(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Today on
"America's Test Kitchen." Dan makes Bridget sauteed tilapia with chive-lemon miso butter. Adam reveals his top
pick for food processors. Jack shares his knowledge
of Italian pastas, and Becky makes Julia
Pesce all'Acqua Pazza. It's all coming up right here on "America's Test Kitchen." (upbeat music) - Tilapia is the third most consumed fish in the United States. That's after tuna and salmon. And it's easy to see why, because tilapia is tasty, it's nutritious and it's sustainable. So Dan's here and he's
gonna show us a great way that we can make tilapia at home. - So cooking fish is one of my favorite things to do in the entire world. And there are certain fish
that are great for poaching, others for grilling, others for searing. And tilapia is wonderful seared, it browns up beautifully in the skillet. So that's what we're gonna do today. Before we get there, we're gonna do a quick salting on this. So I have a teaspoon of kosher salt here, and I'm just gonna hit it on both sides. I have four, six ounce tilapia filets, and this is a really
awesome treatment for fish. You know, we talk about brining
and salting lean proteins and with fish, because they're so thin, it happens really quickly,
which is really nice. And you can brine or salt,
I'm gonna do salting today. I really like it. Doesn't introduce any water
and we're gonna be searing, so that's a nice benefit of it. - [Bridget] Plus it helps keep the flavor nice and concentrated. - Absolutely. Yep. We're gonna let the
fish sit for 15 minutes. So we're gonna get better seasoning, and better moisture retention. - Great, just 15 minutes, fantastic. - Just 15 minutes. So while that's happening, I'm gonna put together a
little finishing butter. So I'm starting with two
tablespoons of white miso. So it's a really sweet, mild
miso with tons of umami. And to that I'm adding a
teaspoon of grated lemon zest, two teaspoons of lemon juice, and an eighth of a
teaspoon of black pepper. And we're just gonna stir this around. Great, that is well-mixed. Next, I have four tablespoons
of softened butter here. So we're making a compound butter, which is just a fabulous thing. So it's a really well flavored butter that's gonna hit the
fish at the end and melt, and just be fabulous. So we're gonna mix that in. Okay, and my final addition is two tablespoons of minced chives. - Little onion-y profile going in there. - Exactly. Okay, perfect. Our compound butter is all set. - Okay. - We need a few more minutes on this and then be ready to cook. - Fabulous. (upbeat music) - So it's been 15 minutes and
you could see that there's a little bit of moisture
on the surface there. So it's pulled some moisture out. Some of it's gone back in, whatever is on the surface I wanna pat off so we get a really nice sear. - [Bridget] Gotcha. As the
moisture was pulled back in, it pulled some of the salt as well. - Yep. And I'll get
the other side as well. So there's not a lot of
tricks to cooking this fish, but one is really, really key and that is splitting it down the middle. So a lot of filets that we
work with are, you know, from cod and bigger fish,
it's just one nice piece. This is the whole side of a tilapia, 'cause they're not very big fish. So we've got the belly portion, and then we have the
kind of the back portion. And there are different
thicknesses as you can see. So it's a super simple technique. Literally just run it right
down and split it into two. So you have thick and thin. - [Bridget] Fabulous. - And this allows us to cook the thick at one time together, and then the thin, so
we're, everybody's happy. So I've got two tablespoons of oil here in a carbon steel skillet. I love cooking in carbon steel. Once it gets seasoned, it's like a non-stick pan.
- Right. - But they're, you know, they can get up to
really high temperatures without any safety issues. And I don't know, they
just get better with time, which I think is such a wonderful thing. - You could use a
non-stick skillet though, if that's what you had.
- Yes, you absolutely could. As long as you have the oil
in there and you get the fish in right afterwards,
you'd be in good shape. - [Bridget] Okay. - Okay, so we're heating over high heat until we just see some
little bit of smoke coming, and I can see it right now. So I'm gonna go in with
the thicker portions first and I'm gonna go on the skin side. That's kind of the nice presentation side. - [Bridget] The seam side up. Really? - [Dan] Yep. So I'm gonna cook this for about two to three
minutes on this side until I have gorgeous, gorgeous browning, and then we'll flip. We'll do the same on the other. - [Bridget] Sounds great. - So I'm gonna use a thin fish spatula, which is what it's designed for here. - Literally in the name. - Yeah. So I'm gonna flip them all over. This is what I meant when I said that it's a great fish for searing. It just takes on incredible color. - [Bridget] All done. - Gorgeous. Okay. So we're gonna go for
another two or three minutes, and I'm gonna temp these thicker portions. We're looking for about
130 to 135 degrees. - [Bridget] Okay. - Okay, so it's been two minutes and I'm gonna check in the
thickest part of this filet here, and see where we are. Again, we're looking for about 130 to 135 and that looks, yep, 131. - [Bridget] Fantastic.
