How to Make Chinese Dishes Like Three-Cup Chicken and Smashed Cucumbers

[Music] today on america's test kitchen bridget and julia share the secrets to perfect three cup chicken jack challenges julia to a tasting of firm tofu lisa reveals her favorite fat separator and keith makes bridget a chinese classic smashed cucumbers it's all coming up right here on america's test kitchen [Music] back in 1283 if the story is to be believed a sympathetic prison warden in the chinese town of dadu prepared the final meal for prisoner wen tiencheng a chinese hero who is still held up as a symbol of righteousness and patriotism now the warden only had a handful of ingredients at its disposal but when's final meal has become culinary legend known as senbeiji or three cup chicken well that three cup chicken you're right it's three basic ingredients soy sauce rice wine and sesame oil not the toasted sesame oil that we come to think of here just plain old sesame oil now over the years this dish has added quite a few ingredients chili some herbs spices aromatics now we're going to take the best of those and show a great version to make at home all right the first thing that we're going to deal with is a little bit of fresh ginger this is a two inch piece of ginger it's going to add some really nice sweetness and pepperiness to the dish now the best way to peel gender is actually to just use a little spoon and take off that papery skin just on the outside it's going to take a lot less than a knife or even a peeler will the spoon will also let us kind of get into all those little crevices it's not a perfectly shaped root we haven't been able to figure out how to get it exactly all the same size so a little spoon will get us right in there now if you like to make rice and things like that oh this is great you put it in the freezer put it in a little bundle stick it right in the water that you're using to cook rice and fish it out tons of flavor right in the peel all right so that looks good so now to prep the ginger we want to cut it into very thin slices and we're going to cut it into half moons so we'll cut it lengthwise right in half and each one of these halves will just go right across with our knife and make very thin slices we're cutting this rather large because we actually want to find the little pieces in our meal also the grated ginger just made the sauce very cloudy and as you get towards your fingers always a good idea to slow down there we go all right one other thing to prep before we get to the chicken all right there is chicken in here scallions now i've gone ahead and sliced four scallions we're using both the whites and light part as well as the dark part of the scallions this is going to be for cooking this is going to be towards the end we're going to add this yeah it's like two vegetables in one it really is take off the root end here and i'll just separate these right kind of right here where the tree branches connect to the bottom trunk here and we're gonna cut these on a bias so i'll go ahead and start cutting these right at an angle and same thing here i'm just going to lock off the bottom and i'm staggering these just like that so i make very easy thin cuts so these are going to go into the bowl with the rest of the scallions again it was six total and same thing here with the greens when i get towards the top not really a big fan of these little dried out pieces so we'll get rid of those bench scrapers a great way of pulling a whole bunch of chopped vegetables into a bowl without dulling the knife so now let's talk a little bit about chicken now we're creating a marinade but it's also a sauce we're going to use it to flavor the chicken then later on it's also going to be the braising liquid okay now before we get to the chicken let's put our sauce together now this is our first cup and its cup is in container not cup is an eight ounces of liquid so this is a third cup of soy sauce again that's that first container or first cup of the the triumvirate was the soy sauce the rice wine and of course the sesame oil and now this is a third cup of dry sherry this is instead of rice wine it's more readily available and also has a really nice warm flavor and a tablespoon of brown sugar this is light brown sugar it's going to add some sweetness it's also going to help the sauce kind of cling to the chicken we'll whisk this together dissolving the sugar and i'll set this aside while we work on the chicken the traditional recipe calls for hacking up whole chickens into tiny little pieces we weren't really crazy about some of the shards that we found in the pieces from using a cleaver also it was just really messy so we're going to go with boneless skinless chicken thighs they're perfect i'm going to turn nice and tender and lots of flavor now this is one and a half pounds of chicken thighs again they're boneless and skinless i've already cut most of these into two inch pieces just going to finish this last one i do want to get rid of some of this fat but a lot of this fat is going to melt away and this is not a recipe you'd want to substitute boneless skinless chicken breast for the thighs because it won't work no just way too dry and then you don't have to be precious about this it's two inch pieces nice and big so they're not going to overcook so let's get this chicken right into our marinade do you say marinade or marinade i say marinade yeah i always think it depends on how much it costs yes the more expensive it is the more marinade it becomes it's like bays and bars right vaz is over 20 bucks all right use a pair of tongs we'll just toss this right in there it's a lot of marinade again but it's going to be the sauce later on we're going to set this aside while we start cooking let's get our aromatics into the pan along with three tablespoons of vegetable oil we're using this instead of sesame oil we usually have toasted sesame oil on him but a lot of people don't have actual sesame