How to Make Classic Italian Comfort Food: Hearty Beef Lasagna and Chicken Scarpariello

today on Cook's Country Christi makes Julia the perfect hearty beef lasagna Jack challenges Bridget to a tasting of mozzarella and LAN makes Bridget a new weeknight favorite chicken scarpariello that's all right here on Cook's Country [Music] the introduction of lasagna and to the American culture dates all the way back to the spaghetti houses of the 1800s these humble bohemian restaurants were fed on the side streets of big cities they served inexpensive meals to young couples and starving artists now you could get a decent meal for 30 cents in that included soup fish pasta a roast plus a cup of coffee now lasagna started appearing on these menus in the 1920s but it wasn't until after World War two that Italian food and Frank Sinatra became popular all over the country making lasagna a household name these days old blue eyes would never recognize some of the more adventurous lasagna recipes buffalo chicken lasagna anyone not today thank goodness today we're celebrating that hearty be feliz Anya that made it in the American classic in the first place a traditional media lasagna also known as a lasagna Bolognese can be a serious undertaking complete with homemade noodles and that won two sauces a creamy bechamel and a long simmered bolognese and it is the ultimate lasagna it's delicious but it takes all day so the question for Christi is can you keep the flavor but speed it up a bit yes yeah it doesn't usually happen but we're gonna do it today all right so we're gonna start with our noodles okay I have about four quarts of water here that I brought to a boil I'm gonna add a tablespoon of salt and now I'm going to add my noodles what'd you think about saving time you think about using no-boil noodles those are not no-boil noodles they are not these are traditional curly lasagna noodles you're actually adding a little extra time to this lasagna we are but we're saving so much time everywhere else so we thought it was worth it to spend the time to get that extra sturdy - and texture of traditional noodles well let the noodles cook for about six to eight minutes until they're nice and al dente okay now let's get started on our meat sauce mmm star ingredient yes what we found with a lot of meat sauces is that as they cook the meat gets kind of dry and kind of pebbly so our solution was to start with a panade like we do with meatloaf or meatballs so I have two slices of hearty white sandwich bread that I've torn up into little pieces and I'm going to add a quarter cup of milk I'm just gonna mash this until I get a nice paste all right so we have our panade good-looking panade why thank you my cellphone my pod so I'm gonna add this to my meat now this is a meaty sauce it's one and a half pounds of 90% lean ground beef usually we go for fattier cuts thing they have more flavor why 90% here because we wanted to be able to control the fat in here it's gonna bake in that casserole dish and there's nowhere for it to go by using the leaner grind we could keep that greasing us in check makes sense I'm gonna add a little salt and pepper - pepper and 3/4 of a teaspoon of salt I'm down in take off the jewelry time to go in try to do this with with a spatula but it's just kind of therapeutic to get I'm going to wash my meat hands and then we'll come back and we'll check on the noodles right so Julia I just checked my noodles they're ready to go so now I've already sprayed this rims baking sheet with a little vegetable oil spray because we don't want them sticking together so I'm just gonna toss them gently let these cool and start working on the sauce using the same pot yeah I like it see easy and quick I'm going to start the sauce with some extra virgin olive oil I have 1 tablespoon and I heat this over medium heat just until it shimmers which shouldn't take too long as that pots pretty hot it is quite the hot pot so we want this lasagna to be very meek forward but we will add some onion this is one onion chopped fine we're just gonna cook these until they've softened we don't really need to go all the way to full browning so that's just gonna take about five minutes we have soft onions smell good you know what's gonna make it smell better what's up garlic ah you're right I've got six cloves that I've minced and a teaspoon of dried oregano and a quarter teaspoon of red pepper flakes as soon as we can start to smell it about 30 seconds can you smell that around oh yeah it smells delicious so now it is time to add our beef mixture now we're not gonna cook this for very long I'm just gonna break it up because we just want this to cook until it's no longer pink so I'm just gonna cook this for about four minutes do you see any pink meat I see no pink there is no pink now we'll add the last element which is 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes that's also not a lot of tomatoes so this isn't really a big tomato we lasagna it's really all about the meat it is about the meat I'm just gonna make sure that I scrape up any good brown bits that got stuck to the pan while the meat was cooking now I just want to bring this to a simmer and then I'll reduce the heat to medium-low I'm gonna cook for five minutes just long enough to let the flavors meld our meat sauce is done so nice that was fast five minutes loved it so now we're going to start on our white sauce that's not a bechamel it's not a vegetable no again we're trying to save a little time and other recipes try to save time too often they'll use ricotta but ricotta tends to get kind of grainy when it really does at higher temperatures