How to Make the Best "Meat" Sauces for Carnivores and Vegetarians Alike

today on America's Test Kitchen Julia and Bridget revealed the perfect weeknight Talia tele with bolognese check challenges Bridget to a tasting of crushed Tomatoes dan reveals why you can't overcook mushrooms and becky makes Julia the ultimate meatless meat sauce it's all coming up on America's Test Kitchen an authentic Bolognese takes time ground beef pork and veal simmer for hours with broth wine and a little tomato to create a sauce that is well worth the wait well we're not gonna wait today and Julia's here so we're gonna show you a much quicker version that's still rich and full of flavor you got it and it all starts with me imagine that so a lot of traditional balinese use a lot of different kind of meat like you said pork feel sometimes beef for a weeknight Bolognese we want to keep it easy so we're just sticking with the beef so here we have a pound of ground beef if you use 85% lean beef which we like for most things it made this sauce a little greasy so we leave it or not this is 93% ground beef yeah we found a use for it another trick we're gonna have is to add a little baking soda it helps keep the moisture in and helps it Brown a bit more quickly because it raises the pH right so here I have 2 tablespoons of water this is 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda you want to make sure that dissolves and we're just gonna drizzle over the meat and then of course we're gonna season the meat so this is 1/4 teaspoon of ground black pepper I'm just gonna use my favorite utensils my hands I'm just gonna mix it right in you don't want clumps of pepper in there all right so that's good for the meat for now I'm gonna need to go wash my hands along here right bad all right we really only wanted to use one meat but we found we needed a little extra boost from a little pork now this is pancetta and the reason why we like pancetta is you can buy it in very small amounts this is only 6 ounces and what we're gonna do is we're gonna grind it up in the food processor into very fine bits almost like ground beef we also like pancetta because it's pancetta so I'm gonna pulses for about 15 to 20 pulses till it's nice the ground alright so that's 20 pulses no big chunks left and now it's time to add a few more ingredients now we're adding a little onion carrot and celery otherwise known as mirepoix and these are classic ingredients in a bolognaise and to make them dissolve into the sauce seamlessly we're gonna add them to the food processor so about 15 pulses it's gonna form a nice fine paste alright now it is time to get cooking alright and here I have a nice big pot ready to go I'm gonna start with two kinds of fat this is a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and to this I'm going to add a tablespoon of butter because why not but actually butter Browns pretty fast so if you use butter alone it'll get much too dark you can temper that browning by mixing in a little bit of oil I like that over medium-high heat we're just gonna let this butter melt before we add our processed mixture all right so that butter is melted and the foaming is starting to subside perfect time to add our processed pancetta and vegetable mixture and notice you know a lot of recipes start with browning and beef to add flavor we're not going to brown the beef we're gonna Brown this mixture to develop some fondant some serious flavor but that takes time so first we got to drive off all that moisture that takes about eight minutes and then we're gonna let it cook and develop some good browning I'm also gonna add just a quarter teaspoon of brown black pepper it's all smelling so good I know right so pancetta is the heavy hitter here it's got lots of flavor and it's cured belly fat from the pig similar to American bacon but unlike American bacon which is smoked pancetta is not smoked so you do not want to substitute regular American bacon for your pancetta or you'll get a smoky bowline yes so this is gonna cook for about eight minutes and I have one more trick all right Eve here I have four cups of beef broth we're gonna use this as the liquid for our Bolognese I'm gonna put it in a pot I'm gonna bring it to a simmer and I'm gonna reduce it by about half to really intensify its flavor I'm gonna take about 15 minutes meanwhile this is gonna cook away and all that moisture is gonna evaporate that'll take about eight minutes Oh smells so good already doesn't it all right so this has been cooking for about eight minutes and all that moisture has been driven out of those vegetables and it's time to get browning so what I'm gonna do is just spread this evenly over the bottom of the pot it's gonna take about ten minutes for this to get nice and brown and to make a nice bond on the bottom of that pot and every couple minutes you want to go in there and stir it around so that everyone gets equal access to the bottom of the pot because that's where the Browning happens all right so this has