Grown-Up Comfort Classics: Stovetop Mac and Cheese and Turkey Meatloaf

[Music] today on America's Test Kitchen Bridget and Julia share the secrets to simple stovetop macaroni and cheese dan reveals the science behind whiskey Adam reveals his top pick for large sauce pans Lisa test lid holders and Becky makes Julie a foolproof turkey meatloaf it's all coming up on America's Test Kitchen Julie and I have seen a lot of recipes for mac and cheese come through the Test Kitchen so when a new technique crosses our path we take notice so we're here to show you how you can have a better mac and cheese through science mm-hmm so there's a new mac and cheese on the block it's a one pan wander and it has four ingredients and it's good love anything before ingredients yep and it comes from the folks at Modernist Cuisine who are very fancy out there on the west coast but it's really fast it's really creamy and so we were inspired to come up with our own one pan mac and cheese recipe I like that here's the one pan medium-sized saucepan and the trick is we're gonna cook the macaroni right in the beginnings of the sauce not only will a macaroni absorb some of that flavor but the starch from the pasta will help thicken the sauce that's such a good idea because usually macaroni is boiled separately and then it's added to the cheese sauce near the end that's right so here I'm gonna add the water this is one and a half cups of water gonna add a cup of milk and that's whole milk and now we're gonna bring this to a boil over high heat because we're gonna cook our pasta right in that sauce okay we're gonna add 8 ounces of macaroni now because we have a set amount of water we want the consistency of the sauce speed just right you have to weigh your macaroni we want 8 ounces of macaroni this is our favorite macaroni this is a gorilla brand elbows and we like them because you can see they have little ridges in those ridges trap the sauce so I'm starting to see bubbles that is a good sign so when I add macaroni right to the pot I'm gonna bring this up to a simmer then turn the heat down to medium-low and cook that pasta through till it's just passed I'll dente which takes six to eight minutes so this pasta has been cooking for about six minutes you can see it's nice and tender it's almost ready for the cheese which is one of the big ingredients in this recipe we're putting cheese - mac and cheese alright so what we found after trying lots of cheeses as the cheese you use in the mac and cheese makes a big difference in terms of the texture so this is deli American cheese and it is fabulous it makes the best mac and cheese you can think of creamy smooth velvety but it doesn't have a ton of flavor so we're gonna balance our American cheese with a little bit of extra sharp cheddar in between these two you have a flavorful sauce and one that's good and creamy sounds great so I'm just gonna grate this on the large holes of a grater because you really have to buy this stuff from the deli well let me show you what you don't want to get from the dough a pre-wrapped slices of American cheese now they can vary widely a lot of them have too much whey which would cause our mac and cheese sauce to be too thick whey a 2-second way too thick and some of them actually aren't dairy based at all they have vegetable oil as a main ingredient so it really is a tricky process you don't want to buy the wrong type of cheese so always get the deli cheese and grate it yourself alright so this cheese is shredded time to check in on our pasta and it cooks very quickly and again we're looking for a little past al dente one for you one for me mm-hmm al dente approves a little bit of cayenne for heat a little bit of Dijon that makes everything cheesy taste a little more cheesy so that's half a teaspoon of Dijon mustard and in goes the melty American cheese and that's about a cup of American we're gonna stir this in and the heat still on at this point so that it just melts down into a nice creamy sauce and this takes about a minute so no separate cheese sauce just right in the same pot with the macaroni and the milk and the water that's reduced down oh yeah that's coming together although we're gonna have the American cheese while it's still on the heat to add the cheddar I'm gonna take it off the heat and treat it a bit more gently so it doesn't break okay so off the heat I'm gonna add a cup of extra sharp shredded cheddar we're just gonna stir it in I just want to get it evenly into the macaroni all right so it's nicely incorporated I'm just gonna put the lid on the pot we're gonna let the cheddar melt slowly okay meanwhile what's mac and cheese without some breadcrumbs on top I know it's just noodles and sauce an easy way to make a toasted bread crumb topping is used 1/3 of a cup of panko and a tablespoon of olive oil we're just gonna toast it a little skillet right here on the stovetop you can just sprinkle it right over the portions of mac and cheese before serving but this isn't necessary it's an option right right it's an option of course you want to season these breadcrumbs a little salt and pepper while you toast them we're just gonna toast it in this skillet until they're nice and golden brown and that just takes a few minutes but you want to keep your eye on them because they have a tendency to go from very pale golden to burnt like that yes they do well let's talk a little bit about American cheese or pasteurized processed cheese it's the key to getting the right consistency in this cheese sauce because it contains emulsifying salts these salts make cheese melt smoothly by stabilizing the emulsion of the fat and protein by adding American cheese to this recipe we ensure that our cheese sauce won't break apart all right these crumbs are gorgeous beautiful to finish these crumbs off we're just going to add a little parmesan 2 tablespoons kind of gilding the lily I know but good all right we're gonna put