Cast Iron Skillet Recipes: Skillet Pizza and Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookie

[Music] the gong [Music] they come home [Music] today on Cook's Country we're cooking in cast iron Julia and Bridget share the secret to perfect skillet feats of margarita Adam reviews the best cast-iron pans with Julia and Ashley makes bridget the ultimate chocolate-chip skillet cook that's all right here on Cook's Country from the Han Dynasty to the ancient Roman from the English monarchs to the American Cowboys cast-iron pans have been used for more than 2,000 years what's made them so appealing throughout history well they can be used for everything see rain bring and baking sauteing flambe and frying now George Washington's mother loved her pan so much I love this she put it in her will but over the last century our cast iron pants have moved from the stovetop the back of our cabinets we've heard a lot of people you know who you are and they say that they only use cast iron for Kornberg mm-hm we've forgotten how versatile this pan is but today we're rediscovering the magic that is cast iron starting off with a skillet pizza [Music] if you want that perfect restaurant style pizza crust at home crispy on the outside soft and chewy in the middle well you got a few options I want one well you can build your own wood-burning pizza oven you have one at home no I wish no I don't have one either or you can invest in a pizza stone or you can pull out your trusty cast-iron skillet that's what we're doing today big cast-iron skillet pizza really crispy bottom great toppings very simple but it all starts with the dough you know this is two cups plus two tablespoons or if you want to be more accurate 11 ounces of bread flour we're using bread flour because we want some gluten formation this is gonna go right into my food processor and now a little bit of yeast this is one in 1/8 teaspoon of instant yeast and a little bit of just regular table salt 3/4 teaspoon I'll go ahead and give this a whirl just about 5 pulses just to mix all these things together next we've got a tablespoon of olive oil some richness I'm gonna put the lid back on and I'm gonna turn the machine on and I'll add 3/4 cup of water this is heated to about 110 degrees now it doesn't have to be warm in order for that yeast to rise but it does give it a little head start I'm gonna let that mix until it comes together at best thirty seconds so you can see it's formed a dough ball a couple scraps on there that's fine we're gonna let this rest for two minutes and then I'll let the Machine whirl again for another 30 seconds that's to ensure that we've activated enough gluten it is fun to watch that go around I'm glad it's not me I'm gonna lightly flour the bench here there we go take out the big ball now if the dough was super sticky I would have just added about a tablespoon more flour to the food processor and let it run for another 10 seconds or so I'm just gonna give this a quick need really I want the dough to come together and become smooth maybe up to a minute of hand kneading is all that's needed get it yeah this is looking beautifully smooth I'm just shaping this into a nice hot ball and now I've got a bowl that we've greased with a little bit of olive oil I'll go ahead and coat the top of the dough flip it over just to make sure it's all coated with that oil that way the dough does not dry out and we're gonna let this sit here right on the counter top until it's doubled in size that's gonna take about an hour and a half sounds good [Music] time to make the sauce hmm so we're making a very robust but simple tomato sauce no cook oh I like that super easy but we wanted to have the right texture we don't want it to be too thin it'll cause the crust to be very very soggy we've got a 28 ounce can of whole tomatoes packed in their juice now we want to get rid of this juice or at least strain it away we might need some of that a little bit later on place them in our food processor we're going to add a little bit of oil this is a tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil some good flavor there too minced garlic cloves a little bit of red wine vinegar for some just a teaspoon will do yeah and a teaspoon of dried oregano now we're going to let all this world together in the food processor until it's nice and smooth only gonna take about 30 seconds [Applause] there we go nice and smooth so now I'm gonna go ahead and pour this into a 2 cup measuring cup because we want two cups of sauce for our pizza you know a lot of people ask us what's the difference between using dried herbs versus fresh herbs and in this sauce we use dried oregano well we have a very good answer for you if you want to use fresh versus dried the ratio is three to one so if you have three parts fresh it's one part dried and in terms of which herbs to use we like dried herbs that are Hardy such as oregano or thyme but herbs like parsley or basil we prefer to use those fresh now we want two cups in total and this section gonna make more than just one pizza so I'm gonna add back enough of the tomato juice to this to measure 2 cups not very smart now let's give this a quick stir there we go the sauce is easy as that I'm gonna go put it in the fridge now I can stay in there for up to a week but it can also be frozen for up to one month [Music] our dough is risen nicely oh it had doubled in size and we're