How to Make Incredible Cast-Iron Baked Chicken and Blueberry Cornbread with Honey Butter

[Music] today on cook's country natalie makes bridget the best cast iron baked chicken jack challenges julia to a tasting of hot sauce and ashley makes julia a perfect blueberry cornbread that's all right here on cook's country cast iron cookware has been a part of the american story from day one paul revere refined the classic dutch oven so the lid had a flange for holding hot coals and he added legs so that the pot could stand upright over a campfire now george washington's grandmother mary hughes willed her cast iron cookware which she called furniture to her daughter mary ball lewis and clark carried the heavy pots throughout their two-year exploration of louisiana purchase in 1804 and they even brought along a few extra as gifts for any native american they met along the way now at the start of the 19th century there were hundreds of u.s cast iron cookware producers but by the end of the 20th century only about a dozen stood but cast iron is back new u.s manufacturers have hit the market and since 2013 cast iron cookware sales are up 37 that is good news today we're using cast iron and taking a new look at baked chicken so let's head into the kitchen with natalie to see how it's done baked chicken is a familiar dish it should be simple easy but it can be problematic and here's the problem you take your chicken you put it in a baking dish if you want the meat to be juicy and tender inside the skin is kind of pale and flabby but if you get that skin super crisp the meat inside is often overcooked until today we have a baked chicken expert with us natalie and she's going to solve all of these problems well the simple things are the hardest right right and we realized during our testing that a glass baking dish wasn't really doing anything for us right so we wanted to use a cast iron we're baking in cast iron correct once it gets heated up all the way it tends to retain heat way longer than an aluminum pan or a glass ceramic dish so what we want to do is we want to heat it up in the oven as opposed to the stove top right because the stove top is kind of spotty the way that it heats up cast iron so we're going to start in a cold oven at 450 degrees cold pan cold oven cold pan cold oven and once it comes up to 450 degrees it's good to go okay so we obviously need to season our chicken and we wanted to keep classic baked chicken flavors and we also wanted to give it some color so this is two teaspoons of salt and to this we're going to add two teaspoons of paprika and one teaspoon of pepper half a teaspoon of onion powder and half a teaspoon of granulated garlic that's it that's a spice mixture that's that's easy exactly pantry items just gonna mix this until it's incorporated all right so we're just going to set this aside for now and we're going to get down to the chicken we like to use a whole chicken here because it's more economical you get to control more of the parts as far as like what size you want how much fat you want to trim off of it so we're gonna start by patting it dry and how big is the chicken this is a four pound bird and it's going to yield three pounds in parts then i'm going to start by taking off the skin that connects the breast to the thigh just using the tip of the boning knife not using the whole blade yeah i always say that the chicken will tell you where to make the cuts there always seems to be a little fat seam at just about every place you cut and then we're just going to flip it over and kind of pop this joint out let gravity do the work for us go along take this off use this little line of demarcation over here to take it away from the joint and separate the leg from the thigh we're going to take off any excess fat so it doesn't render into our sauce and then we're going to take this wing tip and use the same method to kind of let gravity do the work and take it off from the breast we're going to discard the wingtips we're going to do the same on the other side i'm going to take off the back with the larger knife okay i'm gonna take this chef's knife and i'm gonna go down as close to the spine as i can i'm gonna do the same with the other side as well and then with this i'm just going to go along the breastbone and then once i get towards this brass bone i'm just going gonna press down just crush that bone so now that we've broken down our chicken we're going to season it so this is our spice mixture season pretty liberally from a pie get better coverage if you do it up high rather than the right on there that's right so we have to make sure to season liberally on both sides we really want all these flavors to penetrate into the chicken all right we're using all of the rub yes we're using all the rub right all right so we've got our chicken seasoned and now we're just going to wait for our pan to come up to temperature okay so we've taken our cast iron out of the oven and it's really hot as you can feel screaming hot and we're just gonna start off with two tablespoons of unsalted butter i love the little handle cover you've got there i know it's perfect little baseball knit it's a good idea if you don't have a handle cover for your hot cast iron skillet you can wrap it with a towel just to remind yourself that it's hot to this we're going to add six time sprigs for some aromatics nice we're going to start off with our