this over on this side for survey sounds good well you're not looking I'm gonna taste it because it's kind of rude to eat in front of your guests before they're served I gotta see if it needs any salt or pepper mm-hmm doesn't need any salt but I think it could benefit from just a little pepper oh that's the kind of sound you need your mac and cheese to make ready to go I'm gonna give you a big old bowl because you know it's mac and cheese that goes mac and cheese and I'm a kid now a little bread crumb sleaze I mean it looks incredibly cheesy incredibly creamy which is pretty amazing considering how few ingredients went into that pot oh it's so good it's just so creamy and it has a really clean cheesy flavor clean is exactly right you know you didn't have to put a whole bunch of different spices into it really just that Dijon mustard just what I'm getting a little hint of mm-hmm but it's not overpowering at all well you have proven that old dogs like us can learn a few new tricks woof-woof-woof to make this very simple mac and cheese boil with water and milk then stir an American and cheddar cheese to make a super quick sauce top of crunchy panko crumbs and there you have it from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen a new improved and silky smooth simple stovetop mac and cheese I'm gonna need a bigger bowl delicious you've probably been using your whisk wrong since the first time you picked it up let me show you what I mean go all four of these whiskers have the same amount of heavy cream in the exact same mixing bowl and they're using the exact same whisks the only difference their whisking method Joe here is using the side-to-side tim has a figure eight emily has perfected the loop and kate is using the sterk they're all going to whisk for exactly 30 seconds and then I'll judge which method is the most effective whisks down turn your bowls over the clear winner the side to side here why well this whisking technique applies the most sheer force to whatever your whisking shear force is when two forces are acting on something in opposite directions in this case the whisk pulls the cream in one direction and then cuts right back against it that's shear force when using the side-to-side method like Jo whipped cream comes to Peaks quicker your vinaigrette gets emulsify better and your egg whites foam up faster [Music] a large saucepan is a core piece of equipment that we here at the Test Kitchen think every home cook should own the price and quality can vary widely so Adams here to show us we really need to shell out the big bucks for a great saucepan you know we have this lineup of 10 sauce pans they're all fairly large size three to four cords the price range was from about nineteen dollars to about two hundred and fifteen dollars and we concentrated on core cooking tasks for the test we sauteed onions we steamed rice we blanched green beans we browned butter and we made custard in all of these thing okay this one is made from anodized aluminum which is an electric magnetic process that hardens and darkens the aluminum this one sauteed a little too fast for us when we are sauteing onions we want a nice slow to moderate going pace so that they Brown evenly and if you get distracted for a second you walk away you answer the phone you don't burn something we did abuse testing as well we did some thermal shock testing where we heated up these pans and then plunge them into ice water to check for warping and we took him out back and bashed them against a concrete ledge three times our neighbors were so happy Oh some of them survived better than others this one not so much agency didn't survive that well also we got a loose handle on this so we got dents scratches and a loose handle not good not good let's talk about this one now this one has a construction called disk base which means that just the base of the pan just the underneath is a sandwich of three metals it's aluminum in the center with stainless steel on the outside and the inside but the walls of the pan are just stainless steel and what testers encountered with this is that right where the disk base and the thin stainless steel walls of the pan met they would get some burn and custard overcooked onions over browned they also found that because of the curved sides a little harder to see in there and see what was going on with your browned butter okay that can go from a beautiful hazelnut color and a nice nutty flavor to burnt and bitter really quickly you have to keep an eye on it especially towards the end of cooking which was hard to do in this one because of the curved sides it was hard to do in those two because of the dark interior the rest of the Pens in the lineup we're all fully clad and that means that those three layers of metal on the bottom of this one run across the bottom and up the sides the entire body of the pan is bonded three or more sometimes layers of metal okay as pens tend to be a little more expensive but that construction is really designed to heat evenly reasonably quickly and we like it a lot but we did have problems with some of these guys they can get really heavy so why don't you pick that one up and tell me what's thick it is a two-handed operation here really heavy that pan is 4 pounds 12 ounces empty really hard to hold up when you're pouring from it there is nothing in there you're right and when you are holding it up to pour from it steadily or holding it one hand and scraping something out with a spatula that's a lot of weight to him if there's a lot of weight no way this guy had a problem because this handle which is sort of comfortable but a little short got really hot dirty clothes to the pan yeah didn't like that one so much then we get to this pan which I know is gonna be familiar to you very much so this is the all-clad this is a terrific pen this is one testings before we've used them in the Test Kitchen for almost two decades check out