Innehållsförteckning för January/February 2015 från Cook's Illustrated

In 1952, a New Zealander named Tom Neale hitched a ride to a small Pacific atoll, Suwarrow, that had been abandoned since World War II. He was well provisioned, with two cats, kerosene, bully (corned) beef, fishing gear, knives, various canned foods, baking staples, a basic medicine chest, and a few wellchosen books. When he got to Suwarrow, he found a badly damaged boat (he fixed it up using rope that he unraveled and made into caulk), water storage tanks, a few broken-down huts, wild chickens and pigs, and a protected atoll that held an infinite store of easy-to-spear fish. His diet consisted of seafood, chicken, eggs, pawpaw, coconut, and breadfruit. He constructed a native oven and a grill, learned to cook fish wrapped in leaves overnight, and just missed…

Cooking whole chicken slowly at low temperatures is a hugely popular restaurant technique these days. When done properly, slow roasting allows the meat to retain far more of the natural juices than high-temperature roasting does, delivering ultramoist results. That said, I’ve never eaten a slow-roasted whole chicken where the skin was as perfectly cooked as the meat. Typically, the skin is a bit flabby and padded with unrendered fat. For brown, supercrisp results, the skin demands high heat to render fat, drive off moisture, and speed the Maillard reaction. To address that lack, many recipes incorporate a stint under the broiler or a final bast of heat at 500 degrees, both of which are problematic. Cranking up the heat at the end of cooking improves the skin, but usually overcooks…

As a chef, I get particular enjoyment from dining out: It’s my chance to keep up with the ever-changing culinary landscape by experiencing cutting-edge techniques and trendy ingredients. But at home I rarely have the desire to re-create restaurant food. (Who has the time to whip up a frothy bacon emulsion or labor over a batch of green apple taffy?) Still, every so often I come across a dish or approach that I absolutely have to try in my own kitchen. The most recent was a gorgeous platter of slow-cooked whole carrots. Fork-tender and without a hint of mushiness, they had a dense, almost meaty quality to them. And the carrot flavor was superconcentrated: sweet and pure, but still earthy. I pictured these carrots as an accompaniment to everything from…

SCIENCE What Makes a Lemon Lemony? The juice and the zest of a lemon can be thought of as two different components, with each bringing a little something different to the table. Fresh juice gets its tart flavor primarily from citric acid and its distinctively lemony taste and scent from a mix of volatile aromatic compounds—chiefly limonene, pinene, and citral—contained in oil droplets in the juice sacs. The zest contains these compounds and many more (and likely in greater concentrations than in the juice), giving it a more intense and complex flavor and scent. When to Cook with Juice versus Zest Juice and zest behave very differently when exposed to heat, primarily due to the way the volatile aroma compounds are bound up in each. The volatile compounds in juice…

The uniformly sleek, custardy consistency; smooth, flat top; and soft cream color of most cheesecakes is undeniably appealing. But I’ve always been partial to the textural and visual contrast of the New York kind. In particular, I like this version’s characteristic dark brown surface and gentle downward slope from the edge to the center, which acts as a map of the interior’s texture: Its slightly puffed-up perimeter gives way to a more luxurious, plush core that lingers on the palate—rich suede to other cheesecakes’ slippery satin. Somewhat surprisingly, both styles are made with the same basic components—a cream cheese–based filling atop a buttery graham cracker crumb crust. It’s their baking methods that are different. While most cheesecakes are set in an insulating water bath and baked gently at a moderate…

Tasting Mexican Lagers While developing our recipe for Drunken Beans (page 15), we decided to give Mexican lagers a closer look. We sampled the four best-selling imported Mexican lagers plain (after all, we’d likely be investing in a sixpack) and in our Drunken Beans. All four lagers were developed at Mexican breweries and continue to be brewed there, but big-name marketing and distribution companies based in Europe now own them all. They’re also often classified as American Adjunct Lagers. Technically, any ingredient beyond those used in traditional German brewing—water, yeast, barley, hops—is considered an unessential, or adjunct, ingredient. While adjunct grains like corn or rice can be used to enhance the beer’s flavor, body, and aroma, they can also be used to cut costs. All four lagers in our lineup…

