America's Test Kitchen

-Today on "America's Test Kitchen," Dan makes Julia perfect grilled chicken thighs, Jack challenges Bridget to a tasting of fresh mozzarella, and Keith cooks Bridget the ultimate Italian pasta salad. It's all coming up right here on "America's Test Kitchen." -Bone-in chicken thighs have a lot going for them. They're more flavorful than a chicken breast, they're less prone to overcooking, and also, they have that wonderful piece of skin that is delicious when it's brown and crisp, but they also have just a little more fat right under the skin that makes them hard to grill. It causes massive flare-ups, and it prevents that skin from getting crisp, so today, Dan is going to show us how to grill bone-in chicken thighs once and for all. -So, the name of the game with chicken thighs on the grill is to go low and slow. -Low and slow. -Low and slow, and it's going to be perfect, but before we get to that, we're going to talk about how we're going to season these, so let's pop over here. We're going to do a spice paste on these, and so we tried all kinds of things -- marinating, you know, just dry salting, found the spice paste was great, but we had to apply it properly to the chicken, so we're going to start with 3 tablespoons of Dijon mustard. It was a really nice intense base. To that, I'm going to add 5 minced garlic cloves. I've also got 1 tablespoon of lemon zest. We're going to serve these with some lemon wedges at the end, so you kind of get it flavored here and then the acidity at the end, which is nice. I also have 2 teaspoons of minced tarragon. Are you a tarragon fan? -Yeah, I'm a huge tarragon fan. -I also have 1 1/2 teaspoons of kosher salt, 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper, and just a little bit of water. This is just 1 teaspoon of water. If you add too much water, we get some really big issues where we can't brown the chicken thighs. A little bit of water, though, helps spread the paste nicely. So, I'm just going to stir this together. Okay, let's pop over here. So, we've got 8 bone-in chicken thighs here. If there's any, you know, excess skin that's really hanging over, you want to trim that off, but these look really good. So, we're going to season with a 1/2 teaspoon of salt just over the skin side here. We're going to use a little less of the paste, so we want to make sure we have good seasoning. -And that salt will probably help to dry the skin out hopefully to make it more crisp? -Absolutely. So, we tried lots of different ways of putting the paste on the chicken, and we found, you know, if we put it all on the skin, the skin never got crispy. -Mm-hmm. -If we put it all on the meat side, the skin was great, but it wasn't very well seasoned, so we actually found that using about a third of it on the skin side and then two-thirds on the flesh was perfect. You don't have to be super exact about it, but I just like to -- -But you are.

