>> from the editors of cook's illustrated magazine, it's america's test kitchen with your host christopher kimball, featuring test kitchen chefs julia collin davison, bridget lancaster, becky hays, with adam ried in the equipment corner and jack bishop in the tasting lab. discover the secrets of america's foremost food testers and tasters, today on america's test kitchen. today on america's test kitchen, bridget uncovers the secrets to perfect catalan beef stew. then, julia shows chris how to make classic spanish-style toasted pasta. finally, jack challenges chris to a tasting of spaghetti. that's all right here on america's test kitchen. america's test kitchen is brought to you by dcs by fisher & paykel.

america's cooks rely on innovation and culinary precision. dcs by fisher & paykel, offering premium indoor and outdoor kitchen appliances. >> and by kohler. inspiring home chefs to create a professional-level kitchen with innovative sinks, faucets, and cook centers. >> diamond crystal salt, for the professional chef and those who want to cook like one. from our family to yours, fresh from the field, foxy organic vegetables. cooking.com, an online retailer for the kitchen enthusiast. if it's not in your kitchen, try ours. wente vineyards. family owned, estate grown, sustainably farmed since 1883. lee kum kee, providing authentic chinese sauces for the past 125 years. >> everybody knows how to make beef stew, and we've been telling you how to do it for almost 20 years now. you start with beef-- chuck, in pieces.

you brown it for 15 or 20 minutes on all sides, you take it out of the pan, you add your onions, you add some vegetables, you add stock and a lot of wine, you put the top on and you let it cook low and slow. but guess what? we're going to go into the kitchen with bridget, take a little side trip to spain and figure out a whole new way to do an even better beef stew called catalan beef stew. so we're making catalan beef stew, which is very dierent th bstew in fact, it's so different, wegog to starta different cut beef. rebe use tars, we've sd when chuck. it has fat has connect tissue, good flavor, and it breaks down slowl and that's why you stew it. we also say never use the round, which is the hind-quarter, because it's tooean. it doesn't have great flavor. but there's a third way, which is the rib stion of e animal. so we're going to start our recipe for catalan beef stew with something from the ribs.

>> yes, we are. not your ribs, not my ribs. no, we're going to use short ribs. it's a big, beautiful piece of meat, lots of intramuscular fat. and if it's slowly cooked, it mes into butter, and that's what we're going to use toda all right, so i've got two-and-a-half pounds of short rib here. and these are english-style short ribs, and they're also boneless, and that's going to make it incredibly easy for us to cut up our stew meat in just a moment. so i'm just going to put this aside for a second. now, our first step isot gng be browning the meat. instead, we're going to start with cooking our flavor base, and in this case it's a sofrito, and it starts with onions. now i have in my dutch oven here two tablespoons of olive oil, and i've just got it set over medium low until the oil is shimmering. so we are going todd in two onions; these are finely chopped. and along with that, a half a teaspoon of kosher salt and a half a teaspoon of sugar. and both the salt and the sugar are going to kind of break down the cell walls of the onion and

let more moisture out. so it's going to take about 30 to 40 minutes. we want to cook it nice and slow so the onions caramelize. so in the meantime, we've got plenty of time to work on our beef. so we just want to take our knife and trim off this layer of fat on here, because it really won't break down, and get rid of it. and get rid of the silver skin here, too. all right, so now easy, we're just going to cut this into two-inch pieces. just cut right across. and those big pieces of meat are going to stay nice and solid. they're not going to break down and turn into mush. so that's pretty much all we have to do at this point. we'll just babysit the onions and wait for them to turn nice and golden brown. all right, that looks great. >> it smells good, too. >> you can see what 40 minutes of slow cooking will do to an onion. that is beautiful. >> it gets really dark. >> super dark and super concentrated in flavor. all right, so we're ready for our next step. we're going to use a couple of plum tomatoes. just want to cut this length-wise because we don't want the skin.

