How to Make Our Recipes for Chinese Barbecued Pork and Mapo Tofu

[Music] today on america's test kitchen julia and bridget unlock the secrets to the ultimate chinese barbecued board adam reveals his top picks for wire racks and rimmed baking sheets and dan makes julia a szechuan classic tofu it's all coming up right here on america's test kitchen passed by a shop in chinatown and along with rose stocks hanging in the window you might just see ruby red strips of cha siu it's also called chinese barbecue pork but no matter the name it's sweet salty and beautifully charred and delicious and really hard to make at home if you do it the authentic way they take very thin strips of pork and they put it on little hangers in a refrigerator-sized oven they're dyed red which is good luck but we're not going to dye our pork red and we don't have one of those fancy ovens you don't have that no do you no i don't well we're gonna make a really good version anyway using our regular old home ovens sounds good so we have here a four pound pork butt and we're gonna cut it into very thin slices now early on in our testing we tried to cheat a little bit and make them a little thicker but that doesn't work you really need the thin slices so that the fat can melt and how you cut it matters i'm going to cut it right down the middle i'm going to trim away some of this extra fat after i've cut the slices because it's a little easier that way and so i'm going to turn it onto its cut side and i'm going to cut this into three sections so you want a section that's an inch or less thick these thinner steaks will really cook through evenly a lot of that fat will render if there's any big pockets of fat i'm just going to trim them out and a boning knife really makes quick work of this because it's a nice thin flexible blade see how flexible that blade is and that means you can really skim off the fat without getting too much the meat all right so these look perfect yes they do all right now i'm going to take a fork and i'm going to prick them about 10 times or so on each side this is just really going to help the marinade get deep into the meat so now the pork is ready to be marinated i'm going to use my favorite marinating tool here a plastic bag very fancy so we're going to get this ready for the marinade and speaking of the marinade we'll make that next that sounds good so here we have a half a cup of sugar and to that we're going to add half a cup of soy sauce now a lot of traditional recipes we saw use both light and dark soy sauce but we found that regular soy sauce worked just fine here next we're gonna add a quarter cup of dry sherry next this is six tablespoons of hoisin sauce that's a big flavor bomb right there we're gonna add two tablespoons of grated fresh ginger a little bit of garlic because garlic tastes good and everything that sure does this is two cloves of garlic a little bit of sesame oil one of my all-time favorite ingredients toasted sesame oh i just love it everything tastes good that's a tablespoon this is a teaspoon of chinese five spice last but not least a little pepper and this is a quarter teaspoon of white ground pepper which has a much higher more fragrant note than black ground pepper so we're just going to whisk this together and before i marry this with the pork i'm going to reserve a half a cup of that marinade because we're going to make a glaze to baste with the pork just before serving and to make the glaze it takes about five minutes on the stovetop now we're going to add a little honey this is a third a cup of honey which of course helps the glaze stick to the meat and adds its own flavor and sweetness last but not least a quarter cup of ketchup you know how i feel about ketchup you love i love ketchup it's sweet it's sour it's salty and it adds a really nice sort of fruity flavor to this we're gonna bring this to a simmer and let it cook on medium heat for about five minutes till it's nice and thickened and it measures about a cup and i'm leaving you in charge excellent all right meanwhile i'm going to take the rest of this marinade and i'm going to pour it over all this pork in the bag i want to make sure i get all of it out of the bowl the reason why i love these bags is you can really press all the air out which helps the marinade really get all around that pork also means that you don't have to use as much marinade yep right now you have to let this marinate for at least 30 minutes or up to four hours the longer you marinate it the more flavor it gets so i would always opt for the four hours so we're going to put them in the refrigerator all right so the pork has been marinating for four hours and now it's time to cook it so you can see we have a rack set up here that's gonna allow for even airflow on both sides of the meat so you get more of that crispy char i also went ahead and lined the pan with aluminum foil because that sticky glaze is a bear to clean up if it burns on the bottom of the pan you only do that once and also i sprayed the rack really well with vegetable oil spray