- Pretty good. All right, so I've got
my platter right here, right where I need it. And I'm just gonna transfer these out. Skillet is smoking hot again. So I'm gonna go in with
the thin belly portions. - [Bridget] Same thing,
presentation side down. - [Dan] Exactly. Yep. - [Bridget] All right. - So we're not gonna
be able to temp these, we're only gonna cook for about one minute on each side until we get great browning. The good thing is the belly
has a lot more fat in it, so it's a lot more
forgiving to overcooking. Okay, so I'm gonna go in and flip these, it's been about a minute. - [Bridget] Nice color. - [Dan] Nice browning on that. - [Bridget] Mm hmm. - Okay great, so just one
more minute on this side, we'll get some nice browning and we'll get 'em right onto our platter. - Fabulous. - These are perfect. I'm gonna shut off the heat there and we'll just transfer
them over to our platter. - [Bridget] And they're so thin, you don't need to take the temperature. We know that they're done by this time. - [Dan] Exactly, yep. - This is my kind of fast food. - [Dan] Right?
- [Bridget] Yeah. - [Dan] So we've got our
gorgeous fish over here. While it's still nice and piping hot, I'm gonna spoon a little
bit of the compound butter onto each of our filets. That way it melts right into it. - [Bridget] Yes please. - [Dan] That looks so good. - [Bridget] Melting instantly, yummy. - [Dan] Doesn't this look elegant and just really, really beautiful? - [Bridget] That looks gorgeous. - [Dan] Would you like
some of the thicker portion or the belly?
- [Bridget] Yes. - [Dan] Yes, a little
bit of both. I like that. This is, looks so good. We gotta get into this and we
have some lemon wedges too, if you want, would you like
a little bit of lemon too? - [Bridget] Sure. What do you think? - [Dan] Yes. All right, let's dig in. - [Bridget] Lovely crust on that. You really just don't even expect that. And then in the center
of this thicker filet, which I chose because I had a big glob of that miso butter on it. Fish is really moist,
it's well seasoned too. And I love that butter. Getting that little piece
of crispy belly there. Oh yeah. - Yeah. This belly portion is so nice. It's so rich. It's such a mild, clean
tasting fish, you know? So it takes well to so
many different things. It's wonderful with the miso, but you could dress this up
in so many different ways. Yeah. Nothing better than fish. It's so good. - So fast. So delightful. Just like you. - Oh stop it. - Thanks Dan. - You're welcome. - Well, if you wanna make
this great dish at home, salt the tilapia and let
it sit for 15 minutes, cook the thinner and
thicker pieces separately and finish the dish with
a tasty miso lemon butter. So from "America's Test Kitchen", moist, delicious and
super-fast sauteed tilapia with chive-lemon miso butter. (upbeat music) - Food processors are a workhorse in the kitchen and every
cook should have one. The question is which brand is best? - You know, in fact, best food processor is one of
the most often searched terms on our website. You really do wanna buy the right one 'cause the wrong one is frustrating and the right one is a miracle machine. - Oh the right one makes everything okay. And I've owned the wrong and the right one and I totally agree. - We're on the same page. What we like from the last
test is this guy from Cuisinart but there are new models on the market. We wanted to see if any of them
surpassed the old Cuisinart. We bought a fresh copy of
the Cuisinart and six others, so our lineup is seven machines and we paid a range of
$35 to $350 for this. - Ooh, that's a big range. - There's a lot that a food processor does and testers tried everything. They did dozens of tests, assessed them in a million different ways. We'll go through some
of the highlights here. Chopping and grinding, gotta be one of the top
priority food processor jobs. Those tests were mincing parsley, making mirepoix out of
celery, onions and carrots, and chopping cold chunks of beef with butter to make hamburger meat. And testers were looking for
nice uniform pieces of food. Not all of the processors delivered that. The ones that did, had a couple
of things going for them. Number one, they had a
responsive pulse feature. When you took your finger
off the pulse button, the blade stopped turning. The ones that kept turning for another couple of seconds
over-processed the food. - Interesting. - Number two, they had tight tolerances between the end of the blade
and the side of the work bowl. Those tolerances ranged
from 2.9 millimeters to 6.1 millimeters. - [Julia] 6.1 millimeters?
