Cook's Country October/November 2018

ONE OF MY favorite things about cooking is the thrill of the unknown. It’s so easy and safe to settle into the predictable processes of cooking (you know what you’re going to get when you boil a pot of noodles, for example), and there’s certainly nothing wrong with the tried-and-true. But when a new proposition presents itself? That’s when things get exciting. Take, for instance, our recipe for Bagel Bread on page 15. Have you ever heard of it? I hadn’t until a coworker mentioned it. Once she did, I realized that I’d always demurred from making sandwiches on bagels because they can be so unwieldy and hard to eat. But all the qualities of a bagel, baked into a sliceable loaf of bread suitable for, say, a BLT or…

Pie in the Sky I’m traveling for Thanksgiving. Can I fly with a pie? Any tips? –Izzy Sandoval, Iowa City, Iowa The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has a list of food items it allows in carry-on and checked bags. And we should all be thankful that pie has a green light as one of the permissible items. To get a feel for how this works, we did what we do best: We tested it. Over the 2017 Thanksgiving holiday, we gave six staffers a total of 12 different pies (pumpkin, pecan, and apple) to transport on their flights home. And every single pie made it through security. After all the travel, the pies that arrived in the best shape were those that we sent in our winning pie carrier, the…

I just bought a birthday cake at a fancy bakery, and I saw them pulling cake rounds out of the freezer in the back of the shop. Is this just for convenience, or does freezing do something good for the cake? –Wanda Lovering, Chesterland, Ohio Being able to make a cake ahead of time and freeze it sounds pretty convenient, especially around the holidays. But to find out if freezing negatively affects cakes, we baked, wrapped, and froze individual cake layers that we made from boxed mix and with our White Layer Cake recipe. We also made, wrapped, and froze our Easy Pound Cake. After one week, we pulled the cakes from the freezer and thawed them at room temperature for 4 hours. A few tasters actually preferred the frozen-then-thawed…

Hot Water Cleaning –Jeff McDonald, Latham, N.Y. To make sure my cutting boards are really clean, I boil water in the kettle and pour it over my wooden and plastic boards when I wash them. The hot water inhibits bacteria and works wonders on things like beet stains and lingering garlic and onion odors. Waffle Wiz –Rosemary Hogan, Nashville, Tenn. For a fun spin on breakfast, I use refrigerated cinnamon roll dough to make fast, easy “waffles” for my kids. I heat the waffle iron, lightly grease it, and place individual portions of the dough in the four quadrants of the iron. Minutes later, the “waffles” are cooked through and golden brown. I then spread on the frosting, which melts into the indents for a delicious treat made in no…

WE LOVE EGG noodles in soups, casseroles, and as a base for dishes such as beef stroganoff. They differ from “regular” dried pasta by virtue of their deeper yellow color and slightly savory flavor from the addition of eggs. They are most commonly found in a broad, loose corkscrew shape. We tried seven top-selling products, selecting “wide” or “broad” noodles when available, since that’s what our recipes call for most often. We sampled the noodles boiled and tossed with butter, in chicken noodle soup, and in tuna-noodle casserole. Ultimately we can recommend all the noodles, but there were some factors that set our favorite apart. The first was shape. Though all the noodles are sold as “wide” or “broad,” our lineup ran the gamut from thin, wispy corkscrews to long,…

INOCENCIO CARBAJAL STANDS at a massive cauldron of bubbling lard, stirring in sheets of pork skin with a darkened wooden paddle. Another cook reaches into a second pot of lard with a stainless-steel meat hook to retrieve racks of deeply browned pork ribs, pork shoulders, and finally a few slabs of pork belly. The small kitchen is cramped, and the air is thick with a low-hanging cloud of vaporized pork fat. Everyone in the kitchen moves with focus and intent while the radio blares out a chorus of Mexican trumpets in the background. Three men stand scoring sheets of pork skin, quietly and quickly. It seems impossible that this tiny kitchen could sell 8,000 pounds of pork each week. Inocencio opened Carnitas Uruapan in 1975; it was one of the…