How to Make Kung Pao Chicken and Oven-Steamed Fish with Scallions and Ginger

[Music] um [Music] today on america's test kitchen elle makes bridgette a foolproof kung pao chicken adam reveals his favorite heavy duty cutting board and dan makes julia the perfect oven steamed fish with scallions and ginger it's all coming up right here on america's test kitchen [Music] in sichuan cooking the combination of tingly szechuan peppercorns and fiery chilies is known as ma la or numbing heat now it's a key part of a dish that you know well kung pao chicken and elves here she's going to show us how to make a great version at home that's right and beyond the numbing heat kung pao chicken is essentially a stir fry and a flavorful sauce one of the problems though with chicken stir fries is that often the chicken dries out we're going to solve that problem today okay so we have here one and a half pounds of boneless skinless chicken thighs and they've been trimmed and i'm just going to finish this off and they've all been cut into half inch pieces gotcha i love that you use thighs instead of chicken breasts just a lot more flavorful and not going to dry out right that's right so i'm just slicing the chicken into about half inch strips and then i'm going to cut them into half inch pieces yeah those tiny little pieces of chicken are definitely a hallmark of kung pao chicken but i see that you have everything prepped out ahead of time that really is key for any stir fry that you're doing all the cooking is going to go super fast so it's a great idea to prep everything before you get started okay so i've washed my hands i got rid of the cutting board it's time to make the marinade all right i have here some traditional ingredients two tablespoons of soy sauce nice deep flavor and some salt oh yeah one tablespoon of corn starch this corn starch is really the magical ingredient the corn starch is going to coat the chicken so when it hits the heat it's going to create a gel around the chicken this is what's going to make our sauce stick because we don't want our sauce to be starchy and goopy we want it to have a nice shiny glaze i also have one tablespoon of chinese rice wine and finally half a teaspoon of white pepper so i'm just gonna mix it well already this cornstarch is creating a nice glossy glaze it's sticking right to the chicken where it should that's right sticking to the chicken sticking to the chicken so i'm gonna set this aside and now we can start building our sauce so we have more traditional ingredients this is one tablespoon of black chinese vinegar to that i'm gonna add two tablespoons of soy sauce one tablespoon of packed dark brown sugar and two teaspoons of toasted sesame oil it smells so good so i'm going to give that a stir just to make sure that the sugar is dissolved now chinese black vinegar is made from glutinous rice sometimes it's made from sorghum it has a really deep malty flavor and it looks similar to balsamic but it's not quite as sweet so if you can't find chinese black vinegar the best bed is a substitute of sherry vinegar all right so we're going to build the second part of our sauce we're starting with one tablespoon of vegetable oil two teaspoons of grated ginger and one tablespoon of minced garlic the oil is going to make this spreadable and this combination is the basis of szechuan cooking yeah it really is i love this method because you toad everything in oil and then when you add it to a skillet it's not going to clump together right that's right so that's all set i'm going to put this to the side okay before we start getting into making the compound chicken i'm just going to toast half a cup of dry roasted peanuts i have in this nonstick skillet one teaspoon of vegetable oil okay i'm just going to toast these for about three to five minutes over medium-low heat toasting these peanuts is going to add an extra nice texture and flavor to our dish they will not get soggy in the sauce you know when they're ready when they're nice and toasty brown so these peanuts are all set so we're just gonna put them on a plate to cool and set them aside okay all right let's set those aside over here please all right so it's time for us to start building the foundation for our kung pao sauce so i'm just going to take one teaspoon of szechuan peppercorns and put it into a spice grinder i want to grind it coarsely so that they're easier to eat and it's going to give us a more robust flavor all right just a few pulses this is perfect you can smell it already we're gonna move over to our pan this is the same pan that we had our peanuts in over medium-low heat and i'm just going to add a tablespoon of vegetable oil we're going to start these peppers to peppin so i'm going to add our crushed peppercorn and i'm going to add 15 dried arbor chilies and we found just like crushing the peppercorn splitting the arbor chilies and taking the seeds out really helped them to bloom and give us better flavor so we're just going to let these bloom for about one to two minutes all right okay so these bloomed they smell pretty good i'm just going to add our garlic ginger mixture nice little sizzle there yeah and because we added oil it's spreading quite easily and we only need to let this go for about 30 seconds stirring pretty frequently until the clumps are gone that looks about right so now we can add our chicken that's been marinating so we're going to add the chicken and spread it to an even layer in the pan browning is not a staple of szechuan cooking so we don't need a lot of browning but we do need the chicken to be done completely so i'm going to increase the heat to medium high put a lid on this chicken and let it cook for one minute okay okay so it's been a minute i'm just going to take the lid off give it a stir so this stir allows the chicken to cook on the other side and i'm gonna put