How to Make Perfect Fried Eggs, Cold Brew, and Yeasted Waffles

[Music] welcome to america's test kitchen at home today we're cooking breakfast i'm going to show you how to fry the perfect egg aaron's going to talk to us all about cold brew coffee adam has a roundup of tools for eggs and last but not least elle's gonna show us how to make yeasted waffles we've got a lot in store today so stick around [Music] there are three recipes that i think every home cook should know how to make first step the perfect roast chicken second a killer vinaigrette you can put on anything from salad to grilled vegetables to meats and last but not least a perfect fried egg one that has crisp edges tastes a little buttery the whites are fully cooked through but that yolk is still a little runny which is what i'm going to show you how to make today okay now first off let's talk about the pan we're going to use a 12-inch non-stick skillet because i'm making four eggs so you want a lot of surface area nonstick for the obvious reason that you want the eggs to come out of the pan without breaking the yolk also i have two teaspoons of veg oil this pan is heating up over low heat and you want to let it preheat for five minutes that way there's no hot spots in the pan so the eggs will cook evenly all right so while that's heating up let's talk about the eggs i'm going to use four large eggs and you don't want to crack them one at a time into a hot pan because the cooking time on these eggs is really short about a minute so if you crack them one at a time they're all going to be at various stages of doneness so you want to crack them into two bowls so you can add them at once no magic here just cracking except you don't want to break any yolks because in my world a broken yolk means you have a rough day ahead so take your time all right now we're just going to season with a little salt and pepper and if you want to this is when you can jazz it up a bit you want to add a little cayenne a little smoked paprika a little chili powder or a little cereal pepper if you've ever had that on eggs it's good stuff all right so the eggs are ready and now this skillet has been heating up for five minutes i'm gonna turn the heat up to medium high and i'm gonna look for this oil to start to shimmer that's going to let me know that the skillet is hot enough to fry the eggs and get those crisp edges so while that is heating up i'm going to get some butter that i've been keeping cold in the fridge the oil is starting to shimmer now i'm going to slice off just a little bit of butter about two teaspoons a little less than a tablespoon again this butter is nice and cold cutting it into small pieces we're gonna add it to the skillet yep that little bit of sizzle is perfect now the butter just adds flavor we're gonna swirl the skillet around get that butter to melt nice and quickly [Music] oh perfect all right now in go the eggs and as soon as the eggs go in i'm gonna put the lid on cooking the eggs under the lid is the other thing that most people skip but it's really important because you want to trap the steam and that'll help cook the egg whites that are sitting on top and the timer gets started for one minute okay here i have some plates all ready to go with some nice oven-cooked bacon if you don't cook your bacon in the oven you are missing out because it cooks through perfectly and my favorite whole grain toast some coffee and orange juice you can find that bacon recipe by the way on our website americastestkitchen.com all right that's been a minute and now last but not least the key to perfectly cooked eggs is to slide the skillet off the heat to let them finish cooking that way you won't overcook the yolk now you're going to let this sit off the heat anywhere from 15 seconds up to a minute or more depending on how you like your yolks now i like my yolks on the runny side so i'm usually around 15-20 seconds okay now look at these eggs the top of the yolks that albumin that egg white has just clouded over but you can see the yolks are still runny all right i'm gonna cut this in half here we go we're gonna slide on one plate oh time to dig in while they're good and hot i love doing it with a piece of toast best bite of the day right here oh yes you breaking oh look at that [Music] good morning now i'll use the fork this part this fried edge it's like diner style eggs right dip it a little in the oak oh yeah let the day begin so if you want to make perfect fried eggs remember to heat that skillet up first for five minutes next you want to make sure you cover that skillet while you're cooking the eggs and last but not least slide that skillet off the heat to finish cooking the eggs from america's test kitchen at home perfect fried eggs [Music] i started drinking iced cold brew coffee about 10 years ago and since then i drink it pretty much regularly especially during the warm weather months i love ice cold brew coffee because it's a lot smoother and less bitter than regular iced coffee which i also love but i also started making ice cold brew coffee concentrate at home and i'm going to show you how to make that and it all comes down to the beans so we're going to start with medium roast coffee beans and it's important to use medium roast coffee beans because you