chicken we're going to start skin side first because we want that immediate browning all right this is like rubik's chicken you've got to figure out how to jigsaw it all in there yeah kind of like tetris so you can move around the time sprigs if they tend to be in the way okay so all going skin side down yes skin side down yeah i think you're gonna make it it's great we're just gonna pop this in the oven for 15 minutes and it's still at 4 50. yes at 4 50. it smells so good in here smells awesome doesn't it i'm just gonna flip these over and you can already see that it has such nice color on it gorgeous browning yeah you don't get that in a glass baking dish oh definitely not between the spices and the herbs that are in there the whole kitchen smells phenomenal it does so we're going to let this go for another 15 minutes or until the breast reads 160 and the legs and the thighs read 175. all right so roughly 15 minutes aside correct great i'll get the door thank you all right all right oh that looks beautiful i know i'm excited for this we're just gonna temp one of the thighs and we're looking for 175. oh it's perfect so we're just going to let this rest in the skillet for about 10 minutes because we want the juices to get reabsorbed back into the chicken okay all right so our chicken has been resting for 10 minutes now it's time to plate it up thank goodness so start off by taking out some of the pieces and then we can discard the time sprigs that are in here because they've done their work so we have some pretty delicious pan drippings over here and we're just gonna whisk this up a little bit [Music] that's the gold in the bottom of the pan exactly we're just gonna spoon them over our chicken oh yeah looks awesome i like that you didn't have to make a sauce separately keeping with the whole simple is better theme here exactly so would you like a breath yes for you lovely you have to see if this is actually really juicy too the key was getting color on the outside of the chicken but juicy meat inside exactly you can hear it too crispy skin tender juicy i mean look at that they're so good that spice mixture it goes a long way oh it goes a very long way it actually tastes like long roasted chicken it does without the roux without the minced garlic without the onions it's 30 minutes the upfront work the prep it was just breaking down a chicken which really it's a great thing to learn at home because it is going to save you a lot of money and all these pieces are cooked perfectly but also you can do all that prep while the cast iron is heating in the oven exactly i know it cooks like a weeknight meal but it doesn't taste like a weeknight meal it doesn't taste like you took any shortcuts the skin on that chicken is so well rendered it's perfectly juicy too thanks natalie well you're welcome solved all of our big chicken problems i'm glad you liked it well our baked chicken starts with heating a cast iron skillet in the oven meanwhile make an easy spice mixture with paprika onion powder and granulated garlic break down a whole chicken into parts and season with the spices add butter and thyme sprigs to the skillet add the chicken skin side down and bake until done flipping the chicken over halfway through cooking let the chicken rest in the skillet and then serve with those pan juices so from cook's country a foolproof and really better way to chicken it's cast iron baked chicken [Music] hot sauce is big business raking in over 538 million dollars a year so jack's here today to explain the difference between the variety of brands yeah and i brought a little gift milk whole milk so you know the extra fat the milk sugars are going to help you more than water oh thank you now i should say the lovely studio audience has picked the winner of course they did a smart bunch and yeah in case you were wondering i didn't make them do this you didn't no they had it over cheesy creamy grits oh you guys didn't eat it straight well i i just met them so you're going to put me through it i actually love hot sauce well we'll see you at the end of the tasting what you say all right so i'm just going to dig in yeah just dig in these are traditional hot sauces so these are not sriracha which is you know sort of the trend yep it's hot sauce yeah i like how you just went right there yeah you know not like a little teeny bit like let's just go right into it second one so sriracha is got sugar in it and usually a lot more garlic so these are cayenne peppers there's vinegar um some of them are aged so it's like they mash with salt in barrels and they get more complexity i like this one or winter yeah i could drink that that's good wow okay all right the heat level as you know is measured on scoville units and the samples here range from 450 which is very mild i mean zero would be a bell pepper a million would be like you know a ghost chili so the sauces we tasted ranged on the scoville scale from 450 up to 3 000. for comparison a raw jalapeno on the scoville scale is about 2500 so it's about the same level of heat as the spiciest of these sauces okay interestingly you can tell a lot by reading the ingredient list and whether it begins with peppers vinegar or water and that will tell you a lot about what kind of sauce you're getting the number one ingredient list tells you what it tastes like right you're either gonna get a mild sauce a hot sauce or a vinegary sauce so