How to Make Eggs Benedict and German Pancakes for the Best Homemade Brunch

[Music] today on america's test kitchen we're staying home for brunch julie and bridget unlock the secrets to perfect eggs benedict adam reveals his top pick for espresso machines and dan makes julia a show-stopping german pancake it's all coming up right here on america's test kitchen i can name four reasons at the very least that eggs benedict is a restaurant brunch favorite you've got your creamy poached egg your seared bacon toasty bread and it's all under a blanket of rich buttery hollandaise and those four reasons are also reasons you don't want to make it at home hollandaise can be tricky poaching eggs very tricky and if you're gonna make it you're making it for a crowd and poaching eggs and hollandaise and making all that toast that's a handful yeah and you gotta be super organized yes so i'm not but we solved the problem we made a foolproof hollandaise and a really great way to poach eggs and a way to do it all for a lot of people for breakfast sounds great so we're going to start with the hollandaise one of the trickiest of sauces so hollandaise like a mayonnaise is an emulsion and it starts with yolks and this is four large egg yolks traditionally you'd put this over a double boiler and you'd whisk and whisk and you'd pour in melted butter very slowly to make that emulsion some people do it in the blender the blender obviously the blades run very fast making a little more foolproof we've found the best way is actually not to use melted butter at all to use softened butter this is already still in its emulsion so the sauce doesn't break comes together like a dream that was a stick of softened butter and what's going to help us emulsify it is boiling water now this water just came to a boil i'm going to measure out a third of a cup and this is going over the double boiler i mean this is a game changer it's a huge huge change in holland days how many hollandaise do you think you've broken oh a lot actually you know in a lot of restaurants i hate to say it but their secret is using powdered holidays and you can taste that yeah you sure it's terrible now usually they just use a tablespoon or two of hot water this is a whole third of a cup so it's a bit more but it makes a very light fluffy hollandaise so you can see there's chunks of butter in there it's looking like it's not going to come together at all watch this magic a little bit of water stir it up that water starts to melt the butter nice and slowly so that butter doesn't come out of an emulsion it just binds so nicely with the yolks and of course this is over a double boiler so that water underneath isn't touching the bowl and it's at a bare simmer it's just gently cooking the sauce through we're going to cook this until it registers 160 degrees and it's nicely thickened that takes about 7 to 10 minutes all right well julia mentioned that the beauty of this hollandaise sauce it's not going to break which means it won't separate into water and oil as we heat it the reason is that we use softened butter instead of the traditional melted butter softened butter maintains its emulsified structure with melted butter the emulsion has already been broken so it has to be re-emulsified by whipping it vigorously and it won't hold for very long so use softened butter for an easy and unbreakable hollandaise sauce we're gonna cook this until it reaches 160 degrees and happens fast oh doesn't that look good and velvety nice and thick so off the heat this comes now it needs a little flavoring at this point because it just has butter and egg yolks which is pretty delicious i don't mind that we're going to add a little bit of lemon juice this is two teaspoons of lemon juice a little bit of cayenne because that really brings the flavor out a long way and i have to say this version of hollandaise is so gentle that you can add all sorts of stuff to it one of my favorite things is to add curry powder it almost makes a curry hollandaise that's really good for french fries or smoked paprika we're going to leave it nice and simple this time though i'm gonna season it with a little bit of salt this is the kind of sauce that's so easy you can just go crazy with it and people are gonna be so impressed all right so believe it or not this hollandaise will hold perfectly well for several hours so our hollandaise is resting comfortably and it's time to poach some eggs all right now poaching eggs is pretty tricky when you think about it because you're taking an egg which cooks quickly and is fairly delicate you're taking out its protective shell you're dumping it into hot water and the two things you want to cook perfectly the whites and the yolk cook at completely different rates so it's tricky it's a crapshoot and there's lots of crazy methods out there of course we tried them all cooking them in muffin tins in the oven totally didn't work the ones on the outside cooked more quickly than the ones on the inside and they didn't cook through evenly so that was a bust and another method that's popular on the internet is using your microwave with a little bit of water now this sounds good and after about 100 eggs you might get the timing just perfectly for your own microwave but if you tried another microwave it's not going to work so that was a non-starter for us there was one recipe that we found where you swirl the water into a pretty vortex that keeps the whites from spreading too much worked pretty well but you can only do two eggs at a time so if you're serving a crowd it's not going to work too well very impractical and then my favorite which worked really well is you take a spoon two spoons actually and you nestle the egg between them and you lower it gently in the water and you hold it there until the eggs cooked and then you raise it out egg was perfect but it was kind of a hassle can you imagine doing that with 12 eggs i think it kind of makes sense because you're adding the shell back to the egg yeah pretty much so what we found is pretty remarkable it actually has to do with the egg now first you want to use the freshest eggs possible and that's because there are two types of whites because really it's the whites that make a mess there's the watery white that's