can really taste the true flavors of the coffee bean it's also very important to grind your own coffee beans right before you make your concentrate so that it's fresh i'm going to start by weighing out seven ounces of the medium roast coffee beans if you don't have a scale all you have to do is measure out two and a half cups right so now that we have our beans now we're going to grind them so you have two different grinding options you have a blade grinder and you have a burr grinder a blade grinder is designed where it has one hopper and inside of it it has a blade it's just like a little mini food processor and what you do is you put your coffee beans in there put the lid on it and you press the button and the blade just really chops up those coffee beans and you have to shake it a couple times and it does generate heat and it does take away a little bit of the flavor of the coffee so a more gentle approach is using a burr grinder so a burr grinder has three different parts to it it has a hopper where you put your beans into and then inside it has a chamber where it grinds up the coffee beans as the coffee beans go through it it's kind of like how a pepper grinder works and then as it grinds it falls right into this little removable container so i have it set at course when it comes to ice cold brew coffee we want coarse all i'm gonna do is pour the coffee beans right into the hopper before i start to grind my coffee beans as i've made this over the years i've discovered that static is created as it grinds so when you open up the chamber little coffee bits go flying everywhere so i found a little trick to avoid that from happening and that's basically taking a paper towel dipping it into water and then just dripping maybe about 10 drops of water over it and then i stir that in with the base of a spoon and what this does is the water really just kind of keeps the beans from flying around i used to make a mess every time i made this until i figured out how to fix it all right so now you put the lid on and we're ready to grind okay if they're static we're gonna find out and there's no static so it's just perfect thing it's a game changer okay so here's our french press and i'm just gonna add this coffee into the french press and grind the rest of the coffee beans i wish you could smell this right now the smell of fresh ground coffee it just wakes you right up okay so that's our coffee it's waiting for us under french press so let's go on to our second ingredient which is water so when making cold brew concentrate it's really important that you use good filtered water and that will allow the true flavors of the coffee bean to come through you can taste all the little nuances and the caramel notes and the coffee notes and the chocolate notes so we want two and a half cups of water what this comes down to is basically a ratio of one to one so one part coffee to one part water we're using two and a half cups of coffee we're using two and a half cups of water i'm going to pour this water over the coffee grinds if you have a larger french press by all means just increase the the ratio accordingly can see all the coffee's kind of rising to the top and so i'm going to use a chopstick and what this chopstick is going to do it's a very gentle method for stirring the water and the coffee together so now i'm kind of making a ground coffee slurry and it's really important that all the coffee grinds come in contact with water all the flavors are going to come out of the coffee and into the water which is what we want and i'm feeling pretty good about this it's definitely loosened up but just to be sure i'm going to let this sit for 10 minutes and i'm going to come back and stir it one more time okay so it's been about 10 minutes and as you can see a raft has formed the coffee grinds have slowly risen and the water is settled and so now i just want to make sure that i give it one more stir it's very important that the coffee grinds have full contact with the water so i'm breaking up the raft and giving it another stir i should mention that there's a lot of recipes out there that call for constant agitation stirring it often it's really not necessary this is it this is all that you have to do is just stir it this one last time and i'm going to cover it with plastic wrap and this is where it's going to do its thing it takes a little bit of time but it's all hands off so i'm going to let this sit for about 24 hours and you can let it sit from anywhere between 12 hours and 72 hours whatever works best for you and your schedule but i found that the 24 hour mark is the perfect mark for the extraction that i like so i'm just going to let this sit for 24 hours and we'll come back [Music] [Applause] it's been 24 hours and our coffee has steeped and it's ready to press so i'm going to remove the plastic wrap it's good to give it a little quick gentle stir and that will help the raft to kind of break up again and the pressing will be a little bit easier so i'm going to take my plunger and i'm going to start pressing this does take a little bit of muscle you don't want to put a ton of muscle into it because remember you are pressing on a glass jar and you don't want it to break which has happened okay so now it's ready to strain so over