How to Roast Everything: Beef Tenderloin and Turkey Breast en Cocotte

[Music] today on america's test kitchen bridgette and julia share the secrets to the ultimate beef tenderloin jack challenges bridget to a tasting of turkey and dan makes julia fool-proof turkey breast on kokuts with pan gravy it's all coming up right here on america's test kitchen [Music] beef tenderloin is the perfect cut for a dinner party it's quick to cook mild in flavor and as advertised by the name it is tender but dinner guests do not live by beef alone potatoes whether you make them mashed or roasted they are a natural match but that means some last minute cooking until today i have to tell you this recipe is one of my all-time favorites because it's a one-pot meal the potatoes and the beef tenderloin cook in the same pot and you know everybody loves tenderloin from grandparents to kids everyone's pleased with this meal yeah you get some medium rare cuts right in the middle and the ends are a little bit more towards medium so that's right kind of satisfies everyone you got it all right this is a three pound center cut beef tenderloin now we're just gonna season it with a little salt and pepper and here i have two and a quarter teaspoons of salt this is a teaspoon of black pepper and our super secret magic ingredient baking soda this is a teaspoon of baking soda and of course that raises the ph which encourages browning so i'm just gonna whisk this together have this roast dry and i'm going to season it here we go nice and liberally i want to make sure you get it on all sides and it's okay if you get on the board you know what i do i kind of use the roast as a little bench scraper and just make sure it gets seasoned even on the ends so that's coated nice and even and now we're just going to tie it it is a pretty uniform cut of meat but tying helps to ensure that it cooks through a little more evenly i'm going to start in the center and just make double knot the first time go around the string twice that helps it stay in place for that second knot it's great for holiday wrapping as well all right now i'm just going to work my way outwards did you ever work at a rodeo [Laughter] i do know how to wrangle a good piece of beef so that's about an inch and a half between the ties i'm going to trim off the long ends give them a little haircut now we're gonna let this roast sit for about an hour that'll allow the salt to do its magic and make the meat more tender just right at room temperature just right at room temperature now it might sound counter-intuitive but salting meat retains its overall moisture it just needs time at first salting the surface of the cut naturally draws moisture outward if you roast the tenderloin too soon after salting that drawn out moisture will evaporate and sure enough the meat will be dry and disappointing but if you give the salted meat enough time the super concentrated moisture near the surface will seek equilibrium move back into the meat and bring the salt with it the salt causes the muscle proteins to swell ensuring a juicy tenderloin so make sure you give the salt enough time to work its magic all right so it's time to get cooking and we're going to start with the potatoes nice i thought we were going to play ball no we're going to use little red potatoes because they're lovely and creamy and they hold their shape during roasting and also when they're in the bottom of the pan they act like a rack for the roast so i have two tablespoons of olive oil heating up in this roasting pan over these two burners about medium-high heat you can see that oil is just starting to shimmer so here i'm going to add five scallions four cloves of garlic a tablespoon of smoked paprika just adds a little something special to the potatoes because that's an expensive piece of meat and you're blooming it in oil which is really going to enhance its flavor a little bit of salt that's a half teaspoon of salt and a quarter teaspoon of black pepper and now we're going to add our potatoes this is three pounds of red potatoes of course we gave them a good scrub beforehand we're just gonna cook this for about a minute really to help bloom those aromatics can't you smell that paprika when you're starting to smell the garlic this is going to go a great repeat all right so you can see we're starting to get some fond on the bottom of the pan so i'm going to turn off the heat and add half a cup of water this does two things help scrape up the fonds we get all that flavor on the potatoes it's also going to create a little steam when we roast these potatoes to help them start cooking all right so we're going to put these in the oven this is a 425 degree oven we're going to give these potatoes a 15 minute head start ooh you can smell that little bit of smoked paprika oh it smells so good if you wouldn't mind turning that oven down to 300 degrees please all right those potatoes have had a 15 minute head start oh yeah and now it's time to add our beef tenderloin so i'm just going to give it a quick brush with a tablespoon of olive oil don't forget the ends all right so now as i said before we're going to use the potatoes as a rack so i'm just going to push them into the middle i'm going to take this pretty guy put him right on top genius i know right so this is going to go back into a 300 degree oven for about 45 to 55 minutes the key is that the center of the roast is going to register between 120 and 125 degrees that's for medium rare and of course halfway through cooking i'm gonna spin the roast around so it cooks evenly all right so that beef is still in the oven but now it's time to make one of my all-time favorite sauces and i've been pronouncing it wrong for many years i've been calling it personality sauce but actually it's persian sauce much more fancy that way yes but regardless of what you call it it is delicious i put it on eggs i put it on tempeh and of course beef so it starts with parsley and this is three quarters of a cup of chopped