Innehållsförteckning för July - August 2015 från Cook's Illustrated

The world is full of bucket lists—all sorts of wonderful things to do before shucking off the mortal coil. And one has all sorts of other “to do” lists as well: Ten things to do in Rome. Five books to read on vacation. Twenty classic movies in black and white. All of this presupposes that life is about inclusion, not exclusion. That a sufficient number of items checked off the list ensures the good life because life is a function of what one has done, not what one has not done. I beg to differ. One really bad decision—say, deep-frying a frozen turkey—can become your last act of free will. (I know since a friend of mine’s uncle actually died from the aforesaid culinary challenge.) Or how about scuba diving…

While it’s hard to beat the smoky char of a grilled thick-cut steak, I have to admit that since I started using the test kitchen method for pan-searing steaks, the indoor version more often approaches perfection. Our pan-searing technique calls for first baking a thick steak in a low oven and then searing it in a smoking-hot preheated skillet. The initial baking not only evenly cooks the meat but also dries and warms the steak’s surface, resulting in lightningfast searing—just a minute or so per side. The result of this approach is the platonic ideal of a steak: a crisp, well-browned crust and medium-rare meat from edge to edge. The time is so fast that, unlike with most methods, only a sliver of meat below the crust overcooks and loses…

Because the bran is removed from each grain during processing, white rice is mostly unprotected starch. Agitation and jostling during cooking will cause that starch to release and make the rice gummy—which is why it’s best cooked using the gentle absorption method (i.e., simmering the rice in a set amount of liquid). But grains of brown rice still possess their bran, which means they can handle more aggressive cooking. With that in mind, we opt to cook brown rice like pasta, boiling it in plenty of water. The advantage? It cuts down the cooking time, and here’s why. First, boiling water gets hotter than the water in the absorption method—212 degrees versus around 204 degrees—so cooking is faster. Second, the more water in the pot, the more energy there is…

When I have a surplus of summer fruit and not much time to make dessert, I usually throw together a crisp or cobbler—easy, satisfying, and crowd-pleasing. But I’ve often admired France’s answer to those simple desserts: clafouti, a rustic yet graceful baked custard that is studded with fresh fruit such as apricots, plums, or—most classic and my favorite—cherries. To make it, you mix up a batter without any chemical leaveners (similar to that used for crêpes) using flour, sugar, eggs, milk and/or heavy cream, and a touch of vanilla or almond extract; pour it into a buttered baking dish; scatter the cherries (usually unpitted) on top; and bake it for the better part of half an hour. When finished, the custard should be rich and tender but resilient enough to…

I’m always surprised that more people don’t grill whole fish. The grill infuses fish with smoky flavor, while the intense heat crisps the skin beautifully, lending contrast to the moist flesh beneath. And because the skin acts as a buffer during cooking, it helps ensure that the interior cooks through gently. The skin also keeps the delicate flesh contained, making a whole fish easier to handle than fillets. So why don’t more people grill them? One reason might be that the idea of cleaning and scaling whole fish sounds like a chore; plus, they need to be boned at the table or before serving. But there’s an easy answer to those obstacles: Choose whole trout. Not only are whole trout almost always sold cleaned and scaled, but their backbones and…

If you’ve never roasted tomatoes, you should. It’s a largely hands-off technique that yields the ultimate condiment: bright, concentrated tomatoes that are soft but retain their shape. They can be used right away or frozen, and they perk up just about any dish—from sandwiches and crostini to pastas and salads. And yet I rarely roast tomatoes because most recipes take hours, which is no fun on a hot day. Faster recipes yield pulpy, bland results— an unappealing phase between raw and roasted. I wanted bright-tasting, soft-but-intact tomatoes in less time. I started with larger round tomatoes, which boast a higher ratio of the flavorful “jelly” to skin than do the denser plum variety, and a lower ratio of chewy skin than smaller cherry or grape tomatoes. And since the main…

Our two favorite sharpeners from Chef ’sChoice, one manual and one electric, are both fitted with strong, durable diamond abrasives that produce sharp, smooth edges. They’re also dead easy to use. Which one you pick depends on your needs and your budget. High Sides Tall walls hold the knife steady so that the user can draw the blade through the chamber with even pressure. Compact Design The slim body easily stows in a drawer, making it more convenient for routine upkeep. Supportive Chambers Spring-loaded guides restrict the knife’s movement so that the entire edge makes steady contact with the abrasive at a precise angle. Angle Conversion Slot The aggressive first slot can quickly repair extensive damage and narrow a 20-degree Western knife to a sharper 15-degree edge.…

