Cook's Country

-"Cook's Country" is about more than just getting dinner on the table.

We're also fascinated by the people and stories behind the dishes.

We go inside kitchens in every corner of the country to learn how real people cook, and we look back through time to see how history influences the way we eat today.

We bring that inspiration back to our test kitchen so we can share it with you.

This is "Cook's Country."

Today on "Cook's Country," Morgan and I make shrimp with garlic and jalapeo butter.

Hannah reviews Swedish dish towels.

And Christie makes a shrimp curry inspired by famed White House chef Zephyr Wright.

That's all right here on "Cook's Country."

-Funding for this program has been provided by the following.

-Monument Grills, offering innovative technology and design for the grilling enthusiast, with a lineup of gas grills designed with durability in mind, including the Eminence 605, with LED touch panels and side and rear infrared burners.

Learn more at MonumentGrills.com.

-Teakhaus.

Inspired by a passion for cooking and respect for our planet.

Each board is handcrafted from sustainably sourced wood designed for every step, from food prep to presentation.

Teakhaus.

-The Teochew is a community of Southeast Asian migrants with heritage in both China and Vietnam, and they're bringing that shared sense of culinary creativity to restaurants all across the U.S.

And today, Morgan's going to show us one of their amazingly delicious dishes using shrimp.

-Yeah, Toni.

So I'm making this dish from a restaurant called Royal Seafood.

They have these really crispy fried shrimp that are tossed in a butter sauce with a lot of garlic and jalapeos in it.

So I want to start with the sauce.

-Okay.

-So it has some really flavorful ingredients.

So, here I have a tablespoon of fish sauce.

And I'm also going to add a tablespoon of lime juice.

Got a tablespoon of sugar.

And 1 1/2 teaspoons of pepper.

And I'm just going to whisk these up.

This is definitely a dish that moves quickly once you start cooking, so I like to get everything prepped in advance, if I can.

The sauce has two jalapeos.

I already prepped one.

And this one, I'll show you what I did.

So, I like to get in there and stem and seed them.

So I'm just going to take out as much as I can just get out with my hands.

I like to hold my knife parallel to the cutting board, protect my hands, and just make sure I'm getting out these ribs.

They can be a little bitter, and, also, they carry a lot of the heat.

And let me lob off the stems.

And now I'm just going to cut it into 1/4-inch pieces.

So I'm just making little batons and then going through and cutting it the other way.

All right.

So it also has some scallions.

So here I have four scallions.

And I always like to trim the little root end.

You don't want to trim too much.

You don't want to waste any, but for this, I really want to thinly slice the scallion whites and then cut the greens into 3/4-inch pieces.

All right.

So 3/4-inch pieces up here.

Now we're all prepped.

We have our mise en place ready.

-Okay.

-And we can move on to the shrimp.

Now I'm going to start by actually making a brine, which I don't think a lot of people think of with shrimp.

-No.

-But this is a really high-heat cooking.

I'm going to fry these shrimp.

So having a brine keeps them nice and plump and juicy.

So I have 2 quarts of water here.

To this, I'm going to add 1/4 cup of kosher salt, and then I have a tablespoon of baking soda.

So, baking soda it's not something you typically associate with shrimp but it keeps the shrimp really juicy and plump.

-I cannot wait to see how that turns out.

-So I'm just going to whisk this up, make sure everything's nice and evenly distributed.

And the brine is ready.

Here I have 2 pounds of jumbo shrimp, which means there's 16 to 20 in a pound.

And then I'm going to just peel and devein them.

I've peeled and deveined most of them, but I'll show you with this one.

And you also want to take the tails off.

So these are some seafood shears.

If you're not used to cooking with these they're so nice if you cook a lot of shrimp.

So I like to go in, just cut through the back of the shell and then you can peel it right off.

It exposes if there's anything in there.

And then you can go in with a paring knife and kind of just get out anything that is in there and get it clean.

Got my shrimp here, and then I'm just going to make sure that's fully combined.

All right.

Now into the brine it goes.

All right.

Now these are just going to hang out in here for about 20 minutes.

And I'm going to clean up, wash my hands, and then we can coat them.

-Sounds good.

