February 25, 2025 • 9 mins
Julia Davison is nationally known as the co-host of the Emmy Award Winning, America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Country on PBS Television. She is an original cast member of both shows, which are two of the highest-rated instructional cooking shows on television. Julia is the executive editorial director for America’s Test Kitchen as well as host of Julia at Home, which premiered on Pluto TV in November, 2021. Julia began working as a test cook for Cook’s Illustrated in 1999 and led recipe development for America’s Test Kitchen cookbooks for more than a decade. Julia has been a guest on Good Morning America, Live with Kelly & Ryan, The Today Show, Hallmark Channel’s Home & Family, and The Tamron Hall Show. She graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1996. She received an Augie Award from the Culinary Institute of America and was inducted into the prestigious Disciples d’Escoffier culinary society in 2018.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, It's Lucy Chapman with another edition of Here's More.
Thanks so much for joining me today. Today I have
a special treat Julia Davison of America's Test Kitchen and
Cooks Country on PBS Television. Julia is going to be
this weekend at the annual Home and Garden Expo at
(00:20):
the CHI February twenty eighth through March second. Julia, Welcome,
Thanks so much for joining me today. Hi, Lucy, You're
going to be here for the Home and Garden Expo
this weekend and people can come and see you.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Yes, I have three demos, ones on Friday, ones on Saturday,
and ones on Sunday. Friday night, Saturday afternoon and Sunday
early afternoon. I'll be cooking. I'll be showing off some
of our favorite kitchen gadgets as well as some of
our recently tested ingredients. I'll be talking a little bit,
just like about what it's like to work at America's
(00:55):
Test Kitchen and taking lots of questions, taking photos, and
just learning. Actually, I'm really excited to learn more about omahawks.
I've never been there.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Well, you gotta try the steaks while you're here, I know.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I need to get some restaurant recommendations for sure, So
I'm gonna be taking lots of recommendations for where I
should go eat every night.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Excellent or Julia. Let's back up a little bit, because,
as I said, I'm super excited to talk to you
because I was watching America's Test Kitchen. I had to
go out and buy a cast iron pot to make
this beef forg.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
On beef bourging yoch Oh, you had to go buy
a cast iron to seven.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had to and I did, Yeah,
and I never made it.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
You never made it, never made Well, it's actually pretty easy.
I mean, it's just a fancy French beef stew. But
it's just a beef stew with some really good wine
from Burgundy and mushrooms and bacon and pearl onions. You
should totally make that, would.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
You guys have a way of making everything look easy
enough for somebody like myself that did think, well, I'll
just go out and buy a cast iron, like I said,
and I'll make this. And then I when you guys
were gone off my screen, then I lost all confidence.
So you guys make it look so easy.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
It is easy. That's the trick, I don't. I mean,
that's why I love what I do. We teach people
how to cook, and cooking is a life skill, and
it's just really not taught in schools. And unless you
really learn at the elbow of someone teaching you in
your kitchen or you go to school for it, you
don't feel I don't feel like people just don't learn,
they don't have the confidence. But it's it's really pretty straightforward,
(02:28):
and once you know a few of the basic rules,
I mean, the world of cooking just opens up to you.
Like once you learn, for example, how to make a
beef basic beef stew, what cut of meat you want
to use, a shoulder meat, how long it needs to
cook for It needs to cook for about two two
and a half hours and a three hundred and twenty
five degree oven. After that, you can kind of play
with what you want to add to the pot, you
(02:48):
know what I mean. So we love teaching the basics
and why those basics are important, and then give you
the tools to kind of find your.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Style when people are willing to try different things. Like again,
I can talk about myself in that that if I
try a recipe and it doesn't work, out. I'm not
going to just say forget it. I'm never going to
do it again. I do. I pull them out again,
and I try it again, and if it fails again,
I might try a third time. Maybe not, But do
you find people keep trying?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Absolutely? I mean part of it is I think when
a recipe doesn't work, you just everyone has the tendency
to blame themselves. I must have done something wrong, and
that might be the case that I have to say
a lot of recipes out there really just don't work,
and especially all the free ones you get on the internet.
It's a crapshoot. That's whether or not that's going to
turn out, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
I love that you said that I wondered about some
of them.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
The whole thing about America's Desk is is we test recipes.
So we develop recipes, We cook them thirty to fifty times.
