred blend of Mexican cheese?

[Photographs: Robyn Lee]

We didn't eat many Pillsbury poppin' fresh biscuits as a kid, but we sure as heck ate a lot of poppin' fresh breadsticks and poppin' fresh cinnamon rolls. Little did I know when I decided to do a canned, ready-to-bake biscuit taste test there were not the two or three flavors of Pillsbury biscuits I was expecting, but a WHOPPING THIRTEEN WHOLE FLAVORS. Holy cow, that's a lot of biscuits!

Well, we popped, baked, and tasted our way through nearly every one of them. Here's what we found.

Biscuit Geneology

The canned biscuit display at your average supermarket may be a bit confounding at first, but once you figure out how to navigate it, everything becomes clear. The first division level in Pillsbury Biscuits is their size. There are three of them.

The standard Grands! come 8 to a can, weighing in at about an ounce per biscuit. Then there are Grands! jr, which come 10 to a can, and are about 2/3rds the size of a standard Grands! biscuit. The smallest option is their Biscuits Value Pack, which includes 4 cans or 10-to-a-can biscuits, each one weighing about a third of the standard Grands!.

Right off the bat, we can tell you that getting the larger biscuits is the way to go. While all of them sported similar flavors and texture out of the oven, the mini biscuits (we tasted both Buttermilk and Country style cooled down very fast, and if there's one thing that's for sure, it's that Pillsbury canned biscuits are only good while they're warm.

Once you're past sizing, the next breakdown is Homestyle vs. Flaky Layers. On the surface, it may seem like a significant difference. On baking, the variation between the two is not all that great. Homestyle are slightly lumpy on the exterior with soft, sweet, fluffy, Wonderbread-like interiors. Flaky Layers look flaky on the exterior with soft, sweet, fluffy, Wonderbread-like interiors. Once you get past the edges, the flakes kind of all meld into one.

Our recommendation? Get the flakes. They aren't that different, but you at least get the illusion of flakiness, and what more can you expect from a can?

The Flavors

Once you've narrowed it down to sticking with Flaky Layers Grands!, you still have five more options to choose from. Here's our take, from favorite to least favorite.

Grands! Flaky Layers Buttermilk Biscuits

Very not bad. Sweet, soft, and moist, and not particularly biscuit-like—these things are more like soft bread than true flaky or short biscuits—but straight out of the oven, they're decent. They're made with palm and soybean oil, so don't expect any buttery flavor. Some real butter slathered into the middle or honey drizzled over them goes a long way to masking their inherent insipidness. They rely on salt, sugar, and the faintest tang of what could be either natural or artificial buttermilk flavoring (the ingredients list contains no real buttermilk) for their taste, not much else.

Grands! Flaky Layers Original Biscuits

Nearly identical to the Buttermilk Biscuits above, but with a slightly more overt sweetness without the tang of buttermilk to mask the excessive salty sweetness.

Grands! Flaky Layers Reduced Fat Original Biscuits

There's an entire 25% less fat in these biscuits than their standard Flaky Layers, and to be honest, we didn't miss it at all. In a side-by-side taste test, you would barely be able to tell the two apart, particularly not after adding your own real butter to them. Does buttering a reduced fat biscuit defeat the purpose? Maybe, but that's not stopping us.

Grands! Flaky Layers Butter Tastin' Biscuits

This is where we drew the line. Straight out of the can, Butter Tastin' biscuits were studded with frighteningly day-glo orange specks. I suppose these were the butter tastin' flavor crystals, or some such thing. Instead of tasting like butter, the biscuits end up tasting like the worst movie theater popcorn you can imagine. As if Jelly Belly's buttered popcorn jelly beans were baked into a slice of Wonderbread. If we want butter in our biscuits, we'll add it ourselves, thanks. AVOID.

Grands! Flaky Layers Honey Butter Biscuits

All the artificial butter flavor of the Butter Tastin' biscuits, with a healthy dose of fake honey flavor thrown on top. Again, AVOID.

Tell us: Do you ever resort to opening the can? Do poppin' fresh biscuits have a place in your fridge, or are you homemade all the way?