-Toni, these have been brining for 20 minutes.

So now we can drain them.

And then I'm going to rinse them.

So the baking soda, it does a lot of work in making the shrimp nice and juicy, but I don't want any residual baking soda on there, which can kind of give it an off flavor.

I'm gonna give them a nice rinse.

Toni, the enemy of crispy fried food is moisture, so I want to make sure these are nice and dry.

So I'm going to take them and just lay them on paper towels.

Going to get off as much moisture as possible.

And then, I'm going to pat them dry.

All right.

I'm just going to use the same bowl.

I'm going to make sure, again, there's no more moisture in here.

And add in the shrimp back in.

So, this coating is a little different than some of the coatings I've worked with before with brine.

It's all potato starch.

So, potato starch is a lot like cornstarch but it's bigger granules which gives it a really nice crisp coating.

This is what they did at Royal Seafood, which is why I'm doing it here.

-Okay.

-It's also one of the easiest fry batters.

It's just putting starch on it.

So I used 1/3 of a cup there, and I'm going to toss the shrimp with that.

Want all the little nooks and crannies coated in here.

And then I'm going to go back with another 1/3 of a cup and give a second dose.

-That's such a smart way to get an even coating rather than it all clumping at once.

-Exactly.

So I feel like that first one, sort of like, let me make sure all these shrimp are nicely coated, and then, the second one's like, okay, all little nooks and crannies are covered.

There's no clumps.

Everything's really even.

It's going to be a nice crisp outside.

All right.

Now I'm gonna get rid of these towels, and they're just gonna go right back on here.

I'm going to shake off any excess starch that's on them and just kind of space them out.

And then, we can get ready to fry.

All right, Toni, I'm looking for this to be 400 degrees.

It's pretty close.

-You're almost there.

-So I'm using particularly hot oil.

I feel like I usually fry at 350.

But shrimp are so small, and they go really fast, so I want it to be hot enough that the shrimp actually brown in the time they cook.

This is a quart of vegetable oil.

With shrimp, you can shallow fry.

Like, you don't have to deal with deep-frying, if you want.

Just because they're so small, you don't need a whole pot of oil.

And this is a little more approachable.

All right.

So I'm gonna take half these shrimp and add them in.

I've seen people take, like, a shrimp and be like, "I don't want to get near it.

I don't want to --" and drop it, and that's the worst thing you could possibly do because it splatters.

So I'm getting really close and just keeping an eye on my fingers and dropping them in really carefully and gently so there's no splatter.

-Well, sometimes I slide them down the side of the pan, and that gives them like an ease into the oil.

-Ooh, like a little nestle into the oil.

-Yeah.

-So I'm going to let these go until they're golden and crisp, which will take about 60 to 90 seconds a side.

It goes really fast with this 400-degree oil.

I'm gonna get in here and give them a nice little flip.

-Oh, yeah.

Those are beautiful.

-Yeah.

And honestly, you don't have to be totally precious with these.

The shallow fry is, indeed, shallow, but the shrimp are totally submerged.

I'm just doing this because sometimes the bottom of the pan gets a little hotter than the top.

So it gives you a little extra insurance for even cooking.

Once they start getting a little curled, that's when I know they're ready.

This batter, it's looking nice and kind of crisp.

It's a little hard to tell, so what I like to do, I like to take it, actually give it a little tap.

[ Light tapping ] Yeah, you can hear how it's, like... A little crunch going.

Yeah.

It's like the tap's there.

-It's a little bit like knocking.

-Yeah, exactly.

So you don't have to check every single shrimp.

Once you got a few, you know, they're good.

-But the point here is, because they're so translucent, you really want to be sure that they're crisping right up.

-Exactly.

All right, so here, I'm taking them out and put in this bowl that I lined with paper towels.

So, often when I'm frying, I do it on a sheet pan.

I'm trying to make this as easy as possible.

And one plus of the potato starch is it's really forgiving.

It, like, holds its crisp really well.

So you can stack these shrimp right on top of each other, and it's not going to lose its crispiness.

All right.

I'm gonna get this back up to 400.

One nice thing about the quart of oil, it preheats pretty quickly.

All right, Toni, we're back up to 400.

There we go.