Shaping Up Square Cheese Slices Melting square slices of cheese on round English muffins presents a problem: The edges of cheese that drape over the side can drip on the bottom of the oven and burn. To prevent this, Jackie Price of Cranston, R.I., uses a biscuit cutter (a canning jar lid also works) to cut out a circular shape from the cheese slice—it fits perfectly on the muffin. Reheat Soft-Cooked Eggs Nicole Perry of San Francisco, Calif., likes to make a large batch of softcooked eggs for the week and suggests this quick method for reheating them once they’ve been refrigerated. Place the cold egg(s) in a bowl—or, if taking on the go, a food storage or deli container—and fill with hot water. Let sit for 3 minutes, drain,…

Even when I’m not in the mood for beef, I’ll go to a steakhouse just for the side dishes: wedge salad, potatoes au gratin, and creamed spinach. But there’s an exception: the mushroom sides, which are often uninspired. Awful? No. Dull? You bet. Still, rich, meaty-tasting mushrooms are an ideal side dish since they partner well with almost any protein. Outdoing the restaurants? It ought to be a cinch. Right away I knew that sautéing was out since I didn’t want to labor with multiple batches (crowding the pan would cause them to steam, not brown). That left roasting—the best way to develop flavorful browning without requiring my constant attention. I wanted to avoid relatively bland white buttons, so I cut four full-flavored types—cremini, portobellos, oysters, and shiitakes—into chunks, tossed…

Lo mein has long been my go-to noodle stir-fry to make at home because it’s quick to prepare and contains meat and vegetables that add up to a satisfying one-dish meal. But when I want those qualities and also a bit more character, the Japanese equivalent called yakisoba comes to mind. This dish shares the same hearty combination of springy noodles, meat (often beef), and vegetables, but instead of the typical soy-garlic profile of Chinese American stir-fries, it boasts a bright, sweet-savorytangy sauce. Its bold garnishes—namely, pickled ginger and a spice blend with sesame seeds and orange peel known as shichimi togarashi—make the dish even more distinctive. Then there’s the noodles themselves. Like many Asian wheat noodles (including lo mein), yakisoba strands have a springy quality; they also have an…

Ask someone to make a list of extravagant foods and they’re unlikely to mention vegetable broth. But consider how it’s traditionally made: You take a lovely pile of produce, chop it up, and boil it for about an hour. Then you fish out all the food, throw it away, and keep the liquid. And after all that, what you have is not a meal but an ingredient. It’s no surprise that most cooks opt for store-bought vegetable broth (or even water). But even the best of the commercial stuff is not ideal (see our tasting on page 27), which is a shame, since a good broth can be the difference between a ho-hum vegetarian dish and a flavorful one that satisfies all diners, vegetarian or otherwise. I wanted to make…

Acarving board may seem like a luxury when you pull it out only a few times a year—but anyone who’s tried carving a roast on a flat cutting board knows what a disaster that can be, with juices dribbling onto the counter from all sides. Carving boards are designed to avoid this mess, traditionally by relying on a trench around their perimeter that traps the liquid. Eight years ago we selected the J.K. Adams Maple Reversible Carving Board ($69.95) as our favorite. With a poultry-shaped indentation on one side and generous trenches on both, it’s simple but effective. But when we noticed some new boards with features like pour spouts, clever liquid channeling designs, and innovative ways to anchor the meat, we decided an update was in order. We pitted…

WHAT IS IT? This copper mold is used to prepare a French confection known as canelé de Bordeaux (or cannelé bordelais), which dates back about 300 years. The molds, which range from 1¼ to 2 inches tall, are said to be key for producing a dark caramelized crust, the perfect contrast to the vanilla-and rum-spiked custardy interior of these little cakes. We followed the lead of a few respected recipes, seasoning a half-dozen of the largest-size copper molds, lightly coating them with a beeswax and oil mixture known as white oil (which purportedly encourages caramelization while preventing sticking), and freezing them before filling them with batter and baking them. The results were impressive. Still, these days silicone canelé molds can be purchased online, and we found that they made respectable…

