When you spend your days obsessively testing recipes—sometimes 40, 50, even 100 times!—without regard to conventional thinking about what works and what doesn't, there are bound to be some surprises. The test kitchen has made hundreds of discoveries in the last 20 years as we developed foolproof recipes for the best tasting food. A handful of them have affected not just how we make an individual recipe, but how we cook in general.

Now we've collected 30 of our most surprising discoveries into one very special issue—Revolutionary Recipes. These are test kitchen innovations that have changed the culinary world, along with 64 all-time-best recipes (33 master recipes and 31 recipe variations) for favorite foods like crusty grilled steak, crispy roast potatoes, weeknight roast chicken, moist and tender brined roast turkey, foolproof pie dough, perfectly scrambled eggs, and fluffy yellow layer cake.

Succeed the first time you make each of these recipes, and then integrate the winning preparation techniques into your cooking going forward. You won't be disappointed. We also include our picks for best tasting ingredients and kitchen gear that outperformed competitors in kitchen tests.

Recipes, and discoveries, include:

• Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies(browning the butter before adding it to the batter keeps the cookies chewy and adds a nutty flavor)
• Almost No-Knead Bread (beer is the key to practically hands-off homemade bread)
• Simple Italian-Style Meat Sauce (a paste of bread and milk called a panade mixed into the meat before cooking keeps it tender and moist)
• Thick-Cut Pork Chops (roast the chops first in a low oven, and then sear to create a crisp crust)
• Garlic Mashed Potatoes (boil the potatoes with the skins on, and toast, don't roast, the garlic)