How to Make the Ultimate Italian Dinner: Porchetta and Parmesan Farroto

[Music] today on America's Test Kitchen dan makes Bridget perfect for Kevin Jack challenges Julia to a tasting of ricotta Lisa reveals her top pick for wine coolers and Aaron makes Julia the ultimate parmesan farrotto it's all coming up right here on America's Test Kitchen in Italy porchetta is serious business roadside stores a boneless whole hogs with fennel garlic and herbs then they spit roast the pigs until the meat is juicy and the skin is hard and crackly now it is so good that a porchetta sandwich is literally nothing more than meat on a white roll but we are not in Italy and we're not gonna ask you to cook a whole pig so Dan is here and he's gonna show us a great version of porchetta that you and I can make it home so Bridget this is our Pig right here it's shrunk it shrunk a little bit tiny little pig American pigs are tiny now so we're actually going to turn porchetta which is a great streetside food into a really nice roast and for that we decided to shrink it down and we're gonna use a boneless pork button same thing we use for barbecue it's gonna get meltingly tender but we have to wait on that a second all right first we got to deal with the flavor and porchetta has a very distinctive flavor profile so we have three tablespoons of fennel seed we're gonna use our coffee grinder here we don't use coffee in it so it doesn't taste like coffee but it's gonna grind to a nice fine powder we've got a lot of fennel in there it's gonna really come through in the meat which is great so the next ingredient is 1/2 a cup of rosemary so this is fresh rosemary it's about 2 bunches next 1/4 cup of fresh thyme we also have 12 cloves of garlic the tablespoon of black pepper and 2 teaspoons of kosher salt I'm just gonna pulse this until it's broken down a little bit okay so that looks good smells good amazing now you need it to pre grind the fennel because it would have never ground down enough with all the other ingredients in the food processor next up we have 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil I'm gonna process this until it gets nice and smooth okay that looks and smells really good so we have our nice six pound boneless pork butt here a nice fat cap on top we don't have skin in this case to get nice and crackly and give us that nice comparison to the tender meat but the fat if we treat it right it'll do the same thing okay so the first thing I'm gonna do is use my chef's knife and crosshatch it it's based one inch apart so it's gonna allow some of the fat to render it's gonna get really crispy and I'm going on both directions I'm gonna go down through the fat but not into the meat so I've got a nice crosshatch on this and what I'm gonna do is actually split this into two rows okay which we find cook better it's a lot nicer for slicing too so I'm gonna find the grain and we want to cut with the grain because eventually we're gonna carve against the grain we're gonna use a boning knife you can do this with a paring knife and make some really deep slits into this meat here where we can get all that seasoning in we're gonna go all the way through there I'm gonna start like this and then I kind of tilt it out so I can make sure I get all the way through on that side set that one aside we're gonna do the same thing over here okay so now we're gonna start seasoning we've got all these places for that to go so we're gonna take them put them fat side down I'm gonna season all sides of the meat except the fat cap with a couple teaspoons of kosher salt now Dan looks like a super fancy chef because he's holding his hand way up high as he's seasoning the roast but that's actually a really good idea because you get a more even dispersement of the salt the higher up you go so now it's time to get into our paste this is where it gets really messy but also really fun so we're gonna take it and put it all over and also really get into ear so I worked some of that salt into the sides here what we're really gonna get the paste in there really work it inside all of these nice slits we made I'm going to tie these up with three pieces of twine on each one so they kind of hold their shape a little bit better and they're gonna cook for a long period of time be very tender and want them to hold together okay so we're gonna turn these fat side up I like to start in the middle so it's Dan ties these knots he's actually making that first loop twice right around the string and that way it's going to hold itself in place and you don't need another person's finger to hold it in place while you make a double knot works for Christmas presents and it works for pork yes well let's talk a little bit about pork shoulder a whole pork shoulder weighs in around 18 pounds and that runs from the top of the front shoulder all the way down to the Trotter now the pork foot or Boston butt is the top part of the shoulder the cut is comprised of several muscles and it can be poorly butchered when the bone is removed so it's best to purchase a pork but that's not in any netting or under plastic wrap and that way you can see that the entire cut is intact the final thing our pork needs before it goes into the fridge is a nice coating on the fat that's gonna help it crisp and brown and so for that we're gonna use a tablespoon of kosher salt a teaspoon of ground black pepper and one of our favorite ingredients a quarter of a teaspoon of baking soda the baking soda raises the pH on the surface here and when it's more alkaline it's gonna Brown better so we're gonna mix this up and season away okay so I have a nice sprinkling on here I'm gonna use my fingers to rub it in try and get in those crevices that we created with the crosshatch I'm gonna transfer these to our wire rack set in a rimmed baking sheet and these are gonna go into the fridge uncovered we're going to leave them there for the least six hours up to 24 hours we're gonna dry on the surface a little bit can help them Brown in the oven great so 24 hours is passed and we've allowed a lot of that salt and seasoning to get inside the