P eposo was supposedly created in the 15th century by Tuscan fornaciai, the furnace workers responsible for producing the more than 4 million terra-cotta tiles that line the dome of Florence’s famous Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. As the story goes, the tilemakers would lay cheap cuts of beef into clay pots along with a head’s worth of garlic cloves, a handful of peppercorns, and at least a liter of Chianti wine. The pots were said to be left uncovered near the kilns, where they would cook slowly while the tilemakers worked, until the meat was tender and the sauce reduced to a rich nap, perfect for serving over slabs of saltless Tuscan bread. True or not, it makes for a vivid story, just the sort of thing to…

Dishes featuring the classic duo of pork and apples usually aren’t anything special—think weeknight chops and applesauce. But porc à la Normande is a different story. A dish that has graced French tables for hundreds of years, it features an elegant presentation of pork, accompanied by sautéed apples cut into chunks, rings, or even tournées (oblong football shapes), while a sauce, complex with layers of apple flavor and a touch of richness, brings it all together. When I tried a few versions, the potential and the pitfalls were clear. The pork was usually dry and the apples undercooked. Many of the sauces—the component that should really take this dish from everyday to exceptional—were too sweet and tasted flat. And every recipe required hours and an arsenal of pots. My challenge:…

Soupy beans, or frijoles de la olla, are a staple at most Mexican tables and for good reason. The humble preparation, which supposedly derives from the bean suppers that caballeros cooked over fires on the range, typically consists of beans, a bit of pork or lard, and just a few herbs and aromatics like onion, chiles, and maybe tomato. Once the flavors meld and the cooking liquid thickens slightly from the beans’ starches, the dish is as satisfying as a rich stew. Add a side of rice and you’ve got a meal. There are numerous iterations, but my favorite might be frijoles borrachos, or drunken beans, in which pinto beans are cooked with beer or tequila. The alcohol should be subtle, lending the pot brighter, more complex flavor than beans…

Agreat sweet cornmeal muffin might be easy to come by, but a passable version of the savory type is the Bigfoot of the muffin world: We’ve all heard of its existence, but good luck finding physical evidence to support the claim. Most often, these muffins are unappealing, with insufficient cornmeal flavor and/or a dense, heavy crumb. Could I tip the scales in favor of the cornmeal? I knew the reason for the flavor deficit: Recipes generally call for only 1 part cornmeal to 1 part wheat flour. Using more cornmeal would surely produce the distinctive flavor I wanted. But it would also affect texture: Wheat flour helps form an elastic network of gluten that provides structure and traps gas during baking. Cornmeal, on the other hand, can’t form gluten. For…

If chicken broth is supposed to taste like chicken, and beef broth like beef, it stands to reason that vegetable broth should taste like vegetables. After all, this ingredient’s core purpose is the same as that of any other broth: to augment the flavors of and add depth to dishes such as soups, stews, sauces, and risottos. Vegetable broth is also often called on as a meatless stand-in for the chicken or beef kind—and while it shouldn’t taste like meat, it should provide a complex, balanced, unassuming backbone of flavor to a wide range of dishes. The problem is that most commercial vegetable broths do neither of those things. When we tasted 10 products several years ago, we found that the vast majority were awful—sour, cloyingly sweet, or bitter. In…

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED BREVILLE Tea Maker Model: BTM800XL Price: $249.99 Source: amazon.com Tea Machines Tea machines are designed to automate tea making by adding a removable brew basket to an electric kettle. Some also include extra features like a programmable timer, adjustable temperature settings, a keep-warm function, and automatic steeping. We brewed a variety of loose leaves in three models (priced from $86.44 to a staggering $249.99) and found that the Cuisinart ($99.00) and Breville ($249.99) made excellent cups, thanks to their fully perforated baskets that allow for thorough infusion. However, only the Breville was fully customizable. Users could program any temperature between 120 and 212 degrees and steep times from 0 to 10 minutes. Plus, whereas the other pots required the user to manually insert and remove the brew basket,…