we want all that pulp. what i'm going to do is just scrape the pp. keep my hands nice and flat as possible. and i'll slow down as i get closer to the skin. and we're going to go ahead and put the tomatoes in there. all right. and a couple of flavors: we've got a bay leaf here. also one teaspoon of smoked paprika. and this really does add some serious flavor, and it's actually a pretty common ingredient in spanish cooking. all right, so we're going to cook all this. continue over medium low until most of that liquid is evaporated, and again it turns really dark and caramelized. that's only going to take about five to 10 minutes. so that smells so good, and you can really get some of that concentrated tomato flavor in there. so that is our sofrito. one-and-a-half cups of water goes into the pot. and we're also going to add one and a half cups of dry white wine. so you can use something like a sauvignon blanc for this or something like that. all right, so we're going to put

in a sprig of thyme, and also a little bit of cinnamon. this is one quarter teaspoon of ground cinnamon. and that's actually a pretty common spice to use in a stew like this. we need to bring that up to the simmer. so in the meantime, back to the beef. we're going to start off with one-and-a-half teaspoons of kosher salt and a half a teaspoon of black pepper. we're just going to toss it to coat it really well. all right, so that looks nicely coated. now i'm going to take this over to the pot and i'm not going to brown it. we're actually going to put this right into our simmering liquid. now, it's coming up to a simmer here. it's time to get this off the stovetop. we're going to finish it in the oven, and we've set it at 300 degrees, so that's a nice, gentle heat. but i'm not going to put the lid on, so the beef is actually going to brown in the oven. all right, so we're going to cook that for an hour in the oven, and then after that i'll go in there and stir it and redistribute the meat, and then we'll let it cook for another hour and a half to two hours until the meat is really tender. >> so this is a very odd beef

stew; it's all backwards. and one of the things that's most amazing about it is that meat in the oven is going to brown on its own. we didn't have to start the recipe by browning it in the dutch oven like we normally would. why not? well, browning has to do with the maillard reaction; you've all heard of that. that's when amino acids and sugars combine. that happens at temperatures of 300 degrees or above, and it takes a little bit of time. so in the pot, the meat... part of the meat is above the surface of the liquid. it starts to dry out in the oven-- there's no top on the dutch oven-- and then that temperature climbs above the boiling point of water, 212, which is only as hot as it would get if it was wet. it dries out, it gets up to 300 and above, the maillard reaction starts to take off. and it's in there for enough time so you actually get browning and you get a lot of flavor development. so that's how this recipe, without browning the meat ahead of time, actually develops flavor and develops browning. >> all right, so the stew is still in the oven. now we just need to finish the last step, and that's the picada. now, it's traditionally used in

a lot of spanish dishes. and it's very similar to a pesto; it's added towards the end of cooking. it's usually nuts, breads, some other ingredients like herbs. now, i've started off by toasting some almonds. and we chose almonds instead of hazelnuts, which is the other nut of choice, because we're too lazy to peel all those hazelnuts. so this is a quarter cup of blanched whole almonds. i've gone ahead and browned them in a tablespoon of olive oil just until they're nice and toasty brown. that only took about three minutes. we're going to turn this into picada, so we need to grind it up. so i just want to put these in my food processor. oh, the almonds smell great, don't they? >> they do. >> so we're going to put this back over medium heat. and i'm going to add some bread. this is one slice of hearty white sandwich bread, and we took off the crusts and tore it into one-inch pieces. just going to fry the bread in the oil until it's nice and toasty on both sides, and that's only going to take about two to four minutes. all right, so the bread is nicely toasted on both sides. so we'll take it over to the food processor. in it goes.