just about ready to roll it out there you go and get a better view now for your booking pleasure I had to do hell of just seeing how well the dough is risen and you do that by pressing it and if your little divot and your finger doesn't bounce back the dough is risen now it looks like a bowling ball come on over to the stove now here's a 12-inch cast-iron skillet so this is two tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil and I'll give it a good brush all over at the bottom and it's quite a bit of oil we actually want it to start to fry that crust a little bit there we go let's get back to the dough I'm gonna go ahead and turn this out again onto a lightly floured countertop I can always add more flour if I need to pretty-pretty dough now this makes enough dough for two pizzas so I'll take a bench scraper and just cut it right in half there we go I want to save half and we can have it at another time so I'm gonna wrap it in plastic and just put it off to the side I'm gonna start to roll this out to an 11 inch circle patting it first now it will snap back a little bit and if it starts to fight me too much I'll just put a piece of plastic on it and let it sit for another five I'm at a timeout exactly that's what it is it's a dough timeout you go in the corner mister huh I'm gonna use a rolling pin now and start working it out and it's a rustic pizza that's my excuse why it's not gonna be a perfect circle is always my excute this is actually pretty sturdy so I'm gonna go ahead and lift it up we're gonna move it over to the cast iron skillet there we go drop it into the pan and now I'm going to press on the sides just a little bit just to move it up and we're gonna top it with tomato sauce and we're using a half a cup of our tomato sauce per pizza this actually was a hard lesson for me to learn how restraint on the pizza sauce when you're making a pizza let's learn the hard way start with too much the pizza gets soggy it doesn't get crispy on the bottom a little goes a long way on pizza little dab will do you so sauce on now cheese we're using home milk fresh mozzarella so this is 12 ounces enough for two pizzas we've sliced it into quarter thick slices you can see that's a pretty naked pizza mm-hmm that's no problem the cheese is going to melt just a little bit but a lot of that sauce is going to be exposed in the oven and really caramelize and concentrate in flavor now we're not gonna go ahead and put this right in the oven we're gonna give it a head start right here on the stovetop I'll turn the burner to medium high we're gonna let this cook right on the stovetop for about two to four minutes and that's going to give the bottom a head start I'm gonna look for the edges to start to get just set and you're going to see the pizza puffs up just a little bit before we head to the oven and if I peek under I can see that there's some nice color right under there this is ready to go into a 500 degree oven it's gonna stay in there until the whole pizza is nice and set and also golden brown that's gonna take about 7 to 10 minutes Oh smells like pizza Oh does it look like pizza this is ready to come out of the skillet always wrap the handle coz it's super hot so I'm gonna take an offset spatula and just loosen the bottom and then I'll tilt the pan you just draw it right out now we just need a last-minute flourish of some chopped basil about a tablespoon per pizza that makes it the classic pizza margherita fresh mozzarella and the basil and I've got a big old pizza wheel here to cut right through that hearty crust oh I love them when you pick up a pizza pizza and it doesn't flop over so all the toppings fall off onto the plate all right be careful it's hot so good the flavor of that dough is terrific I mean store-bought dough has nothing on this and you saw how easy it was to put together yep so move over pizza stones the cast iron skillet is here to cook your pizza pies start with a traditional pizza dough then make a quick no cook sauce by processing whole canned tomatoes with garlic and dried oregano push the dough to the corners of the skillet before adding the sauce and topping with whole milk mozzarella the crust ahead start on the stovetop so it gets a nice golden bottom then finish the pizza in the oven until golden that takes about ten minutes and there you have it from Cook's Country a superb recipe for skillet pizza margherita [Music] enameled cast iron skillets sure are pretty but the real question is are they worth the money well Adam what do you think that's an interesting question Julian we've addressed it thoroughly now you know that we love cast iron but it requires a little bit of extra care but putting an enamel coating on that cast iron is a way around that care we gathered this lineup of five different skillets the price range was between a low of 48 dollars and 90 cents up to one hundred and eighty dollar guy here but he's pretty but he's super pretty the cooking tests mirrored the same tests that we did with traditional cast iron but we added some abuse testing that was all designed to show us the durability of the enamel coating so we banged on the corners with metal spoons we cut in the pans we scraped in them with metal spatulas and we even created thermal shock we heated them up in the oven and plunged him into ice water most of them survived it without a scratch this guy here got a couple of little cut marks