Laughs

-You know, it never hurts to be exact. So, I'm just going to dollop right on top. And then I'm just going to use the back of my spoon to spread it over, just enough to add some flavor, but not enough to get in the way of fat rendering and that skin getting crispy and brown. Okay. That looks great. Just going to flip these over. -And when you're shopping for these, it pays to go to the butcher counter and pick them out yourself. Be that person. It's okay because if you buy them in the package, you're going to get a whole bunch of different sizes, and they're not going to cook at the same rate. -Okay, and again, just spread a nice even layer on the flesh side. The grill is going to do all the work for us on this. We're going to go nice and low and slow, get some beautiful results. Let's head out. -Okeydoke. -Okay, so, we've got our beautiful chicken thighs out here, and I've been preheating the grill for about 15 minutes all on high. We have a little bit of grill prep to do, and then we'll get that chicken on. -Ooh, that's a hot grill. -Nice, hot grill. So, what we're going to do first is cut out these two burners. We're going to leave this one on high. So, we're creating basically a hot zone here and a cool zone over here. -Known as indirect cooking. -Exactly. So, we're going to actually cook these chicken thighs over indirect heat for most of the cook time. That indirect cooking is going to be really great for the meat and the skin, actually. So, both of them contain a lot of collagen. As you cook them low and slow, that collagen dissolves into gelatin. It's going to help make the meat really tender. It's also going to allow us to get that skin really crispy. -So, this is good for dark meat but not for white meat. -That's right. So, what we're going to do now is just scrape this off. -We always prefer to clean the grill right before we're going to use it because the heat helps loosen up some of that gunk, and you get it good and clean right before you need it. -So, I'm going to use a little paper towel and oil, and we'll just get a nice coating of grease on here. -The oil does a few things. First, it helps clean the grill. It helps get any of those last bits off the grill grates. It also polymerizes onto the grill grates. That helps to make them a little nonstick. -Okay, so, now we're going to put our chicken on, and we're going to do something a little bit different here. I'm actually going to go skin side down. When we tested this, we went, you know, skin side up most of the time, and then we flipped it onto the hot side to get it crispy, all of the fat that had rendered under the skin came out, dripped down onto the coils, and we had a huge flare-up. -So, skin side down almost the whole time. Oh, I can smell the little bit of mustard as soon as those hit the grill. -Smells good, doesn't it? -It does smell good. -So, this is going to maintain at about 350 degrees, which is perfect, and we'll cook for 20 minutes. -All right. -Okay, so, it's been 20 minutes. Let's take a look at these awesome thighs. They're looking good. Now we're going to do a little shuffle around. We want them to cook really evenly. -Little do-si-do. -Little do-si-do. So, we're just going to slide these over here, make room for these to move over, and then these go right in their place. -Yeah, so, it's starting to render, but it's not brown at all. -Not brown at all, absolutely. It's very, very gentle heat over here, rendering lots of fat so it doesn't end up flaring up on the other side. So, we're going to cook this with the lid down for another 15 to 20 minutes. This will be relatively tender around 175, but we find that if we go even higher, about 185 to 190, we get more collagen breakdown. We get a really, really tender, juicy result. Okay, so, it's been 15 minutes. See how we are on the temp here. We're looking for about 185 to 190. All right. Right there. So, that is 187, 188. Fantastic. Okay, so, all this nice indirect cooking was fantastic for the meat and the skin, right? We made everything nice and tender, but the skin needs to crisp up at this point, so we're going to go over to the hot side here. -Finally some direct heat. -Finally. So, this is going to happen really fast because we rendered everything. We've got it really nice and soft. Just going to take a second to crisp it up. -Okay. -Okay, so, that's been about five minutes. Oh, man. Look at that. -Ohhh, that is a very beautiful-looking chicken thigh. -Gorgeous. So, we're just going to flip these over and cook the paste that's on the other side just for another minute or so. -Right because they're cooked through at this point. We're just getting a little bit of that gorgeous char all the way around. -Exactly. Okay. These smell and look fantastic. Time to get them off. Okay, so, these need to rest for about 10 minutes, we're going to cover them with foil, and we'll bring them inside. -All right. -Okay, these look and smell fantastic. -Look at that! -The crispy test. -That is some crisp skin right there. -Going low and slow like that and just finishing at the very end is the key. You know, it tenderizes the skin, and then it puffs and really, really beautiful, and before you dig in, let me give you a little lemon wedge. -You definitely had to stop me there.

Both chuckle

-All right. Let's dig in. -Mm-hmm. -Mm-hmm. -Well, the chicken is moist and juicy -- no wonder because it's thighs, and they're always pretty juicy. -Mm-hmm. -But it's the flavor. -I know. It's so good. -It's not overpowering. You know, when you think about the strong flavors, all that lemon zest and the mustard, I was a little worried that it would be too strong, but it's just a subtle background to the chicken. It's lovely. -It's really good. Just a good grilled flavor. And going low and slow and cooking it to a higher temperature really melts all that collagen. It ends up being really, really juicy. -And then that skin -- kind of call it chicken bacon. So, for the ultimate grilled chicken, start by making a flavorful spice paste with mustard, garlic, lemon, and tarragon, and rub it over both sides of the chicken. After heating the grill, turn all of the burners off except for one so that the grill has a hot side and a cool side. Lay the chicken skin side down on the cool side and cook until the meat registers 185 degrees. Finish on the hot side of the grill until the chicken is well browned on both sides and let it rest for 10 minutes before serving. From "America's Test Kitchen" to your kitchen, the best grilled chicken thighs. Awesome. -Awesome. -Just awesome. -If you really want to lose yourself on the Internet for a few hours, just go and check out videos of artisans making fresh mozzarella. It is captivating. They cook the cheese, stretch it into long thick ropes, cut it, and shape it, but we've got Jack here who's going to show us a much easier way to get mozzarella on the plate -- go to the supermarket and buy it. Which one is best? -So, we're doing the eating, no shaping. I mean, this is a great, simple cheese. These are all fresh mozzarellas. -Okay. -They're all domestic. This is not pizza cheese. This has a higher moisture content, and it's designed to eat as you are having it today. -All right. -So, I should explain why these are all domestic because, of course, mozzarella originates in Italy. Fresh mozzarella in Italy, a lot of it is what we know as bufala mozzarella. It is made from the milk of water buffalos. It is delicious because there's a lot of fat, but it's highly perishable. That cheese really only has a shelf life of 4 or 5 days, so when it comes to supermarket options for fresh mozzarella, it needs to be made with cow's milk. Now, they do make cow's-milk mozzarella in Italy. It's called fior di latte, and that's the tradition that's really been exported here, and most of the supermarket options and, in fact, everything we're tasting today is made in the USA with the Italian recipe. So, it's cow's milk. You add some salt, some rennet, an acid, and curdle it, and then put it in hot water and start stretching and making an amazing video. -