all right, so now we're done with the skillet for a moment. we're going to add a couple of cloves of garlic raw in there, because we really like that pungency of raw garlic. so i want to grind all this down until it's really finely ground, and that's going to take about 20 seconds. all right, so we're done with the food processor. so now we're going to add in some fresh parsley-- three tablespoons of minced fresh parsley. and we didn't want to add it to the food processor because it tends to turn parsley into grass. not good. so we're going to heat up another tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat. and the pan is pretty hot there, so it's at once starting to shimmer. and this is a half a pound of oyster mushrooms, and we trimmed the ends. we're just going to put this right in the skillet and cook them till they start to soften and brown, just for a few minutes. now, we didn't add the oyster mushrooms directly to the stew because we didn't want them to disintegrate and give all their flavor into the stew. so i just want to pull them off

the heat, and now it's time to go get that stew. it smells so good. it's all those potent, concentrated flavors: the cinnamon, the smoked paprika. >> look at that maillard reaction. >> it is seriously brown there. so go ahead and scrape the mushrooms right in there, and the picada. and just to add a little last minute brightness, we've got a teaspoon of sherry vinegar. you do the stirring. oh, that looks good. >> okay. >> all right, back off for a second, i just want to take a taste here. mmm... it just needs a little bit more salt, a little bit more pepper. oh, make sure you gets lots of mushrooms here, too. i mean, the meat is just shredding; it's falling apart. >> oh... this is the best beef stew we've ever done.

>> i think you're right. short ribs and oyster mushrooms, that picada... >> so a catalan beef stew, we start not with the browning of the beef, but with onions and tomatoes cooked low and slow. nice fond in the pan. water, wine, short ribs. top off in the oven, nice slow cooking. that browns the meat actually as it sits in the stew. and finish it with the picada, which has bread, it has nuts, and a little garlic. it thickens up the sauces at the end and adds a nice depth of flavor. so there you have it, from america's test kitchen to your kitchen, we think the best way to make a beef stew: a catalan beef stew. excellent job. >> thank you. >> over more than 20 years here in the test kitchen we've done pasta tastings, and to my great amazement, ronzoni has come out on top. i've actually picked it a number of times. so we like to go back and check things every few years. we're going to do this again and see if the imported pastas once and for all can measure up to ronzoni. >> they're constantly tweaking their formulas, so we like to check what manufacturers are doing.

you have spaghetti, it has been cooked in salted water and lightly oiled so that you do not have one starchy mess. two things we focused on: flavor and texture. now, flavor differences are really pretty subtle. we did a second tasting with marinara sauce. it was impossible to pick up flavor differences. texture, the big thing is that some of them seemed mushy no matter how we cooked them, and that we constantly thought we were pulling them off at the right moment, and then by the time we served them, they were mushy. and we realized it wasn't our fault, it was the pasta's fault. >> it's never our fault! >> it's never your fault. we sent these all out to be weighed to see how much water it was absorbing. and we also analyzed the starch content in the water to see how much starch it was shedding. and the more water it was absorbing and the more starch it was losing, the weaker the pasta was, and the more likely that you had gummy pasta. you can even see the difference here. i've got two samples: this is from a brand that has very low cook loss, meaning it's losing very little starch. and this brand is somewhat clearer. i mean, it's still obviously losing starch, but it's losing

about half as much starch as this other brand, where really you can barely see the spoon through the cloudy water. some of the brands are adding durum flour. finely milled durum flour is cheaper, and so some of the companies are supplementing it, and it's got a much finer texture and weaker structure. you end up with pasta that is no longer al dente no matter how hard you try to pull it off the stove at the right time. so you've been tasting. >> i have. >> you have. >> i like a pasta tasting. >> so anything that you're liking a lot? >> let's start with the worst. >> okay. >> okay, this is the one i did not like. >> well, and that... our tasters agree with you. that was at the bottom of the ranking. it's an imported brand. it was much too mushy. this was the one that had a lot of cook loss, a lot of starch being shed into the water, and we felt like no matter how we cooked it, it was not al dente. >> this had the best texture, i would say, so let's go with that. >> de cecco, from italy; imported. that was our winner. >> finally, de cecco wins. people come up to me for years and go, "what about de cecco?" >> it had the best texture, it had the lowest amount of starch being shed into the water. it did great.

