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America’s Test Kitchen | Episodes, Recipes & Reviews | America’s Test Kitchen America’s Test Kitchen Logo Cook’s Country Logo Cook’s Illustrated Logo America’s Test Kitchen Logo Cook’s Country Logo Cook’s Illustrated Logo Expert advice for every cook Login Join Now Recipes Learn Equipment Ingredients Shows Shop America’s Test Kitchen Butter Chicken Is Much More Than It’s Namesake Ingredient Implies Andrew Janjigian Dig in, Discover, and Cook You’ll want to put this thrifty, fast, and flavorful chicken supper into your regular rotation. We start by tossing cauliflower florets with melted butter, salt, and pepper, then let them roast to golden perfection in the oven. Simultaneously, we sear chicken until beautifully browned, then transfer it to join the cauliflower for a final roast, ensuring succulent, flavorful meat. A luscious sauce quickly prepared in a skillet, crafted from onions, garlic, thyme, and the tangy sweetness of pomegranate juice, takes this dish to new heights. Using pomegranate juice instead of wine for the pan sauce added sweetness and a fruitier flavor. We finish everything by drizzling this delightful concoction over the chicken and serve it alongside the roasted cauliflower. With its harmonious blend of savory and sweet flavors, you can treat yourself and your loved ones any night of the week to a culinary adventure that’s both simple to prepare and utterly unforgettable. Start Cooking Alli Berkey We infused a white fish with robust flavors and turned it into a quick, complete dinner. We focused first on a rich spice rub for the halibut that would impart flavor as it sat. An oil-based rub with coriander and paprika provided aromatic flavor and nice color, and a little bit of cayenne added just the right amount of subtle heat. We tried many accompaniments, from green beans to potatoes, to pair with this spiced fish, but our favorite turned out to be a combination of chickpeas and cherry tomatoes. The chickpeas soaked up the spiced broth, and some of the tomatoes broke down in the oven, creating a bright sauce that complemented the halibut nicely. We flavored the chickpeas and tomatoes with more coriander and paprika—plus shallots, garlic, and lemon to brighten all of the warmth. We simply nestled the halibut fillets into the chickpea-tomato mixture before baking. When the halibut was cooked through, we drizzled it with some fruity olive oil and sprinkled it with fresh cilantro for an herbal note. Start Cooking Camila Chaparro 16 Easy Grilled Weeknight Dinners You’ll be firing up the grill every night of the week to make these tasty, yet simple, grilled dinners. Keep Reading Megan Ginsberg This iconic, cozy British pub staple, hangs on the ultrasavory onion gravy. Bangers and mash may be the meat and potatoes, but great bangers and mash revolves around plump, well-browned links napped with a rich, umami sauce. Searing the sausages ensured that the links developed attractive, flavorful browning; steaming cooked them through gently so that they were plump and juicy. Adding the onions (thin-sliced so that they softened quickly) to the pan to steam with the sausages jump-started their cooking. Continuing to sauté them after the sausage came out further softened them and caramelized their sugars; doing so also developed a deep, flavor-packed fond on the bottom of the skillet. Deglazing the pan with a highly seasoned beef broth captured the fond, and simmering the onions in the broth tenderized them more and concentrated the flavor of the gravy. A cornstarch slurry and butter, whisked in just before serving, gave the gravy the requisite viscosity, shine, and richness. Start Cooking Steve Dunn Your best bet for pasta sauce on the fly? The small but mighty cherry tomato. Cherry tomatoes are the perfect choice for a quick fresh tomato sauce. You can toss them directly into the pan without any prep, and they don’t need lengthy cooking to concentrate their flavor or thicken into a sauce. That’s because they’re naturally more flavorful than the bigger varieties conventionally used in sauce, and they’re full of soluble pectin that breaks down readily to a silky, saucy consistency. To ensure that some of the cherry tomatoes remained intact and would pop in the mouth with their characteristic flood of juices, we cooked them for 10 minutes in a covered saucepan, where only the layer of tomatoes in direct contact with the bottom of the saucepan burst and those on top steamed more gently in the released juices. To keep the sauce bright and tomato-focused, we sautéed the tomatoes with slivered garlic, red pepper flakes, and a touch of sugar, along with anchovies that melded into the mix without announcing their fishiness. Butter tossed with the pasta and the sauce brought a light, creamy richness to the dish. We finished it with a sprinkle of fresh basil and a gremolata-inspired topping of fried bread crumbs and capers. Start Cooking Steve Dunn We make quesadillas complex and filling while avoiding damp, limp results. Making a quesadilla with a complex filling, rather than just cheese, poses a few challenges for the cook that could lead to undercooked, bland, or limp and soggy results. We addressed these issues by using quick-cooking chorizo sausage along with shredded sweet potato, which was concentrated in the microwave so that it don’t sog out the quesadilla. Jarred piquillo peppers delivered superconvenient yet bold flavor, and Monterey Jack cheese was used not just for its distinctive flavor but also for its ability to easily melt without breaking. Finally, we shallow-fried our quesadillas rather than cooking them in a dry skillet, promoting enhanced browning for flavor and a crispness that could stand up to the heavier filling. Check out our version for two. Start Cooking Steve Dunn We set out to find an easy method for making ultrasupple stir-fried beef. We discovered that in order to produce a stir-fry with velvety, tender beef, we needed to choose the right cut of meat and treat it correctly. Flank steak, cut across the grain into bite-size pieces, delivered great beef flavor and a moderate chew. Then, our combination of meat-tenderizing techniques—soaking the meat briefly in a mild baking soda solution and adding some cornstarch to the marinade before flash-searing it in a very hot pan—finished the job of delivering supertender, high-quality beef stir-fry. Start Cooking Steve Dunn Our Chocolate Wafers Are Just as Good as the Ones Nabisco Killed Replicating Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers was a tall order. But our DIY version is an excellent stand-in for crumb crusts, icebox cakes, and more. Keep Reading Emily Rahravan Deli-style shrimp salads can be rubbery and bland. We fix the shrimp, then the dressing. For a shrimp salad recipe with firm and tender shrimp and a perfect deli-style dressing that wouldn’t mask the flavor of the shrimp or drown out the other ingredients, we started by cooking the shrimp in cold court bouillon, then heated the shrimp and liquid to just a near simmer. We kept the traditional mayonnaise in our shrimp salad recipe, but limited the amount to ¼ cup per pound of shrimp. Start Cooking The perfect burgers for early Sunday morning, late Saturday night, and any time in between. We mixed pork sausage right into the ground beef to pack maximum breakfast flavor into these burgers. The resulting patties were savory and well spiced and stayed juicy even after being cooked to well-done (a safety must in order to cook the sausage through). We needed a spicy-sweet sauce to round out the salty, meaty patties: Mayo spiked with maple syrup, minced chipotle chile, Worcestershire sauce, and pepper did the trick. Tangy cheddar cheese, crispy bacon, and a fried egg topped off these decadent burgers perfectly for a meal that featured all the best parts of breakfast in each bite. Start Cooking Jessica Rudolph Before there were bowl shops on every corner, there was simple, unbeatable poke. Poke (poh-KAY”) translates from Hawaiian as...