Laughs

-Moisture content is really important. Some of the brands basically had as much moisture as you would get in pizza block cheese, meaning they were dry and rubbery. -I'm getting that here. -Yeah, that is not a good thing. We found that the top cheeses had a moisture content of around 60%, bottom-rank cheeses, more like 48%, which is really, as I said, what you would get in a pizza cheese, and this is a fine, delicate salad cheese. So, the second thing to think about is texture, and one of the things that influences texture is the pH, so if the pH is too high, it can get very soft almost like a wet sponge, so you want kind of a moderate pH. Usually that means they were using vinegar or cheese culture rather than citric acid or lactic acid to curdle the milk. The other thing is salt. You want some salt. You don't want it to be totally bland. But you don't want it to hide the flavor of the milk. -Mm-hmm. -And, so, you want the salt to bring out all the flavors. You want grassy, floral notes. You don't want a salt bomb. You also don't want it to be totally bland. -Right. Right. -So, I've given you lots of dos and don'ts when it comes to making mozzarella. What about eating mozzarella? -All right. I will happily eat mozzarella. This one, you mentioned a shreddable cheese. This one I could see shredding very easily. It's not what I think of as fresh mozzarella. Especially -- I love fior de latte. Is that right? -You got it. -That sounds so much better than "cow's-milk mozzarella," doesn't it? -It does. -This one is very seasoned, perhaps just a little too seasoned, but I don't mind it. The texture is a little bit dry. This one is bland -- bland, bland, bland, and soggy. It's actually a little bit mushy. These two are my favorite because they have the better seasoning. This one is a little bit higher seasoned, so I think I would be able to eat at least a pound or two more of that than this one. -And it's about quantity. -It's about quantity for me, yes. -You know, I know that about you, and I'm with you. -So, I would say that this is my favorite. This is a very close runner-up maybe -- too much salt. -You want to start with what you chose? -Let's go with the winner. -And you are a winner... -Yay! -...always, but in this case, you agree with the tasting panel. -Okay. -This is BelGioioso. It's from Wisconsin. It's an Italian-American family making it in the Italian tradition, and we thought it was just right -- had enough seasoning but not too much salt, high moisture content. -Beautiful, creamy texture. -It was soft, but it wasn't wet. -Right. Speaking of... -Yes, and that is our lowest-rated cheese, Di Stefano, and it was at the bottom of the ranking because it was described as a wet sponge. -Yeah, I could totally see that. -Yeah, it's just too soft. -It's literally slippery. Not a description of a cheese that you want. -It's because of the pH content, which is affecting the proteins and making the cheese too soft. -We don't want that. And on the other side... -And that cheese is from Crave Brothers. It was next to last because it's way too dry. -Mm-hmm. -This is one that had a moisture content below 50% as opposed to the winners at 60% or 61%. It's not fresh mozzarella. -No, I would shred and heat it and put it between bread, but it's not fresh mozzarella, and this one... -Your runner-up was also the tasting panel's runner-up. It has, again, that high moisture content that we want. -Mm-hmm. -It's not bland. It's not overly soft. It's a good cheese, and it was our second-place choice. -Next time, we'll have to make mozzarella. -That's a date. -Sound good? All right. But in the meantime, let's go out and buy some. The winner is BelGioioso fresh mozzarella. It's $7.99 for 8 ounces. You know about the food pyramid, but do you know about Bridget Lancaster's picnic food pyramid? We have at the apex cold fried chicken. Right underneath that is potato salad and baked beans. You have assorted cakes, of course, cornbread, biscuits, a few salads under that and then, boom, right at the bottom, pasta salad. Everybody brings them to the picnics, and everybody goes home with the leftovers because no one is eating them, but Keith is here, and he has told me he's going to change my mind about pasta salads. -Yeah. Could I bring that pasta salad up in your pyramid if the salad had tender pasta, fresh, flavorful ingredients, and a potent dressing that kind of brought everything together rather than sitting at the bottom of the bowl? -Sure, but can you also get me a unicorn? -I'll work on the unicorn. -Okay. -Let's focus on the pasta salad today. -All right. -So, we're going to actually start with a pasta which makes sense, and we're going to start with a pound of fusilli pasta. This corkscrew shape is perfect for pasta salad because it traps everything. It's like pasta Velcro, so all those dressings and all those flavorful ingredients get caught in these little nooks and crannies for this pasta. So, I have 4 quarts of water here. We'll just add our pasta, and we want to add 1 tablespoon of salt because bland pasta in a pasta salad is, well, bland. -Yes. -We want to go 3 minutes past al dente, so when the pasta cools down, it's still going to be tender. -Okay. -And it will depend on what brand of pasta you're using, so we'll come back and taste this towards the end of cooking to make sure that we get it just right. -Good idea. -So, while pastas cook, we're going to focus on our dressing. Now, most dressings are kind of bland. They fall to the bottom. A lot of people use the bottled Italian dressing. We're not going to do that. We're actually going to build the dressing and make sure that we have something really flavorful to start with. -Great. -So, here I have 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil, and I also have 3 cloves of minced garlic, 3 anchovy fillets, and 1/4 teaspoon of red-pepper flakes. Rather than just whisking these into cold olive oil and adding some vinegar like most people would make a vinaigrette, we're actually going to warm this up in the microwave. We're going to bloom those flavors into an infused oil. I'm just going to put a plate on this to make sure it's covered and doesn't splatter all over the microwave if we get it too hot. So, we're just going to go in the microwave for 30 to 60 seconds until it's bubbling and fragrant. -All right. -Wow. That smells quite