meat so now it's time to roast it when we played around with this recipe and did a lot of testing we wanted to figure out how to get it really really juicy we know that low and slow from barbecue is really good right we get super tender meat so we wanted to do that here the problem is if you go really low about a 250 degree oven it takes about six hours a little too long for porchetta in my book yes so the part of the reason it takes so long is when you get to about 150 160 degrees we get evaporated cooling and it cools the meat so much that it can just kind of stall at that temperature for a long period of time so in barbecue world they solved that by wrapping the meat in foil it prevents that evaporative cooling and allows you to get right through that temperature so what we're gonna actually do is transfer this to a roasting pan we're gonna cover it with foil so this way we can go into a 325 degree oven which is relatively hot but it's gonna trap moisture in here so it's not gonna go over 212 degrees and that more there is gonna allow it to go past that stall and quickly so it's been two and a half hours we're gonna take it out in temp it okay you wouldn't mind turning the oven up to 500 degrees so let's take the temp here now we're looking for at this point a hundred and eighty degrees and you got it and I got it nice that looks great so we get really fast cooking in this nice moist environment but as you can see we don't get a lot of browning yep so we're gonna solve that problem I'm gonna do is transfer these off to this plate here so this is really flavorful liquid we're not gonna use it in this recipe but it's like instant soup it's good to keep so next we're gonna line it with foil here so just this little layer of foil right here will help any of the fat that renders out from smoking in that really hot oven okay so before we put them back in I'm actually going to take off the twine it's for good reason so once we get this nice and crispy you can easily pull that fat off we want that to stay on there okay so now they go right back in I'm fat cap side up right oh yeah we got to get that fat nice and crispy so we want that up so once our oven is at 500 degrees we're gonna put the pork back in and we're gonna cook it for 20 or 30 minutes until it hits 190 it's gonna be beautifully crisp on the outside I cannot wait oh that was good right you delivered on your promise that's for sure oh just look at that it's still sizzling we're still getting crispy or fat so I'm gonna transfer these to our carving board over here and those are gonna need to rest for 20 minutes before we slice into them so this is nice and tender but we still want to cut across the grain just as we would with any roast it's gonna make it even more tender so I'm gonna cut some nice thick kind of half-inch slices man this knife just goes through like butter this is so tender you see that is oh that's just beautiful and incredible yeah this isn't the type of roast that you can really cut into very thin deli slices give you a couple pieces here thank you is that rosemary in the fennel and the garlic mm-hmm I'm excited about this hmm having a moment what it's all about so it's not quite as tender as say something like a pork shoulder that you would make for a pulled pork you want that promise to be overcooked but it still melts in your mouth oh yeah every single bite has the garlic the fennel salt and pepper I would put this on a roll and just eat this yeah condiments needed if we didn't we don't use sauce with it no it's got that much flavor so for our easy porchetta score the fat on a pork shoulder rub with a flavorful fennel paste and then cut and tie into two pieces cook the roast in a moderate oven then finish at 500 degrees to Chris at the top so from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen an easy tasty amazing home version of porchetta [Music] ice buckets for keeping wine cool our mess there's drippy and they even over chill your wine we tested six innovative wine coolers that use no ice they range in price from $14 to $55 we chilled two dozen bottles of wine to the same temperature and started testing both with full bottles of wine and ones where we periodically poured off a glass all the while tracking the temperatures now some of these were terrible this one by RSVP it's made of marble and it's heavy and you have to shove this whole thing in your freezer and then throw in a cup of water before you put in the wine that's super inconvenient and it's still messy this one by wine enthusiast has a double wall insulation like a thermos it's supposed to keep the wine cool without ice but it barely did better than leaving the bottle out on the counter this one's our winner is slide in these little freezer packs the insert stick in your wine and you're done it's nice and compact and it doesn't drip and it kept wine within 10 degrees of its starting temperature for more than seven full hours and best of all it's not expensive for just over $20 the OG stainless steel wine cooler with freezer inserts is the way to stay chill [Music] ricotta is a very mild tasting cheese which begs the question does brand really matter it does matter Julia so we've got four brands here they should be sweet so some of them really didn't have that sweetness that we wanted texture is really a big issue it should be velvety luscious it should not be like cottage cheese okay all right so you can see minute there I guess so let me tell you a little bit about how ricotta is made so these are all whole milk you can buy either part skim or whole milk ricotta we much prefer the whole milk and so we're only tasting whole milk today it bakes up better you know we did this as you're doing it now we also did it in manicotti ricotta comes from the Italian word that means we cooked so you're like we cooked yeah so when you make cheese you separate the curds from the whey now the Italians they never throw out anything ricotta is made from the whey which usually you would just you know throw down the drain so they we cook that way and get more proteins and lactose the natural sugars in