America's Test Kitchen

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-Today on "America's Test Kitchen," Dan makes Bridget the ultimate Chinese pork dumplings, Lisa reviews ginger graters, and Keith makes Julia a Chinese favorite -- Beijing-style meat sauce and noodles. It's all coming up right here on "America's Test Kitchen." -Cooking with family is an important part of Chinese culture --

and especially one dish

dumplings. Well, that's a family affair. We've got a member of the "ATK" family here. It's Dan. He's going to show us how to make great pork dumplings in our own home. -So, Bridget, this is one of those things where you have them out at restaurants and you're like, you couldn't imagine how you could possibly make them at home. -Right. -Right? This recipe, we're going to take you through the whole process and it's actually easier than you think it would be. But it really starts with making your own dough. So, you can go and buy those wrappers. They don't have that nice chew and that texture that we want for homemade dumplings. -It's true, it's true. -So, we're going to start really simply with 2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour. This is 12 1/2 ounces. We love our food processor for putting doughs together. This is going to be great for that. All right, and now I have some boiling water over here, which is actually traditional and useful for this dough. So, I'm going to measure out a cup of boiling water here. You always want to boil your water and then measure it, so you know you have the accurate measurement. I'm going to turn this on and while it's running, we're going to go right down the feed tube with the hot water -- 30-to-45 seconds is all it takes to come together really fast. That's partly because the food processor works so quickly, but it's because we're using hot water, so it helps to hydrate the flour more quickly, so the dough's going to be ready to work with sooner. It also limits gluten a little bit, so it's going to be easier to stretch and work with. So, I'm just going to knead this for two-to-three minutes on the board here, just kind of get that gluten to work together and make a really nice network. Okay, so that's just a couple of minutes there and you can see... -Oh, yeah. It's really supple. But it's not sticking at all. You did not flour the board at all. -No, and we would definitely need to if we were using cold water. Just going to kind of round it off, it's got a nice, taut exterior. So, we're going to wrap this in plastic wrap and we're going to let it rest for 30 minutes. During that time, flour's going to hydrate a little bit more. That gluten that we did form is going to relax, so it's going to be even easier to work with. So, just set that aside. -No refrigeration. -No refrigeration needed. No, we want to let that sit at room temperature. So, I'm just going to scrape out our food processor here so we can use it again. -All right. Well, as Dan mentioned, boiling water is very important to this recipe, and that's for two reasons -- one, the boiling water hydrates the starches, but it also helps to denature the gluten. Now, let's take a closer look at that. Flour is made up of starch and protein molecules. When you add room temperature water to flour, two different types of protein molecules in the flour -- glutenins and gliadin -- they link together to form protein fibers called gluten, and those mesh into an elastic network. Now, the gluten network helps to give baked goods like bread its structure, but that same structure that we like in bread can make things like dumpling dough pretty hard to work with. The elastic gluten wants to snap back on itself, so that's where the boiling water comes in. Boiling water denatures the protein strands in the flour and that alters the structure of the proteins, preventing them from linking up and forming as much gluten. And less gluten results in a more malleable dough that doesn't stick to your hands or snap back when you try to manipulate it. All right, so, Dan, you cleaned out the bowl there? -I did some light housework. So, next up, we're going to work with some Napa cabbage here, so we're making a classic pork and cabbage filling. It's fantastic. We're going to make quick work of this cabbage using our food processor. So, this is 5 cups that we've cut into 1-inch pieces. And we're just going to pulse this until it's nice and small, about 8-to-10 pulses. -Well, that was easy again. -I'm telling you, it's not as hard as you think to make these. Okay, so that took care of the chopping. Let me get this into a small bowl over here. Cabbage is wonderful. Flavor, texture, we love it. And unfortunately, it has a lot of water in it. And if we don't get that out before we put in the filling, it's just going to sog out everything we do in there. So, we're going to get the water out first and that's with 1/2 teaspoon of salt, so just going to sprinkle that over. Salt is going to draw moisture out. We're going to let this sit for about 10 minutes. You'll see tons of water come out and then we'll squeeze it and get rid of it. -Sounds good. -So, 10 minutes are up and you can see that water pooling right underneath there. -Quite a bit. -Quite a bit, so there's even more than that in there. So, what we're going to do is just use our hands and just give it a good squeeze. -Hmm. -But, yeah, you can just see how much this comes out. It's so crazy. That would ruin a dumpling filling. Great, so squeeze that out and just go into a little bowl over here. Okay, so check out how much liquid we got out of that. -I mean, that's at least 1/2 cup. -Okay, so now we are finally getting into the meat of the matter -- our pork. We're going to use ground pork. So, I've got 12 ounces of ground pork here, into my trusty food processor again. Now, we're going to season this really, really nicely, so we're going to turn to a number of key ingredients that just bring a ton of umami and salt and flavor. -Great. -So, we're going to start with 1 1/2 tablespoons of soy sauce. We have 1 1/2 tablespoons of toasted sesame oil. Really flavorful. -Yes. -I also have a tablespoon of vegetable oil. We don't want all of our fat to come from that toasted sesame, 'cause it can really overpower. Also have 1 tablespoon of Chinese rice wine. You can use dry sherry if you can't find that. Have a tablespoon of hoisin, which is salty, but also has that nice sweetness. -It is a flavor explosion. -A flavor explosion. 1 tablespoon of grated ginger. 