America's Test Kitchen

-Today on "America's Test Kitchen," Dan makes Julia an easy grill-roasted whole chicken, Jack challenges Bridget to a taste test of milk chocolate chips, Lisa reviews specialty gadgets, and Elle makes Bridget the perfect skillet-charred green beans.

It's all coming up right here on "America's Test Kitchen."

-The sum of every great chef can be reduced down to just one recipe -- roast chicken, and today, it's Dan's turn.

-So, Julia, I will actually argue that grill-roasting a chicken is the next level.

-So you're breaking the rules already?

You're not going to roast it.

-I'm not even going to roast it.

I'm going out to the grill.

-[ Chuckles ] -So the grill is fraught with all of these problems when you try to roast a whole chicken, and we're not going to spatchcock or butterfly this.

We're not going to treat it in any special way.

We're just going to go straight onto the grill with some really simple prep to it.

So this is kind of the ultimate super simple grill-roasted chicken.

Okay.

So first, I have a tablespoon of kosher salt and a 1/2 teaspoon of pepper.

Combine that, and then I just pat this nice and dry.

-And that looks like a 3 1/2 to 4 1/2-pound broiler chicken.

-That's exactly right.

Yeah.

This is the classic chicken you see at the supermarket, and it's going to be perfect here.

You can do a couple of these if you're serving more.

Awesome.

So I have a tablespoon of vegetable oil, and this is going to serve two purposes.

One, we're going to coat it nicely, and it's going to help with browning.

It's going to, you know, transfer heat really nicely to the skin.

It's also going to help all of the salt and pepper stick to it nicely.

So just rub it in.

Okay.

Now time for seasoning.

Now, my mantra is always season high and dry.

So it doesn't stick to your fingers.

It gets good distribution, and seasoning up high also helps with that.

-And plus it makes you look cool.

-It makes you look -- Oh, yeah, you can do it from, like, up here.

-Oh, there we go.

-There we go.

-That's the drama.

-That's the drama.

Okay.

Great.

So we're not spatchcocking this.

We're not doing a big breakdown or anything, but there are two really important steps that help it cook nice and evenly, and the first is putting these wings back here.

-Mm-hmm.

That just protects the wing tips from burning on the grill.

-Alright.

Great.

And then the other thing is we want to get these legs to stay together.

That's going to give it a nice compact shape, and the real key to it, though, is that you actually protect these thin parts of the breasts from overcooking.

This is really thick up here, not a lot to worry about, but up here, it's real thin, and it's exposed to the heat when the legs are like that.

So I have a small piece of twine here, and I like to go under on one side, over on the other side, and then just tie that off.

And we'll clip the extra string.

So that bird is prepped, and we're almost ready to go out to the grill, but we have one more thing to do.

Let me wash my hands real quick.

So I lied to you a second ago and said that we weren't doing any seasoning beyond what we have on this bird.

We are doing a little bit more seasoning, and it's in the form of smoke.

-Oh, okay.

-We're not going to use a ton of smoke on the grill.

We're not making grilled smoked chicken and a really, really smoky flavor.

We want to use it like we would any other spice, so just a little bit, and for that reason, we're going to start with a small amount.

We only have a 1/4 cup of wood chips here.

-And that's nearly nothing.

-It's a very small amount.

You're going to get this kind of nice background flavor.

It's going to taste like it came from the grill instead of the oven, but it won't be overly smoky.

So I'm placing a 1/4 cup of wood chips in the center of this rectangle of foil here, and then I do a business fold.

So I fold up the bottom third and then the top down over that, and them I'm just going to crimp up the edges, and we'll have an 8-by-4-1/2-inch rectangle.

Now, this might seem very particular, and it is, and there's really good reason for it, and I'll explain.

So what we basically want is just one layer of foil on the bottom here so that when this hits the coals, it starts to heat up really, really quickly.

So the final thing is we're going to cut two 1-inch slits spaced evenly apart.

Airflow is really important with a chip packet.