- [Adam] Yeah! - [Julia] That's a big gap! - [Adam] It is, and the tighter it is against the side of the bowl, the more engagement the
blade and the food have and the more efficient
and neat the chopping is. There was also some correlation
to how snug the blade was on the bottom of the bowl. Blending and mixing are
really important tasks. And there were a couple of tests there. The first one is to put
a cup of plain yogurt in the work bowl, a single drop of blue
and yellow food coloring on either side of the blade
and run it for 30 seconds. A lot of the machines left
stripes of blue and yellow. The better ones blended the yogurt to a uniform perfect green, which indicated efficient blending. - Interesting. - Testers also made mayonnaise because that's a more real world
thing than green yogurt is. Our recipe uses two yolks
and three quarters cup of oil and makes three quarters
cup of mayonnaise. Some of them didn't make
the mayonnaise very well. And one of them to our dismay
was our old favorite Cuisinart that had done a beautiful
job in past tests. It turns out that Cuisinart
redesigned the blade a little bit so it sits a
little higher on the stem, 3.2 millimeters higher. That meant the blade
passed over the egg yolks. Testers also tried slicing
tomatoes and potatoes with this. You want nice, neat, even slices. And a lot of the success
there had to do with the design of the feed tube because the food has
gotta stand up straight and even as it hits the blade. So testers like feed tubes
that had more different options for fitting things in and just
kept them nice and straight. - [Julia] That makes sense. - One of the last important tests was to make a double batch of Pissaladiére. - I love that recipe. - That's such a good recipe
and I know who developed it. It's that French rustic pizza
with the caramelized onions and the anchovies and the olives. The dough is really wet and sticky. The machine that had
difficulty with this test, is this one right here. This has the nine cup capacity. So it couldn't quite handle
the double batch of dough. Also the motor stalled
out a couple of times. So we had questions about
how durable it would be in the long term. You know, in the end, our old favorite from Cuisinart won again. It's the Cuisinart custom
14 cup food processor. We got ours for about $150. It did everything well
except the mayonnaise. Now you and I both like making mayonnaise. I like having a mini bowl. If that's important to you, you may wanna consider the Breville. This is the Breville Sous
Chef 12 plus food processor. We got ours for about $330. It's more expensive. It performed almost on
par with the Cuisinart and it's got that mini bowl. - I see. And there you have it. Our new winner is our old winner. It's the Cuisinart 14 cup food processor that cost us about $150. (upbeat music) - My Italian grandmother
instilled the love of pasta in me, and that includes being a smart shopper. So let's start by figuring
out how to read a label. So I've got to check out. This is our winning brand of spaghetti, and on the front here it has
a lot of interesting words, some of them are more
important than others. Let's start at the top, "slow dried." Doesn't hurt, but it doesn't help. At least we couldn't tell the difference. It's supposed to improve the texture, but the research we did
and the taste tests, didn't bear that out. The next thing on the label, course-ground semolina. That's really important. So durum wheat is used to make pastas. Coarse semolina, which is
basically a coarse form of durum, gives it a better bite. It's more likely to cook
up al dente and chewy. If you just see durum wheat flour, that means they cut some
corners and saved some money, and you're gonna not
like the pasta as much, so semolina's key. Now the cold mountain spring water, that certainly can't hurt, but probably the water
you're cooking the pasta in is gonna have a bigger impact
than the water that's used in the pasta making. Last but not least, bronze dyes. So pasta is extruded, and most manufacturers wanna save money so they're using Teflon-coated dyes that produce really smooth noodles. Old fashioned machines have bronze dyes that give the pasta a
rough pockmark texture that the sauce grabs onto and you want the sauce
to grab onto your pasta. Now cooking, I know there's
a lot of stuff out there. I'm gonna just say two things
I want you to remember. You're probably not using enough water and you're probably not using enough salt. There are hundreds of shapes, actually 1300 different pasta names. Some of those may be
describing the same shape, but needless to say, the choices are daunting
at the supermarket. So let's break it down into
sort of four categories and then there's a bonus one. First off I've got spaghetti here. It's long, it's thin. It needs a sauce that