1/2 teaspoon of salt. 1/4 teaspoon of white pepper. Has that really beautiful fragrant, kind of flora aroma. Very different than black pepper. So, now we're going to process this. Now, this is totally different than making meat loaf or burgers, where we want this really crumbly, tender mixture. -Right. -We want this to be more on the sausage end of things. Like, a little bit snappy. It really holds together and it traps all those juices and fat inside. -Compact. Yeah. -Yeah, compact. So, about 10 pulses should do it. Yeah, you can see it start to stick to the sides. -Yes. -So, now what I'm going to do is just scatter over our salted drained cabbage. I also have four scallions that are just minced up. You need that allium, that really nice kind of sharpness in there, great way to add it. So, I'm just going to pulse this together until it's combined, about eight pulses. That looks excellent. -Mm-hmm. -So, now I'm going to go into our bowl here. I'm going to pack it in really nice and tight here and smooth the top of it. We're going to wrap it, transfer it to the fridge and we'll let it firm up a bit while we get our wrappers ready to go. -Sounds good. -Our dough has rested for 30 minutes and you can see it's slacked out a little bit. -Yes. -And then we've got our pork filling over here, which has chilled a bit. So, I'm going to go a nice cross here and then I'm just going to take out 1/4 of it. We'll work with 1/4 of the dough and 1/4 of the filling. So, I'll set this aside and we'll work with just that. -Okay. -All right, so let's get into this dough here. So, first step, is we're going to get this down to a 12-inch cylinder. Really not hard to do. It almost does it on its own if you look at it the right way. So, I have a ruler here, that's 12 inches. So, we're going to cut it into four equal pieces now, so I like to go right down the middle first and then cut each half in half. Lot of math in this recipe, so just watch out. So, we're going to work with just one of these, uh, at a time and the others, we're going to wrap in plastic and just set 'em off to the side so they don't dry out. -Gotcha. -Okay, so our next cylinder, we're going to go 8 inches this time. -It's a very forgiving dough. -Isn't it? -Yes. -Go in and out. Okay. So, that's 8 inches. -Okay. -I'm going to divide that in half and then I'm going to pass one over to you, so we want to cut these into five equal pieces. -Five equal pieces. -Yep. So, it's four cuts and I've got a little bench scraper there for you. -All right. -Okay. We've got this wooden board here, where we need a lot of flour on it. Just going to come in and dust here. -Thank you. -And then I like to just kind of smooth it out a little bit. And then we're going to go kind of with the cut-side-up there, right? -Okay. -And put them down on the flour. And you can give 'em a little flip, get that flour on both sides. -Sounds good. -Before we get our rolling pin out, what we're going to actually do is just use our palm and press down on them. You can get it down to about 2 inches just by pressing like that. Another nice trick is if you have your bench scraper, you can come right over on the side here and press down. -Oh, look at you. -Yeah. You don't have kind of the irregularities of your palm involved there, either. -Yes. I like that technique. There we go. -Nice. Okay, great. So, there's a wet towel over here, so what you want to do is just cover them up while we're working with just one. -All right. -Okay, great. So, you have plenty of flour. Also really nice idea, take your rolling pin, get some flour on that, as well. And you don't really have to apply much pressure. It's such a soft dough, but you're just kind of starting in the middle, pressing out, and I like to just kind of give it 1/4 turn every time I do that. So, we're rolling these out, at this point, to 3 1/2 inches. -Nailed it. -Nailed it. Nice. So, what we're going to do is we're going to put a scant tablespoon in each one. -Okay. -So, you want to place it right in the middle. -All right. -So, next step here is to brush away excess flour. It's going to make sure that we bond it together really nicely. -Yes, because flour prevents sticking, now we want stick. -Now we want some stick. -Okay. -So, we're going to start with the back here and the front and we're going to bring them up and meet them in the middle, just like that. And the seal right here is going to be 1 1/2 inches across. Beautiful. Okay, so here comes the pleating, so we're going to take this side here and pull it up to the back. -From this side, it would be like that. -Exactly. Yeah. Just like that. And then on this side, so you want to keep closing that down. -Okay. All the way? -And get it right next to the filling so you don't have too much of an air pocket in there. And then we're going to repeat the same thing on the other side, coming up and overlapping. Now, the final step once you have it together is to just kind of curve it around so you get that beautiful nice, true crescent shape out of it. -Very nice. -Cool. And then we just transfer them over to this floured parchment baking sheet. Okay, so now we know how to do it, we've just got to do it, um, 38 more times. So, we're just making 40 of these, total. -All right. -It's a good thing to do with family and friends. -I think once you know what you're doing, though, it goes a lot faster. -Look at this beautiful dumpling landscape. We have 40 gorgeous dumplings in front of us. -They have multiplied. -We're going to cook 20 right now, 20 of them freeze beautifully and then you can cook them from frozen, so -- -Great. -You put the effort in up front and then you have a nice weeknight meal. -Perfect. -So, if you want to set those aside over there. -All right. -And we'll work with just these. So, we're going to use a classic potsticker technique here, where they sear, then they steam to cook through, and then they re-sear. So, the easiest way to do it and to arrange 20 in here, is to start in a cold skillet. So, I've got 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil and I'm going to use a pastry brush just to get a nice, even coating on the bottom. Here is how we arrange 20 dumplings in this skillet. So, we're going to start and we're going to do 16 around the outside. -Kind of nesting them. -And then the last 4, just nestle in like this. So, now we're going to heat these over medium-heat. We're going to cook them uncovered like this, about three-to-four minutes. We're looking for a little bit of browning to start on the bottom. Let's check these out. That's been about four minutes. -Oh, perfect. -So just beautiful, spotty brown. -Spotty brown there. -It's already a little bit crispy. -We're going to sog it out, though. So, what we're going to do is move this off the heat while we add 1/2 cup water to it. It's going to splatter a lot, so we want to just do it off the heat.