Inexpensive supermarket balsamic is best for everyday use, while costly traditional vinegar should be reserved for drizzling on berries, steaks, or a good cheese. But there’s another category of balsamic vinegar, sold in specialty shops and some supermarkets, that falls between the two. Many of these vinegars hold themselves to a higher standard, including adding less wine vinegar and aging longer. We bought three bottles of these midrange balsamics (La Vecchia Dispensa Organic Condiment, San Giacomo Essenza Riserve Balsamic, and Oliviers & Co. Velluto Balsamic Condiment), priced between $4 and $10 per ounce, recommended by a local gourmet shop. We tried them plain, drizzled on berries, and in vinaigrette. Straight out of the bottle we noticed that they had a syrupy consistency closer to that of traditional vinegar, and when…

WHAT IS IT? When food was first put into tin cans in the early and mid-1800s, home cooks opened them up with whatever tool they had on hand, such as a chisel or even a hammer. It wasn’t until the 1850s that the first can-opening tool was invented, and in 1892 this “Never Slip” opener was patented. The tool features a curved blade with a sharp tip and a notched rest. To use it, you punch a hole in the can with the sharp tip, insert the blade, and pump up and down to cut around the can. The notched rest sits on the can’s lip for a secure grip. Punching the initial hole required some force, and it took more effort to work our way around large cans of…

Whipped Cream in Seconds Rather than haul out her stand mixer to whip cream, Julie Lacouture of Los Angeles, Calif., uses her immersion blender. 1. Fill the tall canister that comes with the blender (a wide-mouth quart-size Mason jar also works well) with enough cream to submerge the head of the blender, keeping in mind that the cream will roughly double in volume. 2. With the motor running, move the head up and down through the cream to pull in air. The cream should whip in about 20 seconds. Stacking Pots with Lids Sheila Shapiro of West Tisbury, Mass., doesn’t have much room to store her lidded pots but has found an easy way to maximize her cabinet space. By upturning the lids on her pots, she can stack them…

I’ve always liked the nutty flavor and slightly rustic texture of wholewheat flour, so I’m glad to see it being added to everything from muffins to pizza crusts. But where, I wondered, were all the pancake recipes? A pancake would be a perfect place to swap whole-wheat flour for white flour because its robust flavor would be an ideal foil for the caramel-y sweetness of maple syrup— and the health benefits of eating whole grains don’t hurt either. Pancake recipes that feature a portion of whole-wheat flour do exist, of course, but those that call for 100 percent whole-wheat flour are surprisingly rare. Most cut the whole-wheat flour with an equal amount of white flour, while others call for grains like oats or buckwheat. Many recipes also call for fruit…

Most of us have used a chimney starter only for lighting coals and getting them good and hot before we pour them into the grill. But the coals are actually at their hottest in the chimney—not in the grill, where airflow is far more restricted. So why not leave the coals in the chimney and cook over that? Sure enough, this setup produced a deeply browned sear in just 1 minute per side. Here’s how it works. CHIMNEY DESIGN The cylindrical shape concentrates the heat. The open ends maximize airflow, keeping the fire burning intensely. A 7½-inch diameter is ideal for two steaks. SKEWERS We use 12-inch metal skewers to suspend the steak across the chimney. STEAK We remove the fat cap and divide a strip steak in half. We…

I’ve always enjoyed the pairing of rich, salty pork and bright, sweet fruit—think pork chops and applesauce or prosciutto draped around cantaloupe. So naturally I’m intrigued by the Italian combination of pork sausage links with grapes and balsamic vinegar, a humble dish that originated in Umbria as a quick meal for vineyard laborers. Rich, juicy, and well browned, the sausages are a great match for the tangy-sweet vinegar-based sauce with grapes that soften and caramelize in the pan. Take into account that this dish can be on the table in less than 30 minutes and it’s no wonder it became an Italian classic. But like most preparations based on just a couple of simple components, the fewer the ingredients, the more important the technique. I tried recipes that failed at…

When cooking on the stovetop or grill, if you try to flip a piece of protein—whether fish, chicken, pork, or beef—too soon, the skin or the outer layer of meat will stick (or worse, with delicate fish, flake apart into shreds). But wait long enough and, as soon as the exterior browns, the protein releases from the pan. Why does this happen? The food sticks because cysteine, an amino acid in the protein molecules, contains a sulfur atom that will bond at low temperatures with iron atoms that are present in the pan or the bars of a grill grate. High heat will break these bonds, but getting your pan or grill ripping hot isn’t enough—as soon as you put the food down, the temperature of the cooking surface will…

When a recession hit Israel in the early 1950s, rice—a kitchen staple— became scarce. In response, prime minister David Ben-Gurion called on food manufacturers to develop a wheat-based alternative. The result was the dense, pasta-like spheres called ptitim or, outside Israel, Israeli couscous. Like tiny, granular North African couscous, the Israeli kind is made from semolina flour, but the latter boasts smooth, tapioca-size spheres and a pleasant chew. The little balls are produced in the same way that Italian pasta is made: by forcing dough through an extruding machine. But unlike most pasta, which is air-dried, Israeli couscous is traditionally dried over a flame, giving it toasty, rich flavor. That flavor, plus its springy, toothsome texture, makes Israeli couscous a fresh choice for pasta salad, offering an alternative to customary…

