How to Make Carne Adovada and Esquites

today on America's Test Kitchen L makes Julia a New Mexico classic carne adovada Adam reveals his top pick for nine-inch tongs and Aaron makes Bridget the ultimate Mexican Street corn salad it's all coming up right here on America's Test Kitchen [Music] today we are making one of New Mexico's most celebrated dishes called carne adovada in which pork is braised in a very simple chili based sauce now to make an authentic carne adovada you can't just use any kind of dried chilies you have to use New Mexican dried chilies which were first bred at New Mexico State University back in 1913 and still today by law must be grown within the state borders of New Mexico and luckily you can find new Mexican chilies everywhere even at the supermarket's up here in Boston that's right and this recipe is simple and delicious but it's definitely all about the chili yeah hey so we have here four ounces of New Mexican dried chilies this is what they look like in the package kind of dark and they look good and flexible they are which is key when buying chilies you don't want to buy chilies that are tough and brittle and dry you want them to be flexible that's right so to prep them I'm just gonna take the top off this is the way I like to get the seeds out I know a lot of people have their own methods hmm this kind of works for me just empty it out yep and I do kind of give it a little cut down the middle just to make sure I got it all out and if you get a few seeds in there it's not the end of the world yeah it's almost thick okay we're just gonna cut it into 1-inch pieces all right the total amount is 4 ounces of chili okay that's a lot of chilies this dish is primarily made of chilies so all those chilies are actually very important very useful all right we're all set there now typically when we're working with dried chilies we toast them in this case we're gonna completely skip that step because we want to preserve the freshness and the brightness of the flavor instead I'm gonna steep them in four cups of boiling water and that's just gonna soften the Chili Peppers and eventually puree to a smooth texture that's right would you just make sure they're all covered with water right nice and submerged and then we're gonna let them steep for 30 minutes all right I'm gonna put this aside here and we can start talking about our pour in the main ingredient oh yeah this is four pounds of boneless pork butt that I'm cutting into one and a half inch pieces there's a lot of fat in a pork butt how much you gonna take off not a lot I like to have a little fat in there for the flavor now pork foot also goes by a few other names it goes by picnic shoulder Boston but but it actually all comes from the same part of the pig which is the shoulder all right so while L continues to cut up that pork let's take a minute to talk about New Mexican chilies which are the key ingredient in this recipe now they have a very earthy Sun roasted slightly acidic flavor but they don't pack a big punch in terms of spiciness the spiciness of a chili is measured on something called the Scoville scale which was named after its inventor Wilbur Scoville back in 1912 and it allots every pepper with something called a Scoville heat unit which is the amount of sugar water it takes to remove any spiciness from the human palate so the higher the Scoville unit heat rating spicier the pepper let's take a look at some peppers here on this end we have a bell pepper it locks in at a whopping zero Scoville heat units because it's not spicy at all on the other end we have cayenne this logs in at around 50,000 Scoville heat units in the middle we have a jalapeno at about 5,000 Scoville units last but definitely not least the New Mexican chili with just a thousand Scoville heat units so it has good flavor and it's not too spicy hey Julia I just finished the pork all right cutting it into 1 and 1/2 inch pieces I'm gonna add 1 tablespoon of salt this is gonna help season the meat and help it to retain the moisture while we cook it good to note that she's using kosher salt if you're gonna use table salt you should use half the amount all right so I'm just gonna stir it in there really well make sure all the meat is covered alright so I'm just gonna put it in the fridge for at least an hour ok okay so we have our pork that is all set to go it's time to make our sauce mmm i favorite part yes so we got our four ounces of chili peppers that were soaking for 30 minutes and we're just gonna strain off the liquid I'm just gonna add these peppers to the blender this is the base of our sauce so we're starting right here so to make our flavorful delicious sauce we have to add a few things just a few more just a few so we're gonna add 2 tablespoons of honey so a little sweetness a little sweetness that spicy sweet that's a great combination I have 2 tablespoons of white vinegar 5 cloves of garlic just a little garlic just we're very modest in our garlic we have 2 teaspoons of Mexican or you know two teaspoons of cumin and half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper cuz we need more pepper mm-hmm well like you said the New Mexican chilies don't have a lot of heat so you need a little Cayenne to ramp it up a bit okay and we have a teaspoon of cloves and finally a teaspoon of salt all right so we have all our herbs and aromatics in there we're just gonna make it into a paste to start so that's a thick looking pace it is and it only takes 30 seconds to get there not a lot of time at all it's just a start we just want to give everything a fair chance to get blended in there before we start to add liquids and make it into our sauce all right and speaking of liquids we have