here i have a fine mesh strainer and i put a coffee filter in it so what i'm going to do is i'm going to pour the coffee that i've pressed and i'm just going to drain again through the coffee filter and this step really is not 100 necessary but what it does is it removes any extra kind of coffee sludge that i really don't want in my coffee some people like it i don't really care for it so i'm going to strain it out smells delicious all right smells amazing i'm getting excited um okay so while that's starting to drain i'm just gonna slide this over here there's another step so i have a large bowl and i have a triple layer of cheesecloth that i've lined it with i want to get every drop out of the coffee grinds that are still in this coffee press so i'm just going to transfer them to the setup scrape them in this is gold i gather all the corners together make a little little pouch so i'm just going to give it a couple of squeezes and now i'm just going to pour this right into the coffee filter as well okay so now we're just going to let this sit and it takes about a couple of hours for all that coffee to go through the filter and you can take a rubber spatula and help kind of move any silt and any sludge is left behind so that the coffee can flow through a little bit faster [Music] it's been a couple of hours and our coffee has fully gone through the filter so as you can see it's really strained out quite a bit of coffee grit so i'm just gonna put this aside and now we're ready to basically put this into a jar and refrigerate it it keeps for about one week what i like to do at this point is put it into individual servings so i have a couple of jars so i take my concentrate and i'm just gonna divide it up a half a cup of concentrate is a full portion this makes two portions now it's ready to put into the refrigerator and i have my individual portions ready to go my cold brew has chilled and it is showtime i have a half a cup of concentrate now i have cold filtered water so i'm gonna measure out a half a cup again you want to use really good water when you're making your cold brew so you really want those coffee flavors to come through the ratio here is one to one but if you like your cold brew stronger you can use a little less water if you like it a little bit weaker you can use a little bit more water so i like it at one to one ratio so i'm going to pour that into my cold brew and this is kosher salt i'm going to add just a little pinch and what this does is the salt really kind of rounds out the flavors of the coffee and it also tames down any remaining bitterness that might be left over so i'm just going to swish that around let that salt dissolve a little bit okay so now it's ready to pour over my ice but i want to point out that i actually made my own ice cubes from filtered water you start with filtered water you should really have clean ice cubes as well so all you do is just pour this right over those ice cubes and when i drink cold brew i like to add almond milk to it so i'm going to foam some i don't do this all the time but it really does make it a little extra special the head of the foamer you want to be at the bottom of the liquid and then as it becomes greater in volume you can slowly lift up the tip of the foamer just so it's just under the surface of the foam so this milk foamer is really kind of fun gadget to have i use it when making lattes or cappuccinos you can foam milk or you can foam almond milk all right so now all you do is just hold a little foam back i pour almond milk in look at that beautiful beautiful beautiful foam all right my ice cold brew is ready to drink you can really taste the coffee i'm getting like little chocolate bits and roasted coffee but it's not too roasted it's not too strong really doesn't dominate and making the foam is really nice because you can actually taste the foam as it's sitting on top you can also really enjoy it as it's mixed into the cold brew as well but this is well worth every step that i've taken the payoff is having a couple bottles in your fridge at all times so that you have this to pour and make yourself and it's a nice treat if you want to make the best ice cold brew concentrate remember to use medium roast coffee that's coarsely ground filtered water and a one to one ratio of coffee to water so from america's test kitchen at home the spectacular recipe for cold brew coffee concentrate it's such a treat [Music] eggs serve more culinary purposes than i could possibly rattle off but around here the most important one is they're the basis of all kinds of simple satisfying meals that i would eat morning noon and night here are a couple of our favorite tools that you need to achieve excellence first let's start with a non-stick skillet that's the right choice for making omelets or fried eggs we've tested them all and the one that we like the best is the oxo good grips non-stick pro open 12 inch fry pan it's about 42 dollars it's got a good slick cooking surface it's broad also at nine and three quarter inches and the pan is light and easy to maneuver it also comes in a 10 inch size and an 8 inch size now if you're gonna follow the atk recipe for fried eggs you'll need to cover the pan and most of these nonstick skillets don't come with a cover we've tested