been cooking and I've been stirring for about ten minutes what a difference ten minutes makes a lot of browning and on the bottom that means flavor next up three tablespoons of tomato paste and we're gonna let that cook for about a minute or two let it deepen new flavor next we're just going to reduce this heat to medium I have the beef and I'm gonna cook and stir at the same time breaking up that meat into smaller pieces and that's definitely about five minutes that is very quick for browning me sure is all right so this beef has been cooking for about five minutes it's no longer pink and we're done really actually not much farther to go I'm using a wooden spoon and it really scrape up any of that flavorful Fond because that fawn is serious flavor in goes our next ingredient this is a cup of red wine and we're gonna cook it for five minutes really reduce it down and intensify its flavor how generous of you to save a couple for the rabbit all right I feel the same way all right so we're gonna cook this down for another five minutes before we move on sounds great so that wine has reduced it down and the sauce is thickened a little bit time for the last step and that's to add our reduced beef broth so remember the starter with four cups we reduced it down by half so it's two cups last but not least our super-secret ingredient parmigiano so this is half a cup of finely grated Parmesan now this is our dairy component also it helps really boost that meaty flavor quickly so a lot of bullying yay start with milk and they reduced that milk down for that dairy flavor but we're not adding the milk because for us it dulled the flavors that were so hard to try to build up but the parmesan adds a little of both a little dairy and a lot of flavor that's gonna say we're having milk in the form of Chi exactly we're just gonna bring this up to a simmer oh it smells so good oh hello all right here's the lid we're gonna turn it down to low and we're gonna let this cook it simmer away for about 30 minutes massive massive reduction in time there 30 minutes that's it mm-hmm this is the pot we reduced the broth in I've rinsed it out filled it with pasta water and now I'm putting it on to bring it up to a boil so we can cook our pasta all right so it has been 30 minutes that this guy's been simmering oh gentle gentle my thing is that a Rome and it smells amazing but it looks really water he doesn't have it does yeah you're thinking that's not pasta is it ah yes this very loose consistency is perfect because we're going to serve it over traditional Tahlia tele and you can see this is an egg noodle it's very wide and it has a rough surface yeah when you cook this up it absorbs a lot of moisture so if you start off with a dry sauce it's gonna be non-existent once you add the pasta so starting with a watery sauce is perfect I've turned off the heat I'm gonna put the lid back on let her sit there for a minute here we have our boiling water for pasta again of gallon of water tablespoon of table salt it in go our tell you telly these are always sold in these cute little nests and if you can't find these at the store don't substitute the egg noodles that you would normally use and chicken noodle soup instead use a pop Adele well bring it back to a boil and we're gonna cook them till a very al dente we're actually gonna let them finish in the sauce absorb that sauce flavor and again that will help thicken the sauce up always a great idea all right so these noodles are perfectly cooked they're just al dente so it's time to preserve some of that clicking water at least a half a cup maybe up to a cup always a good idea and I shall go drain for you thank you I'm just gonna toss the pasta with the sauce very gently you don't want to break up any of those long noodles tossing these noodles with the sauce they're like little sponges they suck it all right up ah looks delish my belly's like a little sponge as well let me portion some into a bowl for us mmm little parmesan top please because why not that meat is so tender so tender so rich and really really big flavor coming out of this mm-hmm but thirty minutes I know crazy the beef is just meltingly tender velvety yeah thanks to the baking soda hmm this is one of those dishes if you don't see it you wouldn't believe it that's right right but thirty minutes perfect Boeing yes thanks Julia to make art faster bolognaise toss ground beef with water and baking soda to keep the beef nice and tender build flavor by reducing beef broth and browning pancetta cook the beef then simmer first with wine and broth and Parmesan toss with Thalia Thalia and there you have it from America's Test Kitchen to your kitchen a short on time but big on flavor weeknight cavatelli with bolognese sauce [Music] the first commercial canning of tomatoes happened in New Jersey back in the 1840s now those cans were hand packed and each lid was soldered on one at a time we've come a long way in the industry of canned tomatoes and Jack's here and he's gonna tell