Innehållsförteckning för March/April 2020 från Cook's Illustrated

The phone on my desk beeped and lit up, and after a brief pause, the page came through: “I have spring pea salad in the general kitchen.” Associate Editor Annie Petito’s voice echoed through the office. She was developing a salad centered on the snap, snow, and English varieties that show up early in the season and are briefly but gloriously tender and sweet enough to be eaten raw. Spring on a platter was the goal, albeit a lofty one. I got up from my desk and headed to the kitchen. Entering the buzzy space, I walked past wide stainless-steel prep tables, rows of six-burner stovetops, dozens of wall ovens, busy test cooks, and experiments in progress. There were green beans charring in a skillet, pans of fudgy brownies cooling…

Stir-frying or sautéing fresh snow peas and sugar snap peas or even frozen English peas is fine most of the year. But in spring, when these legumes are actually in season (and the only time fresh English peas are available), cooking them beyond the briefest blanch feels like a shame. This year, I decided to showcase all three peas in a knockout spring salad. Each variety would bring something different to the mix: English peas would add pops of earthy-sweet flavor, snap peas would contribute lots of crunch, and snow peas would provide a more delicate crispness and mineral-y notes. Though I knew I didn’t want to thoroughly cook the peas, a brief dip in boiling water can actually improve their flavor and texture (and also set their bright-green color).…

Salt is one of the most important ingredients in our recipes. It acts as a seasoning as well as a flavor enhancer—a sprinkle of salt makes a tomato’s flavor more vibrant and adds complexity to caramel. Salt can also improve the texture of some foods: Dried beans soaked in a saltwater brine are less likely to burst, and turkey meat and skin rubbed with salt before roasting will be juicier and crispier, respectively. While we call for both table salt and kosher salt in our recipes, we generally prefer the larger, coarser grains of kosher salt for rubbing onto meat or sprinkling over foods. Two major brands of kosher salt, Diamond Crystal and Morton, dominate the American market. While both products are labeled as kosher salt, their grain shapes and…

As mollusks go, clams lack the smarts of squid and the elegance of scallops, but you can’t beat their versatility. A single QUAHOG can filter 24 gallons of seawater per day before its pleasantly chewy meat goes on to season creamy chowder. CHERRYSTONES and LITTLENECKS are younger, smaller versions of the same hard-shell species. Grill and lavish them with garlicky butter; tangle them in spaghetti alle vongole; or serve their plump, saline meat on the half-shell. MAHOGANY clams are rich and salty; their liquor makes a strong seafood base. Quarter-size COCKLES boast ridges that run from hinge to edge; their muscle is sweet, their brine delicate. MANILAS made their way to the Pacific Northwest as stowaways in an oyster shipment from Japan. Now they’re farmed for their nori-like minerality. Tender,…

Reuse Pepper Mill to Grind Spices Anthony Rotolo of New York, N.Y., recycles peppercorn grinders with removable tops by using them to store and grind whole spices. After washing an empty grinder, he fills it with spices such as fennel seeds, coriander seeds, or cumin seeds. Measure Dough Thickness with Stacked Coins Connor Simpson of Madison, Wis., finds that most rulers have a gap between the bottom of the ruler and where the measurements begin that makes it tricky to measure dough. Instead, he washes a few coins and then stacks them beside rolled-out cookie or pastry dough to gauge thickness. Two stacked pennies are about ⅛ inch tall, and three nickels are about ¼ inch tall. Portable Ingredient Station Jeremy Doty of Phoenix, Ariz., stores frequently used ingredients—oil, salt,…

Want to know a secret? Even as a professional cook, I used to get a little nervous when it came time to sauté fish. Fish is expensive, and it can go from juicy to dry in a blink. And when you’re dealing with flaky types such as cod, there is a good chance that the fragile fillets will fall apart when flipped. These days, however, I cook cod and similar fish with ease, and the results are outstanding. That’s because I butter-baste—a technique that involves repeatedly spooning sizzling butter over food as it cooks. I’ll explain the mechanics in a bit, but first, a rundown on why it’s so effective. Bathing fish in hot butter has multiple benefits. It encourages Maillard reactions that add complexity and help develop a golden…

Brittany, France, is renowned for its crepes—but not only the lightly sweet, relatively neutral type that you might sprinkle with sugar or smear with jam. Galettes bretonnes are dark and savory, with a distinctive earthiness that makes them an integral part of a dish, not just an understated wrapper. That’s because they are made from rich, mineral-y buckwheat, which thrives in the cool Breton climate. A galette complète is the classic preparation; it consists of a crepe glossed with salted butter and folded around salty-nutty ham and Gruyere and an oozy egg. Crepes are simply thin, unleavened pancakes, and after a bit of practice—our recipes yield two more crepes than are needed for the fillings—you’ll be able to cook them with confidence. They also keep beautifully, and a stash of…

Ten years. That’s how long I’ve been trying to make crumpets at home. When I lived in Scotland, I routinely bought packages of the thick, yeasted rounds at the grocery store, toasted them, and then slathered them with butter and jam or creamed honey. They reminded me of the English muffins I’d eaten growing up, but with their own charming features: exteriors that crisp up when toasted and moist, slightly elastic interiors full of deep holes that capture anything spread across them. Leftovers freeze well and toast up nicely. Making my own crumpets seemed logical when I moved back to the United States and realized that they’re not nearly as widely available. Plus, I figured homemade specimens would easily outclass the commercial ones. But even after trying no less than…

KEY GOOD FAIR POOR METHODOLOGY • Nine models priced from about $24 to about $94• Brew full pots of coffee using 1:18 ratio of coffee to water to see how machines brew at capacity• Brew 32 ounces of coffee using 1:18 ratio of coffee to water; typical of daily use• Brew 12 ounces of coffee using 1:18 ratio of coffee to water; a single serving• Time brewing cycles• Hold a blind, randomized tasting of coffee brewed in each machine• Track water temperature in brew basket• Track temperature of coffee in carafe over 1 hour• Measure total dissolved solids (TDS) of all brewed coffee• Calculate extraction percentage of coffee produced by every machine using TDS and final weight of brew BREWING: We evaluated each coffee maker’s ability to make well-brewed, full-flavored…

Baking with Dark(er) Chocolates The sales of high-cacao-percentage chocolate bars are surging, getting a notable boost from trendy high-fat, low-sugar diets such as the ketogenic diet—the higher a chocolate bar’s cacao percentage, the less sugar (and more chocolate flavor) it contains. We were curious about how these higher-cacao bars compared to one another, so we selected nationally available bars from three categories—eleven 70 to 73 percent cacao bars, eleven 80 to 88 percent cacao bars, and five 90 to 95 percent cacao bars—and sampled them plain. The textures of the bars were crucial. Chocolates that were conched (heated and constantly stirred) during processing were smooth, which we liked; one product that wasn’t conched was coarse and gritty. Bars containing extra cocoa butter were also smoother than those without. We were…

What is it? While this kitchen tool has the playful curved shape and bright color of a children’s toy, it is definitely not for child’s play. One of the earliest designs of a vegetable spiralizer, the Benriner Cook Help Slicer has been manufactured in Japan since the 1940s and is used for the creation of elaborate garnishes, salads, and vegetable “noodles.” The machine works much like a modern spiralizer, where fruits or vegetables are attached to the prongs of a crank handle and then turned against a sharp blade to produce long, curly strands. But instead of the horizontal orientation of today’s spiralizers, where the produce is pressed sideways against the blade, the Benriner orients the food vertically so it sits on top of the blade, which we found to…

Food Storage Containers We recently named the OXO Good Grips 8 Cup Smart Seal Rectangle Container our favorite glass storage container and the Rubbermaid Brilliance Food Storage Container, Large, 9.6 Cup, our favorite plastic storage container. They both come in smaller sizes and in container sets; we wondered if these would be handy for meal prep, lunches, leftovers, and storage and if they could perform just as well. We tested seven smaller sizes and four sets of the OXO container plus three smaller sizes and two sets of the Rubbermaid container. We opened and closed their latches 25 times each, submerged them in water to see if they were airtight, and then vigorously shook the full containers and checked for leaks. We’re happy to report that they all performed as…