untoasted oil so this is just plain vegetable oil our ginger 12 cloves of garlic and we've gone ahead and cut these in half so a lot of hearty aromatics a lot of ginger a lot of garlic a lot of garlic and a little bit of spice here you can use anywhere between a half a teaspoon up to three quarter teaspoon of dried chili flakes and we're using these instead of thai bird chilies which are very very spicy so what do you think should i add all of it it's all going in all in nothing but net so we're going to put this over medium-low i'll stir this we're going to cook this it's going to become very very fragrant and we left the pieces of the garlic nice and big it's going to get very toasty and actually tender that is some good aromas coming out of this skillet what a difference ten minutes makes seriously and you notice that it's not scorched don't have any burnt garlic all right so now let's go ahead and put the chicken right in along with all that marinade i love this recipe because the marinade becomes the sauce how smart is that this was a great discovery for us a lot of the more modern day versions of this recipe start by browning or stir frying the chicken on its own well we went back to really really old recipes and we found that the chicken was cooked in the sauce for long periods of time so we were thinking do we really need to brown the chicken first to get all that really good flavor but between the soy sauce the dried sherry all the aromatics in here it was not needed all right so we're bringing this up to a simmer over medium high and it's just there comes together quickly so now i'll reduce the heat to medium low we're going to start cooking this for about 10 minutes it won't be done yet but 10 minutes so far all right that is smelling delicious it really is again the chicken is not done yet we're gonna add our scallion white at this point toss this right in there we're gonna let this cook for another 10 minutes or so we're looking for a temperature around 200 degrees which is a bit higher than we usually call for with our chicken recipes but that's because we want this chicken to be very very tender oh it smells so good and we're almost done now we're going to thicken this with a cornstarch slurry right at the end to really just thicken and give that sauce a little bit more body i've got here a teaspoon of corn starch i'm going to add a tablespoon of water and whisk this together let's bring this over here just clear a little bit right here in the center add that in i'm going to whisk this right into that sauce there and it's going to simmer for just about a minute until it thickens you can see it's thickening almost immediately right away all right so let's move this off the heat and finish the dish one of the main ingredients that we found and we really loved was thai basil and you can use just regular basil as well if you can't find this now if the leaves are rather big you do want to cut them in half because we're going to add these in large pieces right into our skillet so again that was a cup of thai basil and there are scallion greens from six scallions that we sliced earlier and we'll finish it up with a tablespoon of toasted sesame oil well i love that usually what we consider aromatics are actually the vegetables you have the basil the scallions the ginger and the garlic enough of this we are ready to eat all right miss julia let me get you all that garlic and ginger and little pretty little thai basil leaf there for you thank you my mouth has been watering since she finished the dish the flavors are simple but they're layered on top of one another the garlic the ginger and then that fresh basil the best part is finding one of these pieces of garlic they're so toasted and really really tender it's kind of like a garlicky cashew bridget i love this recipe so easy and so flavorful thank you i would be willing to go to prison for this one so to make your own version of sand bay g start with chicken thighs and soak them in a soy marinade brown some garlic and ginger in the skillet then add the chicken with the marinade and cook that chicken until it's good and tender finish with some thai basil and sesame oil you've got it so from our test kitchen to your kitchen a great new recipe for three cup chicken good call on the heat level too yeah yeah i like that little bit of kick at the end [Music] tofu dates back two thousand years to china's han dynasty and it's a staple in asian cooking yet here in the us tofu is still looking for a permanent place on our dinner tables but tofu sales are trending up and jack's here to tell us more i love tofu unfortunately i'm giving you the least interesting way to taste tofu it's true you got drained from the package and cut into cubes you can dig in these are all firm tofu this is the test kitchen's favorite style because when you cook it it gets brown and crispy on the outside and creamy in the center unfortunately you're not getting any brown and crispy here a couple things you want to look for you're going to notice textural differences between these three samples firm tofu has a fair amount of liquid pressed out but not all of the liquid so tofu is made a lot like cheese you coagulate soy milk and then it's pressed and depending on how much they press it you can either have soft firm or extra firm tofu there's no real regulations here about one company's firm and another company's firm and so we found a wide variety of textures flavors not so much you'll get some slight nuttiness a little bit of soybeans sweet notes i wouldn't say that you're looking for a lot of differences and remember in the test that we did where we coated it with cornstarch and fried it or we tossed it in a thai stir-fry all the flavors coming from the ginger the garlic the chilies the soy sauce so the tofu is really just meant to be a blank canvas you never i thought you'd be tasting anything as plain as this right i'm really looking for some things here