I'll take 398.

That's acceptable.

So in goes the second half.

All right.

And I'm just gonna fry these just like I did the first batch.

So it'll be maybe a minute or a minute and a half each side.

Toni, we have our shrimp looking nice and pretty.

-They are so beautifully golden.

-Yeah, they look really good.

They look nice and crispy already, but I want to put the sauce on them.

-Okay.

So I'm gonna finish up the sauce.

I did as much prep as I could earlier, but this is sort of the la minute part.

So I have 3 tablespoons of butter that I've melted in this small saucepan.

And to that I'm going to add the scallion whites from earlier.

And you can see this is not a small amount of garlic.

It's a lot of garlic.

-That's a lot of garlic.

-I have 3 tablespoons of garlic.

So, the garlic's gonna do a lot here.

It's shrimp with garlic butter on it, so you want it to have a lot of garlic.

So I'm just gonna cook this until it's fragrant, which will take about a minute.

It's a good smell.

I love garlic.

-I love garlic, too.

-All right.

So now I'm gonna take that sauce we put together earlier with the fish sauce, the lime juice, and that sugar and add this in, along with those jalapeos.

-Whoa.

-Yeah, I know.

It's a bold sauce.

There's a lot going on.

It's one of those sauces that's so much bigger than the sum of its parts.

-Absolutely.

-It's really flavor-packed ingredients that are coming together.

And it's not a lot of sauce.

-It isn't, and especially when you compare it to how much shrimp you have in that bowl.

-So I'm just gonna let this go until it just comes to a boil, and that sugar is going to dissolve.

You want it to actually cook so the sugar dissolves.

It'll only take about 30 seconds.

Can you hand me the shrimp and the scallion greens?

-Yeah.

Let's do that.

-All right.

So, one nice thing about this little bowl maneuver is you can just pull this out... -Okay.

-That's great.

This is boiling.

Got some nice bubbles happening all over.

That sugar is dissolved.

So, pull this off heat.

And it's just going to go right in with the shrimp.

-Ooh, it's gorgeous.

-It is.

Stuff doesn't get cooked all that long, so it's gonna have a lot of flavor.

Like, those jalapeos aren't going to get muddied or dulled at all.

They're gonna be hot jalapeos -- in a good way, though.

-In a good way.

-All right.

And then these scallion greens also go in here.

All right.

And then we're gonna toss.

Yeah.

So I'm just trying to make sure everything gets nicely coated.

That sauce should be sticking to that nice crisp coating.

So, the potato starch, one of the glorious things about it is that it stays really crispy even when you're putting liquid on it.

Like, I feel like it has this lovely, like, crunch still to it.

-Yeah.

-And it can also cling to it.

Like, that double coating gives it a nice surface area for everything to cling to.

All right.

So let's move on over to our platter.

-Your cut on the green onions makes perfect sense now.

It makes a nice garnish.

-It's really pretty.

It adds some intrigue.

And it also just kind of, like, adds a little, like, change when you go to eat.

If there's any sauce left, you can kind of just put it over on top.

-Oh, for sure.

-Okay.

Now we get to eat.

-Wow.

It's beautiful, Morgan.

-Mm-hmm.

All right.

Can I serve you?

-Please.

All right.

So, I have some white rice on each of our plates.

And then, I also have some cucumbers.

-Okay.

So, they're served as a little garnish on the side?

-Yeah.

People on our app love this dish.

We actually had someone, Peggy C., write in, and she said that the cucumbers were such a nice cool, moist reprieve from it.

-Are we ready?

-Uh-huh.

-Mmm.

Wow.

-I know, you hear that crispy shrimp.

And you feel it.

It's like... Just, like, such a nice little shell.

-I can hear your little tap, tap, tap happening.

-Mm-hmm.

-This is, like, delicate.

And it allows the flavor of the shrimp to really come through.

And the sauce is kind of subtle.

-Yeah.

Well, given how much is in there and what you know is in there, it doesn't feel overpowering.

It feels really in balance in a nice way.

The pepper adds a nice little spiciness, and then you got the jalapeo, you get a little scallion green.

-This was really terrific, Morgan.

Thank you so much for showing me how to make it.