hmm we found that cottage cheese works really well it's a bigger curd and it holds up to those high temperatures without getting grainy smart so that's what we're starting with I have a cup of cottage cheese in here I'm also going to add four ounces of pecorino romano this is actually about two cups once you've graded it mm-hmm and then we'll also add a cup of heavy cream because we needed and add some flavors of course a little bit of garlic it's two cloves so we've minced and I'm adding two teaspoon of cornstarch and that's gonna help bind everything and it's also gonna help thicken it right a bit and then a little salt and pepper I have a quarter teaspoon each I'm just gonna whisk this that was the easiest bechamel I never made it is very easy okay now we're gonna head over to the construction zone right cuz you have a lot of components here putting them together looks like it might take a little bit of time it's like an erector set now the first step is we use some vegetable oil spray sprayed the whole bottom so the noodles won't stick I'm gonna take three noodles now look these perfectly fit nicely unfortunately that's not always there's always happen in my house right and we're looking for sturdy not shoddy construction so if it finds that the noodles don't fit all the way to the end we took two noodles and cut them in half cut into it yes I like it that way you have noodles the whole length of the dish and everything is a lot sturdier okay okay I'm gonna take some of my meat sauce all right about one and a half cups and we'll pour this I'm getting so excited and then I'll take half a cup of my sauce and this time just kind of dollop it's not gonna be a totally smooth coverage that's right cuz if when it hits the oven it's gonna melt in me that's awesome and if there wasn't enough cheese here I'm adding a half cup of the mots now this isn't the pre shredded stuff this stuff looks a bit sticky which is pretty important to buy block mozzarella and shred it yourself that pre-shredded stuff doesn't melt the same so now we'll start the second layer all right and like I said it didn't fit your pan and you were using a half sheet mhm say it this end on the second layer you want to make sure you put the half sheet o alternating the cut to fit so it's an even construction yes you might have missed your calling you shouldn't maybe wear a hard hat we're gonna finish this one and then do two more layers so we have four layers and then we'll talk about the topic all right we have finished four complete layers and that dish is full it is full doctor lasagna it's hearty so now we have the last layer of noodles and if you were using half sheets of noodles you wouldn't add it to this top layer alright and you're also not going to add any meat sauce well that's good cuz there's none left we worked it out that way that's smart because if we added meat sauce to the top it keeps it a little wet and if it's wet on top then it's not gonna Brown ah and the brown cheesy top the best part exactly instead we're gonna add the rest of the white sauce so just kind of get it spread pretty evenly now we have the rest of our mozzarella mm-hmm should be about a cup left and we'll sprinkle that over the top now we're gonna add a little bit more of the pecorino just do another quarter cup because this is an aged cheese it's a little drier right so Browns better it's gonna Brown beautifully so there we go now notice that I have this thing on a rimmed baking sheet right because this is very full tips it is and we don't want it to overflow I'm also going to cover it with some foil I did spray this with vegetable oil spray so we're gonna put this in a 375-degree oven middle rack for about an hour you have to go in half way take the cover off oh that's the smell right there the smell of success look at those spotty Brown hits but that looks love a hot I mean it is so hot so we have to wait half an hour that's when you give the cheese and the sauce a chance to kind of set up so we can cut those nice squares I think it's set now awesome time to even yes absolutely the whole making evil is on you the hardest parts is getting the first sliced out looking pretty it's just like operation using the double spatula he's looking dad you nailed it all right I'm going in okay man that's good the cheese sauce it really thickened nicely in and it's just kind of gooey yeah and it didn't break it doesn't have any of that graininess you'd get with ricotta no it's very creamy and very beefy finally a lasagna that tastes like beef Krissi this is the perfect lasagna Thank You Julia hmm thank you for a streamlined meaty lasagna start by boiling traditional noodles then drain them and let them cool on a greased baking sheet instead of making a long simmered bolognaise make a quick meaty tomato sauce with the panade 90 percent beef and some crushed Tomatoes skip the bechamel and make a no cook white sauce with cottage cheese pecorino and heavy cream assemble the lasagna in a very sturdy fashion and a greased dish bake for an hour and let cool for about half an hour before eating and there you have it from Cook's Country P ultimate party beef lasagna it's so good [Music] mozzarella in fact last year the average American ate nearly 11 pounds of mozzarella cheese I mean body buy cheese have we got and jack is here to tell us which supermarket brand of mozzarella should top our pizzas so this is a really interesting taste test we shredded all the cheese's some of them started out as a block one of them might have already come as shredded interesting so you can dig in okay you may want to just use your fingers there's no great way