on the outside and then there's the thicker white and the watery white there's about 30 to 40 percent of the white is that watery white and there's more of it as the egg gets older so fresher eggs have less of that watery white and so what we're doing now is i'm just putting these into a colander and i'm letting that watery white drain away but you can see the thicker white is staying behind it's not going through the colander so by getting rid of that watery bits we're going to have less floaty bits in the water and so you just want to crack the eggs into there and let them sit for about 20 to 30 seconds yeah you can really see this thicker bit of the egg white right here and the center part is draining away yeah it's just sitting pretty all right now let's take a look at our water so i have a dutch oven here and inside i have six cups of boiling water now it's pretty common to add vinegar to your poaching liquid for eggs and indeed we're gonna add a tablespoon of vinegar a lot of recipes we found added a lot more vinegar because the vinegar lowers the ph which helps the whites coagulate better so there's less flutty bits but you can taste the vinegar after a while you go much over a tablespoon it's too much we don't want pickled eggs that's right and i've tasted those from restaurants it's kind of a bummer salt does a very similar thing so we're going to add a teaspoon of table salt but again you add too much salt you get salty eggs but a combination of the vinegar and the salt does it perfectly and you don't get too much of one flavor all right so our water's ready let's come back to our eggs now you can see all that watery bit that's drained away now i'm gonna definitely i mean can you guys see all that white that's drained away about an eighth of a cup of egg whites in there yeah so it really did the trick and those are the egg whites that would float around and make a total mess inside the pot unacceptable unacceptable all right so we're going to leave those behind come back to our pot now i'm going to turn the boiling water off and i'm going to slowly add the eggs one at a time to different spots in the water one slipping them in so they have their own little area to cook and you can see they're just resting gently on the bottom of the pot all right so we're gonna put the lid on and let's set a timer for three minutes and we'll be back so it's been three minutes time to look at our eggs oh they look perfect you can see those whites are just set and that's how you know they're done beautiful yeah now here is the best part of all this is a holding pot for poached eggs now it registers 150 degrees and you can hold poached eggs in there for up to 15 to 20 minutes i mean look at that that is just a beautiful poached egg that is the perfect poached egg isn't that and so this is how you cook eggs in batches for a crowd isn't that amazing that's really cool and this is kind of a restaurant technique yeah all right we're going to cover this keep these guys warm i'm going to scoop out any last wispy whites there are always a few i'm going to bring this water back to a boil so we can cook our second batch of eggs in the meantime we gotta talk about toast trying to toast these one at a time in a toaster oven that would take too long by the time the last one's done the first one's gonna be way cold so these english muffins are going under the broiler for about four minutes until they're nice and toasty then put the canadian bacon on top and it's just under the broiler for another minute longer and breakfast is served my darling nothing better than that smell all right now i'm just going to make this each a little half so we'll come back to the rest later because we're dainty and this holding water is just the best invention ever i mean it makes serving a poached egg on something like this so incredibly easy so i'm just draining the excess water oh look at that guy oh he's quivering he is perfect perfectly poached egg a little of our hollandaise the reason for living i i like to call it i believe hollandaise is french for sauce of life i'm going to definitely add a little black pepper to mine the egg is look at that perfectly cooked yes you never get that in a restaurant it's crack open right in that center i want to shake the hand of the person said you know what these poached eggs need an egg sauce the flavors of the hollandaise i mean it's a very delicate flavor but it tastes so good with the eggs and the salty ham and the little bit of the english muffin that hollandaise is beautifully buttery isn't it but it's still really light and like you said it's kind of a blank canvas you could add a lot of different flavors to it i have to say though that little bit of lemon juice is kind of perfect yeah and just that little bit of cayenne i mean it's a good classic flavor this is amazing and you're right it is perfect for serving with a bunch of friends for foolproof eggs benedict make sure to use softened butter for a make-ahead hollandaise drain eggs and then poach them off heat and hot but not boiling water top broiled bacon and english muffins with the eggs pour on the sauce and of course eat it with a friend so from our test kitchen to your kitchen a perfectly executed home version of eggs benedict also known as eggs benny hmm [Music] consumers pay an average of two dollars and seventy cents for a single cup of plain old coffee and a latte is going to run you around 378. so just buying an espresso machine for home use makes some sense adam is here with the answer how much espresso do you drink in here would you you're gonna have to drink a lot of shots of espresso to make up the cost of one of these guys guess how much you can spend on a home espresso machine just guess i don't know five hundred dollars eight thousand dollars that's more than i paid for my first car you and me bought several cars and i still paid last night a thousand dollars we decided to cap the cost for our testing at a thousand dollars we have six machines none of them cost more than a thousand dollars all of these except for one include some means of grinding there's a grinder built in so you load them with whole beans they also have different adjustments so that you can customize the brew change the grind