Indholdsfortegnelse for November - December 2016 i Cook's Illustrated

Teas Made from the cured leaves of the Camellia sinensisshrub, teas arecategorized based on how they are processed. Oxidation determinesthe color of tea; in general, the more processing, the stronger theflavor. White teas like SILVER NEEDLE are made from young leavesthat are minimally processed, giving them delicate character. SENCHAand JASMINE PEARLS are grassy green teas that are heated beforethey are dried and rolled. MATCHA, a green tea powder, is whiskedwhen brewed to make a frothy beverage. GENMAICHA is green teablended with toasted and popped rice, giving it roasted notes. JADEOOLONG is lightly bruised to produce partial oxidation, giving it abalanced flavor. ENGLISH BREAKFAST and EARL GREY are full-bodiedblack teas; the latter is blended with bergamot orange oil. Madefrom fermented leaves, PU-ERH yields a strong, smoky brew. MASALACHAI, a blend of…

An idyllic roast turkey isn’t hardto envision: Picture crispy,well-browned skin and moist,juicy, well-seasoned meat.And don’t forget a lightly thickened,full-flavored gravy. But alas, the perfectbird is not easy to come by. Crispy skin iselusive, and an ever-present hurdle whenroasting whole poultry is that while thedark meat needs to reach 175 degrees,the delicate breast meat will dry out if it’scooked beyond 160 degrees. The gravyis easier to get right, but it takes aboutan hour of simmering to produce rich,well-rounded flavor. Over the years, we’ve jumped throughall kinds of hoops to try to get both thedark and white meat properly cooked:separating the breast from the leg quartersand roasting them individually, butterflyingthe turkey so it lies flat, flipping the hot turkeyover partway through roasting (usingwadded-up paper towels as hand protection),and even icing down the…

I have long been a fan of cooking in cast iron. So when I set out to develop a recipe for a great steak— one with a perfectly seared exterior and an interior that was evenly cooked from edge to edge—of course I turned to my great-grandmother’s well-worn Wagner cast-iron skillet. After an initial round of testing, though, I had found out a little secret: Despite cast iron’s many virtues, you can’t just plunk a steak into the pan and expect success. The recipes that I tried produced varied results, but none of them were encouraging. There were steaks with burnt exteriors and raw interiors and steaks with pale exteriors and overcooked interiors, and the browning was uneven across the board. I decided to take a step back and investigate…

WHAT IS CHOCOLATE, ANYWAY? The base of all processed chocolate is chocolate liquor, a dark paste produced from grinding the nibs extracted from dried, fermented, roasted cacao beans. In its natural state, chocolate liquor is about 55 percent cocoa butter, which gives chocolate its unique texture. The remaining 45 percent is the cocoa solids responsible for chocolate’s flavor. The cocoa butter and cocoa solids in chocolate liquor may be separated and recombined in different ratios; together, they make up the cacao percentage in a processed chocolate. SHOPPING Brand really matters with chocolate. In tastings we found that nearly half (or even more) of the products in our lineup weren’t up to par, no matter the type of chocolate. So for best results, stick with our winners. BITTERSWEET/SEMISWEET CHOCOLATE WHAT IT…

I once pulled out all the stops to make an entirely authentic version of pad thai, and the result was a real stunner: tender rice noodles entwined in a sweet, sour, salty sauce and stir-fried with garlic, shallot, sweet shrimp, soft curds of scrambled egg, and nuggets of tofu. Chopped dried shrimp and pungent preserved daikon radish contributed intense flavor and chewy, crunchy textures that made me think I’d been transported to Bangkok. Chopped roasted peanuts, crisp bean sprouts, and garlic chives scattered over the top ensured that every bite was as exciting as the next. My only quibbles? After all that work, the recipe yielded only two servings. Also, although it was incredibly satisfying to eat, my homemade pad thai had required a lot of forethought. Sourcing ingredients like…

BAKING We baked a jelly roll cake and cookies in each sheet, giving higher scores for appropriately light golden-brown baked goods that baked evenly across the entirety of the cooking surface. ROASTING We preheated the sheets and roasted parsnips and chicken thighs on them, observing how evenly foods cooked across the entirety of the cooking surface. Those that browned and cooked foods evenly scored the highest. WARPING We preferred sheets that withstood high-heat ovens and rapid temperature changes with minimal warping. HANDLING To test comfort and ease of use, we fitted each sheet with a wire rack, prepared a mock roast (placing a 5-pound bag of flour atop the rack and ½ cup of water underneath it), and did a lap around the test kitchen. The best sheets felt comfortable…

