Innehållsförteckning för May/June 2021 från Cook's Illustrated

Every year, a group of food lovers in the Pacific Northwest collaborates to celebrate and promote radicchio. Local chefs feature assorted varieties of the vegetable on their menus, farmers exchange knowledge, and participants socialize at a gala featuring radicchio-centric dishes. The event, known as Chicory Week, was inspired by the sagre (regional food festivals) of Italy, where radicchio was first cultivated, and is the brainchild of Jason Salvo and Siri Erickson-Brown, owners of Local Roots Farm in Duvall, Washington, who have been growing radicchio for 15 years. After weeks of working with radicchio in my own kitchen, I grew to share Jason and Siri’s enthusiasm and wanted to join them in championing this “beautiful food,” as Jason calls it, and its different personalities. Enjoy radicchio raw to capitalize on the…

Wide selections of whole grains, such as wheat berries, spelt, and kamut, are becoming more common at supermarkets and online—and that’s great news for cooks. Whole grains, or grains that have been minimally processed and still contain their bran and germ, are a livelier (and more nutritious) alternative to rice or pasta, lending a satisfying chew and earthy, nutty depth to casseroles, soups, and sides. Keep a stash of them on hand and you’ll have a wholesome base for countless dishes. I selected nine varieties of hearty grains and got to work to find a simple cooking method that would suit them all. Whole-grain cookery typically falls into two categories: the pilaf method and the pasta method. The former calls for simmering a measured amount of grains in a specific…

In Scandinavia, the arrival of rhubarb signals the close of a long winter. The prolific perennial is used in pies, crumbles, soups, and jams. It is fermented into wine, and its juice is sipped fresh. Purists even eat stalks raw, dipping them in sugar to quiet their bracing tartness. But perhaps the finest celebration of rhubarb is the making of rich butter cakes that are dotted with chunks of the crimson-green stems, perfumed with cardamom and lemon, and speckled with sugar and crisp almonds. The treat is a far cry from the rustic rhubarb upside-down cake I enjoyed as a kid in rural Vermont, where the plants grew wild at the edge of our neighbor’s property. No, the flavor of the Nordic cake is more sophisticated—and the texture more intriguing.…

No matter what your level of baking experience is, the right ingredients can make a big difference in your finished breads, cookies, cakes, pies, and pastries. For the best results, it’s important to know which ingredients you really need and how to choose and use them wisely. FLOURS Flour, the backbone of the baking pantry, provides baked goods with their structure, crumb, and chewiness. Regardless of type, all flours should be stored in airtight containers once they’re opened, since exposure to air can cause flour’s quality to deteriorate. Whole-grain flours (such as cornmeal and whole-wheat flour) are better off in the freezer, because the fat contained in them, however minuscule, will rapidly go rancid at room temperature. ALL-PURPOSE All-purpose flour can be used for a wide variety of baking applications.…

Grill Spatulas A good grill spatula should be agile and tough and keep your hands and forearms safe over scorching-hot cooking grates. We tested seven, priced from about $8.50 to about $37.00, grilling burgers, salmon fillets, and pizza. To test their durability and strength, we dropped the spatulas three times onto the pavement and used them to lift 10 pounds of flour to see if they could manage large grilled or barbecued roasts. We evaluated them on performance, ease of use, cleanup, and durability. Our winner, the Char-Broil Comfort-Grip Grill Spatula (model 4567701), had it all. Just narrow and slim enough at the front edge to fit between closely packed burgers on the grill, it also performed the best of the bunch when we wanted to turn delicate salmon fillets.…