all of the universal covers out there weren't really impressed with any of them except for one it's not strictly speaking a universal cover but this one is the 36 dollar lodge tempered glass 12 inch cover it seals really well to our favorite 12-inch skillet and it's definitely the cover to get even if you have the cover and the right skillet it's super easy to overcook eggs so timing them carefully is paramount and for that obviously you'll need a timer our favorite timer is this one it's the oxo good grips triple timer it's about twenty dollars and it's got lots to recommend it there are three timers which you can read simultaneously so that you can monitor three different projects at once it's got a clock it's got a stopwatch it keeps track of elapsed time and our favorite feature is the direct entry keypad so you can type whatever time you want right in there without all kinds of irritating scrolling you really cannot exaggerate the need for the right equipment when you're cooking eggs [Music] if y'all know anything about me you know i love a make-ahead moment so the idea of having a waffle recipe in the fridge waiting for me saturday morning it's kind of exciting let me show you how i do it i start with one and three quarter cup of low-fat milk and to that i'm going to add eight tablespoons of butter a whole steak so you know it's going to be good i'm going to turn this on to a medium-low heat about three to five minutes all right it's been about five minutes the butter has melted this is exactly what we were looking for i'm going to go over to the table and start mixing our dry ingredients while i let this buttermilk cool until it's warm to touch in the meantime i'm going to start to make our dry mix i'm going to start with 10 ounces of flour perfect so the flour i'm gonna add a tablespoon of sugar also one and a half teaspoons of yeast and finally one teaspoon of salt and i'm going to whisk together these dry ingredients until they're well combined so the yeast here plays two rolls it provides leavening and it adds great flavor all right i'm gonna set this mixture to the side i'm also gonna test my milk to see if it's warm to touch still a little hot so i'm gonna start with the eggs and we have two large eggs and i'm going to add a teaspoon of vanilla extract now i'm just going to whisk the vanilla and the eggs until they're well combined all right that looks great before i put this in i have to add the milk and butter and make sure it's ready warm to touch perfect so i'm going to slowly whisk this in so the warm milk jump starts the yeast all right so i'm just gonna mix it well i'm using my whisk to scrape any flour from around the edges of the bowl all right and now i'm gonna add our egg vanilla mixture and i'm just going to whisk it until it's well combined i'm just going to use my spatula to scrape down the edges to make sure that all of the batter is mixed well so the warm milk jump started the yeast but now we need to slow it down by putting it in the refrigerator or else we'll have a sour tangy batter and no one wants that i'm going to cover it with plastic and put it in the fridge for 12 to 24 hours [Music] [Applause] it's been 12 hours and our batter is ready and you can tell that it's ready because it's foamy and it has doubled in size i'm just going to use the whisk to kind of reconstitute it so it will deflate once you start to whisk it but that's perfectly normal so i have my waffle maker preheated i'm gonna spray it with some cooking spray top and bottom so i'm gonna put about a cup of batter into the waffle maker and this cool dude makes two waffles some saving some time so to go with my very special waffles i have a very special guest for brunch today my mom dr price hi hi i'm a waffle i'm excited you know i love waffles it's your favorite absolute favorite all right so these waffles are done oh my and they're nice and golden oh they smell so good all right a lot of butterfree a lot i know you like a lot of butter yes on your waffle that looks good is that good a little syrup oh it goes right into the little you get so excited over the little i do i do this is good do you want peaches mama i want everything heavy on the goodness thank you all right ah let's dig in and i'm so excited yes [Music] oh that's fantastic did you almost rub your belly i did i caught myself this is so good you have a little tune if you're not dancing and singing right it's not great it's a number one sign that is delicious okay i need to finish this up you can enjoy okay so if you want to make special waffles for your special mom just remember these key steps kick started with warm milk and rest it in the fridge overnight so from america's test kitchen at home crispy fluffy yeasted waffles thanks for watching you can get all of the recipes from this season along with our product reviews and more at our website americastestkitchen.com tv 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: 117,607

Keywords: americas test kitchen, cooks illustrated, cooks country, fried eggs, cold brew coffee, how to make fried eggs, how to make cold brew, yeasted waffles, how to make waffles, breakfast, brunch, breakfast recipes

Id: Hm4qjdhc_To

Length: 23min 2sec (1382 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 23 2021