parsley and that's our base and to this we're going to add a scallion we're going to want to mince it and what you want to do when you mince a scallion is this root end is pretty thick so i like to quarter it and then if there's any big green parts i just cut them in half and then you can just mince it really nicely all right one minced scallion next up corner shones which is french four fancy little pickle tiny gherkins yes and they're delicious we just want to mince these up that's about six tablespoons of cornichons these look pretty good and we're going to also add a little bit of that corner shown juice because that's good flavor very pickly a little salty so good so this is a teaspoon of the cornichon juice next up some capers and of course we rinsed these already to get rid of some of that extra brine this is quarter cup i'm just going to give these a quick chop they're already pretty small but we really want to crush them open so you can really taste them so you're not quartering each one not today that's pretty good into the bowl they go to this we're going to add a little garlic this is three cloves of minced garlic a little bit of sugar to sort of balance all that brininess of the cornerstones and the capers this is a teaspoon of sugar last but not least a little salt this is a quarter teaspoon of salt and a quarter teaspoon of pepper yeah i'm all for sugar when it's used as a seasoning similar to salt and pepper just balances out flavors that way all right i'm just going to mix this up and then what's going to hold it together and really turn it into a relish is some olive oil so i have half a cup of really good extra virgin olive oil here pour this in tell you the truth whenever i make this sometimes i just eat it right off a spoon it's so good all those fresh sort of briny flavors and that is it a persian or as i like to say a personalized sauce oh it smells so good all right so again we're looking for a temperature between 120 and 125 for medium rare right there in the center i'm telling you it doesn't matter what it actually reads i'm going to eat it nailed it we're right on so we're gonna let this rest for about 15 minutes let those juices redistribute of course we're going to tent it with foil help trap the heat in and now back to these potatoes now sometimes if you see the pan getting a little dry in the oven don't hesitate to add a little water i'm gonna tent them as well so they stay nice and warm all right so this beef has been resting for 15 minutes so i'm just gonna get rid of these pieces of twine a pair of scissors is ideal for this because it really can get under the twine which kind of bakes into the meat during roasting the browning of this beef is pretty tremendous we did not sear this in the pan it's all nice and brown that's from the baking soda that's right it's time to slice this roast up and now i'm not going to slice it very thin but also not into thick steak somewhere in the middle about half inch slices oh look at this meat so juicy perfectly rosy throughout almost no gray band and again that's because we didn't brown it so we saved a step and made perfectly rosy meat all right so a nice piece for you and now we've kept these potatoes warm under the foil over here oh yeah last but not least my favorite sauce percy odd fit for king this is beautiful i mean it's a special occasion meal but actually i would eat this just about any night of the week you don't need a fork certainly don't need a knife just a spoon it's that tender and the potatoes that little bit of smoked paprika just gives them a little something special well our one pan wonder starts by seasoning and tying a center cut beef tenderloin cook new potatoes and scallions with smoked paprika right in the roasting pan add water and give the potatoes a head start in the oven top with the roast return to the oven and slice and serve with a quick persiag so from our test kitchen to your kitchen and easy and elegant one pan beef tenderloin with smoky potatoes and persiad relish [Music] last year americans bought 68 million turkeys between thanksgiving and christmas now i'd say that roast turkey is the most anticipated not challenging main course of the year so jack is going to tell us which turkey is worth cooking for the holiday table bridgette you need a good recipe but there's nothing you can do if you buy a bad turkey true and we tasted eight turkeys and four of them we would not recommend really yeah and i've got a couple of them here for you unfortunately we did find four that we love tuck in all right you've got some dark meat as well as some white meat the biggest problems were that some of the brands were both dry and wet that was because a lot of the turkeys are what they call pre-basted okay which is of course they're not brushing anything on the outside they're injecting broth chemicals salt and all these other things into the turkey it makes it mushy it makes it soft so the first thing is texture you want it to be moist but not soggy and not mushy these have all been salted for 24 hours the ones that were not treated with salt air dried them all then we roasted them all per our recipe and so the cooking is exactly the same here we found that when we added our own salt we ended up with basically the same salt level so we didn't really have any problems that the injected ones or the pre-basted were too salty you just don't want to obviously brine or salt those before you cook them the big problem was that they just didn't have a great texture the second problem is some of them had some off flavors so they're injecting things into the turkey and in some cases it said well is this fishy that they injected or something else that tastes like a tuna fish sandwich oh without the bread that's probably not a good thing no so you've been sampling um anything that's immediately standing out to you that's good or bad this one very moist but i'm trying to figure out if it's moist or wet which you know there's there's a fine line