Indholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2025 i Cook's Illustrated

About a decade ago, I was hanging out in the test kitchen when I saw one of my fellow test cooks whisking together a pan sauce. Except she wasn’t whisking the way that I do it, by moving the whisk back and forth; she was looping the ball of the whisk around the interior of the bowl the way one might stir with a spoon. Soon I was asking other test cooks to show me their whisking techniques, and I discovered a surprising amount of variation. Some looped the whisk out of the bowl with dramatic flair. Others made a figure eight with the tines at the bottom of the bowl. Naturally, I started to wonder if there’s a best way to use a whisk and, as I have a…

Side by side in the test kitchen, Cyroos Rahravan and I methodically washed, dried, and picked our way through heaps of fresh parsley, cilantro, and dill while he told me about Nowruz. The word means “new day” in Farsi (its spelling and pronunciation can vary), and the 3,000-year-old cultural holiday to which it refers, also known as Persian New Year, marks the first day of spring. “Everybody’s waiting for that hour, that minute,” said Rahravan about the vernal equinox, the point at which the sun is equally aligned over the northern and southern hemispheres, kicking off the holiday like nature’s own New Year’s Eve ball drop. “Now, it’s Nowruz,” he said. “Now it’s spring.” Rahravan, who is from Tehran and is the father of my test kitchen colleague Emily Rahravan,…

Baked nachos are great for a few servings, but a nacho bar–style spread of chips and toppings is ideal if you’re feeding a crowd or looking for a make-ahead option. The spread looks festive, guests can customize their own portions, and the nacho cheese sauce can be made ahead and kept warm in a slow cooker. We consider the following components iconic for nachos, but they’re just a start. The key is to mix up flavors, textures, temperatures, and colors. For example, pick a protein, a tangy pickle, raw and cooked vegetables, a salsa, and something cool and creamy like guacamole and/or sour cream. NACHOS FOR A PARTY—OR DINNER The following recipes should serve 8 to 12 as part of a spread but can easily be scaled. THE “ORIGINAL” RECIPE…

In spring, asparagus is always lovely—but mimosa is a particularly stunning preparation. To make the classic French salad, you steam or boil bunches of the verdant spears, cool them, and then bathe them in an herb-heavy vinaigrette. The asparagus is arranged meticulously on a platter and then showered with the titular mimosa which, at its most basic, is simply chopped hard-boiled eggs (the word “mimosa” refers to the bright yellow yolks, which recall the hue of mimosa flowers). Vivid and fresh, asparagus mimosa makes an elegant first course but also works admirably as a side dish to a larger meal. I boiled the spears for a mere 3 minutes before plunging them into an ice bath to arrest the cooking. When I plucked them from the ice bath, crisp-tender and…

Panini Presses You may not need a panini press—a clamshell-shaped appliance that closes around foods to cook them, typically adding grill marks—but a good one makes toasting sandwiches and grilling indoors simple. Some can even double as a skillet, grill pan, griddle, and waffle maker. We tested presses priced from about $20 to about $300. Our winner, the Breville Sear & Press Grill (model BGR700BSS1BUS1), browned food deeply when used as a panini press, grill, and griddle, with user-friendly controls. Its ceramic nonstick plates flip to offer ridged or flat cooking surfaces (waffle plates sold separately) and pop out for cleaning. At a fraction of its price, our Best Buy, the Proctor Silex Panini i Press Sandwich Maker and Electric Indoor Grill (model 25440PS), didn’t open flat or have removable…

Suffering from dinnertime fatigue? Consider chicken drumsticks. They may be unpretentious, but drumsticks outperform their poultry peers on almost every level. Not only do legs have built-in handles to help you devour every meaty morsel but, unlike most other parts of the chicken, they’re also encased in skin that can be rendered paper-thin and golden brown, an edible wrapper to the gift of succulent, tender meat inside. Drumsticks are easy on the cook too: They don’t require trimming, and there is leeway in the cooking time since the collagen-rich, unctuous dark meat doesn’t easily dry out. Then there’s economics: Drumsticks are easily the least expensive part of the bird. With so much to love, I hatched a plan: Create a feast of juicy drumsticks—their skin thin, lightly crisp, and coated…

My umma (mom), Nam Soon Ahn, starts her day in the kitchen promptly at 5:00 a.m. She moves about briskly in her worn-out house slippers, meticulously preparing Appa’s (Dad’s) breakfast and lunch before he heads off to work, followed by food we’ll eat for dinner and other meals in the weeks to come. Depending on the day, there might be kimchi to replenish, jeon (savory pancakes) to fry, or pork to braise, and the kitchen fills with a steady hum of utensils clanging against pots and pops and sputters of meats and sauces sizzling on the stove. I’ve had a front-row seat to this ritual for as long as I can remember—exposure that has become increasingly deliberate on my part as I’ve gotten older. Living in America, I’ve come to…