size change the temperature change the volume according to your taste they all have a way of foaming milk so that you can have foam milk for lattes and cappuccinos let's start with these three here they all suffered from a similar problem which is that depending on the kind of beans testers loaded into the hopper not enough beans would drop down into the grinder and so what would happen is they either had to open up the hopper push the beans down manually or the espresso would get brewed with the beans that did drop down and it wasn't really espresso it was more like puddle water at that point at all not good at all for a thousand bucks not acceptable moving on to that money you totally wanted to make an espresso for me and tell me i'm pretty for a thousand bucks you're gorgeous have another espresso this is the nespresso latissima and this is the one that uses these pods instead of whole coffee beans it was really easy to use it was neat you can see that it has a more compact footprint than the others it was also the least expensive one in the lineup about 375 dollars now it made a beautiful crema which is that sort of thick brown foam at the top of the espresso that's emulsified aromatic oils it's supposed to be flavorful best part oh it's wonderful what was underneath the crema the espresso itself not as great really yeah a lot of tasters sort of judge this to be a little bit thin a little lacking in body and flavor now they were willing to put up with the subpar espresso because it was so easy to use them because it was the least expensive one so if you're not that picky right this is actually something worth considering it's the nespresso latissima okay let's move down to this guy here this one is the breville barista express this requires a little more user interaction you have to actually tamp down the coffee grounds into the portafilter position it brew the coffee empty the spent puck of coffee grounds out rinse it put it back in you know it sounds like a rigmarole but it really wasn't that bad it was easy to use the manual was clear and a lot of the testers kind of got into the routine it didn't take that long and so for the diy type if you want to be involved in making your own espresso if you want to learn a little bit about it this one is not a bad one made very good espresso right let's move down to this guy here this is the gaggia anima this is the overall winner this one was 690. i have an espresso for you to taste from this one it was fully automatic the espresso tasted great it was simple to use simple to see what was going on had easy adjustments this is the one you want to bring home that had a beautiful crema and really good coffee underneath well there you go if you'd like to be your own barista then go out and buy the gaja anima automatic coffee machine and it runs about 690 dollars [Music] a german pancake also known as a dutch baby or a bismarck has very little in common with a traditional pancake it's made without any baking powder or baking soda but rather gets its lift and light airy texture from eggs like a popover and they're delicious especially for breakfast and today dan's going to show us how to make one so julia this is the kind of recipe where the devil is definitely in the details all right super easy to put together but you really got to pay attention to the ratios so we're going to start with our dry ingredients i have one and three quarter cups of all-purpose flour here i'm gonna add in just a little bit of sugar this is three tablespoons it's kind of that sweet and savory combination so it shouldn't be really really sweet so next we have a tablespoon of lemon zest that's a lot of lemon zest it's really gonna come through it's gonna be nice and bright we also have a half teaspoon of salt and an eighth of a teaspoon nutmeg mmm lemon and nutmeg good combo right it's a good one so i'm just going to whisk this up we did a lot of testing looking at the wet ingredients this is one and a half cups of milk then we have six large eggs that's a lot of eggs this is a lot of bags so for a comparable amount of flour and other recipes we found three eggs four eggs six is a lot but we really wanted this beautiful custardy texture on the bottom and the eggs were key for that we also have one and a half teaspoons of vanilla extract so i'm just gonna whisk this up until it's nice and smooth like a nice even color okay that looks great so now i'm gonna add this into the dry ingredients we're gonna do it in two stages we're gonna start by adding about two thirds of it that's gonna allow us to really evenly mix it together and then we'll finish with the other third a lot of times when we're making batters for muffins that sort of thing we're very careful not to over mix them we don't want to create too much gluten what's nice about this is it's really a batter so it's thin enough that you don't get a lot of gluten formation so it's not a problem we want this to be really smooth and adding a smaller amount of the liquid to start with is nice you're able to kind of contact all the flour more and that way you can get rid of all the lumps before you add the rest okay now the last third goes in and just whisk until nice and smooth boy a very simple batter have i lost you at any point no i think i got it dry ingredients in one wet in the other mix them together exactly that's why this is such a good brunch breakfast option comes together really fast and not too hard for that early in the morning right not too much to think about it's about all i can handle in the morning okay so now we'll move over to our skillet here so this is where our recipe really kind of goes down a different path than most ones we saw out there so a lot of times you get your skillet as hot as possible so you get it like ripping hot pour in your batter and then it goes into a really hot oven and the idea there is that you get big puff and you get these gorgeous sides on it like a pop-over like a pop-over the problem is you don't have much of that nice custardy interior and we love that so we're actually going to take a lower and much slower approach to it so what i'm going to do is heat this skillet and i have three tablespoons of butter i'm just going to melt these three tablespoons of butter