the milk to become this beautiful velvety plush curd that is called ricotta so interestingly these are all domestic they're all supermarket national brands [Laughter] this one is not like the others what did you just taste there it was different it had a texture like cottage cheese I mean it wasn't smooth or creamy at all it would seem like a different animal and we found that if it tasted that way in this tasting when we then cooked with it was the same problem so you got a sort of filling inside the madakari that was really not that Pleasant we found that the two that we liked the best were actually made with way along with a little bit of milk the other two in the sample were just made with milk so they Americans taking shortcuts you know not following the classic Italian recipe which often gets us into trouble when we take old-fashioned centuries-old recipes and then modify them the texture issue was really interesting we did a lot of research we talked to university scientists and they said it Italy when they make ricotta they actually hand scoop out the cheese it's because the curds are so dead look at that if you have them beaten up in a machine they can turn Kerdi on you and get kind of all broken and separated now of course a supermarket product they're not gonna have somebody sitting there with a scoop doing this my head but our winner actually has invented a gentle pump system so rather than having it mechanically separated it gently pumps out the ricotta so that the curds stay creamy and delicate and not broken hmm so you've been tasting my I know the one out the ends you're not wild about no that's a non-starter for me cuz no texture this one I didn't like either it really had an off flavor a little bit better almost wondered if it wasn't going bad just a little bit yeah not so sweet these two were my favorites this one was particularly sweet it made me almost think there was sugar in it this one had a very smooth creamy texture so between these two I'm kind of split I think I'd go for the less sweet but creamier texture of this one this one's my favorite close second all right let's see how you did right you have chosen the winner the belle joy also made here in the USA it's really creamy and luscious velvety velvety is a good word and it has a little bit of sweetness to it that's natural to the milk but you can really taste the way and it's delicious it is delicious alright so this one which was very sweet that's our runner-up are you doing really well today this is the gal Bonnie again this is also got the way made the traditional way waa why not whe why that they would produce the ricotta in Italy alright and this one which was a little bit sour so this is kelabra this was in third place it was an okay choice but it wasn't as delicious as the top - yeah very clear differences here and this one which I did not like it all Organic Valley the bottom of the rankings of textures all wrong its cottage cheese it is not ricotta so when it comes to making ricotta it's all about the way and for our money we like Bell joy oh so ricotta for 399 don't need rice to make risotto in fact I've had risottos made with barley oats even cauliflower but today Erin's gonna show us how to make Hiroto which is risotto made with farro an ancient form of wheat that's been grown in Italy for centuries absolutely Giulia as you know with risotto it's creamy and rich and it's just so amazing but it's not as simple as just substituting farro in for arborio rice we did a lot of testing I'm going to show you what we learned all right okay as with the risotto we're gonna heat our liquid so we're gonna use three cups of water and three cups of chicken broth we tried it with all chicken broth but it just dominated the farro flavor we really wanted to chicken it was too chicken exactly we wanted the farro flavor they come through so we're gonna heat it up over high heat I want to come to a boil I'm gonna cut it back and put a lid on it while our broth is coming up to temperature I'm just gonna finely chopped 1/2 an onion anytime you cut an onion Julia you always want to cut through the root end to split it break that root end holds all the layers together so they don't split apart while you're chopping absolutely first I'm gonna make several horizontal cuts I'm just gonna keep my hand on top of the onion and I'm just gonna slide the knife through I'm not gonna cut all the way through and then I turn it and then make several vertical cuts I'm just gonna turn it and cut crosswise I'm just gonna finish mincing this onion and we're gonna wait for our stock to come up to a simmer and then we can continue we're gonna move over to our farro so we are gonna use one and a half cups of whole grain farro so it has the outer hull and that's where all the flavor is that's where the challenge comes in because it locks in all that starch that we need to come out to actually make our farrotto creamy we tried a bunch of different recipes and a lot of recipes came out very thin and very lackluster there was one recipe that actually called for soaking it overnight and then pressing it in the food processor and that really broke up and cracked the grains and it allowed this start just to come out which is perfect so that was great but we did not want the overnight soap so somebody suggested using a blender which is what we're gonna use okay sorry I'm gonna pulse it six times and the blender is shaped like a funnel and it creates a vortex so all these grains had no choice but to meet the blade so as you can see Julia we have some whole grains and we also have some cracked greens so we're shooting for about half of the grains to be cracked and that's just enough grain so that starches are gonna thicken our fruit very clever so shopping for Faro can be very confusing to start there are three varieties of Faro it can be made from I corn Emmer or spelt although most the Faro sold in this country is from I corn wheat the other thing that can confusing is that it's processed to different levels for farrotto we're gonna use whole farro that means the hull is still intact but very