is pretty easily spread, something thin like a pesto or a fairly thin loose tomato sauce because otherwise the sauce
is gonna clump on the noodles. Next up we've got linguini. Now this is flatter and wider and so it can tolerate a thicker sauce, maybe something with cheese or
a little bit of cream in it. Up here in the front I've got tagliatelle. Now we've got nice wide ribbons. So chunks of meat, let's say in a Ragu, or bits of carrot or celery in that Ragu. The wider the noodle, basically
the chunkier the sauce. Next up rigatoni, and the most important thing
here is these large tubes. It's perfect for trapping big pieces of eggplant or zucchini. Finally, I promised you a bonus item. This is my favorite shape. This is gemelli and it's
basically twin strands, kind of like a DNA helix
that are bound together. And why I like this is
because it's double thickness, it's got double the chew. And if you like al dente pasta, this is definitely the pasta for you. I hope you will love your
pasta as much as I do. Now that you know a little bit more about how to buy it and how to sauce it. (upbeat music) - Pesce all'Acqua Pazza,
or fish in crazy water, is a popular dinner along
Italy's southern coast. Now as the story goes, the
crazy water is simply sea water that's flavored with a few aromatics and I'm hoping today, Becky, that we're gonna not gonna use
water from the Boston Harbor. - (laughs) I don't think
that would be a good idea, but this dish requires very little work, and we get a huge payoff. - [Julia] Oh, I love it. - Really nice recipe.
- [Julia] Okay. - So we wanna start with
12 ounces of haddock. Now this recipe is often
prepared with whole whiting. And that's an inexpensive fish
has nice, mild sweet flesh, but since whole fish can be hard to find, that's why we're using
the skin-on filets here. - Okay. So we're leaving the skin on? - We are, skin on.
- Oh I like that. - Now, if you can't find
haddock, you could use branzino. You could use red snapper, any firm white flesh fish
will be really nice here. - Okay. - So we're just gonna season the fish up with a quarter teaspoon of salt, and the skin has so much collagen in it, it really gives a lot of
body and flavor to the sauce. An eighth of a teaspoon of pepper. Just get these nicely seasoned. All right, and now we will
start our water-based sauce. - Okay. - So I have a tablespoon
of extra virgin olive oil, and I'm gonna add a
couple cloves of garlic, just sliced up. And then an eighth of a
teaspoon of pepper flakes. I'm gonna put that on medium heat. All right, so there's that
sound we love, it's sizzling. All right so now I have half
of a medium onion, diced up. Going in for just some
nice, subtle sweetness. A bay leaf. And I'm adding a quarter teaspoon of salt. We found a lot of recipes
that add a lot of extras here, like you name it, capers, lemon, oregano. But we really found we really like a nice uncomplicated version. So the bay leaf will add a
nice herbal background note and then the onion adds nice sweetness. - A little bit of kick
from the pepper flakes. - That's right. Just a tiny bit. So we're gonna let that cook
for two to three minutes, just until the onions starts to soften. - Okay. - Now here I have four
ounces of grape tomatoes. You can also use cherry tomatoes. - [Julia] I love the
grape tomatoes though, because I feel they're
a little bit sweeter. And often I think the skins
are a little bit thinner. - And you know, we're
using the small cherry or grape tomatoes here because
they're good year 'round. - [Julia] Yeah. - So they're always reliable and they're gonna add really
nice pops of sweetness and color to the dish. All right. So it's been about two minutes. You can see the onions are
starting to soften here. - [Julia] Smells good. - Smells good already, yep. So let's put those tomatoes in. I'm gonna let these go for
another two to three minutes, just until the tomatoes
start to soften a little bit. All right. So it's been about two minutes. You can see the tomatoes
are softening up nicely. So lets add our water. - I love how simple this is. - So simple. So delicious. - Very few ingredients all go in the pan, bringing out the most of every ingredient. - That's right. So that was three quarters
of a cup of water. Two tablespoons of dry white wine. We really like the nice little touch of acidity that that adds. And now we have six parsley stems. We're gonna eke out
every last bit of flavor from the parsley here. And then I have one and a
half tablespoons of parsley. I'm gonna add half and then
we'll save half for later. All right. You can see
that coming up to a boil. - [Julia] It looks pretty. - Very nice. And now we can add our fish. So we'll just nestle these guys in there. I told you there, this
is very little work. - [Julia] I love this.