us which brand of crushed Tomatoes when our tasting yes it's a little bit more high-tech today so I brought four of the different brands these are right from the can okay crushed Tomatoes so crushed Tomatoes are somewhere between pureed tomato which are perfectly smooth and diced tomatoes which are chopped ideally you want something that has some texture in it otherwise you would just get pureed and so you want it to have some body and freshness so when you start tasting I want you to pay attention to how much tomato flavor or you get a a how much natural sweetness are you getting and then salt levels which will vary so when we spoke to some experts they said that the temperature used in processing may be related to the amount of freshness you don't make sense the more you cook something the hotter it is the less tomato flavor you're going to get and so they gave us this idea of separating out the liquid from the solids and we designed an experiment in the Test Kitchen to try to get at what is the temperature they're using it so we put all of the cans of tomatoes we emptied the contents into a strainer lined with a coffee filter and then two different kinds of liquid came out the heat activates the color pigments in the tomatoes so the redder samples means more heat was used and this gold liquid actually came from our winning brand of crushed Tomatoes because they're using a lower temperature and the temperature is not activating the color pigments in the tomatoes which is totally not intuitive you know red is good thing it's tomato that says tomato this is watery tomato but no it's actually not yeah this gold liquid is a sign that a lower temperature was used during processing and you get more fresh tomato flavor fantastic the lower temperature is maybe 160 to 185 it's called cold break and for the samples that had the bright red color they're being cooked at over 200 degrees it's called fast break it really correlated perfectly with the results of the tasting other things to think about this is their basil and do we want basil basil is something that you can add yourself mm-hmm you may not want in all applications and does it taste like fresh basil if it's in there right the acidity level very some of them were very soft because they didn't use the citric acid which is a firming agent so we also measure the size of the pieces when we drained out this liquid we then got out of our little ruler and start measuring and chunks of one half inch or even a little bigger kind of our nicer they give me more contrast and the ones that were basically all liquid with teeny pieces that are a quarter of an inch or smaller or at the bottom of the rankings so I've been telling you all about what crushed Tomatoes anything that you're noticing here this one definitely has basil in it tastes like pizza sauce to me I think the idea of adding basil at least having that as an option you kind of way to give yourself an option not crowd your entire pantry with tomatoes basil unless you'd like to add it to everything and then why not this one is so thin it's actually more like I would call it tomato soup it's tomato soup has more texture than this this is very thin and watery not only in texture this very little flavor in here okay this one very thick and it tastes like a long stewed sauce to me does that mean there's more or less tomato flavor it's a deeper tomato flavor but I'm not sure I want that I want to cook my dishes to that point but not necessarily start with that as you mentioned before things like tomato sauce tomato puree that might have a little bit more cooking already involved a deeper flavor not sure that I would want that straight from a can I do like this one and actually just looking at it at first I thought it was diced tomatoes with a little bit of sauce in there it almost looks like salsa actually without everything y'all have been there it's sweet it tastes fresh to me it's not too sweet I find with crushed Tomatoes sometimes they're just so acidic and you don't get any of that sweetness this actually tastes really good right you have to start the sweetness is coming from the tomatoes there's no sugar added to any of these and so the brands that are sweeter are using sweeter more ripe tomatoes which is a good thing this is definitely my favorite 100% would you like to see what you picked yes you are a winner yet again this is the tasting panel's favorite this is smt now you may be thinking san marzano tomatoes no no they're from Pennsylvania this even has Italian words on it you would think it comes from Italy but it does not may does it grown in New Jersey Pennsylvania and Ohio okay we love it even though it is perhaps not the clearest origin interesting now this thick guy so this was haunts this was in the middle of the pack tasters thought was a little bitter and as you said it had more of a cooked flavor the liquid coming out of that was that red color so we think it was cooked at a higher temperature all right and then this was the