6 Pro Chefs Make Their Favorite 15-Minute Meal | Test Kitchen Talks | Bon Appétit

today we're in the test kitchen making 15-Minute Meals I think 15 minutes is plenty of time efficient cooking is all about A well-stocked Pantry pulling out little secret weapons that can kind of just Elevate day-to-day normal ingredients it's methods and techniques that you have at the ready damn actually this is really good being able to whip some up quick yeah it's a good tool set to have today I'm making scallion fried rice with a fried egg on top this is like everything went wrong on my commute home kind of dish and I got home at 8 30 and I need to eat now it really speaks to things that I already have on hand the rice is key here because obviously a lot of the work is already done for me and I'm just amping it up so the fried egg is going to add a lot of bulk these sauces are going to add a lot of flavor and the alliums are going to help anchor it and give it depth so I'm just going to start by slicing the whites from the scallions if you wanted to use an onion you could but it's definitely gonna make the prep a little bit longer and I like to keep things fast a few cloves of garlic I measure with my heart and then I'm just gonna grab like two tablespoons of the butter and I'm gonna put it on like medium medium high heat drop the butter in add the garlic and the scallions and I want the butter to Brown a little bit that's going to give us like a Nutty toasty flavor that's just going to amp up the sesame oil a bit it's all about just getting as much flavor from the ingredients that you're using as you can you can see there's some color on the garlic now is a really great time to add the rice the soy sauce whatever feels right I'm gonna do a few dashes the sriracha and like a dash of the sesame oil once the rice looks nice and coated I like to just tap it down and this is going to allow it to crisp up a little bit and give it a little bit of extra texture you'll hear like a dry pop coming from the skillet and that's how I know that like the rice has frisked up I'm gonna add like a tablespoon or two of oil I'm going to show you my little trick for getting a a white that's completely cooked without like sacrificing the yolk so if you tear little air pockets into that like thicker white part you'll get like a very evenly cooked white so just tip and pour the oil on top also to cook that thicker white part the white is cooked I know the yolk is going to stay runny and now it's just about color I'm done add some of those scallions on top a few dashes of soy sauce to season the egg and some sesame seeds it's all about the runny yolk for me it's so good you got the like little crispy bits from like searing off the rice a little bit of richness from the yolk and lots of depth from the scallions and garlic so this is the kind of dish that I like would look forward to at the end of a long day that comes together super fast it all happens in one pan like the rice and the Egg and you don't really have to measure anything just keep tasting as you go and you'll be fine this is a style of Curry that plays mostly into the sort of Japanese tradition of Curry specifically using these like s b Roux blocks I found that these do an amazing job of creating this Rich Curry base with almost no effort I can put the rice cakes right in there they can just cook through to bouncy chewy tenderness this is like the true genius and the true solve in terms of how you turn a bunch of disparate elements into a dish all right I'm just soaking my rice cakes I never actually know if this does anything but I'm using um rice cakes that I've been keeping in the freezer and they just need to be defrosted things like ginger and garlic adds so much flavor to whatever dish they hit so I'm taking sausage out of the casing I could use ground meat but using sausage speeds things up fast trimming the green beans you don't need to take the tail off just just the top when they're in bigger pieces like this I'll just do like a real fast half chop there there I just want to cut up my Curry blocks this is sweet Italian sausage I like to use sausage because it's seasoned and ready to go just breaking it up now for our aromatics that's our Ginger and our garlic green beans can go in all right that's the roux going in I want to let these dissolve I want to make sure like I've got plenty of thickening power and tightness here rice cakes can go in throw a lid on it they're already starting to soften now but I want them to be kind of submerged and coated because that's what's going to soften them fully all right I think we're just about there hmm little extra pop of salt I'm gonna put in a piece of butter a little bit of toasted sesame oil to finish is going to bring this thing home good to go usually I mean I would frankly just eat this right out of the skillet call it a day a little cilantro going on curry rice cakes green beans a little sausage so much flavor to have created in such a little amount of time I think like the real solve is like just being able to make that Fast Curry base you can apply it to so many different things it's those tools that allow you to get lunch on the table and you know 15 minutes or even less so I'm gonna be making a seared flank steak with salvation which is a really delicious sauce from Catalan which is based with almonds and tomato which you can actually make it Dual Purpose by dividing it in half so you get a condiment that adds texture but you also get sauce to dip your steak in flank steak is a really great cut because it's thin you don't have to worry about rendering out a ton of fat it's going to cook really quickly on both sides the first thing I'm going to do is season my meat and let it do its thing while I also then work on my condiment at the same time what I'm doing is I'm building the base for my salvation which is tomato garlic we have parsley and you can use a Fresno chili you can use a scotch bonnet which I typically would use I'm moving on to this beautiful long red chili kind of like I'm Gonna Leave It kind of chunky garlic also kind of has its own element of heat but it also adds this sort of I guess you can say Umami flavor to a Dish as well the garlic here is super thin so that you're not getting a huge bite of it I'm also going to Salt it and that's going