So if I took these wood chips, and I just throw them on the coals, what do they do?

-Incinerate.

-They just catch on fire.

-Mm-hmm.

-You wouldn't get much smoke.

That'd be about it.

So controlling airflow in a chip packet is really, really key.

You want just enough to get in that they start to smolder, and that smoke seasons the chicken.

Okay.

So we'll pop it over here, and it's time to head out to the grill.

-Alright.

-Okay.

So we've got our beautiful setup over here with 7 quarts of coals.

-That's a lot.

-Plenty of heat power here, and we're going to do a really cool setup where we're actually doing a bank on both sides.

-Ah, so the middle is going to be empty.

-That's right, and so what we're really trying to do is mimic the heat of the oven.

We want really indirect moderate heat so we can cook this thing really gently and get really juicy results.

Okay.

Great.

So I've got the banked coals on either side there, and then we have our foil packet.

Going to be plenty of smoke for what we want.

Alright.

So now goes our grill grate, and we cover with the lid, and so we have the vent halfway open on the bottom, and we'll keep it halfway open on top, as well, and what we're looking for now is about 5 minutes of heating.

We'll get lots of nice smoke coming out of those chips, and the grates will get nice and hot, so it'll be easy to clean.

-Alright.

-Okay.

So that's been 5 minutes.

We've got some nice smoke coming out our packet there.

-Just a few wisps.

-Just a few wisps, yep.

So I'm going to use my scraper here.

Make sure we're nice and clean.

-Wad of paper towels?

-Wad of paper towels.

We're going to do a little oiling up.

-Always good to do this to your grill every time just before you cook.

Helps keep the grill grates well seasoned so things will stick less.

-Okay.

Now, it is time for our chicken.

Put it on just like this.

So the cavity is facing me, and we're right in between both banks of coals.

So this way, whenever we render any fat, it's not going to drip down onto the coals and cause flare-ups.

It'll just go right into the bottom of the grill.

-Alright.

Breast-side up.

-Breast-side up, exactly, and so I'm going to put the lid on.

I'm going to put the vents right over the chicken here, and that's going to do a couple things.

The first is that we're going to get really even heat.

If we put it over one of the banks of coals, we draw more air, and we end up getting, you know, hotter coals on this side, so this will be nice and even.

It's also going to make the smoke kind of pull up this way, so we'll get some smoke on the chicken but not too much.

So we're going to cook this until the breast registers 130 degrees, which is about 45 to 55 minutes.

-Alright.

-Okay.

So it's been about 50 minutes.

Let's check this guy out.

Starting to look good.

Now, you can see he's got some smoke on him.

-Mm-hmm.

-You know, a little bit of that nice color there.

So I'm going to go in the thickest part of the breast, and I'm looking for 130 degrees.

And that looks perfect -- 131.

-Well done.

-We'll take it.

Alright.

So now we're going to do some really nice browning.

We've got indirect heat to get it really juicy to this point.

-It's a little pale.

-A little pale, and that's why we've got these hot coals over here.

So I'm going to move it over, but before I do that, I need to make sure I get the juices out of the cavity here.

If we don't, they'll come down here and crash onto the coals and all that soot and all that.

We don't want that.

So I'm just going to go right into the cavity and gently pick it up, bring a bowl underneath and just give it a tilt.

Awesome.

So now I'm going to put it back-side down, breast-side up right on top.

You can already hear some of that nice sizzle.

-Yeah.

-So I'm gonna cover the grill, and we're going to cook this for about 5 minutes until the back is nice and golden brown.

Oh, yeah.

-Oh, I'm starting to smell it now.

-You can smell it.

You can hear it.

-Mm-hmm.

-And we can do a little peak here.

You can see we've got some really gorgeous browning there.

-Now it's looking good.

-It looks nice, right?

It's awesome.

So now we're going to flip it over and get the same thing on the breast side.

-Well, and also, I can see that he's handling the tongs very gently, so you're not ripping any of that skin on the breast because you want that to stay intact.