absolute least favorite from Italy I really so no salt no citric acid didn't and it was the most expensive and our least favorite no flavor all right and this is Muir Glen they were good tomatoes but they had basil in them and a lot of tasters felt like I did I'm not sure we really want basil in every application right right might be good to have on hand for those occasions you want it but not necessarily all the cans of tomatoes in the pantry well there you go if you'd like to have our winning crushed tomatoes in your home well then go out buy smt crushed Tomatoes it's three dollars and fifty cents for a 28 ounce can [Music] you can't overcook mushrooms they aren't meat they aren't vegetables they're fungi and the reason they can't be overcooked is this lobster shells are made of a polymer called chitin and it makes the shell rigid and strong mushroom cells are also made of chitin and it makes them very heat stable let's see that heat stability in action by looking at what happens when we steam beef tenderloin zucchini and portobello mushrooms for a whole hour the muscle fibers in the steak quickly contract squeeze out moisture and turn the steak to leather the pectin in the zucchini rapidly weakens and dissolves turning it to mush the mushroom however with its sturdy chitin stays perfectly tender for 60 minutes when it comes to button cremini and portobello mushrooms go ahead and saute them for five minutes grill them for 20 minutes or roast them for forty five focus on nailing that perfect medium-rare steak and don't sweat the mushrooms [Music] when I first heard that we were developing a recipe for a meatless meat sauce for pasta I was pretty surprised I mean I'd never heard of such a thing before but today Becky is gonna introduce it to us that's right our viewers have been asking for this recipe for more vegetarian options that's right and this is so good I promise you won't even miss the meat okay so this is a vegetarian version of sort of a weeknight Bolognese you got it so we're starting with five tablespoons of olive oil something a lot it is a lot we're not using any meat so we want to replace some of that richness some of that fat that you would get if you were making a traditional meat sauce okay so start with a lot of olive oil that's right medium-high heat we'll let that heat up while we move on over here to some mushrooms ah I see so it's a meaty tasting ingredient that you're gonna put into a vegetarian sauce that's right mushrooms have a lot of umami flavor they're cell walls are also made up of something called chitin chitin doesn't break down over heat so the mushrooms are gonna maintain that nice chewy texture you know most vegetables you cook them long enough they're they turn to mush complete mush not mushrooms so they're good texturally so we have 10 ounces we're gonna put them in the food processor here we'll do half at a time do them in two batches you're gonna break them down to a fine sort of brown meat texture yeah kind of a pebbly texture quarter of an inch eighth of an inch pulse them about seven to ten times that looks pretty good so we're using cremini mushrooms they're relatively neutral tasting we didn't want anything too earthy like porcini or shiitake and we're not using a ton of mushrooms this isn't a mushroom sauce we just want them to add that nice texture and that mild flavor that we're talking about let's do the second batch here that looks good so we'll get our mushrooms into the oil here and then goes a teaspoon of salt all that liquid has to come out so they can get nice and brown and develop all that savory flavor that we're talking about so we're gonna let these cook for about eight minutes while these mushrooms cook we'll move over to the onions I have one onion chopped up here and so you're gonna mince it move the processor that's right same thing is the mushroom seven to ten pulses just to break it down so what the mushrooms go for eight minutes and then we'll add the onion sounds good it's looking good in there yeah they've really cooked down yeah right so that's been eight minutes look at the onions in the pot you want the onions to start to soften we'll let them cook for five minutes I'll continue alright so it's been about five minutes I can tell you like how it smells really good yeah instead of browning the meat you're browning the vegetables to get that flavor that's right and you can see there's little bits of fun starting to develop on the bottom of the pot that's means lots of flavor so let's add a quarter cup of tomato paste which has a lot of those umami compounds I was talking about earlier so I want this to start to brown I want it to turn rust-colored in the bottom of the pot that's a signal with the sugars have started to caramelize and I taste even better so let this go for a minute or two here so I have one more tablespoon of olive oil five garlic cloves minced up one quarter teaspoons of dried oregano and just a quarter teaspoon of pepper flakes just a little kick yeah not