to help to break that garlic down it can also pull the flavor and the liquid out of the Tomato in the chilies as well and then the rest of my garlic I'm going to actually add to my mortar and pestle we'll save that for later parsley is nice because you can use the leaf and you can use the stems you want to use the sort of like the younger tender stem part of it in Jamaica they use a lot of thyme fresh is nice because when we're making a paste it'll release those oils we're gonna just chop up a little bit of almond and add it to our salvachata condiment I'm gonna add Cherry vinegar the acidity is going to also pick up the acidity of the Tomato I'm going to address this with a little oil and let's start this sear on our stick so we're gonna go for very very high heat I'm going to put it to the center of my pan I want the skin to sear really really hard and what I want to do is I'm going to flip it probably like every like 30 to 45 seconds we have our Thyme and our garlic and our mortar and vegetable I'm going to add a little bit of salt to the Morton pestle olive oil we're going to take a little pastry brush and brush this onto the other side of her stick just a flip I'm gonna brush one side we're gonna coat it we're gonna build up like a little lacquer a layered effect let that go for another 30 to 45 seconds we're gonna add half of our condiment to our blender and then we'll check on our steak this is the color profile we're looking for for the steak so this is looking good I'm going to pull this I like medium rareness going on in my steak you want to make sure that it rests so that when you slice into it you don't get this big pool of bloody steak it's full of moisture and also flavor you don't want that to release and so I'm going to start with my SAU Bachata sauce make sure that like you put steak onto it like a dip then you don't have to dip it again but you can dip it if you want to the little swipe of the plate you know what I'm talking about this is leaching all that liquid out still make sure that it's drinking so it's not too wet and then that's just going to go like so hit it with a little bit of olive oil and then finish it with a tiny bit of salt and there we have our flank steak with salbachata this is a really good go-to meal because you're maximizing on ingredients flavor you're getting the best of both from the turning the condiment into a sauce and just really leaning on seasoning seasoning is always your friend if you do it right it really goes a long way so I got I picked the fish for a quick meal because it does it Cooks rather quick so we have two swordfish steaks it's just so fatty it's so marbleized it's delicious man it really is kind of like like the wagyu of the sea well get that seared off we'll cook our fish and then we'll make a little salad quick little meal something that I might have laying around for the most part and a couple solid Pantry items couple secret weapons we're gonna let that preheat we want to let that get nice and hot let that get going and we'll go back we're going to put a little salt on the fish you know it's something I even like to do a little bit ahead of time um with fish especially a thick piece of fish like this you can kind of cook it like red meat a little if we got a little Persian cucumber I like to have it and then just do little slanty Cuts like that little like on little off radishes or one of my in my opinion a a perfect vegetable they're crispy they're crunchy they're versatile some little Sun gold Tomatoes as well we'll do it on the old quart container lid trick add that right to the party We'll add us some olives we'll do a little avocado too let's hit it with a little salt season everything we're also going to add a little bit of shoyu we'll hit it with a little bit of rice vinegar just a skosh a little togarashi and it's just like a little spicy Japanese seasoning all right I'm just going to add a little bit of grain as well not a ton just to give it a little texture a little carbohydrate I don't want it to be that's all you're tasting just a little bit of olive oil a small drizzle of sesame oil simple surrounded by a lot of really interesting staple ingredients that I keep in my pantry to pull off delicious quick fast fresh easy meals so now we got our fish I put a little bit of oil on it and here we go this thick fish takes a little bit longer time to cook it is more forgiving you know you're talking a few minutes on each side cook times or fish are always going to vary on the species and the size of the piece it has this like inner interconnective fat tissue going almost like what you would want to see in beef and just like in the world of cooking steak if I put a little bit of garlic and a little bit of Rosemary I'm gonna do a little bit of butter right at the end you know why not and uh we're kind of good to go you know when you start to see like it would want to fall apart um and if your gut reaction is it needs another minute give it another minute so we got our salad it's been sitting the grains have been absorbing some of those liquids that we put in like the vinegar and the shoyu it can start to make its own little Coating in its own little sauce sounds like a good meal to me yeah let's give this give the fish the old spoon test it's fatty it's moist salty very satisfying eats more like a pork chop what I love about using and cooking old with old grains and incorporating it into something like a salad everything's kind of Jammy and delicious and just kind of a perfect meal in my opinion just a quick kind of cooking protein and you can pull it off with any kind of pantry salad [Music] you can make it your own with whatever vegetable slash protein you have rolling around in your fridge what I like about these noodles they're kind of ramen like they're fresh and these are I believe par cooked in a way so really you just have to stir fry them and then they're done I'm not above getting a pre-packaged bottle that I know will serve its Duty one pan 15 ish minutes we'll get you to yakisoba land bean sprouts I'm not measuring but like a cup ish pick up a coleslaw mix using half a bag or even a full bag will help eliminate the prep separate the greens from the whites success hinges on everything kind of being ready because it doesn't spend much time cooking a fresh pork