We use the scientific method where we change one aspect
of the recipe and test it against other variations to
see what makes the best recipe. But also before we
print them or put them on TV, we send them
(03:59):
out to ten of thousands of home cooks across the
country to see if the recipe works for them because
you know, in the test kitchen we have people helping
us shop and prep and do the dishes. Like we
can make anything work, but the value of a recipe
is and whether we can make it work, it's whether
people can do it at home successfully. And so before
we publish or so manything, we make sure this recipe
(04:20):
has been really vetted in home kitchens across the country.
And I think that's what sets our recipes apart, is
that if they don't work, you know, you can go
through and kind of understand maybe where you went off.
So on our website, every recipe there's a place where
you can leave comments, and the person who developed the
recipe or another food editor, we'll get back to you
(04:41):
and say, hey, did you try this hey, and they'll
help you troubleshoot. And then you'll see pages of people
giving suggestions. Oh I'm gluten free and I used this
and it worked. Oh I'm vegetarian, I substitute this and
it works really great. Like it's like a community of
cooks who kind of help each other navigate this world
of cooking, which every day, I mean they talk about
(05:04):
the global pantry, which I love. It just means you
can get kind of any ingredient you want delivered to
your doorstep within at least a week. So that opens
up the door to cooking all sorts of things, you know,
and for that, you just need a roadmap, and that's
what we're so excited to do.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Do you find that when you talk to people, when
they talk to you about some of their experiences, have
you taken some of their ideas and kind of changed
them up a little bit to work on the show?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Well, it kind of relates to how we choose what
we develop because it takes a long time for us
to develop a recipe, several weeks and a lot of testing.
So before we even decide to do something, we survey
our readers and viewers to ask what they're interested in,
like what your fingers on the pulse of what do
you want to know about airfiers, Mediterranean cooking, cooking for
(05:51):
two gluten free? Do you want to know how to
use your cast iron pan? Like what are you interested in?
And then we take that feedback and that's how we
determine what we work on, and that way we're always
staying relevant. We're always providing content that people say they want,
and so that's really how we include our readers and
viewers into the process at the very beginning.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Julia, what do you do when you think I cannot
cook another stinking thing today?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
I open a bottle of wine and order pizza. I
love it absolutely. I mean I really applaud pizza people
who make pizza at home. It's delicious. But for me,
that's my emergency, that's my We're going to order like,
I don't want to make better pizza at home because
that's my emergency fallback. So yeah, pizza, I love it.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Well, you're going to be at the as I mentioned,
the fifty ninth annual Omaha Home and Garden Expelled this week,
and at thech you're going to be giving tips and
people can meet you and talk to you just a
little briefly and find out some different things about maybe
what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Absolutely, I love it when people ask me really pointed
questions about what they're cooking or where recipes go long
go wrong, because I can I have good answers like
I've probably done that myself and can help people troubleshoot.
But also, you know, we do a lot of equipment
testing at America's Test Kitchen and we put these different
ingredients and pieces of equipment through the ringer and we
(07:24):
don't take any advertising, so they're not paying us do this.
We're just telling you, like kind of like consumer reports,
what's worth the money. And I'm going to bring some
of our favorite products along, like our favorite olive oil,
our favorite chicken broth, our favorite pasta, that sort of thing,
so you can just make smarter decisions in the supermarket.
And so that's fun too.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
One more quick question because I know I talk a
lot about the different recipes that I try and most
of them fail. So over the weekend I made two pies.
I'm learning this pie thing. And I thought that the
hardest thing about making pies was going to be the crust. Yeah,
but I've got that down. I mean, my crust is
really good, so twice's nice. I've made homemade blueberry pie filling.
(08:07):
The first time it was just pure liquid. I mean
there were some blueberries in it, but pure liquid. So
then the next time I put about an eighth of
the liquid in and it's still too running.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yes, you need to add a thickener. Popular thickeners are
tapioca that you can grind up. That's several. Popular one
because it allows the fruit juices to come through corn starches.
Another popular one that you sticken the sauce beforehand, but
that makes you know. Some people like that, some people don't.
(08:41):
People tend to prefer tapioca with fruit pies. The other
thing is cut some serious events in the top of
your blueberry pie. I think our recipe has you take
a round cutter, not quite a biscuit size cutter, but
maybe like an inch and inch and a half and
cut a whole bunch of holes on the top, because
that will allow some of the excess moisture that comes
out of the blueberries during cooking to evaporate. And so
(09:03):
the combination of a sickener and allowing some of the
evaporation to the top crust should solve that.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Oh my gosh, now I gotta go make pie again tonight.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I'll send you a recipe. Yeah, a great one.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Excellent. Well, Julia, this has been so nice to talk
to you. I can't wait for you to be at
the home show. It's going to be a lot of fun.