We tested nine knife sharpeners, four electric and five manual. Models are listed in order of preference. All were purchased online. ROUTINE SHARPENING We bought new copies of our winning chef ’s knife, the Victorinox 8" Swiss Army Fibrox, and assigned one to each sharpener. We dulled them identically and sharpened each according to manufacturer instructions. To rate their sharpness, we slashed sheets of paper and sliced tomatoes and then repeated the dulling, sharpening, and slicing process four more times with different testers. Those that made clean cuts without crumpling the paper or damaging the fruit rated highest. NOTCH REMOVAL We filed notches in both ends of each blade and ran them through their respective electric sharpeners (manual models could not remove notches), timing how long—and counting the number of…

Twenty-one Cook’s Illustrated staff members sampled nine top-selling balsamic vinegars of Modena with Indicazione Geografica Protetta, or IGP, certification. We tasted our lineup plain, in vinaigrette, and as a glaze over asparagus to assess flavor, consistency, and overall appeal. Ingredients are based on label information. Results were averaged and products appear below in order of preference. RECOMMENDED BERTOLLI Balsamic Vinegar of Modena Ingredients: Wine vinegar, concentrated grape must, cooked grape must, caramel color, antioxidant: sulphites Price: $3.49 for 8.5 fl oz ($0.41 per fl oz) Comments: Served plain, this balsamic vinegar tasted of dried fruit like figs, raisins, and prunes. Some of these nuances disappeared once it was reduced or whisked into vinaigrette, but it still tasted pleasantly sweet. While its texture was fairly thin, its flavor earned high marks…

Conventional wisdom says to make sure your cream is cold before whipping it, but we wondered exactly how much temperature matters, so we decided to run a few tests. EXPERIMENT We whipped three batches, each consisting of 1 cup of whipping cream, to stiff peaks: one that came straight from the refrigerator and was 40 degrees; another that had sat out for 1 hour and reached 57 degrees; and a third that was at room temperature, 72 degrees. We recorded how long it took to whip the cream to its maximum volume without overwhipping and noted the final texture. RESULTS The refrigerated sample yielded 2¼ cups of smooth, stiff peaks after 1¼ minutes of whipping. The sample that sat out for an hour yielded 2 cups of slightly grainy stiff…

The spicy grilled dish known as peri peri chicken has old African roots and a meandering history, but the basic idea is this: Chicken is marinated overnight in a paste of garlic, herbs, spices, lemon juice, and peri peri chiles—fiery local peppers whose name means “pepper pepper” in Swahili. The next day the chicken is grilled over a hot fire until the meat is tender and the skin is crisp and charred. The result is a dish packed with complex, spicy flavor. While doing some initial research, I found that published recipes for this dish vary greatly, but given its backstory, I wasn’t all that surprised. Portuguese travelers brought the peri peri pepper from South America to East Africa, where it met up with the ancient tradition of cooking chicken…

WHEAT BERRY PANCAKES MAKES 12 PANCAKES The little bits of bran and germ in whole-wheat flour are a nutritional boon, but they’re also a storage liability because they contain fats that are vulnerable to oxidation. If unchecked, this oxidation can give the flour a bitter taste. For the best flavor, we recommend starting with a freshly opened bag or one that you’ve stored in the freezer (where wholewheat flour keeps well for up to a year). Or you can take it to the next level and grind your own grain. Sound hard-core? We thought so, too, until we tried it. The method is simple: Pulverize wheat berries (which are simply dried wheat kernels and widely available in the bulk section of supermarkets), sugar, and salt in a blender and then…

Traditional fried rice recipes vary widely in terms of ingredients, but there’s one component that’s common to all of them: leftover (as in cold and stale) white rice. Take it from someone who’s tried to rush the process: moist, freshly cooked white rice doesn’t hold up to frying. It quickly absorbs oil, leaving you with a mushy, greasy mass. In addition, recently cooked white rice naturally clumps; it needs to stale a bit (a process known as retrogradation) to firm up so that the grains will stay separate when stir-fried. The problem for me is that I almost never have leftover white rice in the fridge—so I rarely make fried rice. However, since brown rice takes longer to cook, I sometimes make big batches of it so I will have…