belly is so lovely cut it smallish so that it kind of resembles everything else because it's going to cook fast what I like about fresh pork belly is you're getting the the oil the fat which is contributing to the foundation flavor favor of anything that you're cooking this brand of soba noodles they come in a larger pack of three but I think for this portion two is fine so let's get cooking medium high heat while I'm waiting for it to come to heat is just season my pork a bit putting our pork in try to get it into like a thin layer and then don't touch it and then add the wipes of your scallions drain off as much water as possible season every layer of the way the coleslaw makes this so great because everything is like chopped and ready to go Yaki does mean fried so just give it a minute to get a nice little crust just a few drops of water on the noodles it will help them Steam and kind of the way maybe when you make pan fried dumplings and then it'll help kind of remove them from their Caked Up steaks you can definitely use tongs but I don't know why I like to do it this way lower the heat a little bit before we add the sauce so it doesn't burn on impact you can add your fresh green scallions now as well for this amount of noodles I would start with maybe like two or three tablespoons does it smell like yakisoba yes look at this colorful noodle dish with lots of veg you know anytime I can try to get more vegetables into my family I do traditionally you'll see yakisoba served with Benny Suga which is just Pickled ginger this goes a long way in breaking up some of the richness and this is alnori which you can just sprinkle on it's just dried seaweed in a very fine form it really came together in no time at all like half the time was spent prepping the ingredients which feels very much true to the stir-fried School think of this as a nice fried rice CounterPoint in your weeknight dinner Arsenal the heat the smokiness you can taste it here just keep a bottle of the prepared sauce in your pantry always keep some fresh noodles on standby as well if you have any other vegetables rolling around now is a good time to use them this dish is creamy spinach and chickpeas there are a few things I always have in my pantry and freezer for like quick meals I love having Frozen greens frozen spinach and kale are my go-to's I always have canned beans and a few like sauces this one comes together fast because you're relying on big flavors like I'm using Harissa I'm using pickled peppers so those are all big bold flavors so you don't have to do much to get the dish to the Finish Line it's creamy it's crunchy it's spicy it's punchy it's vibrant everything that I want to eat but 15 minutes so I'll start by cutting my shallots shallots are good because they're everything in onion promises to be but a little bit milder lemon we're going to use this to finish our dish drain your chickpeas if you're the Thrifty smart cook you could save that chickpea water for something I am not that person today I love I love Cascadian farm for some reason it's just more vibrant I am going to dump my spinach in so that it can start draining so that means going in there and squeezing every last bit of water out so we're going to go in and add our Harissa to our chickpeas this is Tunisian or Moroccan spice paste it's really well balanced and very flavorful and it's not just spicy so this heavy cream is going to go in the chickpeas and the spinach so we can head on over to the stove we're going to start by heating up a little bit of olive oil add the shallots give them a stir you need a little bit of salt the chickpeas and the Harissa we're gonna get that started as well and that can start simmering the shallots are going to take about four to five minutes and we're looking for them to get a little bit of color while the chickpeas that are going on over there they're going to take 10 to 12 minutes you're looking for it to thicken up and become Saucy next thing we're going to do is add our spinach and we need about a tablespoon of flour the flour is there just to thicken everything up a little bit it is just like creating a roux that's what you're effectively doing so once you see it starting to stick a little bit like that that's kind of when you go in and add your heavy creams and then we're also going to add a bit of water just to make sure everything is the texture we want you want to let it simmer a little bit because you want the raw taste of the flour to cook out time is a good guide but go by visual cues while that's coming together in the last minute I'm just going to warm up the flatbread let's see if we can get a few charred spots on there meanwhile I'm gonna turn these guys off you can see the oil kind of beating up on the surface that's a good indication that you're cooking the spices out well okay so the chickpeas we're just going to stir in some of our giardinero which is like Italian style pickled vegetables kind of breakings everything stir that in and we're good there and we're ready to plate and then we're going to spoon our chickpeas on top and then we're going to finish it off with pickled peppers again nothing fancy with the cuts you're just cutting really rough and then just pile it on top the last thing we need to do is garnish it with fried shallots and that's it that was my 15 minute creamy spinach and chickpeas with flatbread okay A little squeeze of lemon it really does hit every flavor I know the first thing you taste is pickled um peppers in the giardinera it's really vibrant it's it's it's fun and fresh and very unexpected always keep frozen Greens in your freezer and you have a 15 minute meal sorry but this is really good

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 2,665,008

Keywords: 15 minute meal, 15 minute meals, 15 minute recipe, 15 minute recipes, ba test kitchen, bon appetit, bon appetit test kitchen, brad leone, easy yakisoba, flank steak recipe, food, korean rice cake recipe, make flank steak, make korean rice cake, make swordfish steak, make tteokbokki, make yakisoba, quick rice cake, quick yakisoba, recipe, recipes, rice cake recipe, salvitxada, salvitxada sauce, swordfish steak recipe, test kitchen talks, tteokbokki recipe

Id: O1JDBt6WE7A

Length: 18min 51sec (1131 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 31 2022