here two cups of soaking liquid from our Chili Peppers because this flavor in that liquid you don't want to throw it away look at that that's nothing but flavors right we need all of that all right I'm gonna get started okay I'm gonna start by adding one cup of liquid to get everything going and then I'm gonna add up to a quarter cup of liquid to keep everything moving uniformly in the blender and got it and we're gonna let it blend on high speed for another minute I can smell that from here can you imagine how it's gonna taste when it's done alright so I think we're ready to move on to the next step alright we're gonna start by adding the pork to our Dutch oven and we're gonna add the sauce that we created and this sauce as you can see is a little thick it still has a little rustic texture to it because we didn't blend those peppers until they were non-existent we have some little bitty pieces in there it smells divine it really does smell great right as you mentioned the sauces on the fixed side but that's okay cuz a lot of moisture is gonna come out of the pork as appraises alright so I'm just gonna give this a stir make sure all the pork is covered make sure no pieces are sticking together we want every single piece to have some of this delicious sauce alright so we're all set I'm just gonna bring it to a boil over high heat alright it is smelling good oh yeah and that came to well relatively quickly mm-hmm so I'm gonna put the lid on it and it's gonna go in the oven on the lower middle rack at 325 degrees for up to two and a half hours sounds good Oh mmm that smells good I always get so excited it don't burn out the pot out all right let's take a little look-see Oh oh wow that looks great that smells so good yeah I'm just gonna use my fork test it for doneness so it's going right through Oh some even pulled off I think is ready all right I'm gonna give it a stir because I want to reconstitute the sauce and I want to get some of this Fond off of the pot mm-hmm cuz the Fond on the side of the pot that's good caramelized flavor you want to get that back into the sauce alright so it's been 10 minutes mm-hmm it's cooled our sauce has thickened can I make your plate Lisa all right that looks so amazing Oh a little extra sauce too if you wouldn't mind I don't mind at all oh yeah thank you there's a nice warm tortilla for you it wasn't that gorgeous gorgeous mhm would you like a lime yeah okay thank you oh that's great all right all right I'm gonna try my without tortilla first oh look at the meat it just breaks apart with the fork so tender mmm that sauce something else the pork just melt-in-your-mouth mm-hmm the sauce has a deep rich hearty flavor just a little bit of heat I think that's from the Cayenne you put in I think but it's really well balanced with the vinegar and the honey it is it's just got sort of a sun-drenched chili pepper flavor on that luscious pork and it still tastes very bright and fresh even though it braised for hours mm-hmm I'm packing my bags oh hell this is so good I'm moving to New Mexico so to make an authentic carne adovada start with New Mexican chilies seed the chilies and rehydrate them in boiling water and cut up a four pound pork butt into stew meat and toss with salt build a flavor pack braising liquids using the chilies honey garlic and a few other spices along with the water left over from the soap chilies braise the pork in the oven until tender and serve with flour tortillas and languages from America's Test Kitchen to your kitchen a killer recipe for carne adovada I could see eating this for breakfast with an egg on it I could see eating it for lunch and Taco T serving it over rice and beans [Music] here in the Test Kitchen we use a pair of 12-inch tongs for just about everything from flipping over food to wrapping stuff from really high places but we wondered if adding another pair of 9 inch chunks was really worth it so we called an adamant who's gonna tell us which one one are testing there is a new length of tongs in town Bridget you know a lot of cooks sort of prefer a shorter set of tongs because it enhances their sense of control sometimes 12 inches is just a little bit overkill so we have six pairs of nine-inch tongs nine to nine and a half inches the price range was 1199 up to $35 and we did a ton of testing testers used each pair to grip rotate and transfer baked potatoes from a hot baking sheet to puck tender slippery hot dogs from boiling water to move delicate sliced fruit like sliced apples mangoes quartered oranges and have bananas as well as small berries from a platter to a plate to stir one pound of oiled angel hair pasta and portion it onto four individual serving plates to pick up a single rounded toothpick and to lift a heavy jar of salsa control and precision that's the name of the tongs game and that all got down to the design of the pincer okay which is the business end of the tongs here testers were not crazy about these smooth-edged pincers these are sort of like paddles one tester actually said they reminded them of seal flippers and lucky you I am set right there for you try move around some berries or some mangoes all right yeah not not huge control I mean it's okay yeah I mean they get the job done but you don't feel like you have the utmost controller no it's true there's a little bit of slippage going around in there testers were much more impressed with pincers that were scalloped like these and not covered with silicone all right give these a try you have another pair there all right yeah it's these are like having fingers and just flipping them over with your hands and that's exactly what you want in the kitchen is maximum control and oxygen you can eat berries