I cooked professionally in Scotland from 2000 to 2008, and I still miss the relationships I formed there, with friends, with coworkers, and with hot-smoked salmon. The last one might sound melodramatic, but that fish, produced by a smokehouse on the island of South Uist, was special: silky, tender, and well seasoned inside, with a smoky, lightly sweetened, and delicately chewy exterior providing subtle textural contrast. As the breakfast cook at a posh hotel, I flaked it into softly scrambled eggs. At another restaurant, I stirred it into buttery rice for a dish called kedgeree (see “Scottish-Style Kedgeree”). When I came back to the United States, however, my relationship with my favorite fish ended. Hot-smoked salmon is expensive here—about $10 for a 4-ounce vacuum-sealed piece—and I couldn’t justify the splurge.…

Pajeon, Korea’s ubiquitous scallion pancake, strikes that ideal balance between pragmatism and sheer pleasure. One of the simplest and most popular forms of jeon, a broader term for battered and pan-fried foods, it’s cheap and quick to make by mixing up a flour-and-water-based batter, loading it up with scallions, and pan-frying it into one big round. The filling-to-batter ratio is high, and the scallions are typically cut into lengths, so the effect is a nest of verdant stalks glued together by a viscous batter. As it sizzles in a well-oiled skillet, the pancake crisps and browns and the interior sets up soft and dense, with—as Beverly Kim, chef and co-owner of Parachute, an acclaimed Korean American restaurant in Chicago, described—“mochi-like” chew. It’s a no-fuss, substantial snack that’s best eaten right…

It’s a familiar scenario: You bought bananas a week ago, planning to enjoy them when they attained perfect ripeness, but life got in the way, so there they sit on your counter, fragrant and guilt-inducing, their once-sparse speckles now merging into uniformity. Banana bread is an option, but you’ve walked that road so many times. May I suggest muffins? A dozen muffins come together as swiftly as a loaf of quick bread, but because muffins are smaller, they take less than 20 minutes to bake, making them the speediest possible route from countertop eyesore to satisfying snack. But to make muffins that look and taste great—stately, with potent banana flavor—you need a reliable recipe. Quick Start Quick breads and muffins use the same mixing method: Combine the wet ingredients in…

You’d never know it, but phờ gà started out playing second fiddle. It wasn’t until the Vietnamese government restricted beef slaughter in the 1930s that Hanoi cooks turned to chicken to make their brothy noodle soup. Of course, the poultry version was soon a triumphờ in its own right: clear; silky with gelatin; fragrant with spices and sweet-savory charred aromatics; and, above all, deeply, supremely chicken-y. Over time, street vendors and phờ shops throughout Vietnam dedicated themselves to its craft, seasoning the broth with fish sauce and submerging nests of slippery rice strands (banh phờ) in each bowl along with pulled chicken and shaved onion. Diners mounded herbs over the top, a veritable crown of freshness and vibrancy. Like the beef-based original, phờ gà became a quintessential breakfast for slurping…

We love our chef’s and paring knives; we rely on them for most cutting tasks in the kitchen. But occasionally we find ourselves wishing we had a knife that split the difference between these two workhorses—a midsize knife with more power and coverage than a paring knife but more precision and control than a chef’s knife. That’s where petty and utility knives come in. While both these knives are available in a variety of lengths, they’re most commonly found with a blade in the 5-to-6-inch range, almost exactly halfway between that of a paring knife and that of a chef’s knife. Historically, the two knives had very different origins, shapes, and advantages. Over the years, however, distinctions between petty and utility knives have blurred somewhat (see “What’s the Difference?”). In…

Dispose of Frying Oil with Ease We generally recommend that cooks dispose of old cooking oil by pouring the cooled oil into a sealable container and placing it in the trash (or, ideally, the compost bin). Recently we discovered a Japanese product that purports to solidify used cooking oil for even easier disposal. You just stir the small white flakes into warm oil, and then the mixture hardens into a disk as it cools, making it easy to remove and dispose of. We tested two products, portioned into 18-gram (about?-ounce) sachets, that both claimed to solidify 2½ cups of oil. Both products worked identically to solidify separate batches of corn, canola, and peanut oil (each heated to about 175 degrees Fahrenheit to thoroughly melt the waxy product) into firm, gelled…