So we hope to see you there and get more
questions answered.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it, and good luck with
your pie.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Thank you delicious, Thank you so much. All Right, we'll
see you this weekend. Okay, goodbye, Thanks Julia,
Hi, It's Lucy Chapman with another edition of Here's More.
Thanks so much for joining me today. Today I have
a special treat Julia Davison of America's Test Kitchen and
Cooks Country on PBS Television. Julia is going to be
this weekend at the annual Home and Garden Expo at
(00:20):
the CHI February twenty eighth through March second. Julia, Welcome,
Thanks so much for joining me today. Hi, Lucy, You're
going to be here for the Home and Garden Expo
this weekend and people can come and see you.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Yes, I have three demos, ones on Friday, ones on Saturday,
and ones on Sunday. Friday night, Saturday afternoon and Sunday
early afternoon. I'll be cooking. I'll be showing off some
of our favorite kitchen gadgets as well as some of
our recently tested ingredients. I'll be talking a little bit,
just like about what it's like to work at America's
(00:55):
Test Kitchen and taking lots of questions, taking photos, and
just learning. Actually, I'm really excited to learn more about omahawks.
I've never been there.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Well, you gotta try the steaks while you're here, I know.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I need to get some restaurant recommendations for sure, So
I'm gonna be taking lots of recommendations for where I
should go eat every night.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Excellent or Julia. Let's back up a little bit, because,
as I said, I'm super excited to talk to you
because I was watching America's Test Kitchen. I had to
go out and buy a cast iron pot to make
this beef forg.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
On beef bourging yoch Oh, you had to go buy
a cast iron to seven.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had to and I did, Yeah,
and I never made it.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
You never made it, never made Well, it's actually pretty easy.
I mean, it's just a fancy French beef stew. But
it's just a beef stew with some really good wine
from Burgundy and mushrooms and bacon and pearl onions. You
should totally make that, would.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
You guys have a way of making everything look easy
enough for somebody like myself that did think, well, I'll
just go out and buy a cast iron, like I said,
and I'll make this. And then I when you guys
were gone off my screen, then I lost all confidence.
So you guys make it look so easy.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
It is easy. That's the trick, I don't. I mean,
that's why I love what I do. We teach people
how to cook, and cooking is a life skill, and
it's just really not taught in schools. And unless you
really learn at the elbow of someone teaching you in
your kitchen or you go to school for it, you
don't feel I don't feel like people just don't learn,
they don't have the confidence. But it's it's really pretty straightforward,
(02:28):
and once you know a few of the basic rules,
I mean, the world of cooking just opens up to you.
Like once you learn, for example, how to make a
beef basic beef stew, what cut of meat you want
to use, a shoulder meat, how long it needs to
cook for It needs to cook for about two two
and a half hours and a three hundred and twenty
five degree oven. After that, you can kind of play
with what you want to add to the pot, you
(02:48):
know what I mean. So we love teaching the basics
and why those basics are important, and then give you
the tools to kind of find your.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Style when people are willing to try different things. Like again,
I can talk about myself in that that if I
try a recipe and it doesn't work, out. I'm not
going to just say forget it. I'm never going to
do it again. I do. I pull them out again,
and I try it again, and if it fails again,
I might try a third time. Maybe not, But do
you find people keep trying?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Absolutely? I mean part of it is I think when
a recipe doesn't work, you just everyone has the tendency
to blame themselves. I must have done something wrong, and
that might be the case that I have to say
a lot of recipes out there really just don't work,
and especially all the free ones you get on the internet.
It's a crapshoot. That's whether or not that's going to
turn out, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
I love that you said that I wondered about some
of them.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
The whole thing about America's Desk is is we test recipes.
So we develop recipes, We cook them thirty to fifty times.
We use the scientific method where we change one aspect
of the recipe and test it against other variations to
see what makes the best recipe. But also before we
print them or put them on TV, we send them
(03:59):
out to ten of thousands of home cooks across the
country to see if the recipe works for them because
you know, in the test kitchen we have people helping
us shop and prep and do the dishes. Like we
can make anything work, but the value of a recipe
is and whether we can make it work, it's whether
people can do it at home successfully. And so before
we publish or so manything, we make sure this recipe
(04:20):
has been really vetted in home kitchens across the country.