one by one with these a second thing the testers paid a lot of attention to was the locking mechanism tongs lock in the closed position to make storage little easier and there are different ways of operating the locking everyone knows this just a nice little intuitive tab that you move up or down then you have this right here which has two settings so that partially unlocks it and that fully unlocks it so you have to actually slide it twice to get it fully unlocked that is complicating that's crazy and then we're getting into my personal pet peeve these have an automatic lock there's no tab to move there's no switch to move you point them down and they unlock point them up and they lock but I've encountered these a lot in my career and in the Test Kitchen in this testing and in my own personal experience they're always doing the wrong thing they're always unlocked when you want to marked a locked when you want them unlocked they're just counterintuitive they drive you nuts and tongs are all about having control you can have no control over that precisely the last thing that made a real difference the testers was the tension how much force you have to exert on these to use these things and they didn't want their tongues to be too stiff like these were a little too stiff give these a try didn't get them unlocked or locked let me unlock them yeah no it's it's a little too much tension you don't want that no you definitely don't you want a much lighter touch for like a more comfortable degree no tensions in my life certainly not from the top those are not your talk no they're not these are your tongs Bridget these are the winning tongs these are the oxy good grips and nine-inch tongs there are $11.99 they have a comfortable degree of tension they have beautifully scalloped pincers they have a tab to operate the locking mechanism these are as good as 9 inch tongs get and they're very similar to what we use in the restaurant world us too you just you have them locked and then when you want to unlock them hit your leg exactly and then the most important restaurant trick that any tongs should be able to do is open a beer I didn't include that in the tester get it oh there you go Adam you bread dad well if you want a great pair of 9-inch tongs for a multitude of uses well the winner is the Ox oh good grips nine-inch tongs there $11.99 fresh herbs are expensive and it's particularly painful if you have to throw them out because you didn't have enough time to use them well here is a trick that can help simply take any Hardy fresh herbs like this sage for example place it between two layers of paper toweling and put it directly in the microwave and microwave on HIGH for three to four minutes depending on the freshness of the herb and the strength of your microwave now this works best with hearty herbs like sage rosemary marjoram and oregano mint and thyme not so great for delicate herbs like parsley or cilantro and once they're dried you see they maintain their beautiful color and their aroma best of all home dried herbs will hold for up to a year if stored in an airtight container one of my favorite things to make with fresh summer corn is a low phase now it's Mexican Street food they take charred cobs of corn slather it with chili and lime and then pour over crema and of course cheese oh so beautiful but Aaron's here with a simpler version it's kind of more like a corn salad called sq days yes Bridget Eskie taste is such a great dish it has such dimension and flavors and textures and the beauty of making this into a salad is that you get the perfect bite with every single spoonful it's the perfect ratio of flavor and texture all right all right sold so Bridget as you mentioned Mexican crema is one of the key ingredients in this recipe it's so good it's cultured cream and it's spiked with lime juice but it can be hard to find insurance doors so I actually created a substitute for it we're gonna start with three tablespoons of sour cream three tablespoons the lime juice we're not shy with a lime one tablespoon of mayonnaise this helps to kind of give it some cling ability and it's going to thicken the sauce a little bit and a quarter teaspoon of salt so I'm just gonna whisk these together this is so smart because crema really is everything in one mixer dairy it's hanging it's got lots of seasoning to it it's an all-in-one product it's amazing yeah I could drink it that is a regulator exactly okay so next we're gonna move on to Serrano's so Mexican Street corn it has a little kick of heat to it so I'm gonna slice up two Serrano chilies and two eighth inch thick slices rib seeds and all lit up season how you like heat right I love you good no it's this one of those recipes that's adjustable it is heat adjustable you can just add one and also if you don't have Serrano sometimes sir I'm just gonna in the grocery store or whatever reason you can substitute a jalapeno oh just cut it in half lengthwise first all right and cut them into eighth inch thick slices perfect I'm gonna add this to my sauce well the smaller Serrano's no so good it's like in-between a jalapeno and a green bell pepper it has yeah has that really amazing pepper aroma to it but then you can smell the heat coming off of them yes you can so now we're gonna get to the star of the show we're gonna use six ears of corn and I'm going to cut them off of the cob so we're gonna yield about six of corn a big difference from a lot days were yeah grilling the whole cop you are absolutely I don't know about you but I have chased corn kernels all over my kitchen before until I got smart what I'm gonna do is I'm holding this and the base is down and I have my knife up here and I'm just gonna slice