it back in an even layer as it was before okay put the lid back on and let it cook for another minute all right every time you lift the lid it smells better and better i know it's so exciting all right so it's been a minute it's looking good i'm gonna add two celery stalks cut into half inch pieces and it adds some beautiful color a nice crunch in texture and i think a nice cooling sensation when you're eating a little bit of chili you know yes absolutely and i like that you added it after the chicken a lot of recipes will add celery towards the start you end up with overcooked celery yeah that's not good so i'm just going to keep cooking this another two to three minutes uncovered okay so we're going to add the sauce which is the staple of the dish and because we put cornstarch on the chicken earlier the sauce is going to stick and be so glossy and so beautiful i'm going to stir this constantly it just needs about three to five minutes to reduce gotcha look what we made here beautiful this kung pao chicken is saucy but not goopy it's shiny and glossy and smells delicious it's great that it's not swimming in sausage that's right so to finish it off i'm going to add five scallions that i've cut into half inch pieces it's just the white and the light green pieces and our toasted peanuts from earlier i'm just going to stir it to combine it all right so i'm just gonna take it off the heat and we're ready to eat so be sure not to eat the chilies yeah okay and don't write to us if you happen to and i'm serving this with white rice that looks a little more gorgeous there you go all right i'm going for the star of the show the chicken meat is so juicy and tender the thighs were the best selection for this dish the flavor of the sauce is so complex the black vinegar the rice wine the szechuan peppercorns sichuan peppercorns and the fact that everything was prepped to a similar size means you can do this get everything on your forkful in one bite oh you brought the fire i try oh that is good stuff you're going to want to make this kung pao at home and it starts with classic stir-fry prep toss chicken thighs with soy sauce and corn starch then make a sauce with chinese black vinegar brown sugar and sesame oil grind then cook sichuan peppercorns with arbol chiles then add garlic and ginger cook the chicken add celery and the sauce stir in scallions and toasted peanuts and serve with white rice so from america's test kitchen to your kitchen the fiery tingly so good kung pao chicken i think we could go into business with this when it comes to cutting boards i like them big and beefy because it provides you a solid surface to work on but they can be expensive so adam's here to tell us which one is worth the money big and beefy huh i hadn't used that as a descriptor for these but they are big and beefy i hate small cutting boards they offend me personally they can be lightweight they can jump around compared to a plastic cutting board or a composite cutting board you get a luxurious cutting experience because they all tend to be a little softer a lot of space to work with which you like i like to and if you take care of it you get a board that should last you a lifetime we have seven boards in our lineup the price range was about eighty five dollars at a low to two 240 at a high and the materials range from bamboo to four different kinds of wood we have teak right here we have maple we have birch and then there's a japanese cypress called hinoki cool testers minced parsley they diced onions they sliced loaves of bread they pounded chicken cutlets and they hacked through bone-in chicken parts to test stain and odor resistance they minced chipotle chilies and adobo sauce and washed off the boards to see how stained and smelly they might have been all of these boards were washed by hand at least a hundred times they were maintained with mineral oil as needed and they also went home with test cooks for some real world real kitchen testing and the test cooks reported back over time what they thought so in terms of size our recommendation is to get the biggest board that your counter and your sink will allow also the biggest board that you can lift comfortably do not discount the weight factor with these things they can be really heavy the heaviest board in our lineup was about 32 pounds and it was this one all right julia let's see some muscles i'm pretty strong oh my goodness this is surprisingly heavy i'd actually be worried for my safety if i had to carry this across the kitchen to the sink the sweet spot for weight was about 15 pounds that was about this one here 15 pounds was handleable and still secure the height of the border the thickness of the board was also a consideration there were taller cooks and some shorter cooks in the testing squad here some of these boards were as thick as two inches and if they had feet like this one it lifted them up even higher more like three inches that was fine for taller cooks that put the knife in a nice you know comfortable position for some of the cooks who were not quite as tall that could be a challenge and i want you to chop a little parsley and just tell me whether it feels natural to you i've had boards like this before and yeah the knife is actually way too high for me to be comfortable this is going to hurt my shoulder after a couple of minutes so you definitely want to pay attention to the height again the sweet spot in terms of height was about an inch and a half to two inches that was good for most cooks in terms of the feet some testers liked them because it was easier to lift the boards it was easier to get them to dry because they were elevated off the work surface but they're not reversible which boards without feet are so there's an advantage to either ore you know we wanted to figure out how durable these woods were we also wanted to see