Innehållsförteckning för May/June 2020 från Cook's Illustrated

Editor in Chief I’ve got an arsenal of well-used cookware, but two pans in particular never seem to make it back into the cabinet. One is a stubby-handled Wagner cast-iron skillet with a thick, jet-black patina; the other is a lithe, long-handled carbon-steel frying pan with dramatically flared sides. I found both pans at a roadside antique store well over a decade ago when I was en route to my first semester of culinary school in New York. Handling them, I envisioned all the cooks who had used them before me—in a way, they’d be joining me on my journey into the professional kitchen. I happily overpaid. I love how each vessel’s physique telegraphs its performance. The stocky cast iron is slow—both to heat up and to cool down. That…

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts are not the easiest cut to grill, but they might be the most practical. Without skin, bones, and fat, they lack the insulation and succulence of dark meat or bone-in, skin-on parts, but they cook much faster and more evenly and don’t tend to flare up. Plus, neutral breast meat goes with anything—bold sauces, sandwiches, salads, taco fixings—and the grill gives it a savory character that roasting and sauteing can’t match. I started by pounding four breasts ½ inch thick so that they’d cook evenly. Then I thought carefully about how to treat them to ensure well-seasoned, juicy meat. Instead of brining them in plain salt water, I spiked the solution with fish sauce. The soak would help the chicken cook up juicy over the hot…

Easier Herb Bundles Instead of using cheesecloth to wrap fresh herbs or whole spices for steeping in stocks, soups, or stews, Susie Hennessy of Sacramento, Calif., uses a disposable loose-leaf tea bag. The bag is large enough to hold several herb sprigs and is easy to find and discard when cooking is complete. Plus, there’s no cutting or tying required. Preventing Soggy Stovetop Popcorn Michael Hoenig of Beachwood, Ohio, likes to make popcorn in a Dutch oven on his stove, but he finds that steam condenses on the underside of the lid and falls back into the pot, making the snack soggy. In place of a lid, he inverts a colander on top of the pot. The perforated “lid” prevents the kernels from popping out of the pot while allowing…

Broccoli has always been there for us: It is reasonably priced, is available year-round, and boasts stellar nutritional stats. How do we show our appreciation? We toss it haphazardly into stir-fries, steam it to a vibrant (but flavorless) jade green, or—perhaps most insultingly—dip squeaky raw florets into bottled ranch dressing. Doesn’t broccoli deserve better? I wanted a stovetop recipe that would come together quickly and achieve rich browning to enhance the meaty stems and delicate florets. It made sense to start by taking the same general approach that we use for other skillet-roasted vegetables: Steam first, brown second. I cut a little over a pound of broccoli crowns into wedges to create flat sides for browning and then carefully arranged them so that as many as possible were flush with…

I have a long history with panna cotta. I figure I’ve made at least 1,000 batches, because it has been on the dessert menu of every restaurant I’ve ever worked at. No wonder: Panna cotta is pure in flavor, endlessly adaptable, and ridiculously easy to make. It is also prepared in advance. Each of these perks makes it a recipe that all cooks should know. Panna cotta (Italian for “cooked cream”) is made by setting sugar-sweetened cream and often milk, yogurt, or buttermilk with gelatin to produce a luscious, wobbly, opaque dessert with a clean, milky taste. The usual procedure is to warm the dairy with sugar and then stir in bloomed gelatin until it dissolves. The mixture is then divided among ramekins, chilled for at least 6 hours, and…

Many drupes are familiar, even if the botanical classification is not. They’re fruits—including items you might not recognize as fruits—with a three-layer structure: a fleshy or fibrous exterior surrounds a shell (or “pit”) that surrounds a seed. In some drupes, such as PEACHES, the edible portion is the flesh, which easily separates from the pit in freestone fruits; clingstone varieties require more excavation. Dense, rich OLIVES change color as they age, shifting from green to brown, red, purple, and finally black. Young JUJUBES are smooth and crisp like apples; eventually, they shrivel and look and taste more like dates. To access the lychee-like flesh of RAMBUTANS, peel away their spiky skin. ALMONDS are edible drupe seeds; when their fuzzy green flesh ripens, they split to reveal the hard shell that…

