Welcome to 17 Station St. in Brookline, Mass, home to America's Test Kitchen! This 150-year-old building, originally a mess kit factory, is where all the cooking, writing, editing, and publishing takes place.

In 1995, we built our first test kitchen. We installed a small and simple home-style kitchen with just two cooktops and four ovens, and we used the setup to develop all of the recipes for Cook's Illustrated magazine.

Early in 2001, with plans to launch the America's Test Kitchen television show, we realized there just wasn't enough room in our small kitchen to produce a TV show and a magazine. So we expanded. Then, in 2003, with the show, the magazine, and a full-fledged book-publishing program under way, we expanded again. We also realized we needed a soundproof space to prepare recipes while an episode of the television show was being filmed. So we added a second, smaller soundproof kitchen. Now, in 2008, with Fisher & Paykel as our new underwriters, we’ve grown once more, adding DCS appliances throughout the kitchen and giving the on-set kitchen area a facelift.

Today our test kitchen staff consists of 33 professional cooks who develop and test recipes for our TV shows, our books, Cook's Illustrated, Cook's Country, and our special annual issues such as Holiday Baking and American Classics.

Here are some facts about our kitchen complex: