Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies

Adjust

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Just barely melt the butter. It shouldn't be hot, but it should be almost entirely in liquid form.
2. Beat the butter with the sugars until creamy. Add the vanilla and the egg; beat on low speed until just incorporated.
3. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix until crumbles form. Use your hands to press the crumbles together into a dough. It should form one large ball that is easy to handle (right at the stage between "wet" dough and "dry" dough). Add the chocolate chips and incorporate with your hands.
4. Roll the dough into 12 large balls (or 9 for HUGELY awesome cookies) and place on a cookie sheet. Bake for 9-11 minutes until the cookies look puffy and dry and just barely golden.
5. Cool for 30 minutes.

Notes

• The 3 most important things about this recipe are 1) melting the butter, 2) adding enough flour, and 3) not baking for too long.
• If you find that the dough is wet and it REALLY sticks to your hands, you probably need a little more flour. This is important otherwise you'll have flat cookies. I'll usually add a few tablespoons at a time to get it to the right consistency. See video in post for reference. You should be able to roll the balls of dough between your hands without any issues.
• One of the keys to achieving the perfect cookie is to ensure the correct amount of flour is used. Ideally, the flour should be weighed. In testing, we found that 6.75 ounces of flour was the correct amount. Without a food scale, don't pack the flour into measuring cups and always level the flour off.