If you want to get a sense of the gutsy, vigorous, animated nature of stir-frying, the best place to start might be with physician and writer Buwei Yang Chao’s definition of ch’ao, the Chinese word for the technique. “Roughly speaking,” she writes in How to Cook and Eat in Chinese, the seminal 1945 cookbook she produced with her husband and daughter, “ch’ao may be defined as big-fire-shallow-fat-continual-stirring-quick-frying of cut-up material with wet seasoning. We shall call it ‘stir-fry’ or ‘stir’ for short.” The main thrust of Chao’s definition is that stir-frying employs high heat and constant motion to cook food so rapidly that proteins brown uniformly and vegetables lose their raw edge but retain vibrant color and fresh crunch. As soon as the food hits the wok, it’s repeatedly pushed,…

Bánh xèo, particularly the version made in Ho Chi Minh City, is one of my favorite dishes. If I spot it on a menu at a Vietnamese restaurant, I’m going to be ordering it. It’s a spectacular jumble of flavors, colors, textures, fragrances, and temperatures, the centerpiece of which is a warm, crisp-tender, turmeric-tinted crepe punctuated with small shrimp and matchsticks of rich pork belly. To enjoy it, you tuck pieces of the sunny-yellow pancake inside a cool lettuce leaf along with lots of fresh, aromatic herbs and then dip the bundle into nuoc cham, a mixture of fish sauce spiked with lime juice, sugar, and chiles that contains sour, salty, sweet, umami, and spicy flavors. Often, do chua, a carrot and daikon pickle, is served on the side. Banh…

Angel hair might just be the least popular pasta variety out there. I get it: With an average diameter of less than 1 millimeter, angel hair pasta is so delicate that treating it like standard-issue noodles guarantees a disappointing tangle of mush. It was only when I ignored all conventional wisdom about pasta cookery that I was able to produce results that I could get truly excited about. Here’s what you need to know. Don’t Test for Doneness Superfine angel hair goes from pleasantly tender to hopelessly overcooked in a heartbeat. That means that in the few seconds required to taste-test a strand, the rest of the pot could overcook. And I don’t recommend following the cooking time on the box, as it’s generally too long. Instead, I eliminated any…

KEY GOOD FAIR POOR METHODOLOGY • Nine woks in a variety of materials and designs• Priced from about $33 to about $55• Seasoned woks according to manufacturers’ instructions, if not preseasoned• Stir-fried green beans; Fried Rice with Shrimp, Pork, and Peas; and Thai-Style Stir-Fried Rice Noodles with Chicken and Broccolini• Asked four additional testers with varying wok experience to prepare Red House Spice’s tomato and egg stir-fry in each wok• Cleaned woks with hot water and a brush, not using soap, after each test• Confirmed that the three highest-rated woks also work on electric coil cooktops PERFORMANCE: We evaluated the flavor and appearance of the food made in each wok. EASE OF USE: We evaluated how easy each wok was to cook in, lift, and handle, including its weight, handle…

The Best Canned Tuna in Water We use solid white tuna in water in recipes such as tuna-noodle casserole and tuna salad. To find the best, we bought eight top-selling nationally available supermarket solid white tunas (what the industry calls “white” tuna is always albacore). Six were packed in water, and two were packed without additional liquid. Panels of 21 editors and test cooks sampled the tunas plain and in tuna salad, rating their flavors and textures. In both tastings, tasters found one tuna to be “moist,” with “lots of flavor,” but “not too fishy.” While some were described as “mushy” and “soggy,” other products lost points for being too dry. “The flavor is good, but it feels wrung out,” wrote one taster. So what made some tunas so dry?…