Katie Drsoptig

Katie Drsoptig is Sugar Press's Culinary Technique and Food Science Editor. Her interest in cooking started less with recipes and more with questions: why does searing brown meat, why does an egg white whip into foam, why does a marinade only penetrate so far. Those questions eventually turned into a career spent explaining the mechanics behind everyday cooking.

Katie's approach treats every technique as a small experiment. Before she writes about a method, she tests it several times, adjusting one variable at a time, timing, temperature, ratio, until she can explain exactly what is happening and why. She is less interested in trends than in fundamentals: the handful of techniques that, once understood, make almost any recipe easier to execute with confidence.

At Sugar Press, Katie anchors the Techniques category, covering everything from braising and brining to knife skills and blanching, always across cuisines rather than any single culinary tradition. She works closely with Wayan and Benjamin to make sure a technique explained in one article connects naturally to a gear recommendation or a meal plan elsewhere on the site.

When she is not testing a technique for an upcoming article, Katie can usually be found rereading old food science references, taking notes in the margins, or attempting to talk anyone nearby into a debate about the right internal temperature for chicken thighs. Her goal for every reader is simple: fewer guesses in the kitchen, and more control.

Posts by Katie Drsoptig