over medium-low heat we'll pour in our batter and then we're going to go into a cold oven wow very different than a traditional recipe and what's really nice about that is it's much more gentle so what we end up getting is a thicker bottom very custardy nice bottom but the sides still creep up a lot yeah it's kind of all about those sides i have to say and it's super dramatic but you don't dry them out so it's really really nice combo custardy with big sides yes i like it so the butter is melted i'm going to go in with our batter and also you're using a nonstick skillet that's right you can actually use a traditional skillet as well we like using a non-stick as a little extra protection this thing releases pretty well out of a traditional skill as well i'm going to take this and put it into a cold oven and immediately turn it to 375 degrees about 30 to 35 minutes it'll be done you're going to see the sides are going to grow really dramatically so julia a lot of times you'll see apples actually in a german pancake batter itself we tried a lot of those recipes and the flavor's nice it's nice to have the pieces in there but it really prevents a lot of spread so you don't get the dramatic high sides it just kind of gets in the way of the texture so we decided to actually reserve the apples and make a topping very clever so we get the apples but we also get the right texture so we're working with one and a quarter pounds of brae burn apples brae burns are a really good baking apple so they hold up we're not gonna get applesauce we'll have some nice pieces still so i'm just gonna pop the core out i'm just using this apple core here i like it because it's got this cool eject feature you can pop it right out see your pro corer i like gorgeous some people it's a 50 50 shot with your pro or anti-core i like it usually when i'm wearing with apples it's i'm working with a lot of them right now i'd just rather punch them all out and said i'm going to use my white peeler also big wide peeler fan wow you don't like a white peeler no i actually for me i'm not a big core or y peeler fan what i like the old-fashioned kind of peelers and when i peel an apple i spiral it around to see if i can get the whole peel off without it breaking so i'm going to start by cutting it in half and we want half inch wedges that are then cut in half crosswise so these nice little pieces like this so to accomplish that i like to cut first crosswise and then just cut my half inch wedges so i have two tablespoons of butter melting over medium heat in our traditional skillet that's kind of why it's nice to use your non-stick skillet for the pancake we're going to use this for the topping okay so now that's melted i'm gonna add a third of a cup of water a quarter cup of brown sugar give the makings for our caramel it's looking good right so i also have a quarter of a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and an eighth of a teaspoon salt now i just want to whisk this until it is dissolved get that sugar dissolved now we're gonna go in with cinnamon's best friend the apple so this is not a very hot pan we can really smell all that cinnamon and brown sugar what's nice about using brown sugar is it gives a lot of the same flavor of caramel but very quickly right that's a lot more flavor than we get with white sugar so i'm gonna bring this up to a simmer over medium high heat then we're gonna cover and cook for five minutes let's put a cover on it put a lid on it okay so this is five minutes and we've got big oh that smells good and that smell awesome smells like the fall it does you can see we've got a lot of liquid that came out of the apples we want that to reduce down and thicken up into a really nice glaze so we're going to cook this for about five to seven minutes until that sauce gets nice and thick and glazy and the apples turn totally translucent and tender check out this reveal wow every time i see it i think it's even bigger than the last time isn't that incredible amazing this is dramatic that is something else i mean it's just incredible but i know it sinks kind of fast too oh there you can watch it it's starting to go down watch it as it goes we have these beautiful tall sides we've got this really thick custardy bottom so i'm just going to transfer this over to a cutting board here it's kind of the easiest way to go i mean this is just a killer thing to put on your table for brunch or something like that it is a showstopper it's totally a showstopper i'm going to cut you a nice wedge here look at that beautiful gorgeous would you like a little bit of apple oh yes please okay get a little bit of that nice sauce on there too don't hold back on the sauce well now you can see that sort of custardy bottom that was really important with a cold oven how is it delicious the edge is nice and dried out like a pop over i love how the apples aren't in it because very often the apples release a lot of liquid and they mess with the texture having on the side is a good idea it's great right that nice egginess that you get you're getting popovers here it's the best and it's easy this is something else stan to make an outstanding german pancake begin with a loose batter using lots of milk and six whole eggs start it in a cold oven and bake until the edges are deep and golden and have puffed up dramatically serve with a brown sugar apple topping and you're golden from our test kitchen to your kitchen a fabulous recipe for german pancake you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season along with our tastings testings and select episodes at our website americastestkitchen.com i might need another slice i can make that happen for you 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: 806,158

Keywords: eggs benedict, german pancakes, german pancakes america's test kitchen, german pancake recipe, poached eggs, hollandaise sauce, hollandaise recipe, poached egg recipe, eggs benedict recipe, brunch recipes, homemade brunch recipe, brunch recipe, egg recipes, americas test kitchen, america's test kitchen, espresso, espresso machine, espresso machine reviews, equipment review, coffee, coffee machines, kitchen equipment review

Id: omelPJ8WKy8

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2019