yeah so again thinking about texture the softer ones can soak up more flavor the ones that were really already firm to begin with bordering a little bit perhaps on rubbery besides the fact that they didn't have that contrast between the crispy exterior and the creamy middle because they weren't creamy to begin with they didn't really soak up flavor quite as well so you seem to have stopped tasting i did i think i have my opinion well i want to hear it all right so this one was a non-starter it was you mentioned rubbery this was a rubber eraser it was like chewing gum it was terrible did not like it at all you sure about that i'm positive [Laughter] now these two were a lot softer than this one but this one was by far the softest and also had almost a sweet finish that i really liked this one was fine it you know they're both pretty mild tasting but this one had a little bit more texture so this one was definitely my favorite this was a close second this was a loser all right so we tasted five brands there was only one we didn't like let's start with the one that you didn't like and see if you agreed with the expert panel all right and you picked the one that we did not like as the one you didn't like this is the hodo soy it's very very rubbery and it doesn't get better when you cook it oh dear all right next up my second place uh this was the runner-up this is from melissa's it has a mild flavor it does a great job when you're cooking but it was not our favorite all right this one was my favorite and this was our favorites in the soya it had a little bit of that sweetness a little nuttiness to it you're not really going to taste that once you start putting ginger and soy sauce on it but it's just a lovely tofu all right so there you have it for the best firm tofu choose no soya organic firm tofu at 2.99 when you're making gravy or soup and it's time to remove the fat your best tool is a fat separator we tested six priced from 12 to 34 they're pretty simple they all work on the principle that that floats now there's two styles pitchers with low spouts like this or cups that have a bottom drain like this now the problem with the pitcher style is that some fat always gets into the spout and then after you pour out most of what you want you have to leave some stock behind or you'll let even more fat get in but bottom drainers don't have this problem you push the lever to make it go and when you release it it cuts off instantly you want a nice wide opening so you have a bigger target when pouring you know something like this is pretty small you want some tall sides on it so it catches splashes and you want small holes to catch solids but lots of them to let liquid drain fast you want easy to grab handles and you want it to hold a lot while every model we tested said it held four cups that was a lie and bigger is better our winner which is the queezy pro fat separator consistently yielded the most stock with the least fat and it was easy to use and since the canister just pops off it's also easy to clean at 33.95 the quizzy pro fat separator really works the same cool as a cucumber isn't just malarkey this cousin of the watermelon is over 96 percent water and in fact in parts of china street vendors will offer patrons an ice cold peeled cucumber to cool them down on a hot summer day but keith is here and he's going to show us another chinese cool cucumber dish which is called pai huang gua yeah this is also called smashed or smacked cucumbers and it's a perfect example of that cooling effect of cucumbers it's a szechuan dish commonly served with hot spicy rich food and it really balances out those hot flavors so what we want with the cucumbers is we want to have the skin on we want that crisp skin and the tender flesh underneath we dismissed american cucumbers right off the bat because that skin is too waxy and thick it doesn't eat very well pickling cucumbers and small persian cucumbers were better but there are too many seeds in the pickling cucumbers and these little persian cucumbers they have a nice thin skin there's not enough flesh underneath so what we have here are two english cucumbers they're about 14 ounces we're gonna trim the ends off these before we get to smashing now we could go ahead and smash these right on the counter but i wouldn't advise that because you'll be cleaning cucumber seeds up off your cake for weeks right so we're going to put these into a plastic bag before i do that i'm just going to cut them into thirds and so you want to smash them in big pieces yeah we're looking for a one to one and a half inch pieces here not small it doesn't have to be perfect random size pieces are just fine now traditionally this is done with a flat side of a cleaver but i like to use a small skillet has a little bit more heft to it a little easier to break these up and you don't want to whale on these you don't want to be crashing these you just want to kind of have gentle but firm if that makes any sense no it totally makes sense you're smashing you're not beating the tar out of them exactly so you can see that they're broken into three or four spears if they don't if they kind of break in half that's okay we're going to tear them with our hands afterwards anyways so really you're just bashing them until they start to break apart yeah you're just going to kind of flatten them and they'll break really easy into small spears just open this up now we want to salt these before we eat them we want that kind of pickle texture we want to take some of that liquid out so we're going to put this mass pieces into a colander toss it with some salt let it stand for a little bit one to one and a half inch pieces and is there any seeds that have come loose just leave them right in the bag i don't really want those seeds because there's more water in those seeds and we want to get rid of some of that excess moisture that cucumbers have looks like a fun job too this is kind of fun meditative