J. Kenji López-Alt Baked 15,000 Choc Chip Cookies to Give You the Perfect Guide

If you’re a foodie fan and you’re not yet familiar with the name J. Kenji López-Alt, this is your nudge to get to know the chef. The food writer and chef is responsible for some of the New York Times’ most popular recipes; he often shares tips on how to nail simple tasks (like fried eggs), and he has managed to master the perfect choc-chip cookie recipe, too.

In a recent post to Instagram, López-Alt shared that he “baked nearly 1,500 cookies while developing” his recipe for choc chip cookies. The recipe is so well-loved, in fact, that they’re broadly known as ‘Kenji cookies’ he shared.

All this time and work was invested into developing a recipe for chocolate chip cookies that are exactly the way López-Alt likes them.

That recipe is available for free on Serious Eats. And in it, the food writer shared that his intention was to achieve the following:

“…chocolate chip cookies that are barely crisp around the edges with a buttery, toffee-like crunch that transitions into a chewy, moist center (sic) that bends like caramel, rich with butter and big pockets of melted chocolate. Cookies with crackly, craggy tops and the complex aroma of butterscotch. And, of course, that elusive perfect balance between sweet and salty.”

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4 things that make the perfect choc chip cookie

As a part of López-Alt’s recipe, he shared four points that make this choc chip cookie recipe stand out from the rest. Those are:

• Browning the butter gives the cookies a more intensely nutty, butterscotch flavour.
• Chopping the chocolate by hand creates large and small pieces for more textural and flavour contrast.
• An overnight rest allows enzymes to break down large carbohydrates, enhancing the caramelization and browning process the next day to help the cookies develop deeper flavour.
• Tearing apart and recombining the dough makes a rougher surface for craggier cookies.

The recipe, which you can read in full here, calls for 30 hours of rest time. And according to López-Alt, this extended resting period makes the caramelisation and browning process the next day, not to mention the flavour, that much better.

Anyway. If you decide to give the Kenji choc chip cookie recipe a whirl, let us know in the comments how you find it! We’re certainly keen to taste these perfect mouthfuls of sweet and salty.