Innehållsförteckning för January/February 2020 från Cook's Illustrated

It wasn’t long ago that pan pizzas were dowdy pies associated with chain restaurants, but I like to think that those of us who grew up savoring these thick-crusted pizzas always knew they had more potential. And now they’re getting their due: Respected pizzaiolas are finally giving these pies the same attention they’ve always lavished on thinner, more austere styles, and Americans are (re)acquiring a taste for them. Even Pizza Hut wants a better slice: The iconic chain recently revamped its signature pan pizza for the first time in decades. If you ask me, the appeal of pan pizza is obvious. The crumb is thick, plush, and encased in a golden, crispy crust. The red sauce is thick and has a bright taste. And there’s plenty of gooey, stretchy cheese.…

CLEANED SQUID IS SOLD IN TWO PARTS Most fishmongers sell both squid bodies and squid tentacles. The bodies tend to be smooth and tender, while the tentacles offer pleasant chew and more surface area. BUY WHOLE BODIES WHEN POSSIBLE Though we’ve found the quality of precut rings to be just fine, buying whole bodies allows you to cut them to your own specification. MOST SQUID HAS BEEN FROZEN Unless you have access to squid direct from the boat, anything you buy has been previously frozen and treated with additives such as sodium citrate and sodium carbonate to inhibit spoilage and enhance texture. But that’s fine: We found the quality of frozen squid—both frozen in the supermarket freezer section and thawed at the fish counter—to be good, and we didn’t detect…

How can I be sure that my yeast will work? Yeast is a living organism, and its activity will decrease over time—even if the package is unopened. To check that your yeast is healthy, run the following test: In a small bowl, mix 1 teaspoon of yeast (active dry or instant) with ½ teaspoon of sugar and 1 tablespoon of room-temperature water. The mixture should look bubbly within 10 minutes; if it doesn’t, it’s time to buy a fresh supply of yeast. How does the temperature of my kitchen affect proofing? The ambient temperature impacts yeast activity, which affects how quickly the dough rises and the quality of its flavor. Proofing in a cold (67 degrees or cooler) room slows yeast activity, but that can actually be a good thing…

Dal is the Hindi term for dried peas, beans, and legumes and—somewhat confusingly—also refers to the dishes made from them. Dal in some form is consumed daily in most Indian households. Not only is it a complete protein when paired with rice or bread, but unlike many dietary cornerstones, dal can be utterly packed with flavor. But there’s more: Dal comes together easily and quickly and it’s nourishing, satisfying, and cheap. And one of the real joys of dal is that it can take a near-endless variety of forms, from celebratory dal makhani, rich with butter and cream, to workday dishes consisting of only lentils, onion, and spices. I set my sights on palak dal from northern India, a simple dal finished with spinach (palak means “spinach” in Hindi) that…

We purchased 11 of the top-selling extra-virgin olive oils that are nationally available in supermarkets, including four products labeled “robust,” a recent addition to the category. Twenty-one America’s Test Kitchen staff members tasted the products blind, in random order, first plain and then in two applications: in a simple vinaigrette on lettuce and drizzled over warm white beans. We also sent a set of the oils to a group of expert olive oil tasters in California but did not include their opinions in our rankings. We purchased the oils in local supermarkets and online, and the prices listed are what we paid. Scores from the three in-house tastings were averaged, and products appear below in order of preference. RECOMMENDED 1 BERTOLLI Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Original, Rich Taste CO-WINNER PRICE:…

What do you eat when you’re celebrating? Soup dumplings? Prime rib? A tower of cream puffs festooned with spun sugar? In Uzbekistan, the answer is rice pilaf, no question. Known as plov (or osh), Uzbekistan’s fragrant combination of savory spiced rice, tender meat, and velvety carrots studded with tangy, garnet-colored dried barberries is piled high on a platter and garnished with a head of spreadably soft garlic. The ultimate expression of generosity, community, and national identity, plov is prepared at every feast by a master of the art, known as an oshpaz, who cooks in a huge wok-shaped cauldron called a kazan and may serve hundreds of guests from a single batch. Uzbekistani home cooks make plov, too, but on a smaller scale. The process starts with sautéing loads of…

The meatballs I loved growing up were my grandmother’s: a pleasingly coarse but tender mix of beef, pork, and veal that she seasoned boldly with Parmesan and herbs, browned, and then simmered in a bright-red sauce. Chinese lion’s head meatballs are very different. For one thing, they’re made entirely from pork and seasoned only subtly with aromatics such as scallions, ginger, and white pepper, as well as modest amounts of Shaoxing wine and usually soy sauce—choices that enhance (rather than detract from) their porky, umami-rich profile. But what really makes them stand apart from other meatballs is their size and texture: They’re as big as tennis balls and boast a seemingly paradoxical combination of spoon-tenderness and sausage-like spring and juiciness. (Read on and I’ll explain the two-part method for achieving…