the effect of the wood on the cutting edge of a blade so we got a little robotic help for that we got a robot in here from the autodesk technology center in boston and the robot was fitted with a brand new factory sharpened knife for each board the robot used the knife to make 5 000 strikes on each board we stopped every 200 cuts so that we could assess the sharpness of the knife by slicing through paper which is our sort of standard sharpness test and also inspect the board see how that was doing under the stress of all that chopping all the knives could still cut through paper it was not quite the same story for the boards i want you to flip over this one at the end if you would please all right the jeff oh oh oh no i'd be mad if this was my board at home now the robot was adding more pressure than a human would you using a really hard strike right yeah so this is pretty extreme but over time this could happen there is a scale to measure hardness and softness called the jenka scale the range in the janka scale in our lineup was a low of 349. okay to a high of 1480. oh wow the board made of teak was 989 on the janka scale and we considered that a nice happy medium this was soft enough so that it was a nice luxurious cutting experience but hard enough that it would be durable all right we have two different types of construction for these boards this one that your hand is on that's called end grain and what's going on there is you have a bunch of pieces of wood that are fused together vertically so that the ends are exposed the teak one that's called edge grain and you have a bunch of pieces of wood that are fused together horizontally testers actually preferred the edge grain because the end grain boards were more susceptible to moisture absorption also when they were oiling the boards with mineral oil the end grain boards absorbed more oil than the edge grain boards did the teak board actually absorbed the least mineral oil of all teak contains a natural resin called tectaquinone that keeps it conditioned and naturally repels moisture so this one required a little less maintenance than the others all right you know testers really think that choosing a big cutting board like this is very personal it depends on how strong you are how much space you have how big your sink is what your aesthetic is but this one take house by proteak edge grain board for about 105 which has been our winner in the past retains the title as the winner it's a great choice for a lot of people it is spacious because it's 24 inches long by 18 inches wide it's an inch and a half high it's 15 pounds so it's stable enough but you can still move it around it was the second least expensive one in the whole lineup at 105 and we really can stand by this because we've used it in the test kitchen for 10 years and had no issues to report all right so it's standing the test of time here it is so there you have it if you're ready to invest in a nice big beefy cutting board look for the teak house by proteiq edge grain cutting board at about 105 dollars if i said today that we're making steamed fish you'd probably just go and change the channel because what is there to know but dan says he has a new recipe that delivers more flavor than either grilled or roasted that's right so i love steamed fish but you have to do it right oven steaming is my favorite way to do it it's really hands off you get super moist really really tender fish but you got to do it the right way so we're going to start with some intensely flavorful ingredients working with scallions ginger and garlic we're gonna use them in a couple different ways so first things first i have six scallions here they're gonna coarsely chop they're gonna go in my baking pan and that's actually gonna be our steaming vessel so out of these two here this is we're gonna get a little fancier we're gonna do some nice thin bias cuts on them so just kind of stack these up here i'm going to transfer these to a bowl and we will reserve them for a garnish at the end so the next really flavorful ingredient is ginger we're going to use this in two ways as well so i've got about a three inch piece here and two inches of it i'm going to coarsely chop we're not looking for perfect knife skills here just trying to access that flavor and that's going to go in here as well all right and then for this piece here i'm going to do a nice julienne so i want to trim off a little the bottom there and make really nice thin slices and then what i like to do is stack a few pieces a little deck of cards little ginger cards and then i'm just going to slice that same rough thickness that i was doing on this side same thing here nicely done great so that's a garnish we're going to set that aside now to this we're also going to add three cloves of garlic that are sliced thin that's going to be super flavorful so let's head over here and we're going to make our sauce this sauce is going to be really really important it seasons the fish in the end but it also provides all the steam in the oven and it's going to start with 3 tablespoons of soy sauce 2 tablespoons of rice wine i've got one and a half teaspoons of toasted sesame oil a little goes a long way but it's really really rich nice flavor also got one and a half teaspoons of sugar so a little bit of sweetness to help balance things out i also have a quarter of a teaspoon of salt soy sauce is pretty salty so we need a little bit to balance it and then finally one of my favorite ingredients is a quarter teaspoon of ground white pepper it's going to add a ton of complexity to this dish all right so the difference between white peppercorns and black peppercorns comes down to how they're processed black peppercorns are the unripe berries from the pepper plant and they're dried which is why they look a little shrunken and their outer skin has a bittery