Cook's Country December/January 2018-19

SOME FOODS ARE unquestionably beautiful to behold: luxurious ribbons of glossy melted chocolate, for example. Delicate, coral-colored flakes of gently cooked salmon. Verdant leaves of peak-season lettuces, a thousand shades of green. These foods have an advantage, because beautiful foods are more likely to be loved. But not every dish can bank on physical beauty. Take Chicken Cooked in Milk (page 10), the weirdest recipe in this issue. When you pull it from the oven, you’ll wonder what you’ve done. But once you place the first bite of tender chicken and soul-warming sauce on your tongue, its inner beauty blossoms. Close your eyes. Absorb its nuance. You are smitten. Our Amish Cinnamon Bread (page 23) cuts a similarly plain figure but will fill your kitchen with mesmerizing aromas, hinting at…

How Hot Is Your House? What do you mean when you call for something to be “room temperature”? My grandma keeps her kitchen a lot warmer than mine. –Lydia Gendron, East Hartford, Conn. The term “room temperature” shows up a lot in our recipes. Often in baking recipes, we call for butter and other ingredients to be at room temperature so they cream/incorporate better and/or produce a desired effect in the final baked good. And we often call for letting yeasted doughs rise at room temperature. When we test recipes, we assume 67 degrees is room temperature. While you don’t have to adjust your thermostat every time you bake, we do suggest you remain aware of your cooking environment. If you live in a warm climate, breads and other things…

A Treat with the Trimmings –Ginny Muldoon, Latham, N.Y. When I make a pie, I turn the excess dough that I trim from the lip of the pie plate into a sweet treat. I put the odd-shaped scraps on a small, parchment-lined baking sheet; brush them with butter; and then sprinkle on some cinnamon and sugar. They bake up in no time and are really tasty. Pepper Prepping –Shannon Smith, Fort Worth, Texas I follow a three-step process to make mincing jalapeños easier. First I halve the chiles lengthwise so one of the halves is still attached to the stem. I then cut the halves into long strips, leaving the stem end intact. Finally, I cut across the strips, creating a nice even dice. Cutting them this way allows me…

A DECADE AGO, many Americans hadn’t even heard of sriracha. Then, sometime around 2010, this Thai-style chile-garlic sauce went from specialty ingredient to phenomenon. Huy Fong Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce, the iconic bottle with the rooster logo and the green squeeze top, has come to represent the entire category, but it isn’t the only sriracha anymore. With more options on the market, we wondered which was best. To find out, we purchased five srirachas and sampled them in a trio of blind tastings: plain, in spicy mayo sauce with potato chips for dunking, and drizzled over fried rice. Our preferences came down to flavor, heat, and texture. Two products were odd—one with a “funky” fermented quality that reminded us of the Korean chile paste gochujang and one with fruity notes—and…

DRIED FRUITS SUCH as cherries, apricots, raisins, prunes, and apples have a concentrated sweet-tart flavor that is a delicious complement to a savory, juicy pork loin roast—and recipes combining the two abound. But for some reason, these recipes nearly always call for stuffing the roast with the fruit. I’ve often felt that this method is unnecessarily complicated and the results usually aren’t worth it. Placing the dried-fruit stuffing securely inside the roast requires tricky butchery. Plus, stuffing a roast makes it harder to cook the meat just right. Why not simplify matters and prepare each element separately, ensuring a juicy, tender roast to serve with an easy dried-fruit sauce? The keys to a perfect roast pork loin are adequate seasoning and cooking the roast to the proper internal temperature. For…

ONE SUNDAY, WHEN I was preoccupied with a skillet of sizzling pork chops, I forgot to stir the broccoli I was sautéing on another burner. By the time I finally remembered, the broccoli was near-black in color and, I feared, destined for the trash. But I sampled a piece and was surprised to find that it didn’t taste burnt—just deeply roasted, a touch smoky, and lightly sweet. The florets had ultracrispy, almost-fried shells surrounding tender interiors. My “mistake” turned out to be the hit of the meal. To re-create this skillet-charred effect, I’d need a reliable, perfectly predictable recipe that didn’t involve accidentally ignoring the broccoli. I started my first test with 1½ pounds of broccoli florets (I chose to use only florets because it’s harder to get consistent browning…