because that sticky sauce when it gets into all the nooks and crannies of the rack it's a mess it's not coming out now we messed around a lot with roasting temperatures high temperatures were great because you got a nice char on the outside but the meat was kind of tough low temperatures the reverse happened the meat was tender it had time to render the fat but you got no char on the top so we're gonna do a combination low to nice render the fat and then we're going to finish under high with the glaze all right to help the steaming in the beginning to render some of the fat then add a quarter cup of water this also helps prevent any drippings from burning and then i'm going to cover with foil we're going to roast it for about an hour at 300 degrees now it's going to be covered with the foil for the first 20 minutes then we're going to take the foil off and go for 40 minutes longer and then we're going to broil it to finish oh looking good it is looking good all right if you could turn the broiler on for me please sounds good you see how they're nice and glisteny on top that's good flavor and good moisture but all that moisture means the glaze wouldn't stick right now and here we have our glaze that we reduced earlier and we want that on the pork that's right we want to stick so this is what we're gonna do we're gonna throw this back under the broiler for about seven minutes to dry out the tops of the meat and then we're gonna glaze it and broil it for a little longer and we're gonna do that on both sides so dry glaze flip dry glaze dry glaze flip dry glaze gotta so that broiler is preheated and it's time to get going get that for you oh it's looking good those are nice and golden on the top little charring on the edge and as you said it's a little dried out on the top which is what you want yes exactly so now it's time to glaze i'm gonna use about half of this glaze that we made and put it on the top and the sides hello pork this now goes back under the broiler for about five minutes or so until that glaze is nice and caramelized oh wow oh hello gorgeous i mean look at it it's just still bubbling on the top we broiled it and glazed it on both sides so that on the top and the bottom it looks this gorgeous gorgeous right but all this bubbling means it's very hot so we're going to let them cool down and rest for at least 10 minutes before we slice in all right so this has rested for at least 10 minutes at least it felt a lot longer than that i know now i'm gonna slice it into nice thin bits oh and it's so juicy again because it's pork shoulder which just retains its juice so nicely oh look how juicy that is let me give you some choice pieces right from the middle here oh you know i'm going to give you the end piece because that was super glitzy but i give myself the other end part of course we're serving this over sticky white rice because that's traditional yep it's also the perfect foil for all those big flavors and all those pork juices baste the rice the rice at the end is pretty good i'm gonna go right in for that end piece cause it doesn't get much better than that almost like bacon but with a totally different flavor profile and that flavor profile is awesome this is a keeper this is a keeper you're a keeper thanks for a fool proof chalk you at home cut pork butt into strips and marinate the meat in a sweet and salty mixture cook the pork on a rack over water then broil and glaze to build a crust cut into thin strips and serve with rice so from our test kitchen to your kitchen a chinatown worthy chinese barbecue pork [Music] most excellent [Music] by the last count the test kitchen had no fewer than 381 baking sheets in these halls now those sheets are kitchen mvps around these parts and adam another mvp is going to tell us which brand to purchase for your own kitchen can we just stop there i love being called well you know i have like fewer of these sheet pens at home i probably only have five or six but they never see the inside of a cabinet i use them constantly and i think they have it easy compared to the test kitchen i would say 381 that's what you were doing this morning running around counting sheet pans we use these in all kinds of ways you would expect them to be used and ways you wouldn't expect them to be used they're used to bake cookies jelly roll cakes biscuits scones chicken fish meat we use them to roast oven fries and root vegetables and not root vegetables like asparagus or green beans we use them to toast seeds and nuts we spread out freshly cooked rice and pasta on them to cool quickly for salads we use them to sort dried beans we fit them with a wire cooling rack so they can hold breaded foods before and after they're cooked or we can drizzle chocolate over desserts or even broil foods so they see a lot of action and it's important to get a good one that's why we're testing here we have a lineup of eight the price range was seven dollars and forty three cents to twenty three dollars and sixty nine cents materials were pretty standard aluminum aluminized steel aluminum