spicy flavor white peppercorns on the other hand are the ripe berries and they're soaked and fermented in water and then that skin is removed so their flavor is floral and light and a little bit more complex so if you want bold and spicy go for the black peppercorns if you want light and fragrant go for the white okay so we've got all our components and it is now time to build the ultimate oven steamed fish set up in a brownie pan yes it's crazy right it is a little crazy so if you think it's weird that we're in a brownie pan we're also going to make a sling in the same way that we do for brownies the fish is going to go on that it's going to be perfect so we have a piece of foil here that i folded over so it's about six inches wide and about 18 inches long and i'm going to press it in now we don't want the fish to stick to it so i'm going to use a little bit of cooking spray on there clever now it's time to look at our beautiful fish so we have cod here it's one of my favorite fish but anything in the cod family so pollock haddock cake would be great as well will work perfectly in this recipe you want something that you know flakes apart when it's cooked it's a little mild but really really nice and meaty too so i have four six ounce fillets here beautiful now there's not a lot of trick to doing this but you do want to look for any of the thinner pieces you have and those should go in the center they'll cook a little bit slower that way yeah protect thinner pieces in the middle so now i'm going to take this sauce here and pour it around the fish as i mentioned it's going to create that really nice steamy environment in the oven later on after that fish has given its liquid into it it's also going to make an incredible sauce oh just a little to do it huh little will do it we want it to be nice and concentrated when it comes out of the oven okay and now we're just going to cover with foil i'm going to go into a 450 degree oven on the middle rack nice hot oven will create lots of steam we're going to go until it reaches 125 degrees in the center which can take anywhere from 12 to 14 minutes okay so that's been about 12 minutes we're gonna take a little peek inside oh so we're gonna look for about 125 degrees in here and that is beautiful okay so now our trusty foil sling is gonna come in handy let a little of that moisture drain all right and then we just come over to our platter here and we just slide everything down boy that nonstick spray really did the trick huh beautiful right yeah okay so i like to just space them nice and evenly in there so we've got amazing flavor in here we've got our fish juices we've got all those awesome ingredients we added for the sauce and those aromatics so we want to access all of that so i'm going to strain it off and just press on those aromatics make sure we get every last drop out it's beautiful i like that it's not a fussy sauce it's just the juices left in the bottom of the pan exactly it's packed with flavor you wouldn't mind grabbing that i'll bring the fish over here all right okay so i'm going to pour this sauce all over our fish here you want a nice deep platter for this because there's plenty of sauce and it looks beautiful too now my beautiful bias cut scallions go over the top ah now it's coming alive little garnish goes a long way i've got two tablespoons of oil heating up in this eight-inch skillet over medium-high heat we're gonna get this to just smoking all right so that is just starting to smoke that is very very hot oil so i'm going to turn off the heat and remove it from the heat and add my julienne ginger so we're looking for them to get a little bit brown and golden a little bit crisp so the frying will mitigate that sharp ginger flavor and make a flavorful oil and this will take about 20 to 30 seconds all right that looks beautiful you see how it gets nice and crispy and a little bit brown so now it is time to put it over the fish all right oh oh when that hot oil hits the scallions you can smell that too so the final step is a third of a cup of cilantro leaves and the thin stems so unlike parsley the stems of cilantro are quite sweet beautiful gorgeous that's a looker okay it is time to dig in i'm really impressed with how this platter came around right yeah this is definitely company worthy so then just a little bit of steamed rice as well the sauce catcher get some sauce here don't hold back oh i won't oh yeah bon appetit [Music] so good perfectly cooked and the flavor of the sauce although flavorful doesn't overpower the delicate cod it really marries it nicely that frizzled ginger on top it adds so much flavor the oil adds a ton of richness mmm i just got a hit of that ginger and its flavor is really mellow and it has a nice crisp texture i love the balance of really deep flavor from that soy sauce and then all the fresh stuff on top well this certainly takes my old steamed fish up a few notches right damn this is wonderful thanks so if you want to make this killer recipe for steamed fish layer scallions ginger and garlic into a baking dish cover with a foil sling and arrange the fish on top pour soy sauce and rice wine over the fish cover with foil and bake for just 12 minutes remove the fish from the dish strain the liquid and pour it over top finally finish with a quick warm ginger oil from america's test kitchen to your kitchen a terrific new recipe for oven steamed fish with scallions and ginger you can get this recipe and all the recipes from the season along with our tastings testings and select episodes at our website americastestkitchen.com whoa 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: 112,273

Keywords: chinese food, seafood, americas test kitchen, cooks illustrated, cooks country, recipes, cookbooks

Id: psfGOp0jJ_o

Length: 24min 2sec (1442 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021