-Exactly.

So that beautiful browning, we're going to get it on the bottom there, as well.

About another 5 minutes.

Okay.

So that's been 5 minutes.

Some nice searing going on, so let's take a look at that.

-Ooh-hoo-hoo!

-That looks good, doesn't it?

-That looks great.

-So we're going to pop it over here, over indirect heat again so we can take its temperature, and this time, we're looking for 155 degrees.

We're actually going to let this rest for 20 minutes, and we'll see that we come up past 160.

Beautiful.

So we're at 156.

-Alright.

-We are good to go.

So we'll transfer it to our carving board here.

We're going to leave this uncovered so we get that nice, crispy skin, and we can head in.

In about 20 minutes, we can carve.

-Alright.

-Okay.

So this thing looks and smells incredible.. -Mm-hmm.

-You get that whiff of smoke, right?

Really, really nice.

So this has rested for about 20 minutes.

We gained that extra 5 degrees from that sear that we did at the end there, so the only thing left to do now is carve and eat it.

-Mmm.

-So I like to go in on the side here first.

Oh, my God.

You can see those juices.

-Ohh!

-That looks so good.

I separate between the leg here and the breast, and then I just do a little pop, make sure I can get that out of there.

So then once we've separated this out, I like to do this right away, is to just kind of find that seam.

It's a little less obvious once it's cooked.

You can't see that line of fat quite as well, but it's usually a little bit more towards the drum than you think it is, and you just cut right through, just going through cartilage, and we've got our two thighs and our two drumsticks, and I really like this orientation for taking off the breasts.

It allows you to kind of follow the curvature of the breastbone a little bit more.

So the first thing you want to do is find that bone right in the middle and then come just to the left of it, and I like to start with kind of the long part of my knife so I'm not digging in too deep.

Gives me a chance to peek and make sure I got it right, and I'm just to the left of that bone, which is awesome.

And here, it's all about taking your time.

And so once it starts to come away, peeling it back is a really, really nice move.

You get to see more in there, and the more you can see, the easier it is.

So here, I'm following it down, peeling back, and then you can get down to see this bone right here.

That's where the wing attaches, so we're just going to cut through, and then I like to make one incision on this side to separate that skin, and you've got your breasts separated.

-Perfectly done.

-So just work on this side, as well, same way.

Awesome.

So we come down here.

See that bone?

And, again, I like to come over here and just make that one incision this way.

And now you've got a nice, clean view of your wing bone here, so it's very easy to take that off, and then you can do an easy split on that, as well.

So you've got your drum and your flat, and I like to leave that little tip attached there.

It didn't burn because we tucked it away.

It's extra crispy.

And then just do nice thick slices on this.

That skin is where we picked up most of the smoke flavor, so you want a lot of that.

You're going to get the best effect that way.

Alright.

Now it is time to eat.

-Not a minute too soon.

-Come on down here.

-Oh, that looks perfectly done.

-So if I had to guess, you want a drumstick.

-[ Chuckles ] You know me.

-Yep, but you also want to try the white meat.

-Of course I do.

-Alright.

A couple slices.

-This looks amazing.

-Oh, it's so good.

-Just a handful of ingredients -- salt, pepper, oil, chicken, and wood chips.

-A little bit of smoke, yep.

You can see how juicy it is.

-Oh, perfect.

Absolutely perfect.

-Mmm.

-That little bit of smoke is just an accent.

It's by no means overwhelming.

-It's like roasted chicken with just a little bit of something extra special.

What's really nice is we have good grill flavor overall.

-Mm-hmm.

-You know, most of the time, we cooked indirect, which is really good for evenly cooked meat, but that little bit of time directly over the coals, we get all these little tiny flare ups, and that provides a ton of flavor right on the skin itself.

-Dan, this is absolutely delicious.

So there you have it.

If you want to make the ultimate roast chicken, rub a 3-1/2- to 4-1/2-pound bird with oil, season with salt and pepper, and tie the legs together.