alloy and our tests included making lemon sugar cookies making jelly roll cakes roasting parsnips and roasting and broiling chicken thighs and we were just looking for nice even browning and good release right performance differences were pretty minimal they all did a decent job browning baked goods they all released food just fine that's good news that led testers to focus really on some design differences let's start with this one on most of these pans the sides are about an inch tall and they sit pretty perpendicular to the cooking surface not so with this guy the sides are angled and lower and that caused a problem when they were pulling this pan out of the oven filled with chicken grease and juices after broiling that chicken the juices could slosh right over the side not good at all these two were imprinted with ridges this one has a ridge around the walls that's supposed to give it extra stability and a hedge against warping this one has this house tooth pattern on the bottom which is supposed to aid in crisping and in our tests neither one really did the trick let's go down to this guy here this is actually the pan from the testing whereas the rest of these are new and here's where we want to talk about warping warping happens bridget it's not just us who are warped the pan's warped too and this one check this out a little too warped that warped way more dramatically than the others and it stayed warped whereas not all of them did now these two were the ones that warped the least in the whole test they were neck and neck for the winter and actually we chose this one this is the nordic ware baker's half sheet it's 14.97 and it edged out its competition because it warped a little bit less and it was a little bit less expensive you can buy more you can buy more of them got to get up to 381 now remember what i said about fitting it with a wire rack we also tested those we tested three different wire cooling racks we focused on models that did not have a non-stick coating because that's not broiler safe and it had this grid pattern to help hold food securely as opposed to just parallel wire bars we cooled fragile sugar cookies and we made really sticky barbecued pork on these guys performance differences were not that significant and testers chose this one for a couple reasons number one it's got three support bars underneath each with two feet so it's extra stable number two it fits perfectly in our favorite sheet pan number three it was a bargain so this is the winning cooling rack it's the liberty wear half size sheet pan cooling rack sold in packs of two for 15.99 it's a bargain you can get a lot of use out of it excellent well if you want to get use out of these in your kitchen go out and buy our winner it's the nordic ware baker's half sheet at 14.97 and pair it with the liberty wear half size sheet pan cooling rack and that is 15.99 for a set of two [Music] the most famous dish from china's szechuan province is a rich spicy braise called mapo tofu now before you think tofu is not for you let me tell you that this dish is seriously satisfying it's the ultimate comfort food and even better it doesn't take long to cook but there are a few secrets to recreating this dish authentically at home and that's why dan's here this is one of my favorite dishes really chinese or otherwise it's so satisfying and it features tofu so this is like the tofu dish for non-believers it's kind of is right it's really intense and meaty it's spicy it's so savory and the tofu acts as kind of a balance to all of that so that's what we're going to start with we have soft tofu here which most americans i think are more comfortable with firm or extra firm tofu it holds up on the grill or in a saute pan you can get really crispy but the soft tofu is really it's melty and creamy and it's key for this dish it's almost like cheese in this dish it is almost yeah exactly it's that really nice balance to all the other powerful components so we're going to start with the soft tofu here and we're going to cut it into half-inch pieces soft tofu you need to be a little bit careful with it while you're working with it because it it is so tender so you just want to push right through it like this yeah i know it should be very delicate it's got to be very delicate with your tofu then go right down the middle it's very satisfying to cut tofu yeah cause it's like nothing else yeah exactly you can make it very uniform i'm gonna transfer this over to a bowl here we love the fact that it's nice and creamy and soft in this dish but it can have a tendency to break down as you're stirring it around because it's a it's a braise so we're actually going to do a step that's pre-cooking it a little bit very gently it's going to help firm it up so to do that i have two cups of chicken broth ah the first step to non-tofu lovers add a little chicken broth there are so many meaty ingredients that are going into this it's gonna blow your mind so that's that and then we're also gonna add in 12 whole scallions that we're going to cut up we're going