often you can find pearled farro that means some of that hull has been removed and if you're lucky says so on the label but putting pearl on the label doesn't always happen take this for example this has been pearled but you'll see it doesn't say anywhere on the label it also doesn't say it in the ingredient list but you'll notice it does say cooks in 10 minutes now that's very fast for farro because a whole farro takes about 30 to 40 minutes so when shopping for farro for farrotto look for whole farro and if you don't see hole on the label look at the cooking time it should be 30 minutes or longer okay Julie we're gonna start our farrotto so we have two tablespoons of butter melting and I'm gonna add our chopped half onion I'm gonna cook this just for about three to four minutes until the onions soften our onions are nice and soft Julia I'm going to add one clove of garlic stir this up so you can smell it I can already smell yeah now that smells good next we're gonna add our cracked marrow I'm gonna toast this Julia for about three to four minutes and talking start smelling it becoming nice and toasty and this is really developing the farro flavor we do this often we make regular risotto but also when we make pilaf or quinoa or almost any grain toasting it deepens the flavor alright so there we are can you just got a little darker in color and can yeah Matt I can totally see yeah it's ready okay so we're gonna move back to our broth mixture what we're gonna do is we're just gonna take the lazy man's approach we're gonna add five cups speaking my language yeah this is a lot more liquid than a traditional risotto method where you just add it in small batches you added almost all the liquid there's only one cup left over there which we'll use later on we're just gonna let this simmer all the bubbles are gonna make the Barrow agitate and all those starch molecules are gonna come out and it's gonna be just as creamy as if you start it for 25 minutes we're also gonna put a lid on it you never put a lid on risotto because you're stirring it the entire time but we're gonna put a lid on this we're gonna cook this for about 25 minutes over low heat until the farro is just all dente and the liquid is almost all absorbed so let's take a closer look at what's happening in this pot starch granules and farro contain two different types of starch molecules called amylose and amylopectin and they behave very differently in hot liquids let's take a closer look amylose molecules are long single chains when these chains are heated they break out of the farro starch granules as the granules break down during cooking this leads to a soft creamy texture amylopectin molecules are much more complex because of their branched structure the amylopectin starches don't break out of the granules when they're cooked and don't absorb liquid very well this leads to chewiness thanks to these two different starch molecules our farrotto will have a creamy and chewy texture hey Julie it's been 25 minutes I've stirred this a couple of times just to make sure it's all evenly distributed and look almost all that liquid has been absorbed and it should be about just al dente so it should have a still have a very good chew it's starting to take on that creaminess okay so now we're gonna add two teaspoons of chopped thyme 3/4 of a teaspoon of black pepper and 1 teaspoon of salt I'm just gonna stir it for about 5 minutes constantly and what this is gonna do is it's gonna coax out more starch and it's gonna make our farrotto even creamier all right Julian that's that look like risotto Oh creamy or what okay I'm just turning off the heat now I'm gonna add two ounces of grated Parmesan cheese which is traditional in risotto two tablespoons of chopped fresh parsley 2 teaspoons of lemon juice the lemon juice will really add a little brightness to it and cut through that richness two more tablespoons of butter I see how your little bit more cream a bit of butter a little bit of cheese yeah I know I'm just gonna stir this until the butter melts you smell it I can smell the parmesan I can smell a little bit of lemon juice in that time I'm gonna add a splash of our liquid just to kind of like loosen up a little bit cuz as it's just under bowls it's gonna tighten up even more so I'm gonna add a little bit more the tricky thing about risotto and it's also true of farrotto that as it sits it really gets quite sick so if it's sitting for a while before you serve it good idea to loosen it up with the rest of that liquid and then it'll be perfect when you eat it now it's nice and fluid I'm just gonna taste it for seasoning I need time you make anything Julie you want to just taste it for seasoning might need a little pepper a little salt in order it might be perfectly fine and I love the strip it is so good all right I have my bowl ready that looks delicious good look at the how creaminess yeah that's what we wanted mmm it's like the ultimate comfort food yeah it has a little bit more complexity than risotto can has the brand in the hull this not only has the chew but it has some flavor that weedy flavor yep what a difference to give 402 a try grind full farro in the blender then toast it in the pot before adding the hot liquid let it simmer until nearly tender then stir constantly for the final 5 minutes of cooking finish with fresh herbs parmesan and lemon juice and there you have it from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen a terrific new recipe for parmesan farrotto you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season along with our tastings testings and select episodes at our website America's Test Kitchen calm so good 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: 173,248

Keywords: porchetta, risotto, porchetta recipe, farro recipe, parmesan, farroto recipe, parmesan farroto, parmesan risotto recipe, recipes, pork, pork butt, italian recipes, italian pork recipe, learn to cook, cooking show, america's test kitchen, ricotta, wine cooler, kitchen equipment reviews, kitchen

Id: _uyNJ_qPH44

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 21 2019