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

Our Tasting Methodology: All taste tests are conducted completely blind and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample 1 first, while taster B will taste sample 6 first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill out tasting sheets ranking the samples for various criteria that vary from sample to sample. All data is tabulated and results are calculated with no editorial input in order to give us the most impartial representation of actual results possible.

[Photographs: Will Gordon]

Next week I'll be cooking my inaugural Thanksgiving dinner. I've been itching to tackle this project for as long as I've been a chronological adult, but this is the first time I've been sufficiently motivated and stove-having to take this important matter into my own hands. Plus no one invited me to dinner this year, so I figure I might as well celebrate the successful completion of Operation Alienation by throwing my own party.

I've never cooked a whole bird of any kind, so the prospect of preparing a 15-pound turkey is somewhat daunting—and also completely unnecessary since I'm only feeding two people—but it turns out they don't make mini turkeys. With all the advances in the miniaturization of dogs and cars and Snickers bars, I had assumed I could pick up a nice 5-pound turkey, but that's apparently not the case.

My only options seem to be: A) downsizing to a less regal bird, which I won't do because I'm tired of chicken, I'm not sure what a squab is, and no one will sell me a crow; B) resorting to just a turkey breast, which presents the infernal problem of all white meat; and C) resigning myself to leftover turkey sandwiches through Valentine's Day.

The best and most obvious answer for a novice cook hosting a two-person dinner is a hasty retreat to the frozen food aisle. Alas, I can't go that route. My pleasant and popular wife was a civilian casualty in the aforementioned Operation Alienation, so I owe her the home-cooked meal she could easily have gotten elsewhere. But let's say you find yourself in a more reasonable situation. Maybe you have to work an inconvenient shift next Thursday, or perhaps the holiday finds you far from your loved ones and you want something festive to eat when you Skype into the family meal back home.

Regardless of your reasoning, there's never any shame in taking the easy way out, so I took it upon myself to taste four leading brands of frozen turkey-and-etc. meals. I cooked them all in a conventional oven.

Hungry-Man Roasted Carved White Meat Turkey ($2.50, 16 ounces)

This pound of food promises "home-style gravy with white meat turkey, seasoned stuffing, creamy mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, and an apple cranberry dessert." It's cheap and easy to pick apart silly food marketing adjectives—"Ooh, honey, let's get this one: The turkey's carved!"—so I will only allow myself to say that this gravy, and the entire meal it insufficiently masks, is only "home-style" if you live in a combination prison-orphanage engaged in the black-market manufacture of sodium and despair.

Just about every element of the Hungry-Man was disastrous. The gravy was salty and greasy, the flavorless potatoes were barely reconstituted, the turkey was gummy and sliced too thin, and the stuffing managed to fail on both sides of the same dirty coin: The portion buried under the turkey was sogged into submission and the part exposed to the heating element for the full 40 minute cook time was rock-hard.

To be fair, the ambitious four-veg blend of peas, carrots, baby carrot coins, and (two) green beans was nearly mediocre, with the peas less desiccated than expected and the mushy carrots at least a proud shade of orange. The apple-cranberry dessert tasted like brown sugar jelly, but it was a thoughtful touch that in a different life wouldn't necessarily wreck a bagel. Alas, in the final accounting I have to say that no man, woman, or beast should ever be hungry enough to eat this.

Banquet Turkey Meal ($1.09, 9.25 ounces)

This was better than the Hungry-Man, and it's hard to quibble with any complete meal that costs $1.09. But I'm an expert quibbler, so here we go!

The dense, gray potatoes had an odd vegetal flavor that leaned more toward dirty than earthy. The turkey was a mix of light and dark meat, neither of which tasted like anything in particular and both of which were egregiously rubbery. However, the gravy was suitably viscous and the stuffing held up well. And good news for those who buy TV dinners for the vegetables: the peas were better than they looked, tasting fine for the quick second before they devolved into a mouthful of pea paste.