>> this i think is ronzoni. >> and you would be correct. (laughing) >> look at that, hey! i'm a ronzoni kind of guy. actually, it does have a nutty flavor, it does. >> our tasters thought though that... that has durum flour as well as the semolina, which we think makes it a little more prone to being soft when you cook it. >> and this one was sort of in between here. >> that was also in the bottom half of the rankings. that's barilla, the best-selling brand in italy that's now being made in the united states. again, this one has durum flour and we felt like it was a little tricky to get it cooked just right. often it was too soft. >> so after 20 years of being in first place, ronzoni drops out of the running, and the new winner is de cecco. so you want to make a nice paella and you ain't got no rice. so what do you do? you use pasta, of course. >> mm-hmm. >> which is the point of this exercise. fideo, which is, in spain, sort of a bucatini style pasta, about two inches long. >> uh-huh. >> as a matter of fact, fideo is that pasta; that's where they get the name of that dish. >> that's right. >> so paella with pasta. >> yeah, it's like paella's

younger, shy sister. >> i got that. >> so, much like paella, the starch is cooked in a very flavorful, seafood broth, and then it's studded with seafood and then finished in the oven. so starting with the seafood, the first thing we noted is that a lot of the fideo recipes used all manner of seafood. but we can simplify it down just to shrimp, and it still tasted pretty good, because of course these are cheap and very easy to find. and what we're going to do is peel and devein the shrimp. and this is a pound and a half of shrimp, and they're 21/25s, meaning that there's 21 to 25 shrimp in a pound. so we're going to take off the peels, but we're going to save the peels because we're going to use them to make a very quick homemade seafood broth later. and of course, sometimes this is done for you if you buy what is called "easy peel shrimp." but sometimes if it's not cut open, you want to go in there, cut open the top, and make sure there's no icky vein in there. and a trick is to use a paring knife and you can just wipe off the vein on a piece of paper towel and then throw it away. so obviously, shrimp cook

through really quickly, and if you added them at the beginning they would be overcooked, so we're going to add them at the end. but if you just sprinkle them into the dish, they taste really bland, so we're going to marinate them. this is a tablespoon of olive oil, a teaspoon of minced fresh garlic, a little bit of salt and pepper. and you're going to stir this around so that it's all nice and coated. and we're going to keep these in the refrigerator until we add them to the pot at the last moment. all right, so now onto the flavorful broth. so to the shrimp shells we're going to add a little bit of water. this is two and a quarter cups. and now we're actually going to add a little bit of chicken broth. this is one cup of low-sodium chicken broth, which of course will add a meaty flavor to the seafood broth, but won't add its distinctive chicken flavor. along with a bay leaf, nestle that in there. and then we're going to cover the bowl and microwave it for about six minutes until the water's boiling and the shrimp shells have turned pink. all right, so while we're making our easy microwave broth, we're going to take a look at the noodles, the pasta.

and obviously, real fideos are pretty hard to find and they're not worth searching out because you can substitute thin spaghetti or spaghettini. it works just as well. and of course, we've got to break them down into smaller pieces that measure about an inch to two inches. use a clean kitchen towel and you put the spaghetti in the middle and you kind of make it flat. fold the towel over, and now holding it taut right against the edge of the counter here, you're going to break it into one- to two-inch pieces. (crunching sounds) >> that's a great sound. >> it is a good sound. there we go. and then you can just simply dump it into a bowl. the key flavor in fideos is this pasta, but toasted till it's a nice golden brown. and we're going to do that in this skillet. i already have two teaspoons of olive oil in here. we're going to put it over medium high heat. add the pasta. we're just going to toast it until it's very golden, about the color of peanut butter. and a lot of recipes we found did this in the oven, but that didn't work for us because it