to do this we did do a test with pizza the pizza is not here I noticed that yeah a couple things that we're gonna pay attention to one is is there any dryness now we brought the best of the seven shredded cheese's but all the shredded cheese's are coated with cellulose and it gives it a little dryness to keep the shreds from clumping so can you pick that out okay second thing is fat level some of these are whole milk and some of them are part skin whole milk cheeses have closer to forty eight percent fat level the parts game is closer down to a 42 or 43 percent fat and you can tell the difference in richness it also will affect how they melt the whole milk cheese's melt really lovely the last thing is moisture content most of these cheese's are labeled low moisture which means they have between 45 and 52 percent moisture content but our favourites were not labeled low moisture when we did some lab work it turns out there's somewhere in between what I think of as pizza cheese which is a low moisture mozzarella and that fresh stuff that you might put on a salad the moisture content there would be about 60% interesting so anything you're noticing off the bat about these three lovely samples you know shredded cheese well this one I feel like you put baby Swiss in there instead it tastes sharper and it's very interesting good interesting I'm trying to figure out if it's a ringer it might the right cheese tasting would I do that to you you know it's not a bad cheese I wouldn't call it mozzarella though this one is appreciated I can feel it counter enos on my tongue having said that sometimes I'm really busy I love having an option of pre-shredded cheese yeah and you're not going to eat it out of a bowl like this I probably would but I agree once it's melted I'm not sure that I would notice it this is beautiful its creamy its soft and it's nicely seasoned too it's definitely my favorite okay all right yeah you want to see how you did I do congratulations you chose the winner yes the Palio whole milk was blocked cheese now the studio audience this was not their favorite interest it was interesting but the expert panel this was their favorite I love how neutral and creamy it's got a little bit of seasoning high moisture high fat it's a good cheese I'm gonna check all the way down here and see if this is pretty shredded you got this right this is also from Polly oh it's the whole milk but it's pretty shredded and honestly if you look at it it kind of looks like it was shredded by a machine yes by somebody with a box grater it's so true and definitely not by me that's way too perfect and let's check out this baby Swiss that I think you threw in there so this is from organic valley the studio audience loved this our expert panel I think was downgrading it because it tasted different than the other cheese's it's sharp it's funky all right and I guess this is a funky audience like funky cheese but it's really not conforming to the classic flavor profile of a mozzarella cheese right it's almost cheddar II well there you go to top your pizza pick up our winner it's the Palio whole milk mozzarella cheese it runs $5.99 per pound [Applause] [Music] today we're making chicken scarpariello now what we know about the dish is that it comes from the area of Naples in Italy not Florida what we don't know is really where that name comes from so scar pillow in Italian is Schumaker so one could patch or cobble the dish together and scarpariello means a shoemakers assistant so an apprentice could buy all the stuff on a cheap wage now other people you know tend to get a story that's a bit more flowery the studs of garlic remind them of the nails on the bottom of shoe I don't know what's true but what I do know lawn is going to show us how to make great chicken scarpariello yes yes I am this dish is awesome it features really nicely browned chicken with sausage peppers and onions and you can't go wrong you really cannot go wrong chicken sausage peppers onions you have me there yeah right one of the other things I love about this dish is you don't dirty too many pans doing it it all happens right here in this 12-inch skillet weeknight dream right I've got a tablespoon of oil I'm just gonna crank it up to medium-high and while that oil heats up let's prep the chicken alright the main ingredient yes I've got three pounds of chicken parts here you can buy them in pieces you could break down a chicken if you'd like the fat's been trimmed off I've cleaned up the pieces a little bit the last step is just to cut the breasts in half that helps them cook through a little faster and everything finishes up at the same time great I'm just going to cut through this skin and when you get to the bone instead of cutting down I'm just gonna press just cracks right through yeah that's great we're using chicken with the skin on and the bone in that's going to add a lot of flavor to this dish after the pieces are cut in half pat them dry getting rid of that water really speeds up browning and we want the crisp skin and the flavor okay a little bit of salt if you don't mind Sharp's you pepper form you got it alright I'm the pepper lady just bring me in I'm just gonna go wash my hands and we'll start cooking sounds good now that that oil is smoking let's get the chicken in the pan alright that's a good sound and LAN is cooking all the chicken in one batch here so it's really important to get that pan and the oil superheated if she were to not let the oil goes up to the point where it starts to smoke the pan would be too cold all the chicken goes in the oil temperature drops and the chicken would steam rather than brown