strong. -Oh, it's bubbling. -Yeah. All those aromatics have infused into the oil, and that will the base for our dressing. Another problem with pasta-salad dressings is that they're usually too thin, so if you have a flavorful dressing and it's at the bottom of the bowl, it's not doing any good. -No. -So, we wanted to create a dressing that had some body to it, so we went through some different variations, and what we found is that we wanted to take some of the ingredients that you normally put in pasta salad and actually grind them up and make a dressing from those ingredients. One ingredient that we found a lot was peperoncini. These things are great. They're tart. They're spicy. So, we're going to take 1/2 cup of these. We're going to take the stems off, we'll take the seeds out, and then we're going to actually process them in the food processor as the base of our dressing. -Okay. -I'm just going to take these stems off first. Then reach in here, and we can kind of pinch that core out. There's not a lot of seeds here, but you can get the majority of them out. That's great, but if you leave some in, that's okay, too. It's not going to ruin anything. We're going to process it up nice and fine. Okay. In addition to our peperoncini, I'm going to add 2 tablespoons of capers -- again, potent ingredient, briny flavor. It's going to be really great in our pasta salad. Okay, I'm just going to pulse this 10 times until the peperoncini and the capers are broken down and finely chopped. Okay, that looks great. You can see that they're nice and finely chopped. -I can smell it from over here. -Yep. -Mmm, pickle. -So, we're going to add 2 tablespoons of the peperoncini liquid that they come in. It's vinegar and a little bit of salt and also peperoncini flavor. So, rather than using a wine vinegar or a balsamic vinegar, we're just going to use this instead. -Very good. -2 tablespoons. And then we have our warm infused oil that we'll put in here. So, we have our infused oil and our peperoncini liquid in there. I'm just going to process it for 20 seconds until everything is incorporated. Okay. You can see it looks almost like a pesto that we have going on here. -Yeah, it sure does, really yummy pesto. -Yeah, so, it's super concentrated, super flavorful, and it's actually going to work into those nooks and crannies on the fusilli and make sure that we have a nice, flavorful dressing that doesn't fall to the bottom of the bowl. -That's great. You got everything in teeny, tiny pieces so it'll hook onto the Velcro pasta. -Okay, so the pasta has been cooking. I'm just going to give it a test here. Mmm. That's great. So, it's past al dente. It's soft. It's tender, which is going to be perfect when we cool it. So, can I ask you to drain and rinse the pasta? -You sure can. -That's nice and cooled down, and we want to make sure that we shake that really well. Going to use a nice big bowl today to make sure that we can toss all these ingredients in here evenly. -Great. -I'm just going to add our thick dressing to this pasta. Can see there's nothing in the bottom of the bowl right now, so it's clung into that pasta, and you're going to get that flavorful dressing in every bite. So, now we have our pasta. Let's look at our mix-ins. And we weren't really interested in doing more cooking for this. We didn't want to go out to the grill to grill vegetables or roast vegetables, so we went to our pantry to find a bunch of nice, flavorful ingredients. So, first up is 1/2 cup of sun-dried tomatoes that have been thinly sliced, a nice, bright flavor that these will add and a little bit of chew. -Yep. They're acidic, they're sweet, and they're chewy. Nice. -Next up, I have 1/2 cup of Kalamata olives that we've cut into quarters. Again, big flavor, high-impact ingredients, you know, briny, salty flavors. -Mm-hmm. -I also have 2 cups of baby arugula. We were missing kind of a salad-y element to this, and that's where this arugula came in. -Okay. -So, 2 cups of baby arugula, and I also have 8 ounces of fresh mozzarella cheese. Right now all we have is that 1/4 cup of olive oil. We were looking for a little bit more richness, and we're going to have a bunch of bold ingredients in there, and the fresh mozzarella gave us a nice, fresh, creamy flavor without really dominating like a pecorino would or a Parmesan. So, now I have to do a little bit more knife work here. We have 8 ounces of dried salami here, and we like a small salami like this. We like the texture of it. -Mm-hmm. -We like the flavor of it rather than going to the deli and buying those slices. The deli slices will work, but you want to make sure that you're getting a fairly thick slice so you have a nice substantial dice in here. -Okay. And the dried salami just has so much more flavor than the deli salami. -It does -- much more flavor. So, you know, we're looking for a Genoa salami or a Soppressata, which do have more flavor than those deli slices. We want a 3/8-inch dice here, and that might sound a little finicky, but it was the perfect kind of size for our salad. Too small, and it kind of fell to the bottom. -Sure. -Too big, and then you're kind of chewing on a big piece of salami. Nobody wants that. Okay, let's transfer. Use our bench scraper to transfer this over easily. -You are not skimping on the additions, either. -No. This is hearty in flavor and texture. So, I have more peperoncini. We have that in our dressing, but we wanted a little bit more. This time we're going to add it in slices rather than processing it so same drill here. I'm just going to take the top off, take the core out. So, I'm starting with 1/2 cup here, and I'm going to just slice these into thin rings. Okay, one last ingredient, and that's basil. Can't have pasta salad without basil. -That's a lot of basil. -It is. We're looking for 1 cup of chopped basil here. So, again, this is like the arugula. It's going to add flavor, but it's also going to add freshness and color. I'm just going to chop this up. -Basil bruises very easily, especially as it sits after you chop it, so good idea to cut it up last minute. -Yeah, same thing with the arugula, too. You can make this pasta salad in advance, up to 2 or 3 days, but with the greens, the arugula and the basil, you want to add them at the last minute. -Oh, that smells so good. -Okay. I'm just going to... toss this really well. -That is beautiful. -Okay.