Make a two-sided fire, add a wood chip packet for a little smoke, and cook the chicken in the center of the grill for about 45 minutes.

Using tongs, carefully drain away any rendered fat and juice from the cavity before browning it on all sides.

From "America's Test Kitchen" to your kitchen, a killer new recipe for easy grill-roasted whole kitchen.

Awesome.

-Awesome.

-Awesome.

-There used to be only one chip on the block, and that was the semisweet chocolate chip, but now there's bittersweet and white chocolate versions and milk chocolate, so Jack's here to tell us which milk chocolate chip we should be using.

-There is a chip for everyone.

-I love it.

-And this is your lucky day because usually I bring you the raw ingredient straight from the package... -Yes.

-...which, in this case, would be pretty good.

-Right.

True.

Yeah, wait a minute.

-But I made it even better.

I brought you chocolate chip cookies.

-I got to say, I am not unhappy.

-Yeah.

You get two.

So dig in.

These are milk chocolate chips, so the difference between milk chocolate and the dark chocolates, which includes both semisweet and bittersweet, is that it has more sugar, less chocolate, and of course it has the milk solids, which gives you that creamy, buttery, luscious texture that we love with milk chocolate.

So the big thing we thought here was going to be, "Oh, sugar notes," or "the amount of cacao."

Not really.

These all have about half the cacao, which is the chocolate component, of a bittersweet chocolate, so our favorite bittersweet chip is a 60% cacao chip.

These are around 30%, and so they have a milder chocolate flavor.

-Right.

-Although you will see some floral notes and some fruity notes that are all coming from the chocolate.

The biggest difference here was not about flavor, but it turned out to be about distribution.

-If something is this perfect, you have to be picky, right?

-Yeah, the size of the chip, which is why I wanted you to taste them in the cookie.

When we did the plain tasting or we did a pudding tasting where we melted the chips, really the differences were pretty much the same -- none.

I mean, people liked them all.

They're chocolate.

They're delicious.

-Right.

-Some of the brands had smaller chips with better distribution, and, in fact, I've got a little visual here.

We counted the number of chips in 1 cup.

-Mm-hmm.

-And in our favorite brand, you got 394 little chips in 1 cup.

-394?

-And the one with the biggest chips was only 139, and so what happened was you got pieces of the cookie that had a lot of chocolate and then pieces that had no chocolate.

The brands that had smaller chips, you had even distribution, so you got chocolate in every bite.

-Chocolate even playing field, right?

-Yeah.

Now, we're being picky here.

-Mm-hmm.

-These are small differences.

The big chips don't ruin the cookie.

-Mm-hmm.

-But we felt like, "Well, given a choice, we'd rather have chocolate evenly distributed throughout the cookie and in every single bite."

So you've been eating and drinking.

-I'm going to need at least 20 more minutes alone with these cookies.

They are all kind of magic.

I have to say, though, this might be one of the times that I'm going to disagree with our tasters because I love the little treasure that you find with this one.

You get some of these bigger chips.

I wouldn't mind more of them in there.

If I could make my perfect cookie, I'd probably use some of these and some of the smaller ones so I get big pockets and little pockets, but I'd say, in flavor, I'm having a hard time -- I'm having a real hard time, and I would still say this is probably my favorite and maybe this is my second favorite, although I like this darker, as well, but I'm not sure that that's milk chocolate, and I like that one, too.

-[ Laughs ] Would you like to see what it is you've chosen, or do you want to just keep eating?

-Let's see what I've chosen.

How about this one, starting off with this one here?

-Yeah, so you chose the runner-up, which is a delicious chocolate, Guittard.

-Mm-hmm.

-But it is a bigger chip, which our very picky panel thought you didn't get enough chocolate in every bite, but I actually think, as a chocolate, it's delicious.

Floral, fruity, it's really lovely chocolate.

-And really creamy, too, and kind of decadent, as well.

Alright.