When Helene An first paired noodles with garlic and butter, she was only trying to help her family get by. It was the 1970s: The first large-scale wave of refugees was just starting to enter the United States from communist-held Vietnam, and only a handful of Vietnamese restaurants dotted the country. Thanh Long, her family’s San Francisco restaurant that served burgers and club sandwiches alongside ch giò (fried spring rolls) and roast Dungeness crab, was one of them, and it wasn’t profitable. What everyone around her really loved to eat, An noticed, was pasta, so she cobbled together a noodle dish that combined elements from the Vietnamese, Chinese, and French cooking she’d grown up with. “I combined [food from] three of the best countries to create my own cuisine,” An…

What do you call it when two iconic street foods from different parts of the world collide? In the case of tacos árabes—a coupling of Arabic shawarma and Mexican tacos—you might say it’s culinary kismet. The distinctive tacos sure taste as if they were meant to be. They start out impressively, with heaps of pork butt marinated in lime juice and Levantine spices and cooked on a sizable vertical spit called a trompo. The finished meat, at once succulent and charred, is carved from the rotisserie and tucked inside a yeasted flatbread called pan árabe. Then come the garnishes: drizzles of smoky-fiery chipotle sauce; a cooling salve of yogurt sauce; and onions, cilantro, and lime. Paulette Schuster, PhD, author and scholar of food and identity, described the tacos as “a…

BARBECUE SPICE–ROASTED CHICKEN DRUMSTICKS WITH WHITE BARBECUE SAUCE SERVES 4 TO 6 TOTAL TIME: 1¾ HOURS White Barbecue Sauce ¾ cup mayonnaise2 tablespoons cider vinegar2 teaspoons granulated sugar½ teaspoon prepared horseradish½ teaspoon kosher salt½ teaspoon pepper¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper Chicken 1 tablespoon kosher salt1¼ teaspoons packed brown sugar1¼ teaspoons pepper1¼ teaspoons ground coriander1¼ teaspoons ground cumin1¼ teaspoons garlic powder1¼ teaspoons onion powder½ teaspoon smoked paprika⅛–¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon warm tap water2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil2½ pounds chicken drumsticks 1. FOR THE SAUCE: Whisk all ingredients in bowl until smooth. Refrigerate until needed. (Sauce can be refrigerated for up to 2 days.) 2. FOR THE CHICKEN: Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Line rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil…

Aluminum foil is a staple in many kitchens, including our test kitchen. One brand name is dominant in the foil market: Reynolds. It makes up over 50 percent of the market share of aluminum foil, according to Circana, a Chicago-based market research firm. Private-label foil makes up another 40 percent of the market. We tested products from Reynolds, eco-friendly products from another national brand called If You Care, and popular private-label options from Costco, Target, and Whole Foods Market. Does a name brand make a difference, or is saving a few bucks on the store brand the way to go? How We Use Aluminum Foil Aluminum foil is handy for wrapping foods for storage and for keeping them fresh, from a leftover slice of pizza or half an avocado to…

Is It Better to Tear or Cut Lettuce? Cooks have long been warned that cutting lettuce with a knife should be avoided; instead, the recommendation is to tear your greens. Cutting, the theory goes, does more damage to cell walls and thus leads to more enzymatic browning, which is created when ruptured cell walls release enzymes that trigger polyphenols to combine and form brownish pigment. Because tearing encourages the lettuce to cleave along cell walls instead of across them, the damage is supposedly less. To see for ourselves, we gathered four different types of lettuce: iceberg, butterhead, romaine, and escarole. We tore half of each head into 2-inch pieces and cut the other half into similar-size pieces. We stored the leaves in partially open zipper-lock bags, placed them in the…

One of Turkey’s iconic food traditions is serpme kahvalti, a colorful, multivarious spread of small breakfast plates. Many of the components—such as homemade JAM (often strawberry, apricot, or sour cherry) or a swirled plate of TAHINI AND GRAPE MOLASSES—are meant to accompany bites of SIMIT, twisted bread rings coated in sesame seeds. KAYMAK, which is similar to clotted cream, is also a spread for breads, usually paired with honey. A simple cheese platter might include buttery slices of KASSERI; tangy, brined BEYAZ PEYNIR; creamy, scoopable LOR; or a lacy wedge of KARS GRAVYER. EGGS might be sunny-side up and served with SUCUK (a spiced sausage) or scrambled in MENEMEN with diced tomatoes, peppers, warm spices, and sometimes crumbled cheese. Some spreads include savory pastries such as PO AÇA (an enriched…