One last thing I'm going to do before we eat

I'm just going to taste this. -He's thinking about it. -I'm thinking about it. -That's good. -I'm going to add a little bit more salt...and a healthy dose of pepper here. Okay. -Ohh. -It looks great, tastes great. -I got to admit -- this is looking good. -It's climbing up your pyramid? -Well, we'll see. We'll see. -Okay. So, I'm just going to transfer this into a prettier bowl. I just want you to notice that there's no dressing in the bottom of this bowl. -No, there is not. -All on the pasta. -Clinging to the Velcro fusilli, right? -Yeah. Okay. A serving for you. Make sure I get a little bit of everything in here. -Is this going to climb onto the pyramid? -It will. -Has tons of flavor and that -- the anchovy, capers, peperoncini. -Yeah. -Beautiful. You can see the toppings and the pasta. They're all mixed together. Everything didn't make a big dive for the bottom of the bowl. -And the pasta is firm, but tender. -Mm-hmm. And I love the little bits of mozzarella in there, too. They add such a beautiful, creamy texture. Of all the pasta salads, this has definitely reached the apex. -Yeah, this is a pasta salad I'm proud to bring to a picnic. -You should be proud. For a pasta salad you'll be proud to take to a picnic, cook fusilli until very tender. Then microwave oil, anchovies, and garlic until sizzling. Process with peperoncini and capers, then toss with the pasta. Finish with salami, olives, cheese, and herbs, and, of course, serve. From our test kitchen to your kitchen, a surefire flavor-packed Italian pasta salad. You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season, along with our tastings, testings, and select episodes on our website, americastestkitchen.com. It's gone. Shoveling it in, Keith. -Let us help you with dinner tonight. Visit our website anytime for free access to the newest season's recipes, taste tests, and equipment ratings, or to watch current episodes, log on to americastestkitchen.com.