from the chef's knives but that was about it in terms of the stick resistance we had mixed results and it depended on really what you were cooking and how much fat was involved that was the key so if you are searing really nicely marbled steaks or shallow fry and breaded chicken cutlets where there's plenty of fat involved the food browned beautifully and released without a hitch but when you get into foods that are sort of notorious for sticking like fish like scrambled eggs like skillet cornbread was a great example of this in all of the traditional cast-iron skillets we tested the skillet cornbread developed a beautiful golden crust and popped right out of the pan when we turned it over in four of these five enameled cast iron pans the pan actually held on to a chunk of the crust so the loaves ripped and came off with a big hole in them Oh now we tested the conductivity and the heat retention and we found that the enamel coating doesn't really affect that they heat up just the same way but regular cast iron can go into a screaming hot oven or even under the broiler it's indestructible that way these pans with their coatings a lot of them have maximum temperatures they can't handle the superhot temperatures because the coatings will develop little tiny cracks called crazing and in fact this one here has a recommended maximum temperature of just 400 degrees oh that's not high enough not high enough definitely not in the end we came up with two cast-iron skillets and an answer to our question if you're not up for the extra maintenance of a traditional cast-iron and you have the money to spend there are really good enameled cast iron skillets to buy and this is one of them this is the look crows a signature 11 and 3/4 iron handle skillet it's a beauty but this one's expensive it's a hundred and eighty dollars okay in terms of the cooking test right on its heels was the pan in front of you that is the mario batali by dansk 12-inch open saute pan that one cooked nearly as well as this 180 dollar look who's Abe and that one is just $60 all right so there you have it if you're in the market for an enameled cast iron pan you have two choices you could spend the big bucks and go for the lake crew se or save some cash and buy the mario batali from dansk [Music] so what's better than a chocolate-chip cookie you might ask and I'll tell you it's a huge chocolate-chip cookie one that's super gooey in the center and crisp around the edges I mean what is not to love so speaking of love I'm here with the lovely Ashley it's going to show us how we can fall in love with a big skillet cookie that's right it's a big skillet cookie and it's all made in this 12-inch cast-iron skillet and it's easier than your traditional chocolate chip cookies you don't have to deal with scooping portioning rotating multiple sheet pans in the oven it's all done here plus the bottom in the tall sides of the cast-iron skillet are gonna make for a really crispy crust yeah so what we're gonna do is we are going to start by melting 9 tablespoons of unsalted butter which I've gone ahead and started right here and we're gonna cook this over medium heat until it we start to smell a really good nutty aroma and there's gonna be some bubbling that starts and once that starts to subside we're gonna know that this is nice and brown it's hard to see browning butter in a black cast-iron skillet so I have a couple tips for you throughout this process I am gonna be stirring constantly just to ensure that nothing's burning in the skillet but using a white tipped high heat rubber spatula I can just drag my spatula through and once I start to see some specks of golden brown I know that it's pretty close to done or what you can do is use a regular old dinner spoon and the same concept there you're just gonna drag your spoon through and once you start to see if the brown bits at the bottom of the spoon you know that it's time to pull your butter because it's going to be done relatively quickly about five minutes total as you can see we've got those browned bits lots of flavor so to stop this from cooking I'm gonna remove it from the skillet and transfer it to this bowl here and you can really see that browned butter in there laughs yep and it's just gonna give that really nice toffee flavor we have three remaining tablespoons of unsalted butter that I'm gonna add into here just to stop this from cooking I'm gonna whisk these together so you're cooling down the butter yep those three tablespoons of butter are just about melted I'm mesmerized it's like watching a butter merry-go-around them yeah I'll go on this merry-go-round any day meet you here we have our sugars I'm gonna add this into the butter mixture 3/4 of a cup of packed dark brown sugar half a cup of granulated sugar 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract and 1 teaspoon of table salt I'm just gonna whisk this together for about 30 seconds until nice and smooth okay now the remaining ingredient here is one whole egg plus one egg yolk and the extra egg yolk is gonna provide extra moisture again and richness mm-hmm I am just going to continue to whisk this for 30 seconds until nice and glossy and then I'm gonna let it sit for three minutes and that's gonna help to dissolve the sugars that's time to re whisk our sugars here I just wanted to explain quickly why I'm doing this so it's gonna be a total of 10 minutes that