Confession time: I genuinely enjoy turkey burgers. If you’ve encountered a truly bad version (plenty exist) or consider it a punishment to eat a burger made from anything but beef, hear me out: There’s a lot to like about a well-made turkey burger. Think a light, juicy texture; savory meat; and a tender, well-browned crust. For turkey burger success, you must first make peace with the obvious: Ground turkey isn’t ground beef. It’s very wet—71 percent water versus 66 percent for beef—which makes it hard to work with, yet it can easily cook up dry. That’s because ground turkey must be cooked to 160 degrees. At that temperature, nearly all the turkey’s abundant moisture will have been squeezed out by contracting proteins. Thorough mixing also causes the myosin (a sticky…

TASTING Dried Lentils In our recipes, we most often call for brown or green lentils, which are inexpensive and easy to find and tend to hold their shape when cooked. But which ones are best? We purchased five kinds of lentils labeled as brown or green or simply as “lentils” and sampled them in three blind tastings: plain, in a hearty vegetable soup, and tossed with vinaigrette in a simple salad. When tasted plain, the lentils were mild, but when we salted and combined them with other ingredients in soup and salad, their earthy and nutty flavors really came through. One product, which was sprouted, or germinated, stood out slightly for its mild mushroomy quality. The lentils’ textures varied more dramatically. When cooked according to the instructions on their packaging,…

A recent study conducted by a food scientist at the University of Massachusetts found that a 15-minute soak in a 1 percent baking soda solution removed 20 percent of one common pesticide from apples and 4.4 percent of another. This sounded like an easy and promising method for getting rid of at least some pesticide residue from produce, so we decided to give it a try. First, we purchased pesticide detection cards that can identify commonly used pesticides. (The cards detect pesticides that fall into two general types based on their chemistry: carbamates and organophosphates.) Each card contains a white disk and a pink disk. The white disk is pressed onto the test area; after giving the chemicals in it time to react, the pink disk is pressed against the…

On busy weeknights, I often build meals around boneless pork chops. Their mild taste makes them easy to pair with sides, they’re ready to cook straight from the package, and they don’t require hours of cooking to turn tender. But plain chops can be boring, so I like to gussy them up a bit. This time, I had my sights set on a sweet, tangy glaze. I could picture juicy chops with a rich, glossy coating clinging tenaciously to the tops and sides. And yet, as soon as I started experimenting with recipes, I realized this was fantasy: By the time a glazed chop reaches your plate, its coating ends up everywhere but on the meat. Many glazes are made with jams, jellies, or preserves, which is a big part…

In one of the last reviews he penned before his untimely death in 2018, Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold wrote lyrically about the hummus at the city’s beloved Middle Eastern restaurant, Bavel: “The seriousness of a Middle Eastern restaurant rests in its hummus. Grainy, vaguely sour hummus is OK to send off in your children’s brown-bag lunches, and the mayonnaise-y over-garlicked stuff may be exactly what you want to see alongside a takeout roast chicken… But the great kitchens, the ones that inspire hour-long drives and dinnertime haiku, tend to labor over their fragrant goo as assiduously as a French baker might over her baguettes.” The hummus Gold spoke of is fundamental throughout the Middle East, where it’s often the focal point of a meal and entire careers…

A toaster oven can do way more than make toast. A good model functions as a small second oven that preheats faster, uses less energy, and is easier to clean. Plus, it won’t heat up your kitchen as much on hot days. Since toaster ovens come in a variety of sizes, we narrowed our lineup by choosing models that were big enough to toast six slices of bread and tall enough to roast a 4-pound chicken. We chose 10 ovens, priced from about $40 to about $270. Trials in Toasting We toasted sandwich bread in all the models: single slices on light, medium, and dark settings, as well as four and six slices at a time to see how evenly the ovens toasted. After some fiddling with settings, we were…

Extra-virgin olive oil can be stored in steel tanks for many months—or years—before it is bottled, and the “best by” date printed on the label is two years after that. By contrast, a harvest date tells you when the fruit was pressed, so it’s easier to gauge the oil’s freshness. The newest crop of premium olive oil from the Northern Hemisphere is bottled and sent to stores by late spring or early summer with a harvest date of the prior year. That said, because most supermarket oils are made up of several oils harvested over months across different countries, a specific harvest date is harder to identify. California Olive Ranch’s Destination Series bottles may have a harvest date, but the company lists two full years, such as 2017–2018, given that…

When you buy cream for whipping, you have two choices: heavy cream (also called heavy whipping cream) and whipping cream (also called light whipping cream). Their chief distinction is fat. Per the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, heavy cream must be at least 36 percent fat, while whipping cream must be at least 30 percent fat but less than 36 percent fat. This might not sound like a big difference, but after whipping more than a few bowls of cream, we can say that it’s surprisingly significant. Heavy cream produced a more luxuriously thick whipped cream than whipping cream—and had a lot more staying power. And depending on how it was pasteurized, it also made for a much more flavorful topping. While most creams in the dairy case are ultra-pasteurized…