didn't toast through evenly. and you have to stir it a lot to make sure it gets evenly golden. in the oven, that was just a pain. so the key is to stand here, stir it a lot, keep it moving so it gets nice and evenly toasted. and this will take about six to eight minutes. so here's our broth that has been in the microwave. you can tell it smells pretty good already. we're just going to let it hang out here and steep while we finish cooking the pasta. >> okay. >> all right, now this pasta is looking good and toasted. so now we're going to take it out of the skillet. we're going to set it aside in a bowl while we start to build the basis for our sauce. all right, so putting the skillet back on the heat. we're actually going to build the fideos right in this pan. we're going to start by adding two tablespoons of vegetable oil and one onion. and we're going to sauté this over medium-high heat until it gets nice and softened and a little bit brown. and to help things go a little faster, we cut the onion on the small side, and we're going to add a little bit of salt, which

of course seasons the onions, but it will help draw the moisture out of the onions so they cook a bit more quickly. this is very similar to making a sofrito. when you're talking about fideos, a sofrito usually is onions, garlic, and tomatoes. using fresh tomatoes was out of the question for us between the peeling and the long cooking time, so we're going to use canned tomatoes; 14.5 ounce can of diced canned tomatoes. but we don't want to include the juice because we don't want it to be a tomato sauce. we just want the tomatoes themselves. so we're going to drain them, and then i'll run over with a knife and get them into much smaller pieces. all right, and i'm actually going to return them to the strainer so they can continue to drain until we're ready to add them to the pan. that way they'll be good and dry and they'll start to brown right away. so those onions look pretty good, and now we're going to add our tomatoes. (sizzling) and we're going to really cook this down so the tomatoes get brown and start to develop a good flavor and some fond on the bottom of the pan.

all right, so these tomatoes have been cooking for about three minutes. we can see the fond has started to develop on the bottom of the pan, and they're a little bit darker. and now we're going to add some aromatics and spices. and this is a little garlic, just two teaspoons. and now really the heart of the flavor of fideos: paprika. (sniffing) oh, smoked paprika, which is one of my favorites. >> mm, i do too, i love it. >> yes, we're going to add a teaspoon of each to the pan. this is half a teaspoon ofof anchovy paste. so we're going to cook these spices until they're really well developed. >> mmm... >> yeah, you can start to smell them. that takes about a minute, a minute and a half. and we're getting a nice, dark fond on the bottom, and that's good. and notice i didn't put in saffron, which is traditional for paella and some fideo recipes. but we found you really couldn't taste the saffron in the finished dish, and it just wasn't worth the expense, so we left it out. so to this we're going to stir in our fideos. get them all coated with some of this spice and tomatoes. and now it's time to add our

broth, which has been steeping off the heat. and we're going to strain it right into this skillet. here, i'll hold the strainer. >> and i'll take the hot bowl. >> there you go. it's not that hot, is it? there you go. and i'm going to press down on the shrimp shells to make sure i extract all the broth. and to this we're just going to add a little bit of white wine. this is a quarter cup of white wine. and a little bit of salt and pepper. this is a quarter teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of ground black pepper. and now we're going to bring this to a simmer and cook it uncovered until the pasta's tender and the broth has reduced to a nice sauce. and that'll take anywhere from eight to ten minutes. all right, so these noodles look pretty done. of course, we're looking for that they're tender. mmm... >> that would be good. >> that's good. they are ready to go. and so now we're going to stir in our shrimp that has been marinating. we're going to sprinkle them over the top. now we're just going to stir them a little bit because we're

going to run this under the broiler to finish, which we found some traditional recipes did. and it got the pasta on top nice and toasted and gave it some good texture. but if you just leave the shrimp hanging out on top, they get a little overdone and rubbery, so you just want to stir them in. a few of them sticking out's okay. that looks pretty good. so now i have the broiler heated. and we're going to run this under the broiler for about five minutes or so. and now, of course, that's a broiler-safe skillet. if you didn't have a broiler- safe skillet, you could have just transferred all of that into a broiler-safe casserole dish and done the same thing. >> okay. >> so it's been about five minutes. time to check on our fideos. oh, that looks good. >> it looks like a lovely fideo garden. >> (laughing) it does. yeah, the ends of the pastas curl up, and that's what gets toasty and crunchy. and while we're going to let that cool for a minute, i'm going to make a quick aioli, which is traditional to serve with fideos. so i'm going to start by making a towel nest for the bowl so it doesn't wobble around. and in the bowl, i have two large egg yolks. i'm going to add a little garlic.