to use the entire scallion it's a really nice technique is we're actually going to smash the white parts a little bit kind of tenderize them so everything eats the same yeah i've actually never done this it's a cool technique so you just kind of use the side of your knife smash them down a little bit and so we're going to bring out a lot of that flavor and then we're just going to cut them into one inch pieces helps have a really big hand to cut so i'm just going to cover this up and we're going to go into the microwave five to seven minutes just until it's nice and steaming and hot so this is microwave for about seven minutes and it's nice and steamy yet take a peek absolutely you should take a smell and so the tofu is just firmed up a little bit it's still gonna be nice and creamy but it's not gonna fall apart when we put it in the braise we're gonna let this sit while we're working on our spice paste and this is not just spicy it's super meaty super intense and there's some really fun ingredients in here so we're gonna start with one of the most unique ingredients that you get to work with in the kitchen sichuan peppercorns peppercorns is not a great name for them because they're not spicy they're really numbing very strange very very strange but they work so well with the spicy components of the dish so i toasted these in the microwave for just 30 seconds they get really aromatic oh wow and then they get a little bit crunchier so they're easy to grind so you can toast things in the microwave absolutely i'm gonna put this into a spice grinder here and i like to shake it while i'm doing it because it's fun but also because it helps get everything ground up really nicely all right great so i'm just going to transfer this back to the bowl we've got about a tablespoon here let's get into the spice paste very excited we're going to use our food processor to make it really simple so we're gonna start with nine cloves of garlic just a few just a few just a few cloves of garlic so those are gonna go in next up is another really interesting ingredient and it's called broad bean chili paste now broad beans is another term for fava beans so if you grab fava beans they're in here along with soy beans and chilies and it's left to ferment for a long time and we all know that fermentation produces really intense flavor we're going to use a third of a cup of that next up we have our good friend ginger all right so this is a three inch piece of ginger that we just cut into coins the next unusual ingredient you know what these are they look like bugs but i actually know them to be fermented black beans that's right they are and they're really really flavorful i think the best way to think of them is like little concentrated nuggets of soy sauce right so soy sauce is made from soy beans these are soy beans that are salted and left to ferment and they get that crazy umami flavor really really savory a little goes a long way we're gonna use a tablespoon we're gonna start with these ingredients and we're gonna grind them in here and just get this to a coarse paste it takes about two minutes okay so we've broken it down some we're gonna do a little bit more grinding excuse me yeah it really is very potent with that broad bean paste and those fermented black beans and all that raw ginger and garlic and it's gonna add a ton of flavor to the dish so next up we're gonna add a quarter cup of oil this is just regular vegetable oil next is a tablespoon of sichuan chili powder which sounds crazy right it sounds really spicy it's spicy so the interesting thing is it's not that spicy considering how spicy sichuan food often is this is a lot like korean chili powder if you've ever used that and that's a fine substitute for it so it's a lot of fruitiness and a lot of good pepper flavor but not tons of heat every flavor you put into that food processor packs a punch yes so next up we have our sichuan peppercorns that we ground up i'm gonna use a teaspoon of them right here i'm gonna save the other two teaspoons for later so we're gonna process this again now we want it to be nice and smooth takes about one to two minutes all right that's looking good now we're going to transfer this over to a bowl well it smells really good i kind of just want to put it on some crackers i would do that with you absolutely that's really all of our prep but i've got a surprise ingredient for you and i don't think you saw it coming and it's beef yeah yeah the best part of making a tofu dish is when you can add a little beef right and i think this is what really transforms this dish people think tofu i'm not gonna like it but there is some beef in it it's not a lot there's only eight ounces but it's really there for some texture and some flavor it's not the star of the dish the tofu is still the star so we're gonna start with a tablespoon of oil in this large saucepan here we're gonna go right in and put this over medium heat so we're using 85 ground beef here i've done this with lamb you can also use ground pork it's kind of a free-for-all ooh i