anything that you're noticing here yeah i hope i brought enough ah this milk is good okay yep i'm good would you like to start with what you liked yeah so i loved this one as i mentioned i could drink this one i know this brand i know this flavor i put this on my wings this is the very traditional essence of a buffalo chicken wing in my book so this is my favorite um i like how it has a little bit of a garlicky flavor to it and i love how like no confidence whatsoever you're like you're hedging your bats so let's see how your bet paid off yep you are 100 correct that's the frank's red hot we actually did a buffalo wings tasting and we loved it there because it's got a really nice consistency and it clings well it's also got a lot more salt than the rest of these interesting so it you know if hot sauce is a flavor enhancer all that salt helps studio audience landslide that was their favorite good choice so what's your second favorite this one i didn't recognize it but i really liked it had a lot of other flavors going on um it's spicy but it had a little bit of a wista sheery umami anchovy thing going on that i liked all right so this is a tabasco this is i would say the most vinegar forward vinegar is the first ingredient it's also i actually think it's the hottest and when we did the lab test with the scoville units it was the hottest at the 3000 okay this one did not like it um and i'm surprised to hear you say this has more vinegar than this this to me was watery vinegary sharp acidic cheap awful um lighter fluid that's what i would say about that one no opinions whatsoever i mean you know it just makes my job so hard well this has the most water this is oh interesting this one is really fruit forward but not necessarily in a good way no wow i own this i buy this regularly but i had no idea that i'd like this one so much more well now you know no i know so if you want to buy the winning hot sauce at the supermarket go with frank's red hot original cayenne pepper sauce at 3.49 for a 12-ounce jar [Applause] [Music] when we set out to make a new recipe here at cook's country we start by finding as many versions of that recipe as we can find and we make a few in a side-by-side test now when we did this with blueberry cornbread the differences were dramatic some were cakey some were savory some had an odd bluish color didn't they ashley they absolutely did almost gray even and that wasn't very appetizing and honestly it was just very simple what we wanted to do we wanted to find a way to add blueberries to cornbread the idea is simple but as it turns out it's not as simple to make so the first idea savory or sweet well we kind of teeter-tottered in the middle there we did find a really nice balance of the two so i'll walk you through how we did it all right all right so first we are going to start with a nine inch greased light colored cake pan and i'm gonna line it with one and a half tablespoons of yellow cornmeal okay so instead of dusting the cake pan with flour as you would with cakes notice i said cakes and i asked you about sweet versus savory so you're already kind of treating it like a cake but instead dusting the pan with flour you're dressing it with cornmeal that makes sense yeah and it's just gonna help for um easy release and it's gonna give you a little bit of that cornmeal crunch i'm all about texture so it's gonna be a good one and i did notice she said light colored cake pan what happens if you use a dark colored pan you have to shorten the cook time okay all right now on to the dry ingredients here we have one and a half cups of all-purpose flour one cup of yellow cornmeal and this is just the regular yellow cornmeal that you find in most grocery stores here we have three quarters of a cup of granulated sugar two teaspoons of baking powder and finally three quarters of a teaspoon of table salt just gonna whisk that until combined now you said one and a half cups of flour to one cup of cornmeal now obviously we must have tried different ratios that's more flour than cornmeal sounding a little cakey well again teeter-tottering we're walking that fine line trying to keep you in suspense and i think it's working all right so we'll move on down to our wet ingredients here we have 12 tablespoons of unsalted butter that i've gone ahead and melted and then cooled it down which ensures that it's not going to cook or scramble the eggs that are in this i've done that before this is one cup of whole milk and two large eggs so not buttermilk yet a different cornbread a lot of corn breads are made with buttermilk because that tang's good unless you're going for something a little on the sweet side you're on to me ma'am all right now as you can see i'm just whisking this until combined and because of the temperature of the butter and temperature of the cold milk sometimes it does tend to clump and that's totally okay that's just because of the temperature of everything combining those clumps wouldn't melt in the oven all right let's combine everything together here here's the dry thank you so here we have the dry ingredients and i'm going to add the wet then i'm just going to whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until just combined and that's important because you don't want to form any extra gluten at this stage extra gluten means extra chewy cornbread all right this looks great just want to reincorporate it just with