When we were perfecting our method for cooking sausage, we kept running into a weird phenomenon: Sometimes sausages that were fully cooked to 160 degrees looked pink inside. Deep, hammy pink. Naturally, nobody wanted to touch those links, but we later learned that persistent pinkness can be due to a variety of factors unrelated to the meat’s doneness: the seasonings, the age of the pork when it’s processed, and how it was stored. But according to Joseph Sebranek and Melvin Hunt, professors and meat experts at Iowa State University and Kansas State University, respectively, the most significant factor affecting the pigment is the pork’s pH: The higher the pH, the more stable its pink pigment will be, even when the meat is fully cooked. We confirmed this effect by adding…

GRIND THE MEAT YOURSELF Grinding your own meat leads to a burger that’s far superior to those made from commercially ground beef because it allows you to control the cut and how finely you grind it. And you don’t need special equipment to do it—just a food processor. The trick is to grind the meat fine enough to ensure tenderness but coarse enough that the patty will stay loose. Use the Best Cut Chuck is often used for commercial ground beef, but it contains lots of connective tissue that must be removed before grinding. Instead, we use sirloin steak tips (or “flap meat”), which are well marbled and require little trimming. Trim and Cut After removing any excess fat and gristle, cut the steak tips into ½-inch chunks, which will…

In 17th-century Plymouth, Massachusetts, Pilgrims and Native Americans frequently cooked up what was later referred to as “Plymouth succotash”—a stew of corn or hominy, dried beans, and bits of dried or fresh meat or fish. By the 19th century, succotash had evolved into the meatless side dish that we know today. But just because a dish boasts longevity doesn’t mean that it’s well liked. In fact, many folks crinkle their noses at the mention of succotash, since they have always known it as a dish of canned or frozen corn and lima beans swamped in a thick, dull cream sauce. This is a shame, since a quick, easy mix of crisp, sweet corn and creamy beans should be a summertime staple. I set out to modernize succotash by nixing the…

Japanese bladesmiths have long favored chef’s-style knives with blades that are ultraslim—that is, sharpened to about 15 degrees on either side of the blade—and for good reason: In addition to being thin and lightweight, these blades have a supernarrow cutting edge, which helps make them razor-sharp. We’ve also come to favor a thinner edge. After years of testing dozens of knives, our repeat favorite is from Victorinox, a Swiss-made knife that is sharpened to 15 degrees on either side of the edge, allowing it to push and slide through food more easily than do more traditional European blades sharpened to at least 20 degrees. To maintain that narrow edge, we use a tool specifically designed to sharpen a blade to 15 degrees. Our favorite models, both from Chef’sChoice, are a…

The first thing to understand when you set out to buy balsamic vinegar at the grocery store is that it has little to do with the traditionally made, name-protected Italian artisanal product called aceto balsamico tradizionale. It’s not even made for the same purpose. The traditional stuff is a small-batch, long-aged product that bears a Denominazione di Origine Protetta (DOP) seal indicating use of locally grown ingredients and adherence to strict guidelines. Costing as much as $250 for a tiny 3.4-ounce bottle, it’s meant to be drizzled sparingly over steak or strawberries—or even sipped. Masking its flavors in vinaigrette or burning them off in a cooked application would be a tragic mistake. That’s where the supermarket stuff comes in. This inexpensive mass-produced product is designed for salad dressing or to…

TASTING ISRAELI COUSCOUS Israeli couscous, a round semolina pasta about the size of tapioca (distinct from the tiny, grain-like North African couscous), provides wheaty flavor and pleasantly chewy starch to soups, salads, and pilafs. We tasted five supermarket products, plain and in our recipe for Israeli Couscous with Lemon, Mint, Peas, Feta, and Pickled Shallots (page 22). Cooked according to package directions, most passed muster, but one was a mushy mess. Its directions demanded almost twice the usual quantity of water and had us boiling it far longer than the others. We learned that better texture is also a result of the proteincarbohydrate ratio. The firmer, springier products had a higher ratio of protein to carbohydrates than the mushy product; proteins enhance texture by holding the carbohydrates together like an…

RECOMMENDED CHICAGO CUTLERY Walnut Tradition 4-Piece Steak Knife Set Model: B144 Price: $17.95 for set of four knives RECOMMENDED AMCO Swing-A-Way Jar Opener Model: 711BK Price: $10.09 NOT RECOMMENDED GRILLBOT Grill Cleaner Model: GBU101 Price: $120.71 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED RACHAEL RAY ChillOut Thermal Tote Model: 7-62570-03-99 Price: $17.99 RECOMMENDED TODDY Cold Brew System Model: BXTCM Price: $34.95 UPDATE Inexpensive Steak Knives When our favorite steak knife set, the Victorinox Swiss Army 6-Piece Rosewood Steak Set, increased in price from $80 to $170, we wondered if we could find comparable knives that wouldn’t slice into our savings. We rounded up four less expensive sets and tested them against our winning Victorinox set ($28.46 per knife). Lefties and righties with large and small hands sat at dinner tables to try each blade, slicing…