enough to make it spicy but enough to give it a little zing I'm mixing this with some oil I'm trying to coat all the little pieces of garlic with oils so they'll start to sizzle right when they go into the pot makes sense look at that nice rust color yeah you can see that color of the tomato paste really did Brown yeah it looks great I'm just gonna turn the heat down to medium here has the baton back to you thank you so I'm gonna make a clearing in the center of the pot here that's a little garlic can start to cook right away I can have direct access to the bottom of the pot so we'll let this cook for about 30 seconds what a smoke good it does I have 28 ounces of crushed tomatoes that's gonna go into the pot and then I have 2 cups of vegetable broth well just let this simmer for five minutes then we'll come back alright so our sauce has been simmering for five minutes it smells really good yeah it doesn't move I can tell by your face you're gonna like I don't have a poker face now we're gonna try and bulk it up a little bit give it some nice hardiness and make it really satisfying ultimately we landed on chickpeas so I have one can of chickpeas here that I drained then a really nice tender texture when they cook up and they give that nice bulk that we're looking for we're gonna put them right in the food processor and we're just gonna pulse these just like everything else seven to ten times break them down to a quarter inch size all right we want to rinse these off they have some starch in them and if we don't rinse them then our sauce might get too thick you can see it's kind of cloudy that's all the starch coming off now we'll put this into our pot and we'll let this cook for 15 more minutes so the total simmering time here because there's not a lot of meat it's pretty short it is very short so this needs to simmer for 15 minutes so while that cooks we'll drop the pasta all right so I have spaghetti here today this is such a thick hearty sauce you could use any shape that you like so tablespoon of salt our usual we'll put the pasta in we'll cook that till it's just al dente and then we'll combine it with sauce it'll be time to eat all right so I think our pastas done if you want to give it a quick shot only one way to see if your pastas done and that is not to throw it at the wall that's to taste it mmm we're good perfectly al dente awesome so I'm gonna drain the pasta and save a little bit of the cooking water yeah just in case we need to thin the sauce out a little bit you always want to save some of your pasta water that's right here in the Test Kitchen we test everything including whether or not you should shake the colander as you drain pasta and the result is no don't shake the colander leave some of that water in there because that'll help loosen up the sauce that looks great let's finish our sauce here I just have two tablespoons of fresh basil I'll give it a little bit of freshness a little bit of color now I haven't told you one of the best parts of this recipe we actually made a double batch nice yes so you could put half of it in the freezer you could put in the fridge for a couple days I like recipes like this me too gold in the bank coz I like to yes that's right so this is an 8 ounce ladle so I'm gonna take three cups three ladle holes and we'll mix it with the pasta looks delicious you can see it has some really nice texture to it so you can freeze that extra sauce for up to two months I love it it went out give me a little bit of that pasta water move some things up a little bit this nice and starchy has a little bit of salt in it my stomachs growling did you hear that let me serve us up here all right good that looks very good what's that a tiny bit more so I'm with you are you or twirler I am a twirl or how about yourself yes mm-hmm it has a really meaty flavor even though there's no meat in it mm-hmm party I told you I could do it you did you nailed it to make this sauce pulse cremini mushrooms and chickpeas in the food processor build a hearty tomato sauce with sauteed aromatics pan tomatoes and the vegetable broth and finished with fresh basil from our Test Kitchen to your a game-changing recipe for meatless Nitze you can get this recipe and all the recipes from the season along with our tastings testings and select episodes at our website America's Test Kitchen calm thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen what you think we'll 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: 244,234

Rating: 4.919899 out of 5

Keywords: meat sauce recipe, bolognese recipe, tagliatelle alla bolognese, tagliatelle bolognese, how to make bolognese, how to make bolognese sauce, meatless bolognese, vegan bolognese sauce, how to make vegan bolognese, pasta recipes, pasta recipe, how to make meat sauce, recipes, america's test kitchen, canned tomatoes, canned tomato taste test, americas test kitchen, cooking show, cooking tv show, vegan recipes

Id: DSaSeRY3nIA

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2019