This was... My second is between these two.

I still like them all.

What am I talking about?

-Yeah.

-Ah!

This is what I grew up with.

-Yeah, this was actually kind of at the bottom of the rankings if you can put anything at the bottom of the rankings.

-Interesting.

Right.

-They're all good, but it wasn't spectacular.

-Mm-hmm.

And how about this one?

Let's go all the way down here.

-So this is the winner.

This is from Hershey's.

-Hershey's.

-Yeah, and we just felt like it had great flavor, it had the smallest size, so you got the most even bits throughout your cookie.

And the last one... -This is really good, too.

-You kind of nailed this one.

You said it's dark chocolate.

I thought I'd fool you.

This is our favorite bittersweet chocolate.

-It's really good.

-So it's got twice as much chocolate and half as much sugar.

Now, there's a lot of sugar in the cookie itself, but it's a -- for a more sophisticated palate.

-Is that what it is?

-If you want to go back to your childhood, you want a milk chocolate chip, right?

-Right.

Exactly.

Okay.

So my recipe for chocolate chip cookies -- one part that chip, one part that chip, and two parts these chips.

What do you think?

-So you're having four parts chocolate chip cookie?

-There's no flour in there.

-[ Laughs ] -It's just all chocolate.

-That sounds like a great recipe.

-Well, there you go.

Why don't you go out and buy the winner?

It's the Hershey's Kitchens milk chocolate chips.

It's $3.29 for a 12-ounce bag.

I'm taking these with me.

-I never want you to waste your money on gadgets you don't need, so even though we tested all these products, forget them.

We're going to tell you what really works.

First, egg cookers.

They're cute.

They seem easy, and they all made hard-boiled eggs, but could you make excellent soft-cooked or poached eggs like they promised?

Nope.

So get this.

It's our winning steamer basket from OXO.

All you need is a saucepan and this basket for perfect eggs every time every way.

Now, manual food processors -- they seem great.

Not only were they a ridiculous workout, but they couldn't chop anything evenly.

Now look at this.

Now uniform chopping is important if you want food to cook evenly and to have the right texture.

These are really terrible.

Instead, get our winning Cuisinart Elite 4-cup electric mini food processor.

I have the same onions in here.

Look at this.

It chops everything perfectly in seconds, and you won't even break a sweat.

Finally, indoor pizza ovens.

We tested a bunch of these.

They have one job, and they choked.

I mean, look at the scorch marks on this one.

It literally smells like an ashtray, and it kind of tastes like one, too.

Instead, you want to use our favorite baking stone by Old Stone Oven and the oven you already have for perfect crispy pizza every time.

-Roasting and grilling are great ways to get deep caramelized flavor onto vegetables.

Think broccoli, red peppers, and even green beans, but Elle is here to show us a new -- at least new-to-us way that might even be the best of all.

-That's right.

We were inspired by a cooking technique from the Szechuan province called dry frying.

With that, you cook the beans twice -- first deep-fried, then stir-fried with aromatics.

Then the outsides are blistered until they have nice deepened flavor, but we needed a faster way to get to those results.

So we're starting with a pound of green beans, and they just need to be trimmed, and it's a pretty quick process.

-This was always one of my jobs when I was a kid.

-Me too.

Me too.

-Yeah.

-Alright.

So we have a pound of green beans here.

-Okay.

-Now when we were trying to figure out a way to cook these beans faster, we tried just frying them straight up.

They got tougher and tougher every time.

It was horrible.

What we found was that steaming is actually the fastest and best way to go.

-So we're presteaming them, later on frying.

-Yes.

-Okay.

-We're going to steam them in the microwave.

-Even better.

-Even better.

Even faster.

-Yes.

-So first, all we have to do is rinse these beans.

Alright.

That looks great.

So I'm going to go back into the bowl with these beans, and we're not going to dry them because we're going to use this extra water for steaming.

So I'm just going to cover it.