Stouffer's Signature Classics Roast Turkey ($2.89, 9.6 ounces)

Now we're getting somewhere. The potatoes were a bit overwhipped for my taste, but they fell squarely on the spectrum of acceptable mashed potato consistency and get major points for having actual flavor (fake butter, but still). The thick-sliced turkey tasted like good roasted chicken, and the stuffing had the best texture of the bunch. The peppery gravy was nice, but there wasn't enough of it; the scarceness and the package design made it hard to slop enough gravy over into the potato compartment.

And the Winner Is...

Boston Market Turkey Breast Medallions ($2.50, 15 ounces)

Boston Market scored big with both the best potatoes and the best turkey. The turkey's a little tough and stringy, but the substantial medallions represented the only protein in this tasting not best described as "probably chicken or, wait, is that canned ham?" It's turkey through and through.

The gravy was well-seasoned and savory. This dinner also benefitted from the best package design (which turned out to be a surprisingly important factor). The bold decision to throw compartments to the wind enabled maximum diner discretion in mixing the potatoes, turkey, and gravy, with the imposing mound of mashed keeping the mixed vegetables safe and dry on the far side of the good stuff.

About the author: Will Gordon loves life and hates mayonnaise. You can eat and drink with him in Boston or follow him on twitter @WillGordonAgain.

[Photographs: Robyn Lee]

The Winners!

• #1: Heinz Organic
• #2: Heinz
• #3: Annie's Naturals
• Best Buy: Del Monte

Before we begin, some quick education. Here are three fun ketchup facts:

• As a non-Newtonian, thixotropic fluid, the viscosity of ketchup is dependent on how fast it is flowing, hence its ability to stick stick stick inside the jar, then pour out all of a sudden.
• Ketchup got its starts as a fermented fish-based Malay sauce and went through many iterations in England—including mushroom and nut-based versions—before the modern tomato-based sauce was born in the 19th century.
• In 2011, the global ketchup market showed over $1.2 billion in sales. That's the equivalent of 400 million bottles of Heinz.

Everyone got that? Good.

For most of us, Heinz is the default ketchup of choice, the one we compare all other ketchups to. It makes sense; the company dominates 60% of the entire ketchup market. But that doesn't mean that there aren't other options out there, and—at least in our local market—Heinz tends to be one of the more expensive brands on the shelf, priced at about 150% compared to its closest comparable competitor.

Add on to this the recent backlash against high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)—the sweetener of choice for ketchup manufacturers since at least the mid 80's—and the accompanying influx of both organic brands and brands made with non-HFCS sweeteners, and you've got a few other variables to contend with.

Could one of these cheaper or non-HFCS bottles be worth squeezing on our hot dogs or dipping our fries into?

The Contenders

We picked 10 nationally available brands for our taste test. We tasted only classic tomato ketchups. Flavored ketchups, spicy ketchups, curried ketchups, etc, were not included. Five were organic, the other five were not. All ketchups were tasted double-blind, side by side, with french fries for dipping.

• 365
• America's Choice
• Annie's Naturals
• Del Monte
• Heinz
• Heinz Organic
• Hunt's
• Muir Glen
• Organicville
• Trader Joe's

Criteria and Results

Our panel of tasters was asked to evaluate each ketchup considering its sweetness, tartness, and overall flavor. A good ketchup should be boldly seasoned with salt and sugar, but with enough acidity in it that it does not become cloying.

When the results were scored up, tasters showed a strong preference for brands with a higher perceived tartness—our top three winners were also the top three tartest brands according to our palates.

Texture was also an issue. Smooth, glossy, creamy ketchups were strongly preferred over pulpy, loose, or wet-tasting ketchups. Similarly, we liked our ketchups clean-tasting. Too many spices or competing flavors quickly pushed a few contenders to the bottom of the pile.

Recommended

#1: Heinz Organiic (6.7/10)

Cost per Ounce: $.20
Sweetener: Sugar

Most tasters were convinced that the regular Heinz would win the taste test, but the organic version, made with real sugar instead of HFCS barely edged out its more long-lived non-organic counterpart. "Smooth and tart," "this tastes like normal," and "good body" were some comments. It's 25% more expensive than the standard Heinz, so your budget might dictate passing it up if you are a big ketchup-eater. But not to worry, the regular Heinz trailed by just a couple percentage points.

