Part II: Tackling Recipes —Learn our tips for testing new recipes for future issues and how these tried-and-true steps can benefit anyone venturing to cook something new.

When our eclectic shopping trips are over, we head back to the kitchen to begin the process of recipe testing. We obtain recipes from all over the world, sometimes more than a year in advance of their appearing in the pages of SAVEUR. Some come directly from the writer of an article, others are based on the recipes of professional chefs, a few are borrowed from cookbooks, old and new, that we love, and a handful are developed right here in our test kitchen.

Cooking from untested recipes requires an ample dose of curiosity, with a little healthy skepticism thrown in. Listening to your instincts and learning when to deviate from a recipe and when to remain loyal to the original are often the toughest parts of the job. Many recipes that come to SAVEUR are being written down for the first time, and it's inevitable that details sometimes get left out.

Whether the recipes we test come from Vietnam, Venezuela, or Virginia, our goal at SAVEUR is to present readers with the most authentic rendition of a dish. Finding the middle ground between the original recipe and a version that works at home may be a challenge, but, in the end, we love recipes—reading them, tweaking them, inventing them, and testing them; after all, they're our bread and butter.

Here are a few hard-won recipe tips from the SAVEUR test kitchen.