like the idea that you can swap in different meats yeah i'm just gonna break this up with this wooden spoon here we're gonna cook it until it just starts to brown which takes about five to seven minutes so this has been about seven minutes we started in a cold pan so it takes a little while to come up but we've rendered some fat you can see we get a little bit of browning so this is ready to go we're gonna just scrape it up leave a little fond in the bottom there we're gonna transfer this back to the bowl now you're using the same bowl that the raw meat was in that's okay here that's okay because it's gonna go back into the pot and continue heating up and cooking we're gonna add another tablespoon of oil put this back on medium heat and now oh our pressure waiting for this paste yes if it smelled good before it's really gonna smell good once we get it in there i'm going to kind of scrape up some of that fondant there like a lot of curry paste it's going to start to break like you're going to see the oil break out from the rest of the stuff and it's going to get a nice dark color that's going to tell us when it's done so this will take about two to three minutes to get to the right stage yeah now you can really see that the oil has separated out of that paste and it's a very dark spicy color yeah and so that red color is a good indicator that we've also got a lot of flavor in it right so a lot of those fat soluble chilies and all that stuff the pigments come out at the same time as the flavor so that's a really good sign that looks great all right so now it's time to add our tofu how are you going to get that big old bowl into this little pan that's a great question i'm actually going to have you help me yeah i get to do something yes so if you just give it a tilt and i can just kind of help guide in some of the pieces here so we firmed up this tofu so it's not going to completely fall apart as we throw it into the pie here we also have two tablespoons of hoisin paste some sweetness a little bit of sweetness again more soy adds a ton of flavor also got two teaspoons of toasted sesame oil so we're adding this towards the end as a lot of good flavor but it's not something you really want to cook with and finally our browned beef all right so i'm gonna very gently stir get everything mixed together and we're going to bring this up to a simmer it takes two to three minutes and look how firm that tofu is soft tofu is really just so delicate that if you look at it wrong it'll just crumble apart and it's releases but you're actually stirring it here and it's holding its cube shape yep that's right and and it's really nice because it's still gonna be creamy it's not gonna be that kind of dried out pieces of extra tofu yes we have one final step we're gonna mix up our cornstarch slurry so we're gonna add two tablespoons of water and just a tablespoon of cornstarch it's nice to do it at the very end right if you do this too far in advance the corn starch sinks to the bottom of the bowl and you just have to whisk it all over again yeah so you might as well just wait right okay and we're gonna just gonna stir this right in plenty hot to gel that cornstarch so i'm just stirring to kind of distribute that cornstarch slurry throughout then it's going to thicken up really nicely in just two to three minutes mmm it is time to eat this smells so good it smells delicious it's thickened up you can see it's got that nice gravy there this is gonna be awesome you want a big portion right i mean big big you have to ask this is really intensely flavored we're gonna serve it with rice but you don't eat like a massive amount of this so say you and we've got our sichuan peppercorns some ground up that we reserved here and these can just get sprinkled right over the top oh it's gonna go oh fresh tingles it's gonna get tingling in here yeah oh that smells good so good right oh i like the the kick on the back finished with the tingles i think it's floral it gets spicy it gets tingly that's a very complex combination of flavors damn this is delicious well done thank you so to make mapo tofu at home make a potent spice paste with broad bean paste fermented black beans szechuan chili powder and toasted szechuan peppercorns use soft tofu and poach it briefly with chicken broth and scallions before adding it to the pan with ground beef and there you have it from america's desk kitchen to your kitchen a terrific recipe for szechuan braves tofu with beef you can find this recipe along with all the recipes tastings and testings from this season at our website americastestkitchen.com 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: 187,759

Keywords: mapo tofu, how to make mapo tofu, chinese barbecued pork, pork, chinese barbecue pork, chinese barbecued pork recipe, recipe, chinese recipes, pork recipes, tofu, tofu recipes, chinese pork, pork butt, rimmed baking sheet, equipment review, kitchen equipment, americas test kitchen, america's test kitchen

Id: AXR5sW5LoEw

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 31 2019