America's Test Kitchen - General Discussion

[dubbel zout]

22 hours ago, Mondrianyone said:

The raisins in the carrot cake were a deal breaker for me

That was one trick I thought was clever. I don't like raisins in baked goods, but if they were chopped up so finely like that? Not a dealbreaker. And they also affected the texture, making the cookies  chewier, I think.

The pretzel ep is on this afternoon, and after reading everyone's comments here,  I'm really looking forward to it. The great Zingerman's has a pretzel making kit that doesn't seem to lean on the lethal side of cooking. I was going to give it to my nieces for Christmas one year, but it sold out before I could place the order.

ETA: Saw the show, and it's nuts. I understand needing to take precautions with the lye bath, but nothing is worth turning my kitchen into a hazmat site. It was hella entertaining to watch, though.

Deep-frying is another thing I'll never do, so onion rings remain a restaurant dish for me.

Edited February 9 by dubbel zout

[Bastet]

The bread crumbs segment was all kinds of validating, as I not only use the three different kinds for different applications in the same ways Jack suggested (especially using fresh when making meatballs), but, while I make fresh from different bread, for the plain, very finely ground crumbs I use their favorite, Progresso, and for Panko, I use their favorite, Kikkoman.

I joined Bridget in laughing at one pork chop being enough for two people.

I love pork and greens together*, so I liked the concept of the pork and broccoli rabe sandwich on Cook's Country, but it still had too much bread for my personal taste.  I think if I hollowed the thicker side out some, I'd dig it.

*It's a bit of an obsession.  If I'm doing a simple side salad, vegetable side, and grilled/roasted piece of meat dinner, I can do just about any vegetable in the world with chicken, beef, or fish.  But a pork chop?  That must be accompanied by collard greens, mustard greens, kale, something like that.

[AllAboutMBTV]

Any idea why Elle left the pork chop on the bone before marinating it, dredging it and frying it, especially since she cut it off before serving? Unless it made a convenient handle for moving the chop around I can't imagine the bone/marrow added much, if any, flavor to the marinade or oil. I kept waiting for her to say why she left it on, but she never did.

Deep/shallow frying is a deal breaker for me, as is sous vide, so I contented myself with learning, knowing I'd never actually make either recipe.

[Bastet]

I shouldn't have watched before making dinner -- now I want the Basque clam and chorizo dish from CC (I want even more the inspiration version from the Boise restaurant, with the fresh sausage) rather than the chicken I have roasting.  I love chorizo, and I love pork and shellfish together. 

[dubbel zout]

On 2/11/2025 at 6:38 PM, AllAboutMBTV said:

Any idea why Elle left the pork chop on the bone before marinating it, dredging it and frying it, especially since she cut it off before serving?

I think part of it was that the bone made a convenient handle, but the main reason was probably because the bone kept the meat juicier when it was frying. I'm surprised she didn't say why she wanted bone-in chops. 

On 2/10/2025 at 1:07 AM, Bastet said:

I joined Bridget in laughing at one pork chop being enough for two people.

With all of the accompaniments, it wasn't that skimpy. (But I laughed along with Bridget as well.)

I know the sous vide is hand's off once the package is under water, but I don't want to spend two hours cooking only to then have to sear the chops to give them color and more flavor.

[Yeah No]

I just wanted to say that I've never agreed with using fresh bread or breadcrumbs to make Italian meatballs and that comes straight from my Sicilian great grandmother, through my grandmother and mother to me. Not all Italians agree with using the fresh bread and I know for a fact that if you know how to cook and prepare the meatballs right they don't get dried out from using dried breadcrumbs and in my opinion they taste better and have a better consistency. You have to kick up the proportion of cheese, add a tbsp. of milk (per pound) and add an extra egg (2 per pound), then fry them at a low temp., but they come out much better IMHO. ATK has always irked me that they think they know better than my family of gifted Sicilian cooks how to cook meatballs.

[MerBearHou]

Did anyone else see the 25th Anniversary 2-hour show today?  I don’t know if it’s shown before, but I saw it this morning and loved every minute.  My favorites in the cast — really the OGs — all were there and had interviews and interactions.  Bridget and Julia did all of the cooking but in each segment, a rotating group of our longtime favorites sat right to the side and had fun commentary.  It was also fun to see snippets from 25 years ago and how different (and yet the same) they all looked.  Loved every bit of it.  What a treat.

[chessiegal]

14 minutes ago, MerBearHou said:

Did anyone else see the 25th Anniversary 2-hour show today?  I don’t know if it’s shown before, but I saw it this morning and loved every minute.  My favorites in the cast — really the OGs — all were there and had interviews and interactions.  Bridget and Julia did all of the cooking but in each segment, a rotating group of our longtime favorites sat right to the side and had fun commentary.  It was also fun to see snippets from 25 years ago and how different (and yet the same) they all looked.  Loved every bit of it.  What a treat.

MPT2 (Maryland Public Television's Create channel) aired it September 21, 2024. I decided to record it and enjoyed it so much I still have the recording.

[Bastet]

2 hours ago, MerBearHou said:

Did anyone else see the 25th Anniversary 2-hour show today?

I saw it in October (I missed it when it aired here, and it took me a while to find it on the PBS app).  I enjoyed it a lot, but I wish they'd had bloopers like the 20th anniversary special -- those always make me laugh.

[Mondrianyone]

Update on something I posted about not long ago:

The streaming channels that Dish has going (including an all-day ATK/CC channel, hence mentioning it here) weren't recordable at that time. They are now--or at least some of them are. So if there's a show you wanted to hold on to from the last few years, you can record it now. (And there's another channel that has a bunch of Scott McGillivray's past shows, which I'll be watching like it's my job, though that's irrelevant here.)

[MerBearHou]

3 hours ago, Bastet said:

I saw it in October (I missed it when it aired here, and it took me a while to find it on the PBS app).  I enjoyed it a lot, but I wish they'd had bloopers like the 20th anniversary special -- those always make me laugh.

I kept waiting for bloopers at the end!  Was surprised they didn’t include them — that would be have made it perfect.  

[dubbel zout]

The bloopers were my favorite part. I love seeing how things go wrong even with seasoned, professional cooks. 

The King Arthur blog has a post every April 1 that shows how things there have gone wrong. They're very relatable—forgetting to grease a pan so half the cake layer sticks, using a too-small pan so there's overflow, forgotting a major ingredient and something doesn't rise, etc.