between the two this one the dark meat almost flavorless really having a hard time actually differentiating it between it and the breast meat here you know the dark meat really should have three four five times the amount of fat that is in the white meat and if they bread the turkey so that there's very little fat in the entire bird you get very little flavor this particular one actually i think this might be my favorite because the dark meat almost has a metallic flavor to it that is quite pleasant like yeah i would say minerally how does that sound but i like that better but you know the dark meat does have those metallic or mineraly notes that are gamey i mean that's what the dark meat should have and that for people who don't like that that's what that breast breastfeed is there for this is my favorite this my second third and fourth are tied at the bottom so this is my favorite you chose the winner yeah this is mary's free range it has what i would call old-fashioned turkey flavor it does it tastes like thanksgiving yes absolutely the best choice all right i'm surprised bridgette as much as i'm excited about that you got the winner the butterball tank that was at the very bottom of the range a little mushy here on the dark meat but i like how seasoned it is well it is well seasoned well hopefully these two cancel out each other a little bit so this this is the genio this was the top rated of the pre-basted turkeys we didn't like it that much but if you wanted to go that route didn't want to salt or brine the bird we thought this was the best option still not our favorite by far but kind of nondescript and i'm surprised this is plainville farms i don't know this is from upstate new york it's the runner-up the winner mary's is from california hmm nope still don't like it you sure i can't make you keep on eating that well there you go the best turkey according to america's test kitchen and me is mary's free-range non-gmo verified turkey and the price is 259 per pound today we're roasting a turkey breast and believe it or not we aren't going to brine it instead we're going to cook it in a pot with a tight fitting lid which the french call cacote and that tight fitting lid is important because it prevents the liquid from evaporating during cooking and this creates a very moist gentle cooking environment inside the pot and produces some really flavorful drippings when you cook in the pot it's known as cooking and cocoa and today dan's going to show us how it's done i'm very excited that we're free from brining now it's gonna be a very very simple recipe and it's gonna start with a six to seven pound bone-in turkey breast big guy big guy we can't put a whole turkey in a pot so we're just gonna go with the breasts but this method because it's so gentle it really does a nice thing for the white meat so we're going to start by first taking off these ribs so i'm just going to use some shears to do this i'm going to follow along the bottom of the breast and cut right through these ribs and a good pair of polti shears are worth their weight in gold for this they are the best tool for this job definitely so i'm gonna go down here and then i'm gonna flip it like this kind of snip in and then there's a bone that where it connects right here that kind of goes out towards the wing and a lot of times like on this one it's still on there so i'm just gonna take this and push down like that it's a very satisfying sound if you like breaking down poultry and then i'm just going to go in between and take this off okay you can take this chance to you know trim up any areas that don't look good if there's too much skin in one place this recipe because it's cooked in a wet environment the skin doesn't get super crispy so this is not so much a skin focus recipe where we're going to jump through hoops to get it really crispy we want the meat to be extra juicy okay so now i'm just going to take some paper towels and pat it dry on all sides so i'm going to use some kosher salt do you want me to do the pepper since you're i would love that yes thank you happy to help all right all right let me do a flip here and you can start peppering and i'll follow you with some salt all right there we go a nice coating i've got a couple tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil over medium high heat until it just starts smoking that sounds good doesn't it and i'm putting this in breast side down and now we're going to add a bunch of aromatics so we've got one onion here and these are just sprinkle right around the bird i also have one carrot one celery ribs and then we've got six cloves of garlic two pretty little thyme sprigs and finally one bay leaf last but not least last but not least so i kind of like to stir these around and get them in that nice oil we're gonna sear it this way until the skin gets nice and brown and sometimes you have to tilt it a little bit in order to get the skin on all parts nice and brown and that's going to take 12 to 16 minutes the vegetable is going to get nice and brown as well and we're going to get really nice fondant in the bottom of our pan the font is important for the gravy exactly this is all about the gravy mmm smell that you can really smell the change between the raw vegetables and now that they're cooked starting to smell a little like thanksgiving around here so the vegetables have really reduced down in size they've given up tons of liquid and they started to brown and i've really moved the turkey breast around as i cook so that we get good browning on all sides now it's time to flip we go in here we have tongs and a wooden spoon this is the hardest part of the recipe but you just take your time beautiful nice color okay so here's where the magic happens we're gonna turn off the heat we're gonna take our foil and we're gonna put it over the top we're gonna make a really nice seal so it's great if you have a really heavy pot here because the lid sits really nicely on top and it traps all that moisture