-Thanks for cooking with me, Toni.

-And if you would like to bring this house special dish into your home, brine the shrimp, toss them twice with potato starch before frying, and serve it with a flavor-packed sauce.

From "Cook's Country," shrimp with garlic and jalapeo butter.

I'm already getting ideas for this sauce, Morgan.

-I know.

I'm like, let's put it on some chicken.

Let's put it on some whitefish.

-Little chunks of whitefish.

-Today, we're gonna talk about Swedish dishcloths, which evidently are dishcloths that you do not need to assemble.

How about that?

Well, Hannah's here, and she's gonna take us through our most recent testing.

Now, I'm very interested in this because I'm not quite sure what they are.

-We felt the same exact way.

These have not been common in the U.S.

for a long time, but recently, they are everywhere.

They're a biodegradable and eco-friendly alternative to paper towels, which are single-use, and sponges, which are made from plastic.

They've been around in Europe for years, though.

They were actually invented in 1949 by Curt Lindquist, a Swedish engineer, yes.

So, now they're coming stateside.

We wanted to test.

First of all, we didn't know what they were, either, like I said.

Let's try this out here.

Pick that one up.

-Okay.

That's adorable.

It looks like a giant cocktail napkin.

-Yes, the patterns on some of these -- gorgeous.

But it's, like, crispy, right?

You're like, "What's going on here?"

Now go ahead and put it in the water.

Watch it transform.

-Very floppy.

Now this looks like a washcloth.

-Exactly.

Now it's sopping wet and floppy, so totally different form.

We went into methodical testing mode because we did not know how to test these.

So we made a list of everything we do in the kitchen with a sponge, a dish towel, and a paper towel.

And then we did a bunch of research on what is available in the U.S.

-Okay.

-We zeroed in on four major brands that were a little bit different from one another, and we tested them with all of those tasks we made in our big list.

Our first finding, if I may ask you to do a little more work here.

-Right.

Because you want a dishcloth to be able to dry off glassware.

-Common use for a dish cloth.

Exactly.

So, go ahead and see how that works.

-The outside's not bad, but the inside is challenging, let's say.

Yeah, just getting that in there.

-It's crispy.

It doesn't work.

-Very stiff.

-So we didn't like them for drying.

-Not great.

-Great news, though.

We love them for wiping down countertops and appliances and washing dishes.

Some were really useful additions to the kitchen, but not all of them.

-Okay.

-Come with me over here, my friend.

-The Pink Palace.

-Yes.

Okay.

These are a brand called Wowables, and I want to give them some kudos because this is a smart idea.

This is a compact, familiar format to us.

But that's where my praise ends, because, unfortunately, these were really thin.

They ripped often when we peeled them off the roll.

-Mm-hmm.

-They were too thin to be substantial enough to clean effectively.

And look at this right here.

These are reusable.

So, they come in this beautiful compact format, but once you use them -- like this is a stack of six I have used right here -- you're supposed to air-dry them all around the house.

So, there's 30 on this roll.

This is just 6.

Can you imagine having your house covered in these?

-No.

And especially if you're in a small kitchen, forget about it.

-So, good idea, bad execution, unfortunately.

Let's talk about these three.

This one, so pretty from Papaya.

So gorgeous, a little bit insubstantial.

We wanted a little more cushion when we were spreading out and wiping things down.

So we loved these two from Skoy Cloth and SWEDEdishcloths.

Get what they did there?

-Love a good pun.

-They were just the right size.

You know, big enough to feel substantial but had enough finesse to get into small corners.

Both biodegradable.

Both can go in the washing machine or the dishwasher.

-Great.

-Yeah.

You also have to air-dry them, but since you don't have like 30 around, it wasn't a big deal.

-And they're both biodegradable.

-Exactly.

So, these work out to costing about $2 a sheet.

They come in packs of multiples.

These were about 65 cents a sheet, but they're not good, so it's not worth it.

Invest a little bit more and get better performance.

-Well, we all need as much help as we can get in the kitchen, so thank you so much.

-You're welcome.

-If you want to go check out the Swedish dishcloths, we've got two winners.

One is the SWEDEdishcloth.

Very clever.

And that retails for $10 for five towels.