this handle very comfortable it's got that cupped shape that kind of anchors it your hand and didn't get too hot it feels like holding a good tennis racket exactly and so this is our winning saucepan Bridget this is the all clad stainless four quart saucepan for not a cheap pan it's a hundred and seventy nine dollars and 13 cents so we actually named a Best Buy which is also one previous testings this cuisinart multiclad unlimited four quart saucepan with cover $65 and twelve cents for this one but you know what it's performance was pretty good and for that kind of price difference we're happy to recommend this one well well there you go our winner is the all-clad stainless four quart saucepan and the price is one seventy nine and thirteen cents we develop hundreds of recipes here in the Test Kitchen but before any of them get published or put on TV we send them out to a small group of home cooks for a trial run these folks make the recipe then fill out a survey with questions like could you find the ingredients did you have the right equipment or did you make any substitutions we learn a lot from these surveys and it's made one thing very clear lots of folks like to swap ground turkey for the ground beef and they're disappointed with the results take this turkey meatloaf for example this was a beef meatloaf we just put in ground turkey and it is a brick I mean is this a meatloaf are our Boston paver and here let's take a look on the inside oh I can barely get my knife through that oh it's dense I mean it look at this it just crumbles right apart almost like whitefish salad I mean we can do so much good we tweaked the recipe from top to bottom you can't just swap in Turkey and call it a day they're different animals yes literally they really are so let's get going we're gonna make something much much better all right I have three tablespoons of butter melting over low heat now we're adding butter because unlike pork or beef turkey has very little fat so we're gonna add back some of that richness with the butter that's right cuz usually when you make meatloaf you saute some aromatics but it's just in a little bit of fat this is substantially more fat in the pan that's right and I'm adding a little bit of baking soda just a pinch we're creating an alkaline environment that helps the onions break down a lot faster I have half an onion it's chopped up fine our onions are going to cook in only about five minutes whereas they would take about 15 minutes and a quarter teaspoon of salt and we'll cook these for three or four minutes just until they start to soften and take out a little bit of brown color all right it's been about four minutes you can see our onions are starting to get a little bit Brown they're nice and soft nice and soft in a quick amount of time you don't want crunchy onions in a meatloaf that's bad no you just want to kind of fade away into the background but give you that nice little flavor here's one the garlic clove minced up classic stuff that goes a meatloaf teaspoon of fresh thyme you want to cook that garlic down a little bit let the flavors start to bloom smell it already mmm you can okay so it's been a minute mm-hmm garlic's very fragrant yes so good and now adding two tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce packs a punch in terms of flavor that's right it goes into beef meat lobes as well because it's so full of flavor yeah and actually Worcestershire sauce is mostly vinegar but has lots of other things in it like sugar molasses garlic clove and Chubby's tamarind and then it's aged for a few months before it's strained and bottles and that's why it has such a punch yeah you get a lot of bang for your buck yeah I'll let this reduce down for a minute just to concentrate those yummy flavors all right that looks good yeah it's good smells potent mmm so let's put this in a bowl we'll let this cool down for a few minutes and then we'll come back and mix up our meatloaf all right onion mixture is nice and cool I'm going to add two egg yolks that'll add some nice richness to the lean meat that we were talking about and it'll also help to bind the meatloaf together now 2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard that's a lot of Dijon it won't make the meatloaf too spicy because red 2 pounds of meats so it'll be just the right amount mix that in okay now I have my secret weapon for turkey meatloaf 3 tablespoons of quick oats now this is very unusual right now we want it to kind of break up that dense texture that we saw in that horrible meatloaf yes we tried everything we tried bulgur we tried ground nuts we tried couscous turned out that quick oats were the very best they break up that texture you can't identify them as oats in the meatloaf and they work really nice and they just cook right in the meatloaf that's right now if you can't find quick oats or you don't have them you can use old-fashioned oats you just want to chop them up really fine just don't use steel cut oats okay they'll stay kind of pebbly they won't cook all the way through I'm also adding 2 teaspoons of cornstarch the cornstarch helps to track all the nice juices that them Turkey has so it bakes up nice and moist also 3/4 teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of pepper okay so let's put our oat mixture in the secret bowl of ingredients that's right don't tell anyone now I have 1/3 of a cup of chopped parsley that's not so secret but adds a nice little bit of color and flavor 1/2 a cup of Parmesan cheese now Parmesan has a ton of umami flavor and Turkey doesn't have a lot of that so the parmesan is gonna give us that nice savoriness that Turkey lacks that's a lot of flavor packed into that little bowl it sure is plus some texture from those oats that's right so now it's time for the turkey it's turkey time so I have 2 pounds of 93 or 85 percent turkey and I'm gonna use my hands to mix this together there's no better tool you're