inside even if you do it's still nice to put a piece of foil on here it kind of fills in those gaps and it protects it a little bit more also makes it more foolproof so if you had a not so heavy lid it would still seal in all that moisture exactly so we're gonna just go around here crimp this in we're gonna go into the oven about an hour and a half to an hour and three quarters and it's actually really low about 250 degrees which for turkey roasting is really low normally we're up around 400 degrees and our goal is to get browning and really crisp skin here all we want is super juicy turkey meat so going nice and low like that is going to keep it very very moist so it's been about 90 minutes and i'm gonna take it out we're gonna temp it over there so it's going here 165 is what we're looking for on the nose okay so that's fantastic we're going to get it out of the pot here i have to say getting out of the pot is one of the hardest parts about this recipe that's the only hard part of this recipe is maneuvering the turkey absolutely i'm going to slide in my tongs underneath here i find that's good give myself lots of support and then i'm just gonna use the wooden spoon as kind of a stopper there pick it up and pop it down on our board now we gotta test it with foil and i'm gonna slide this out of the way so we can deal with our broth so this is really intensely flavored stuff we've got that good browning from the skin on there and we've trapped everything in the pot so i'm putting this over medium-high heat and we're going to cook it down and that's going to take about 15 to 20 minutes and it's going to smell really good while we're doing that all right so this has been going for about 15 minutes oh it smells even more intense than when it first came out of the oven we've got a good amount of fat in here and that's the perfect base for our roux so i'm going to dust over a quarter cup of all-purpose flour the fat really helps with preventing lumpy gravy because that fat's going to coat all the particles of flour so they're not going to clump together we're going to cook this for about two to five minutes we want to get some good color on it okay it's nice and dark you can see that fond on the bottom there we're going gonna scrape all that up with four cups of chicken broth so the key here is to add it gradually and whisk a lot because if you add the broth all at once and try to whisk it vigorously you'll wind up with a lumpy gravy but if you add it slowly and whisk as you go that's how you get a smooth gravy so once you've got about two cups in about halfway you've diluted it enough that the rest can go in a lot more quickly that looks good it looks like good doesn't it so i'm also gonna go in with my wooden spoon and just scrape around the corners there's lots of fun and as it gets moist you can kind of scrape it back up into the sauce okay so i got most of that incorporated so i'm gonna bring this up to a simmer and we're gonna cook it until it's a nice gravy consistency about two and a half cups and it takes ten to fifteen minutes all right this smells so good it looks amazing i'm gonna shut the heat up so this is two and a half cups here it's reduced down it's nice and thick in that flour give it a lot of good body and all we gotta do is strain this now all right i know from experience this is a two-person job i was gonna ask for your help thank you that's yeah let me hold the pot and you can strain it now i can't see what's going on so you tell me if i'm dipping i'll tell you if you go too crazy nope a little bit more a little bit more that's great i'm just going to use this ladle to help things along you can keep going just a little bit more excellent make sure you get all that out that gravy is where it's at perfect that's great so we're gonna get back to the turkey here oh that is so not a looker it's not a liquor no and that's the point here it's not about the skin it's about the meat underneath the skin that's right so we're going to do is just find the breastbone runs right through the middle there when i get to this point i like to just take a little peek inside make sure i'm following the right path that bone at the bottom there has an unusual curve so taking a peek means you can really navigate it easily all right that comes right off all right so i'm gonna use my knife and just get right underneath the skin there so i can peel it back very elegantly done i'm just gonna cut nice thick slices we're not making sandwiches right we're making dinner and you got to see how juicy that is oh look at that nice and low and slow you get the best results and julia i'm going to give you the center cut the big center cup pieces oh now may i pour a little gravy on top of yours yes oh oh that looks beautiful it's so good it's the best turkey breast and gravy ever this turkey makes wonderful leftovers because it's so moist it's moist the next day when it's cold it does make great sandwiches damn this is absolutely delicious thank you you're welcome for the juiciest roast turkey breast cook it and coat brown a bone-in turkey breast with a few aromatics cover the pot with foil then the lid and cook it in a 250 degree oven then use the drippings to make a flavorful gravy so from america's test kitchen to your kitchen an amazing recipe for turkey breast and cacao with pan gravy you can find this recipe along with all the recipes tastings and testings from this season at our website americastestkitchen.com i would eat this year round yeah not even thanksgiving this is a sunday dinner for me tuesday wednesday 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: 169,404

Keywords: turkey, beef, beef tenderloin, beef tenderloin roast, persillade, turkey breast, turkey en cocotte, gravy, turkey and gravy, roasted potatoes, beef tenderloin recipes, turkey en cocotte recipe, turkey breast recipe, gravy recipe, learn to cook, america's test kitchen, recipes

Id: SSdiV_vjQMQ

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 10 2019