Or you can go with the Skoy Cloth, and that's $8 for four.

-Zephyr Wright was the personal chef for President Lyndon Johnson and first lady Lady Bird Johnson, and she's remembered for both being a wonderful cook but also for being a key influence on the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

And today, we're making a recipe inspired by her, a shrimp curry.

-Yes.

Shrimp curry, which has actually been a really popular dish among southern cooks, like Zephyr, since the 1800s.

-Wow.

-Yes.

Now, Zephyr's version, from the 1960s, is actually a milder, more delicate curry than we might think of.

If you're thinking about modern or traditional South Asian or Southeast Asian curries, but it's got really nice, layered, complex flavor, and it comes together super quickly.

-Okay.

-We're gonna start with a bouillon cube.

Super concentrated flavor.

Great all-around seasoning.

So that's what we're gonna start with.

Of course you can use chicken broth.

We're gonna make a cup of this.

So a cup of chicken broth is a great substitute, but Zephyr used a bouillon cube.

-Gotcha.

And it does have a bit more flavor, especially if you rehydrate it yourself.

-Right.

So I have some boiling water, and we just need a cup of it and I'm gonna give it a little head start.

We'll let that dissolve on its own, and we can move on to the star of the dish -- the shrimp.

-Mm-hmm.

I have 2 pounds of extra-large shrimp.

That's 21, 25 per pound.

And I've already peeled, I've deveined, and I've taken the tails off.

-Gotcha.

Tails off.

-Tails off.

'Cause you can buy them peeled and deveined, but you can't buy them with the tails off.

-No.

-Okay.

-Those tails came off.

[ Both laugh ] Now I want to season the shrimp before I do anything else.

And I'll just do that with 1/2 teaspoon of table salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper.

Nothing major.

Just making sure that everything's nicely seasoned.

I promised you some layers of flavor.

-You did.

-We can set the shrimp aside and now start talking about the sauce.

-Okay.

-I have a 12-inch skillet with 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter that I'm gonna melt over medium heat.

And we'll let that start while I prep an onion.

-Okay.

I love watching people chop onions.

Everyone does it just a little differently.

-All right.

I don't know that I'm doing anything new and exciting.

I'm just going to work with my slices up the onion first, and then I'll do my vertical cuts.

And then just cut across the end.

-Nicely done.

-Thank you.

And then, if there are any pieces that I'm not 100% sure of, I'll just rock back and forth through it.

All right.

Besides prepping the shrimp, that's the most work we have to do for this recipe.

-That's pretty easy.

-It is a great weeknight dish.

Not only does it taste delicious, but it couldn't be easier.

Okay, it looks like our butter has melted.

So we can add the onion.

And we'll also add 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

So we're seasoning the sauce as well as the shrimp.

-Adding a little bit of salt when you're sauteing vegetables helps to draw out their moisture so they cook just a little bit more quickly and they get a little bit more brown.

-So we're just gonna cook this until it's softened, and that'll take us about five minutes.

-Okay.

-The onions are nice and soft, so we can proceed to add some flour.

-Okay.

-This is a tablespoon of all-purpose flour.

And we started with some butter.

And we have onion.

Now we're adding some flour.

You know where I'm going with this.

-That makes a roux.

-That makes a roux.

We'll add 1 1/2 teaspoons of curry powder.

-Okay.

-And that's where most of our flavor's coming from.

1/2 teaspoon of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger.

And this is just gonna have a lot of really nice, bright, fresh curry flavor.

So, now that our flavors have bloomed I'm going to add a cup of whole milk.

-Interesting.

-Oh, just wait.

[ Both laugh ] A cup of whole milk and our cup of chicken bouillon that we've reconstituted.

-Because if you think about it, you made a roux, and then you added milk.

That would be a bchamel.

-Mm-hmm.

-If you had not added the milk and just added the broth, that would have been a velout.

-Right.

-So it's half velout, half bchamel.

-These are classic sauces that Zephyr would have been familiar with.

She cooked in the White House.

You know, she was cooking from classical recipes.

And so this is how she built her curry, which makes a lot of sense.

-It does.

-I want to scrape up the fond, make sure I get every bit of those bloomed spices mixed in.