I'm not gonna touch these and just let them do their thing it's gonna take about five minutes on this side we'll flip them over give them another threes around the second side but in the meantime we can go prep our peppers all right good I have one red bell pepper here and I'm just gonna take the bottom off and the top but we're not throwing those away we'll use them and then open it up run my knife along the ribs to remove them beautiful pinwheel action yeah going on right and then it's already nice and flat and we'll just go and slice now as for these tops and bottoms I'm just gonna run a knife through them they're perfectly good you know reason to not use them and then we move on to our pickled peppers I'm using hot cherry peppers for that kicky Heat they're nice and briny and salty I'm just gonna cut the top off scoop out the guts with a spoon and then run a knife through now this is one of five cherry peppers it's going to yield about a half a cup once it's prepped Bridget this chicken looks great five minutes on that skin side gave at this gorgeous color and three minutes on the bottom it's fantastic I'm gonna get this out of the pan all right so that pan looks beautiful that's lots of flavor in there right so I have 8 ounces of sweet Italian sausage with the casings removed and I'm just gonna break it up into kind of bite-size pieces after it is broken up it's gonna leave it alone let it brown stir occasionally so it's been about three minutes this looks you can see that a bunch of the fat has rendered out and the sausage is nicely browned I'm just gonna transfer this to a towel lined plate to get rid of that extra fat I'm just gonna pour it out and reserve one tablespoon so now that the sausage and chicken are done let's get our vegetables into the skillet I've got one onion sliced thin and that bell pepper we worked on earlier just gonna stir it around as it cooks and I'm just looking forward the vegetables to pick up some color soften a little bit it's been about five minutes and the onions are nice and wilted as are the peppers they're starting to color it smells so unbelievable in here right now so we're not quite done yet let's get those cherry peppers in this is five cloves of minced garlic all right and lastly one teaspoon of dried oregano just gonna give this a stir and make sure that the garlic is cooked out and those aromatics bloom a little bit this will take about one minute so now we're gonna begin building our sauce this is 1 tablespoon of flour I'm just gonna sprinkle it in so it's not a super thick sauce it's just enough to add a little bit of body right this gives you a nice silky texture and it clings better to the chicken and the vegetables I've got 3/4 of a cup of chicken broth all right I think it sounded glazing the pan there and 2 tablespoons of the brine from those pickled peppers a little pickle brine yeah it's fantastic it is as sweet salty a little sour a little bit spicy - yeah it's perfect as you can see it's come up to a simmer the sauce is starting to tighten up mm-hmm that's it we're almost there I'm going to turn this off and stir in that sausage so now the chicken goes right on it's like the peppers and the sausage are acting as a rack holding the chicken above all the song yeah the skin is staying well above the liquid and it's going to stay crispy while the chicken finishes cooking that's great so this is going to finish in a 350 degree oven I've got the rack in the middle position it's gonna take 2025 minutes ok great does that smell great it smells amazing so it's been about 20 minutes I'm just going to check the temperature and I'm looking for the breasts to register about 160 degrees there we go perfect all right and the dark meat the thighs and the drums we're looking 475 just looked great one last bit I've got a little bit of chopped parsley it's about a tablespoon beautiful just adds a little freshness to this and some color now it looks Italian you ready to try this I sure AM here is a little bit of the dark meat hmmm a little bit of the white meat and the vegetables and sausage all right yeah you're right the skin is still nice and crisp and the breast meat is still really juicy really tender yes I would say that looks juicy and very tender great hmm I've got the sweet flavor coming through with the bell peppers a little kick coming behind it with that briny cherry pepper and that sauce it's nice and silky it's not running all over the place that's not broken it's fantastic thank you on so much this is spectacular well it's easy to cobble together dinner if you have the right ingredients and it's just that simple for chicken scarpariello start with browning the chicken then sausage right in that chicken fat followed by onions red peppers cherry peppers and a little oregano toast flour in the pan then deglaze with broth and cherry pepper Brian put the meat back in the pan and into the oven it goes until it's all cooked through so from Cook's Country a shoo-in for dinner it's our fantastic full flavored chicken scarpariello and you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season along with our tastings testings and select episodes on our website cookscountry.com 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: 313,213

Keywords: italian food, italian cooking, food, cooking, lasagna, lasagna recipes, beef lasagna recipe, how to make lasagna, chicken scarpariello, chicken recipes, comfort food recipes, cook's country, cooks country, americas test kitchen, america's test kitchen, pasta recipes, pasta

Id: zwnnk3YJPz8

Length: 23min 4sec (1384 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 08 2019