gonna get in there and have fun so let me get going on that when you go to the supermarket to buy ground turkey you usually have two choices a light colored turkey and a dark colored turkey now the light color ground turkey is usually labeled 99% lean and it's made almost entirely with turkey breasts that means it has less fat less flavor and it cooks up to be very dry now this darker color ground turkey is usually labeled either 85 or 93 percent lean it's our favorite because it's made with the thighs the dark meat so that has a juicier texture and makes a better meatloaf my hands are cleaned up let's make up a quick glaze to go on top of the meatloaf oh I love those sweet ketchupy glazes right on the top I know it's almost the best part you find it let's do some medium heat here I have a cup of ketchup quarter cup brown sugar two and a half teaspoons of cider vinegar just for a little bit of tartness and fruitiness you know cider vinegar has that nice fruity flavor and just 1/2 teaspoon of hot sauce just a smidge just a tiny bit just to you know give it that certain something okay so we're gonna let this bubble away for five minutes you keep an eye on it for me you bet all right so I'm gonna shape this meatloaf I have a little bowl of water here I'm gonna wet my hands just so the meat doesn't stick too much to my very clever we also have a wire rack here we've lined it with aluminum foil the foil will be for easy cleanup the rack is just gonna promote even cooking all right let's get this onto the aluminum foil so no loaf pan here just a nice freeform shape yeah we're going freeform today we're going wild will you get more surface area with the freeform shape yeah that means more area for the glaze that's right everybody wants more glaze at least I do when it comes to meatloaf right all right so we're going for a 9 by 5 how do you think I did I think you nailed it I think I did too let's just double-check it seems a little bit much to have a ruler out here but if you take your time to make a perfectly shaped meatloaf it's gonna cook evenly it makes sense right so it's been 5 minutes you can see our glaze thickened up nicely here that even smells like meatloaf to me I know right it's that distinctive glaze smell it sure is I'm going to brush half of it meatloaf now with a pastry brush here I'm just gonna do some painting and we want to paint the sides too not just the top because we want that yummy glaze all around this is another advantage of doing freeform is that you get more glaze so we're gonna bake this in a 350 degree oven for 40 minutes then we'll take it out and add the rest of that glaze mmm black right on the top yeah we want that first layer to set and dry so we can add even more glaze nice and then we'll return it to the oven for another 35 to 40 minutes all right that is looking pretty good to me I think that's about half I'll get the oven door for you thank you we're doing the upper middle rack here 350 degrees for 40 minutes all right [Music] when you take the lid off a cooking pot where can you put it down it's gonna make a mess it's gonna make everything wet a lid holder promises to contain the drippy mess and save counter space but do you really need one we tested for price from 12 to 80 dollars now they're all heat-resistant and most of them have troughs to catch the drips but right away a few of these or flops this one didn't even actually want to hang on to lids and the Starship Enterprise over here kind of hogs the counter and it's 80 bucks we wanted a lid holder to be secure and compact our winner held every lid we threw at it from small to big and even manage our ladles and spoons it's called the Yamazaki home ladle and lid stand and it's the only model that also works as a tablet or magazine stand white cook for just $18 this versatile little tool is a big help ooh that's looking good that looks awesome all right so let's take its temperature here we want it to be 160 degrees that looks like a proper meatloaf it does doesn't it that looks so good and we are right where we want it nailed it let's let this rest for 20 minutes and then it'll be time to dig in it's been 20 minutes all right let's do it Eitan time oh so good do you like the end piece I do I look okay it's kind of a small piece though right maybe you want one more I'll never turn it down you can see right away that this is a very different meatloaf than the one we saw at the beginning that was like a brick oh yeah this is light as a much easier texture the fork actually goes through it it's gonna be nice and juicy mmm-hmm I love the glazed Oh little sweetness little tartness mm-hmm nice and sticky it's really good you know this isn't just a great turkey meatloaf this is just a great meatloaf you actually never know that was made with Turkey mm-hmm it's true for the ultimate turkey meatloaf start with sautéed onions and flavoured them with Worcestershire and Parmesan add quick oats for texture and be sure to use dark ground turkey brush twice with glaze and bake the loaf on a foil lined wire rack and there you have it from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen turkey meatloaf with ketchup brown sugar glaze you get this recipe and all the recipes from the season along with our tastings testings and selected episodes on our website America's Test Kitchen calm so good oh I love it thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen what you think we'll leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello 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 I'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 417,836

Rating: 4.9079719 out of 5

Keywords: mac and cheese, cheese, comfort food, mac and cheese recipe, comfort food recipes, meatloaf recipes, turkey meatloaf, recipe, recipes, cooking, learn to cook, america's test kitchen, whisk, kitchen equipment

Id: N3VQ0aYr5gE

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 06 2019