my rubber spat here all right now time to add the blueberries he's the star of the show the star of the show 10 ounces two cups of these beautiful blueberries those are gorgeous and just like earlier i'm gonna fold this just until combined all right now i will transfer this batter to the prepared pan and get every little drop in there so now just gently using my rubber spatula i'm just going to ever so lightly try and flatten out the top of my cornbread here that's a lot of blueberries i guarantee you one blueberry at least one blueberry in every bite almost done here we have one tablespoon more of sugar just gonna dust it on the top before going into the oven how cakey of you i've been called worse and you want to make sure all the cornbread gets covered so go slow at this stage if you'd like so i've sprinkled that lovely sugar on top the cornbread and i have an oven that is preheated to 375 degrees i'm going to bake this until nice and golden brown on the top and a paring knife inserted in the center comes out clean should be about 40 to 45 minutes smells good oh yeah i am so excited for this thank you so i just want to test for doneness again going to insert this paring knife i'm looking for no crumbs attached onto the sides of it there's no crumbs but it's not exactly clean looks like you stabbed a berry it does all right so i'm going to let this cool in the cake pan for 20 minutes all right in the meantime i've got a little trick up my sleeve and it's called honey butter so i have four tablespoons of unsalted butter that is softened and here i have two tablespoons of honey and i love using these little spatulas for sticky stuff like this or for things that are just in a little tiny bowl because it helps ensure that everything gets out nice and cleanly quarter teaspoon of salt and finally a pinch of some cayenne pepper i like that a little cayenne a little honey you know making a flavored butter or compound butter is so easy and it just elevates whatever you're cooking just kicks everything up just a little notch 100 behind you there and people think you really went the extra mile that's true meanwhile it took two seconds to put this together so as you can see i've been mashing it with a fork came together really really easily so again we are going to wait 20 minutes for this to cool in the cake pan all right all right it's been 20 minutes the next step is to run the paring knife between the cornbread and the cake pan loosening it up a bit all right and now i'm just gonna put the dish towel here just to hold it put my hand right on top of the bread drum roll there we go we are in business nicely done thank you so much so this is still quite warm it needs about 20 more minutes to cool all right it has been 40 long minutes julia it's time to slice into all right i've been waiting for this all right so i'm gonna slice it into eight slices using the serrated knife i'm gonna cut it down the middle from top to bottom and from side to side then crossways this just helps to ensure even sizes these are nice big pieces of cornbread oh yeah you're not skimping no skimping in my kitchen ooh and then the honey butter yes i think i'm just gonna put a little on the top yeah i'm going in all right not too sweet it really isn't that sweet i know i've been giving you a hard time about the cakiness because i'm not a big fan of sweet cornbread it really is right on the line between cake and cornbread it's not dense cornbread it's not cake and it's not mushy it really is baked all the way through but light nice and tender that melted butter is really coming through yeah and we paid attention to how much we are mixing this or not mixing this because we didn't want to develop that gluten which is going to make this tough and it's a cornbread after all it's not a cake and it's not a hearty hearty bread and the sugar actually brings out the corn flavor a little bit especially given that we're using supermarket cornmeal it's hard to get a light texture like that when you're making a melted butter or a bowl cake because the tendency is to overmix it and that makes it bready but this is lovely and light i also love the little crunchy bits of cornmeal that are all around the pan it's like a little crunchy present with every bite i love that this is delicious ashley thank you so much thank you you're welcome to make this amazing blueberry cornbread start by dusting a nine inch round cake pan with cornmeal using a three to two ratio of all-purpose flour to cornmeal along with some whole milk and melted butter mix the batter together by hand before gently stirring in the fresh blueberries dust the top with a little sugar bake for 45 minutes and let cool slightly before serving with honey butter from cook's country a great recipe for blueberry cornbread with honey butter i'm kind of getting rid of the fork i'm just going oh that's good officially takes it out of cake territory that's what i was thinking thanks for watching cook's 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 hi 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

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 126,302

Rating: 4.9322033 out of 5

Keywords: cast iron chicken, baked chicken, cornbread, blueberry cornbread, cooking, cooks country, americas test kitchen, cooks illustrated

Id: V9_sSjNUmBA

Length: 23min 48sec (1428 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020