- [Becky] Yeah. - [Julia] This is my kind of recipe. - [Becky] Yep. This is it. Now we'll just put some
of that goodness on top. The fish doesn't need to be completely covered here. - [Julia] Okay. - This is just exactly how it should look. That is really just
about all we have to do. Now we just let it cook. We're gonna put the lid
on, came up to a boil. I'm gonna lower that so gently simmers for three to seven minutes until the fish reaches 110 degrees. (upbeat music) Okay, it's been about seven minutes. Let's take a look here. Ooh. - Ooh. That looks beautiful. Also, that's a really bare simmer. Just a few bubbles here and there. At home, I think I would've been tempted to crank up the heat a little bit, but that's what you want, nice and gentle. - That's right, I turned
the heat down to low. We want it at nice and gentle. And now we want the fish to be at 110. So let's see where we're at. 111, I'll take it. - [Julia] Nice.
- All right. So it's not quite done. We need the fish to be
at 135 to finish cooking. But what we're going to do is slide the pan off the heat and we're gonna let that finish off-heat. And what that means is
you can't screw it up. It's gonna be perfect. - Oh I love that idea. Letting something finish off the heat, so it slowly comes up to temperature. - Yep. - Also keeps it nice and moist. - That's right. You can't go wrong. (upbeat music) All right, it's been five minutes and I think our fish is perfect. Look at that. It's about 135 degrees. It's cooked all the way through. - It is pretty. - All right so I'm gonna
get rid of the parsley stems 'cause they have done their job of giving us all their nice flavor and we'll get rid of the bay leaf as well. I don't wanna eat that. All right, can I give that to you? - Sure thing.
- Thank you ma'am. And now remember that extra
parsley that we had saved? I'm just gonna sprinkle that on top. - [Julia] Oh nice. - [Becky] I mean that's gorgeous. - It's beautiful. I can't believe how
quickly that came together. - Yeah. We made a really nice
dinner for ourselves here. - Yes we did. Yes you did. - I'm just gonna give a little taste, see if it needs any more salt and pepper. That is so good. (both women laughing) I was gonna tell you about it. It needs a tiny bit of salt. It really is, from just a water base. - I love it.
- It's amazing what you can do. - Yeah, old school.
- Yes, that's it. All right and I wanna make sure I give you that gorgeous broth. - Yeah you definitely wanna serve this in a shallow bowl because
that broth looks delicious. - [Becky] Yeah, and now I have
some nice bread for us here, so we can get every
last drop of that sauce. - [Julia] Oh yeah it's
for dunking in, all right. - [Becky] Don't mind if I do. - [Julia] Oh, the fish
is perfectly cooked. I mean, you can just flake
it right off with a spoon. - So moist, so tender. - So flavorful.
- Yeah, just perfect. Great for a newbie. If you've never done fish
before, can't mess it up. - That broth, it has so much flavor. And that body thanks to the
collagen in the fish skin, really turned that water
into a proper sauce. Oh, that's good. A little bit of heat on the back end. - You can taste the wine a little bit. - Yep. - You can taste the
parsley and the bay leaf. - Becky this is amazing, thank you. - My pleasure! - [Julia] To make this
simple but flavorful dish, build a braising liquid
using sliced garlic and cherry tomatoes. Gently lay haddock filets
into the pan, cover and cook. Then let the fish finish
cooking off the heat. From "America's Test Kitchen," a classic Italian recipe
for Pesce all'Acqua Pazza. You can find this recipe
and all the recipes and product reviews from this season, along with selected
episodes, at our website americastestkitchen.com/tv. I'm definitely making this.
- Oh yeah. - 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.