Tasting Whole-Milk Ricotta A good ricotta should be both creamy and dense, with a fresh dairy flavor that adds richness to dishes like lasagna, cannoli, and cheesecake. To find the best supermarket whole-milk ricotta, we scooped up four contenders and had our tasting panel sample them plain and in baked manicotti. In the plain tasting, tasters lauded the three creamy, smooth cheeses and panned the lone “granular” product. Our two top scorers were cheeses with a mild sweetness, which we preferred to those with tang. In manicotti, the grainy ricotta that stood out in the plain tasting once again received low marks In Italy, ricotta is made with whey (a byproduct of cheese making), which is heated with a small amount of acid to form curds and then drained. Ideally,…

In the early 1980s, Parisian chef Joël Robuchon turned mashed potatoes into an utterly sublime experience by employing two hallmarks of French cooking: tireless attention to detail and a whole lot of butter. His method: Boil 2 pounds of whole unpeeled potatoes and then peel them while hot before passing them through a food mill. Next, incorporate a full pound of cold butter, 1 tablespoon at a time, by beating vigorously with a wooden spoon—a 10-minute, arm-numbing process. Finally, thin the puree with warm milk and pass it repeatedly through a tamis (a flat, drum-shaped ultrafine sieve). Robuchon’s painstaking efforts produced the ultimate example of pommes purée, ethereally smooth and laden with butter. While I love Robuchon’s recipe, the scandalous fat content and the drudgery of sieving make it unrealistic…

The frittata is sometimes called a lazy cook’s omelet. After all, it contains the same ingredients but doesn’t require folding the eggs around the filling, a skill that takes practice to master. But it’s not just the fold that distinguishes the two. Frittatas sport a golden-brown exterior, whereas any browning on a French-style omelet is a sign of poor technique. Also, an omelet should be custardy and just set, whereas a frittata must be firm enough to hold a filling in place. But even the practical frittata requires a little know-how, lest the bottom turn rubbery or the center end up loose and wet. I wanted to uncover the keys to a tender, evenly cooked, cohesive frittata. I also wanted it to be big and hearty enough to serve at…

A cup of pureed butternut squash soup is fine as a dinner starter or as a side to a sandwich. But this winter I wanted a heartier soup that I could enjoy as a stand-alone meal. I’ve seen a few versions that pair chunks of squash with creamy cannellini beans, which sounded like just what I was after. I sautéed sliced leeks, added diced squash and chicken broth, simmered it all for 10 minutes, added the beans, and simmered a little longer to warm them through. I wanted simple, but this was too simple, as the soup was thin in taste and texture. Furthermore, the squash had cooked unevenly. There was one clear reason for the uneven cooking: It’s easy to evenly dice the neck of a butternut squash but…

In the world of pastries, apple strudel seems unassuming. It’s not over-thetop buttery or sweet. It’s not loaded with a rich filling. Yet its marriage of flaky pastry and just-sweet-enough raisin-studded apples is perfect: ideal for dessert, with afternoon coffee, or even for breakfast. No wonder it’s an everyday favorite all over central Europe. And yet making strudel, at least the traditional way, is not at all simple. To create the swirl of delicate pastry that defines it (strudel means “whirlpool” or “eddy” in German), you start by stretching a piece of dough the size of a brick until it measures well over 4 feet long and 4 feet wide and is so thin you can read a newspaper through it. You brush it with butter and then pile a…

WHAT IS IT? A cross between a waffle maker and a panini press, this electric gadget known as the Sunbeam Party Grill was popular in the 1960s and was used to make hot snacks for cocktail parties or treats for the kids. Lift the lid and spoon batter into the 12 small nonstick cups to make mini muffin–type treats, or make filled snacks by laying down one square of bread, topping it with a dollop of filling, and then topping that with another piece of bread and closing the lid to cook. We put the grill through its paces using recipes from the original manual. All three items we made—muffin-like Chocolate Chippers, Stuffed Quick Pizzas, and Peanut Butter and Chocolate Bites—were big hits with tasters (especially the peanut butter bites,…