I'm gonna be whisking on and off for 30 seconds now we get pulled away as you know quite often in the Test Kitchen for different types of tastings doesn't matter if you're baking something or have something on the stove you gotta go out and taste mm-hmm so this recipe was developed when we went out for a tasting got back in the kitchen went back out for another tasting hence 10 minutes had gone by and it turned out that batch of chocolate chip cookies was the best one yet and we found that it was because the sugars had a chance to dissolve I twist that for 30 seconds and I'm gonna wait three more minutes two more times okay and then it's gonna be a total of 10 minutes gotcha [Music] it's been 10 minutes it's amazing how much lighter in color it gets to here we have one in 3/4 cups of all-purpose flour and a half a teaspoon of baking soda and just whisk this until combined and I'm gonna add this into our sugar bowl here we're using that rubber spatula I was using earlier I'm gonna combine this without over mixing until just combined you know it's always a good idea to do what Ashley did and add any chemical leaveners like baking soda or baking powder directly to the flour and whisk it together before you add it to your butter and sugar mixture here you can see we have some chocolate chips now this is one cup six ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips and the important thing here is you want to measure and weigh your chocolate chips for this recipe and that's because they can sink to the bottom of the skillet if you're using too many of them and it's gonna scorch the bottom of your skillet I'm gonna add this here and mix this until just combined and no flour pockets remain which will take about one minute there are no more flour pockets remaining I'm just gonna wipe out any leftover butter that might be in the skillet can you hold the bowl for me I'll serve answer that and thank you so much now using this rubber spatula I'm just going to carefully flatten it into a single layer here that's a big cookie oh yeah I have a 375-degree oven that's been preheated when I transfer this and let it cook for about 20 minutes until the top is nice and set and golden brown then I'm gonna rotate the pan halfway through cooking oh the whole kitchen smells like okay in heaven as you can see the top is just set and it's gold and brown and just around the edges they're starting to pull away from the pan so that is perfect now does this have to cool down it does it does have to cool for about 30 minutes okay so I will patiently wait but you're so right about that crisp edge you know I think cast irons kind of make everything that you make in them even better you can make so much in a cast iron pan and there's a really rich history behind cast iron cookery and for more information on cast iron history go to our website it's been 30 minutes and we have waited I've waited so long and it's still a little bit warm nice using this bench scraper you can also use a knife I'm gonna cut this into some nice healthy wedges for us and by healthy she's referring to size one for you mm-hmm if I look in here you can see how moist that is that means that is really going to be nice and soft and chewy but it's very crisp around the edge now no forks and knives because it's a cookie oh yes butterscotchy toffee it really does have that butterscotch taste absolutely so chewy you know one thing I hadn't even thought of big cast iron pan you put the cookie dough in it it stays in the oven for a longer period of time than all those tiny individual cookies so we're getting this amazing crispy kind of talking lacy tom yes mm-hmm oh this is so good I bet this would be great for a party you can actually make it into a happy birthday cake oh yeah put a little icing on top our cast iron chocolate chips skillet cookie proves that sometimes bigger is better to build a cookie with deep rich flavor we start by browning butter in a cast-iron skillet and use two kinds of sugars using more dark brown sugar than granulated for toffee flavor after adding an egg and an extra yolk we alternate whisking and resting the mixture for a total of three times which allows the sugar to fully dissolve and bake up with a chewy Center and crisp edges flour baking soda and chocolate chips are mixed in then the dough is patted out and baked right in the cast iron pan a taupe golden brown finally we cut the giant cookie into wedges and there you have it a super easy super tasty and super big cast iron chocolate chip skillet cookie you can get this recipe in all the recipes from this season along with our testings tastings and selected episodes at cookscountry.com backslash backslash and giant cookie thanks for watching cooks country from America's Test Kitchen so what'd you think leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or just say I now you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel see you later alligator [Laughter]

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 508,789

Keywords: cast-iron skillet, cast-iron, cast iron pizza, cast-iron pizza, cast iron skillet pizza, cast-iron cookie, cast iron cookie, cookie, baking, chocolate chip cookie, dessert, cheese, mozzarella, homemade pizza sauce, homemade pizza, recipe, cook's country, cooking show, learn to cook

Id: FSBj2--LOww

Length: 23min 7sec (1387 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 27 2018