They go in the microwave for 6 to 12 minutes, and they'll need a little tending to, so we're going to give it a stir every 3 minutes.

Okay.

So it's been 6 minutes, and our beans are steamed.

They've gotten us halfway to our dry frying process.

So they're just going to dry off on this paper towel-lined plate.

-And they're still green.

-Yes.

They're still green.

So these are done.

I'm just going to set them aside.

-Okay.

-And we're going to do something a little different with these beans today.

-Oh, yeah?

-Yeah.

We're going to add panko bread crumbs, and we're using panko because they absorb far less oil than standard bread crumb.

So I'm going to just put them here in our spice grinder because breaking them up a little bit helps them stick to the beans.

-Okay.

-And so we don't want to overdo it.

We're looking for the texture of couscous.

So that was 2 tablespoons of panko.

It's a couple of blitzes.

Okay.

So I'm going to toast these bread crumbs in a 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium-low heat with 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil.

We'll know they're ready when they turn golden brown.

So it's been about 5 or so minutes, and you know they're ready because they're nice and golden brown.

-It smells like toast in here.

-I know, right?

So I'm just going to take it off the heat.

-Alright.

-And I'm going to add 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt because panko really doesn't have much flavor on its own.

-It does not.

-It needs a little help.

We have 1/4 teaspoon of red pepper flakes and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper.

I'm just going to give it a little bit of a stir.

-Mmm.

-That looks great.

We're going to put this aside and start working on our beans.

Alright.

It's time to fry these beans.

-Yes!

Yes!

-So we have this nonstick skillet over high heat.

This is the same skillet we used to make our bread crumbs.

-Okay.

-I've added 2 tablespoons of oil, and you'll know it's ready to start cooking when it starts to smoke, so it's time to go.

I'm going to add these beans in a single layer... -Alright.

-...and no stirring.

-It's a really good thing that you dried those off.

Can you imagine if all that water went into that skillet?

-Oh, it'd have been frightening.

So you just make sure that they're all touching the bottom of the pan, a good single layer.

So it's been 4 minutes.

These beans are charred beautifully.

-Whoa!

-They're more tender than before.

So I'm just giving these a final turn, another 4 to 5 minutes so that they can char all over.

-Sounds good.

Alright.

So how is it that green beans can spend such a long time over high heat and not turn mushy?

Well, green bean cell walls contain hemicellulose and pectin, and these two compounds help to give green beans their structure.

Now, their structure also comes from a polymer called lignan.

Lignan literally means wood-like compound.

So the hemicellulose, the pectin, and the lignan all contribute to green beans' firmness even after a long stay in a hot skillet.

-Alright.

They're ready to go.

So I'm just going to get these green beans on the platter, but I'm going to leave all of the excess oil in the skillet, and you know what else is going to add to the flavor?

The panko we made earlier, so I'm just going to sprinkle that on top.

-Those are gorgeous.

Unbelievable aroma in here, as well.

-Let's dig in.

-Alright.

Mmm.

Mmm!

-Wow.

They're tender.

-Oh, yeah.

Mm.

-Deep flavors.

-Really, really deep roasted almost flavor, caramelized on the outside.

The interior is still nice and firm.

I love that little bit of crunch.

It's beautiful.

-A little kick.

Did you get the kick back?

-Yeah.

Kick is coming.

The black pepper and the red pepper one-two punch?

-Mm-hmm.

-Oh, yeah.

Well, there you go.

To get unbelievably deep and rich flavor into green beans, rinse and then microwave green beans, create a crunchy topping by cooking and seasoning panko bread crumbs, sear those green beans in a single layer until they're charred all over, transfer them to a serving bowl, and then sprinkle with those crumbs.

So from "America's Test Kitchen" to your kitchen, skillet-charred green beans with crispy bread crumb topping, and you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season, along with tastings, testings, and select episodes on our website.

That's americastestkitchen.com.

Mm-hmm.

-Mm-hmm.

-What else could you use this with?

-Let us help you with dinner tonight.

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