And we're going to bring this up to a simmer so that we can thicken the sauce with the flour.

It smells so good already.

-It really does.

-Yeah, Zephyr, you know, she was the private chef, as you said, but she also cooked for a lot of state dinners.

-She did.

-She cooked when they entertained politicians.

-Yeah.

And she was kind of well known in LBJ's dinner-party circle.

-Absolutely.

In fact, I love -- There's a quote from Sam Rayburn, who was the Speaker of the House at the time.

He called her the greatest Southern cook this side of heaven.

-Yeah.

-I mean... -That's high praise.

-That's pretty awesome.

All right.

We are coming up to a simmer, and you can see how the texture has already changed.

It's definitely getting thicker.

-Yep.

That roux is going to work.

-Mm-hmm.

Now, interestingly, Zephyr Wright would steam her shrimp separately and make her sauce, and then bring everything together.

-Which is very French.

-Right.

So this really is an homage.

We're really inspired by the recipe in so many ways.

This is one key difference, that we're going to add the shrimp now and cook it in the sauce.

-That makes sense.

Fewer pots, fewer dishes, making it more of a weeknight staple.

-Right.

And we can control the cook on the shrimp, too, so we're only cooking it once.

So, this really only takes 2 to 4 minutes once the shrimp goes in.

And I will go in and unearth some of them from the bottom and make sure everything cooks evenly.

Oh, wow.

These look great.

And they look like they're just perfect right now.

So I'm going to turn off my heat.

And now the one thing we want to do to really make this curry flavor sing is to add some acidity.

So I have 2 teaspoons of lemon juice... -Okay.

-...we're adding here at the very end just to have a little bit of sharpness to contrast the richness.

All right.

So, we have some rice.

You need something to soak up all that good sauce that we have here.

-Yeah.

-So, without further ado... All right.

We'll get a little extra zhuzh.

-Mm-hmm.

I'm going right for the sauce on a little rice.

-Okay.

-I want to taste that flavor.

-The pure sauce.

-Mmm.

There's a lot of shrimp flavor in that -- obviously, because you cooked the shrimp right in the sauce.

But the curry -- you said mild and sweet and creamy, but there was no cream in there.

It was just milk and a little butter.

-Mm-hmm.

-That is lovely.

-And the ginger just kind of pops out at you.

-Mm-hmm.

I don't think I've ever had a shrimp curry like this.

It's really good.

-Neither the texture nor the flavor overwhelms the shrimp.

It really is nice and balanced.

-I can't believe it came together that quickly and has this much flavor.

Then again, there's the bouillon.

The bouillon is a secret weapon for adding flavor to anything.

-Mm-hmm.

You're using just a few ingredients.

You need to pick them well and make sure that they're good and potent.

-Christie, this is delicious.

Thank you for showing me how to make it.

-It was my pleasure.

-If you want to make this simple shrimp curry, dissolve a bouillon cube in 1 cup of water, make a curried sauce with milk and the bouillon, then simmer the shrimp right in the sauce.

From "Cook's Country," a terrific recipe for Zephyr Wright-inspired shrimp curry.

You can find this recipe and all the recipes from this season, along with our product reviews and select episodes at our website, CooksCountry.com/TV.

-Let us help with dinner tonight.

Visit our website anytime for the newest season's rigorously tested recipes, full episodes, ingredient advice, and equipment reviews.

CooksCountry.com/TV.

-"The Complete Cook's Country TV Show Cookbook" brings together every recipe, tasting, and test from 18 seasons of the beloved TV show.

With trusted equipment recommendations and insights from the entire cast, this book is your guide to the very best in regional cooking.

The cost is $24.99, $15 off the cover price of $40.

To order, head to our online shop at CooksCountry.com/book.

-Funding for this program has been provided by the following.

-Monument Grills, offering innovative technology and design for the grilling enthusiast with a lineup of gas grills designed with durability in mind, including the Eminence 605, with LED touch panels and side and rear infrared burners.

Learn more at MonumentGrills.com.

-Teakhaus.

Inspired by a passion for cooking and respect for our planet, each board is handcrafted from sustainably sourced wood designed for every step, from food prep to presentation.

Teakhaus.