#2: Heinz 6.5/10)

Cost per Ounce: $.16
Sweetener: High fructose corn syrup

"This is iconic ketchup," was the general sentiment. "Sweet, vinegary, and not too tomatoey." Turns out that with ketchup, a strong tomato flavor is not necessarily a good thing. Balance of sweetness and plenty of sharp acidity are the trump cards we look for. "This has a familiar essential ketchupiness."

Good In A Pinch

#3: Annie's Naturals (6.2/10)

Cost per Ounce: $.24
Sweetener: Sugar

"I like this—it's a little sweet for me, but tart enough to back it up." Between this and Heinz's two offerings, most tasters had trouble distinguishing the difference. All three had that familiar, not-too-tomatoey flavor laced with a hint of onion, allspice, and cloves.

But at 20% more pricey than our winner Heinz Organic, we have trouble truly recommending this brand.

#4: Del Monte (5.7/10, BEST BUY!)

Cost per Ounce: $.07
Sweetener: High fructose corn syrup

A decently balanced ketchup that was comparable to our higher-ranked winners in terms of flavor profile, it lost a few points from tasters in its overall score because it's a little too thin compared to the glossy, creamy Heinz and Annie's. But at less then half the price of Heinz, it's our Best Buy. If you're planning on having one of these parties where you fill up the kiddie pool with ketchup and ask everyone to bring their own nuggets, Del Monte is the brand to go with.

#5: America's Choice (5.4/10)

Cost per Ounce: $.11
Sweetener: High fructose corn syrup

A slight aftertaste of Worcestershire sauce was noted by a few tasters, as well as a lack of real creaminess in its texture. "Molasses and smoke," is how one taster described it. Still, most of us would happily dip our fries in it.

#6: Hunt's (5.4/10)

Cost per Ounce: $.11
Sweetener: High fructose corn syrup

Heinz' biggest competitor didn't really stack up in our taste test. It had a decent "smooth consistency" and "nice tartness," but this was one case where too much vinegar ended up working against it. It was our tartest scoring brand, with one taster saying, "it tastes like the whole vinegar bottle fell into this batch." Too bad, because it had decent tomatoey flavor.

#7: Trader Joe's (5.2/10)

Cost per Ounce: $.08
Sweetener: Sugar

"This tastes like Worcestershire sauce," said one taster. Others agreed. While it was nice and tomatoey, it had a slightly gritty texture and an overwhelming sweetness that wasn't balanced by enough acidity.

Not Recommended

#8: Muir Glen (4.5/10)

Cost per Ounce: $.15
Sweetener: Sugar

"Sweet, thinned-out tomato paste." All sweetness, no tartness, with a lumpy, barely-pureed texture. Some didn't mind this more "natural" texture, while others said simply, "THIS IS BAD."

#9: Organicville (4.0/10)

Cost per Ounce: $.21
Sweetener: Agave nectar

"This is like a health brand," said one taster of its "naturally tomato sweet" flavor. The only one made with agave nectar, there was something off about its sweetness—a hint of bitterness on the back of the tongue—that turned us off. "Lumpy. Too sweet. Blugh."

#10: Whole Foods 365 (3.3/10)

Cost per Ounce: $.07
Sweetener: Sugar

Oh, Whole Foods, when-oh-when will your 365 come up with a product that doesn't score near the bottom of our taste test? An overwhelming amount of cloves, a thin viscosity, and a pulpy texture with cloying sweetness produced a range of reactions from "strange!" or "something tastes funny..." to simply "eww" and "yuck." It's a ketchup even ketchup lovers couldn't get behind.

Our Tasting Methodology: All taste tests are conducted completely blind and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample 1 first, while taster B will taste sample 6 first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill out tasting sheets ranking the samples for various criteria that vary from sample to sample. All data is tabulated and results are calculated with no editorial input in order to give us the most impartial representation of actual results possible.

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.