right through this and most of them you have a couple of jumpers but most of them will go right into the pie plate yeah I usually save all of my corn cutting for New Year's Eve so it's just it's like confetti exactly and it's a snap so I'm just gonna add those to the bowl okay I'm gonna get cooking we're not gonna fire up the grill now cuz they're just gonna fall through the grate what saw through the crap right now I'm heating up a tablespoon of vegetable oil and a 12-inch nonstick skillet over high heat we want a lot of heat we really want that char from that you get from the grill so I actually I tried broiling the corn checking that I was like a natural substitute and or grill yeah it didn't work out so well some of the corn kernels got charred but the other one's got leathery and dry so I cut the corn off the cob thinking that could broil that but it's too far away from the element and by the time and actually charred it was overcooked right so here we are with a skillet and this is perfect oil is hot you can see it shimmering and dancing around I'm gonna actually cook half of the corn right now it's gonna put half of the corn into the pan so I really want to get this into an even layer in the skillet going up the sides basic I want as much contact with the corn kernels through the hot skillet as possible so I think that looks pretty good so now I'm gonna sprinkle this with a quarter teaspoon of salt I'm gonna let it go I'm gonna put a lid on it and let that go without touching it for three minutes by dividing the corn into two different batches I'm getting twice about a char and by cooking it with a lid on is trapping the steam and it's cooking the corn that's not touching the bottom it's just steaming it perfectly so six minutes total that's still super fast super fast all right Bridget I'm gonna remove this from the heat for 15 seconds all that popping corn we want to keep it in the pan so that's why we need a little 15 second rest here so timeout it's a timeout right settled it together oh yes it smells like it came off the grill you really want that char that's like one of the signature flavors in the dish and check that out see look at that chart that's what you want exactly what we love actually I think that is a better job of charring corn than I usually get on my girl I think you're right is when you cut the corn kernels off the cob it allows some of the sugars and the start just to kind of come out of the cob and so you can see some of the black bits in here those are the juices that have charged the hole and it's gonna add more flavor to our salad all the natural sugars just caramelizing so we're gonna repeat that with second half of our corn so I'm gonna add another tablespoon of oil okay our oil is hot I can see a little wisps of smoke coming so I'm gonna have the rest of our corn do you hear something it sounds like movie night okay so it's been 15 seconds it's quieted down like that char I'm gonna reduce the heat down to medium I mean I have one teaspoon oil two cloves of garlic and a half a teaspoon of chili powder this is gonna add complexity to our dish and it's gonna add a little bit of heat store dish and plus that's part of a latte so yes people take the lime half lime and dip it in chili powder and just slather that great that it's in that and what we're doing here is we're actually blooming the chili powder so it's getting more complex and more flavor will come out now we're gonna add this to our corn and I'm gonna stir this all together we want to coat the corn with all the crema and we're gonna let this cool for 15 minutes okay Bridget it has been 15 minutes and this is cooled off it's still a little warm yes and now we're gonna finish it we're gonna add 1 cup of cotija cheese this is a dry salty cheese which is great and if you can't find it just substitute feta cheese all right and we're gonna add 3/4 of a cup of cilantro we want a healthy amount of cilantro having fresh ingredients right at the end right every I mean they're a yes adds more texture and three scallions I've sliced them up very thin and stir it all together I'm at crema real has coated all those charred corn kernels beautiful it's doing its job yeah early is all right now as with anything I'm gonna taste it to make sure it's good for seasoning so good would you like some s ki J I would love something it's so fragrant in here between the toasted corn aroma that little bit of cilantro that you added right at the last second that's kind of amazing kind of I've kind of all sorts of Awesome if there's so many flavors and textures going on you know I love is that little bit of chili powder and the garlic that you sauteed David a toasty flavor alongside of the charred corn absolutely this is so fresh and bright it couldn't get any better if you'd like to make this beautiful corn salad make a creme of a sauce with sour cream mayo and lime juice and stir and slice serrano chiles char fresh corn kernels in two batches in a skillet tossed with the sauce then add sauteed garlic and chilli powder add cotija cilantro and scallions and season with salt and lime juice from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen a spicy and toasty Mexican corn salad or this heat it and you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season along with our tastings testings and selected episodes on our website America's Test Kitchen dot-com serious party going on in this bowl 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: 68,442

Keywords: carne adovada, new mexican pork, esquites, mexican corn salad, cooks illustrated, americas test kitchen

Id: 8SYy0MsSi3Q

Length: 23min 6sec (1386 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2020