And I think that's what sets our recipes apart, is
that if they don't work, you know, you can go
through and kind of understand maybe where you went off.
So on our website, every recipe there's a place where
you can leave comments, and the person who developed the
recipe or another food editor, we'll get back to you
(04:41):
and say, hey, did you try this hey, and they'll
help you troubleshoot. And then you'll see pages of people
giving suggestions. Oh I'm gluten free and I used this
and it worked. Oh I'm vegetarian, I substitute this and
it works really great. Like it's like a community of
cooks who kind of help each other navigate this world
of cooking, which every day, I mean they talk about
(05:04):
the global pantry, which I love. It just means you
can get kind of any ingredient you want delivered to
your doorstep within at least a week. So that opens
up the door to cooking all sorts of things, you know,
and for that, you just need a roadmap, and that's
what we're so excited to do.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Do you find that when you talk to people, when
they talk to you about some of their experiences, have
you taken some of their ideas and kind of changed
them up a little bit to work on the show?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Well, it kind of relates to how we choose what
we develop because it takes a long time for us
to develop a recipe, several weeks and a lot of testing.
So before we even decide to do something, we survey
our readers and viewers to ask what they're interested in,
like what your fingers on the pulse of what do
you want to know about airfiers, Mediterranean cooking, cooking for
(05:51):
two gluten free? Do you want to know how to
use your cast iron pan? Like what are you interested in?
And then we take that feedback and that's how we
determine what we work on, and that way we're always
staying relevant. We're always providing content that people say they want,
and so that's really how we include our readers and
viewers into the process at the very beginning.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Julia, what do you do when you think I cannot
cook another stinking thing today?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
I open a bottle of wine and order pizza. I
love it absolutely. I mean I really applaud pizza people
who make pizza at home. It's delicious. But for me,
that's my emergency, that's my We're going to order like,
I don't want to make better pizza at home because
that's my emergency fallback. So yeah, pizza, I love it.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Well, you're going to be at the as I mentioned,
the fifty ninth annual Omaha Home and Garden Expelled this week,
and at thech you're going to be giving tips and
people can meet you and talk to you just a
little briefly and find out some different things about maybe
what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Absolutely, I love it when people ask me really pointed
questions about what they're cooking or where recipes go long
go wrong, because I can I have good answers like
I've probably done that myself and can help people troubleshoot.
But also, you know, we do a lot of equipment
testing at America's Test Kitchen and we put these different
ingredients and pieces of equipment through the ringer and we
(07:24):
don't take any advertising, so they're not paying us do this.
We're just telling you, like kind of like consumer reports,
what's worth the money. And I'm going to bring some
of our favorite products along, like our favorite olive oil,
our favorite chicken broth, our favorite pasta, that sort of thing,
so you can just make smarter decisions in the supermarket.
And so that's fun too.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
One more quick question because I know I talk a
lot about the different recipes that I try and most
of them fail. So over the weekend I made two pies.
I'm learning this pie thing. And I thought that the
hardest thing about making pies was going to be the crust. Yeah,
but I've got that down. I mean, my crust is
really good, so twice's nice. I've made homemade blueberry pie filling.
(08:07):
The first time it was just pure liquid. I mean
there were some blueberries in it, but pure liquid. So
then the next time I put about an eighth of
the liquid in and it's still too running.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yes, you need to add a thickener. Popular thickeners are
tapioca that you can grind up. That's several. Popular one
because it allows the fruit juices to come through corn starches.
Another popular one that you sticken the sauce beforehand, but
that makes you know. Some people like that, some people don't.
(08:41):
People tend to prefer tapioca with fruit pies. The other
thing is cut some serious events in the top of
your blueberry pie. I think our recipe has you take
a round cutter, not quite a biscuit size cutter, but
maybe like an inch and inch and a half and
cut a whole bunch of holes on the top, because
that will allow some of the excess moisture that comes
out of the blueberries during cooking to evaporate. And so
(09:03):
the combination of a sickener and allowing some of the
evaporation to the top crust should solve that.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Oh my gosh, now I gotta go make pie again tonight.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I'll send you a recipe. Yeah, a great one.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Excellent. Well, Julia, this has been so nice to talk
to you. I can't wait for you to be at
the home show. It's going to be a lot of fun.
So we hope to see you there and get more
questions answered.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it, and good luck with
your pie.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Thank you delicious, Thank you so much. All Right, we'll
see you this weekend. Okay, goodbye, Thanks Julia,
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!