A Stand-In for Pie Weights When prebaking 9-inch tart shells,instead of covering the dough withfoil and weighing it down with pieweights after trimming the dough,Jaime Pedraza of Minneapolis, Minn.,puts an 8- to 8½-inch-diameter potlid on top of the foil. It’s effectiveat preventing the pastry from puffingup as it bakes, and it is eveneasier to put in place and removethan weights are. Homemade MakeshiftApron Not having an apron handy, LyndaCrowley of Kill Devil Hills, N.C.,fashioned one with a few items inher kitchen: a large dish towel, twoclothespins, and two long pieces ofkitchen twine—one for around herneck and one to fasten at her waist. Skinning Hazelnuts with aGood Shake Rather than dirty a clean dishtowel to rub the skins from toastedhazelnuts, Ashley Butkovic ofSeattle, Wash., has found that shecan remove the skins…

Italy’s porchetta—fall-apart tender, rich pieces of slow-cooked pork, aromatic with garlic, fennel seeds, rosemary, and thyme and served with pieces of crisp skin on a crusty roll—is one of the world’s greatest street foods. Traditionally a whole pig is boned and the meat is rubbed with an herb-spice paste. The pig is then tied around a spit and allowed to sit overnight. The next day, it’s slow-roasted over a wood fire until the meat is ultratender and the skin is burnished and crackling-crisp. Recently, porchetta came to mind as I pondered my holiday roast options. It may sound strange, given that a sandwich doesn’t offer much in the way of presentation, but it’s such a knockout for flavor that I had to wonder: Could I make a few tweaks to…

I’ll concede that millionaire’s shortbread is a corny name, but it fits this impressively rich British cookie/confectionery hybrid: a crunchy, buttery shortbread base topped with a chewy, caramel-like layer, which is in turn topped with a thin layer of shiny, snappy chocolate. It’s an indulgent combination of textures and flavors, all stacked in a sleek package. I ate a lot of it when I lived in the United Kingdom, and since it has a good shelf life (more than a week), I figured it would make an ideal holiday gift. But after giving a few recipes a try, I realized that a gift-worthy recipe wasn’t going to just come to me wrapped neatly with a bow. The shortbread base in most recipes was easy enough in terms of composition—just flour,…

My go-to cooking method for root vegetables has always been to roast them in a hot oven until they are caramelized and tender. This year, though, I wanted to come up with something more elegant and interesting that would leave the oven free to cook the holiday roast. Braising— cooking food in a small amount of flavorful liquid that then serves as a sauce—seemed promising. But I wanted to avoid recipes that left the vegetables swimming in bland, soupy liquid or, alternatively, cooked down the sauce to the point that it was a glaze. I wanted my braised vegetables to be napped in a generous amount of rich, flavorful sauce with appealing body. Carrots possess a sweetness that plays well with a range of flavors—plus, they offer an appealing bright…

Rimmed baking sheets, also called half-sheet pans, are true workhorses in the test kitchen. We have stacks of them that we use every day for obvious tasks like baking cookies or roasting oven fries or root vegetables. But we also use them for baking chicken or fish, toasting nuts and seeds, roasting vegetables such as green beans and asparagus, and baking jelly roll cakes. More unusually, we use baking sheets for sorting dried beans or spreading out cooked rice or pasta to cool before making salads. In a pinch, an inverted baking sheet can even stand in for a pizza peel or baking stone. And that’s just the start. Slipping a wire cooling rack inside (to elevate food for increased air circulation and also to contain mess) makes these pans…

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED PYREX Easy Grab 3-Quart Oblong Baking Dish MODEL: 1085782 PRICE: $7.29 RECOMMENDED CUISIPRO Fat Separator MODEL: 747301 PRICE: $33.95 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED LIBERTYWARE Half Size Sheet Pan Cooling Rack MODEL: GRA4 PRICE: $15.99 for set of two RECOMMENDED TOVOLO Stainless Steel 4-in-1 Cocktail Shaker MODEL: n/a PRICE: $8.99 RECOMMENDED DESIGN TRIFECTA 360 Knife Block MODEL: HB360 002 PRICE: $248.64 Glass Baking Dishes Three-quart, or 13 by 9-inch, glass baking dishes are ideal for bringing lasagnas, casseroles, cobblers, and crumbles straight from the oven to the table. And because they’re transparent, it’s easy to monitor browning. You can’t broil in them, but these inexpensive pans are dishwasher-, microwave-, oven-, and freezer-safe. So does it matter which dish you buy? To find out, we tested five baking dishes priced from $7.29…