The Best Recipe for Chewy Oatmeal Cookies is Not on the Back of the Oat Canister

[Music] when most people make oatmeal cookies they just use the recipe on the back of the canister that's right because if anyone should know how to make a great oatmeal cookie it's the folks who make the oats but that iconic recipe has some issues the cookies have a very cakey texture and almost no oatmeal flavor to speak of mm-hmm so we decided to give this recipe a well-needed makeover we wanted a chewy cookie with serious oat flavor and it starts with using the right oats so here we have old-fashioned rolled oats and that's the classic oat you use in an oat cookie however we've seen some recipes that use quick and instant notes but this is a no-no these oats have been Park cooked and then read dried and they have almost no flavor and their texture is really sticky almost like wallpaper paste okay so these are out honestly you don't want to use steel cut oats this is not for cookies this is for a bowl of porridge in the morning a big thick strapping bowl of you'd know about that one so here we have 3 cups of old-fashioned rolled oats and that's the same as you'll see on the back of the canister so no changes yet all right now let's look at the dry ingredients here we have 1 cup of all-purpose flour that's a slight change the recipe on the caster has a little more flour but by reducing the flour and leaving the oat amount the same you're gonna get more goat flavor to this we're gonna add a little salt this is three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt and a little baking soda that's the leavener this is half a teaspoon of baking soda and that's also a little bit less it's gonna make those cookies a little less cakey okay we don't want puffy cookies no you know that back of the canister box it made a really cakey cookie on the inside with crisp edges but as soon as that cookie cooled it sort of had a uniform texture that was just stale we want crisp edges chewy Center gotcha and another way that we get a nice chewy Center with crisp edges is looking at the type of fat now that well-known recipe uses 20 tablespoons of butter which adds a lot of flavor almost too much covering up that oat flavor but also it makes the cookie too cakey so we reduced it down to just 4 tablespoons of butter and half a cup of vegetable oil now what this is doing is this is inverting the ratio of saturated fat to unsaturated fat which again leads to a chewy or Center and that's what we're after so when you use a liquid oil like this you're talking about a bowl cookie so no standing mixer needed in order to get this butter in there we're gonna have to melt it so this is four tablespoons of unsalted butter over medium high heat while we're melting it we might as well Brown it because that really helps the flavor shine through so we're gonna cook this for a minute or two after it starts to melt until you get that nice golden color now I imagine since we're stirring everything together we're not using an electric mixer that also helps prevent a cakey cookie because we're not beating any air into it that's right so I love this simpler and better community so this is another time when you want to walk away because that butter could go from brown burned like that I also like to swirl the pan here there's something to do but it also helps Brown the butter a bit more evenly oh there she goes oh that's not so good yeah we're gonna go right into a bowl all right so into the hot butter we're gonna add our spices and our spices is just this lowly bit of cinnamon just a quarter teaspoon and this is a market difference from that recipe we've been talking about that had nutmeg in a ton of cinnamon we found it really just tastes like a spice cookie not like an oatmeal cookie so just a little bit of cinnamon does a job that's my song yeah and by adding it to the butter you're really blooming its flavor all right to this we're gonna add our oil and this again this is half a cup of vegetable oil we're gonna add our sugars now two types of sugars brown sugar and white sugar that combo adds good flavor and crisp edges so this is three quarters of a cup brown sugar 1/2 cup of white sugar let's stir this together I love Bowl cookies they're just so easy to make I don't even bake him the dough I've been known to do that that's where you mix it in a bowl preserves one all right now we're gonna add the eggs now the original recipe had one egg but we added an extra yolk and adds richness without being greasy so one egg and one yolk last but not least a little bit of vanilla this is a teaspoon between the brown sugar the brown butter and that little bit of vanilla oh yes oh yeah all right now we're gonna add our flour mixture now this dough is gonna get very thick and that's good because I think a lot of oatmeal dough's they add too much liquid thinking that the oats need that and that makes a cakey texture you want a stiff dough so it stays nice and crisp all right last but not least our three cups of old-fashioned oats and the most controversial ingredient in this whole cookie the raisins this is half of raisin you're not a fan of the reasons I am actually a fan of the reasons but just half a cup is all we're going to add they're optional I'm opting them in here I'm sorry that's all right I'm gonna make you like them mm-hmm I have no choice you don't have any choice so you can see how thick this dough is all right so switch over to a spatula and really just make sure everything's all incorporated here now it probably would have been easier to stir if you hadn't added the raisins all right I think we're pretty well incorporated so I have some baking sheet set up over there if you wouldn't mind thank you and they're lined of course with parchment paper now we're just gonna portion these cookies out and you want about three tablespoons of dough per cookie I'm gonna use a handy dandy scoop that measures pretty much three tablespoons of dough there's just so great to have on hand mm-hmm and I'm gonna push them all out and then if there's any dough left over I'll go back and add little bits to the whatever cookies look like they need it Jo left over here's our last cookie there all right now before we put these in the oven want to flatten the cookies a little bit because this dough is so thick those cookies won't spread right on their own so we're gonna give them a head start and the key to doing that is wet hands cuz this dough is very sticky so with wet hands I'm just gonna press each cookie tell us about two and a half inches in diameter I like to do one and then measure it see ya on the nose so that's your template that's my template all right so that tray looks perfect and as usual we're gonna bake these one tray at a time that way they bake evenly all the way through we're gonna bake them at 375 degrees for about ten minutes of tray until they're set around the edges but still nice and chewy in the middle Oh smell that I do I do I do hmm now knowing when these cookies are done baking can be a little tricky because they don't get a ton of color you can see they're just starting to get golden around the edges and but the center looks underdone and that's perfect that's how you get a chewy Center and also if you kind of touch it on the side you can see that edges are just starting to set so that's perfection okay so we're gonna let these cookies sit on this hot tray for about five minutes they're gonna continue to bake through a little bit and set up then we're gonna transfer them to a wire rack and let them cool completely all right in the meantime I'm gonna throw this second batch in the oven alright so here are two batches of cookies and they're ready to eat just no more waiting oh look at that nice and chewy in the center mmm very crisp around the edges mm-hmm it really does have an almost a toffee like taste but I can get those oats in there it tastes like toasted oats that's right I have a really complex flavor thanks to that brown butter and a little bit of cinnamon you know is not overpowering most the time when I eat cookies it's like a spice cookie with a little bit of oats in mm-hmm you definitely switch the equation that's oats first cinnamon takes a backseat finally an oatmeal cookie recipe that lets the oatmeal sign to make these at home start by using a combination of vegetable oil and butter and Brown that butter to deepen its flavor reduce the spices down to just a smidge of cinnamon and use both granulated sugar and brown sugar for a toffee to like taste mix the cookie dough by hand during an old-fashioned oats and raisins just before baking and there you have it from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen the most excellent the most OD oatmeal cookies oatmeal mokou taste is that what you owe to you Mike okay 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 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Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 924,693

Keywords: oatmeal raisin cookies, best oatmeal raisin cookie recipe, best oatmeal cookies, oatmeal cookies, cookies, cookie recipes, how to bake cookies, oatmeal raisin cookie recipe, america's test kitchen, americas test kitchen, cooking show, cooking tv show

Id: nfn0O25aDaU

Length: 8min 31sec (511 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 13 2019