right after you smash you do a little meditative tearing um okay so i have one and a half teaspoons of kosher salt here i'm just going to sprinkle this over the cucumbers toss them we're going to let these sit for 15 to 30 minutes and that's going to start to draw out a lot of that moisture all right well being aggressive with the cucumber speeds up the effects of the salt during the violent smashing the cucumber cells are damaged which results in moisture leaking out of the damaged cells now when salt is added even more moisture is drawn out giving the cucumbers a crisp pickle like texture now if we just use sliced cucumbers it would take considerably longer to get the same amount of liquid out of the cucumbers so next time you want to get your aggressions out skip the punching bag and make a cucumber salad instead so our cucumbers are almost ready we're going to make a really simple dressing for this dish now the predominant flavor in this dressing is garlic but if we know anything from garlic once you mince it it can get too aggressive over time sure can so we're going to employ a technique that we've used in the past in dressings is that we're going to take a little bit of vinegar and we're going to soak the garlic in that to mellow that garlic flavor out now for this dish we're using black vinegar which is a chinese vinegar it's made from rice and it's aged in earthenware pots and it develops this really complex flavor much like balsamic has a complex flavor so we have four teaspoons of vinegar here and i have one teaspoon of garlic that's been minced to a paste in our testing we found that products labeled just black vinegar can be inconsistent in flavor so we're using jingjiang vinegar which is a much more consistent flavored vinegar okay so we're going to let that mellow out five up to 15 minutes while we do that i'm going to toast one teaspoon of sesame seeds in the small skillet that we have over here we're just going to toast this over medium heat for about three to five minutes we're going to shake that pan occasionally to make sure it's getting toasted on all sides okay so our sesame seeds are nicely toasted here i'm just going to pull them off the heat so they don't continue to cook now let's focus on our dressing our garlic has mellowed in that vinegar and we're just going to finish it up with a tablespoon of soy sauce it's going to season the dish give it an umami flavor which is nice i have two teaspoons of toasted sesame oil a nice nutty flavor there and one teaspoon of sugar just gonna whisk that up really quickly okay our dressing is done now it's time for our cucumbers mm-hmm just gonna take these out of the colander put them into our bowl to give them a shake to get any of that excess liquid off there and you don't need to rinse these there's no reason to rinse these we had just enough salt to bring out the moisture but not enough where we have to rinse them off i just wanted to show you this bridget you can see all this liquid that we have here maybe two or three tablespoons especially for just 15 to 30 minutes for salting the cucumber exactly so with smashing the cucumbers we had six times the amount of moisture given off in 15 minutes than we did with chopped cucumbers it's going to pour the dressing over the top i'm gonna grab our toasted sesame seeds sprinkle this over the top give this a quick toss now another advantage to smashing cucumbers is that these irregular pieces are gonna really hold on to that dressing really well a colleague of mine compared it to pouring water onto a wooden floor with chopped cucumbers it just kind of runs off but these smashed cucumbers are kind of like a shag carpet so when you pour something on top it just drinks it all up i have to say this whole thing has come together incredibly fast yeah not a lot of ingredients either okay so i think it's time to eat these that's it that's it awesome now traditionally this is meant to be eaten with spicy food you're gonna have something rich and spicy with it you want something plain but since we're just eating the salad by itself today we have a szechuan chili oil here which is going to add a nice spiciness so if you're going to serve this with a grilled fish or grilled chicken i would suggest making this chili oil which you can find on our website we'll just give it a little bit more pizzazz i love looking at these craggy cucumbers and you gotta say i mean the dressing is actually sitting on the cucumbers you're right it didn't all go to the bottom of the bowl grab some with the chili oil completely different texture slice absolutely it is pickle crisp and the dressing is balanced too you get the garlic right at the beginning but it's not too too harsh and that black vinegar has a nice complex flavor so simple so good and actually fun that technique of smashing the cucumbers yeah when's the last time you made a salad with a skillet not a knife it's true keith amazing recipe thanks so much well this recipe starts by cutting trimmed english cucumbers into thirds smash those cucumbers then toss them with salt to dry out moisture finish with a classic black vinegar and garlic dressing so from our test kitchen to your kitchen a great new recipe for your summer table pai huang gua or smashed cucumbers you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season along with our tastings testings and selected episodes on our website americastestkitchen.com [Music] really good it doesn't make enough though thanks for watching america's test kitchen what'd you think well 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: 260,555

Keywords: three cup chicken, chicken recipes, chicken recipe, chicken, recipes, recipe, chinese food, chinese recipes, smashed cucumbers, smashed cucumber recipe, cucumbers, chinese recipe, three-cup chicken, tofu, tofu taste test, taste test, americas test kitchen, america's test kitchen

Id: _ltdIV_cMkI

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2019