this is one large clove of minced garlic. a little bit of lemon juice; four teaspoons of lemon juice. half a teaspoon of salt. quarter teaspoon of sugar. and now i'm going to slowly whisk in three quarters of a cup of olive oil. and of course, we're making an emulsion, so i start off pretty slowly and let the oil get used to hanging out with the yolk, and then you can go a little bit faster as the emulsion gets stronger. and there we have a little garlic and lemon aioli. i'm going to season it with a little bit of white pepper. now we're good to go. >> mm, that looks good. >> going to sprinkle just a little bit of fresh parsley over the top, and now we can dig right in. and it has that smoky smell thanks to the smoked paprika and the little bit of char from the broiler. i'm going to put a little bit of aioli on top for you. >> sure, thank you.

mmm... >> mmm... >> boy, this is really good. >> it has real flavor thanks to that paprika and the smoked paprika. and the browned tomatoes really have the depth of flavor. >> so to make fideo, which is a early version of paella, at home, we toasted our own pasta, we made our own shrimp stock with the shrimp shells. we also marinated the shrimp. the whole thing goes into a skillet and is cooked briefly, and then finished under a broiler. so it's something you could do tuesday night, wednesday night, thursday night. so from america's test kitchen to your kitchen, an early version of paella called fideo, which is made with pasta. you can get this recipe, all the recipes from this season, our tasting and testing results, watch selected episodes of this show at our website, americastestkitchentv.com. you know, usually imported recipes don't make it as a tuesday night dinner. this one, this makes it. >> yeah. >> let us help with dinner tonight. visit our website any time for free access to this season's recipes, taste tests, and equipment ratings, or to watch

current season episodes. log onto americastestkitchentv.com. >> the complete america's test kitchen tv show cookbook includes every recipe, tasting, and testing from all 13 years' shows, including this season. with over 850 recipes, it's our most comprehensive collection ever. the cost, $29.95-- ten dollars less than the cover price. you will also receive this four dvd set, a $39.95 value, featuring all 26 episodes from this season, at no additional charge. to order, call 1-800-831-8315, or order online at americastestkitchentv.com. >> america's test kitchen is brought to you by dcs by fisher & paykel. america's cooks rely on innovation and culinary precision. dcs by fisher & paykel, offering premium indoor and outdoor kitchen appliances. cooking.com, an online retailer for the kitchen enthusiast. if if it's not in your kitchen, try ours. from our family to yours, fresh

from the field, foxy organic vegetables. kohler. diamond crystal salt, the gourmet choice. wente vineyards. and by lee kum kee. >> welcome to "skyweek." let's see what's happening in the sky from monday, july 22, to sunday, july 28.

two fine constellations are side-by-side in the south -- hook-tailed scorpius on the right, and sagittarius to its left. modern star charts usually show sagittarius as a teapot. it's an eye-catching pattern, even though none of its stars is super bright. but sagittarius means "archer," and the bow and arrow are easy to picture if you visualize the stars that way. according to ancient greek tradition, the bowman was either the centaur chiron, or the satyr crotus. this is tony flanders from "sky & telescope" magazine, wishing you clear skies and great views. >> brought to you by... manufacturers of telescopes and binoculars. maybe you have some energy- saving appliances, like an

energy star-rated washer and dryer. but what about your tv? chances are it's on more than your washer, dryer, and kitchen appliances combined. did you know that if half of us in the u.s. replaced our regular tvs with an energy star model, the change would be like shutting down a power plant? you can find the energy star on everything from standard to high def to the largest flat-screen your heart desires. ow that makes sense. hi, i'm rachel.

come and join my friends... alex, leah, and hopkins for "signing time!" leah uses american sign language. we'll teach you some. come sign with us. ♪ there's singing time and dancing time ♪ ♪ and laughing time and playing time ♪ ♪ and now it is our favorite time, signing time ♪