Sizzling

and especially one dish

-Very nice. -Beautiful. So, we're going to pull it back on the heat now, bring it up to a boil, and then we're going to cover, and go medium-low-heat for about six minutes and this is the step that really cooks them through, so that filling is -- is fully done. So, that's six minutes. We're going to take the lid off. -Ooh! -Most of the water is gone. There's just a little bit left. And once it's gone, we're going to crank this up here to medium-high. It's going to start browning again. That beautiful flat side will turn golden-crispy-brown. It only takes about a minute to three minutes. All right, let's take a look at one of these and that is gorgeous. -Perfection. -That's what you're looking for. So, we're going to turn off the heat and get these onto our platter. Now, I like to plate them with the crust-side-up, not only for, you know, beauty and little bragging rights... -Aesthetics. -Aesthetics....but also because it keeps it nice and crispy. -Oh, that makes sense. You don't want that crust sitting right on the plate and steaming. -Exactly. So, these obviously look beautiful. But we're only going to know how good they are until we eat them, right? -That's true. -We've got to eat them. So, we have a couple different options for how to dip these. -All right. -So, we've got some soy sauce and black vinegar, which are totally traditional and delicious. We also have a Sichuan chili oil and this is really cool. It's got a combination of heat from the chilies and then also this numbing quality from Sichuan peppercorns and it's an amazing combination. All right, let's dig in. -All right. You took two, so I'm going to do exactly the same. I don't want to be rude. -That's just the start. -And eat them all. Right. -That is so good. -Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. -Crispy on the bottom. -Oh, super-crispy. -That wrapper is so nice and chewy. -If you used regular store-bought wrappers, they can be really thick, so where it's pleated, it ends up too gummy and too thick and doughy. -We haven't talked enough about the filling. -I would eat that filling all by itself. Tons of flavor packed in there. It's not just steamed little bit of pork. -No. -And it's still tender, even though you really processed it. And it was so easy. Well, gather your family and why don't you make dumplings, as well? Make a dough by processing boiling water into flour, knead, and then let that rest. Create a filling with pork, soy, and spices, along with chopped cabbage and scallions. Roll, fill, and pinch each dumpling and then cook until spotty brown. Add water, cover, and steam until those dumplings are crisp and super-brown. Serve with soy sauce and a little numbing chili oil. So, from our test kitchen to your kitchen, easy to make, fun to make, it's Chinese pork dumplings. Well done. -Thank you. -Yeah. -We love freshly grated ginger in all kinds of sweet and savory recipes. Cookies and cakes, stir fries and glazes, sauces and soups. And normally, we just use our rasp grater. The rasp can grate a tablespoon of ginger in one minute. But we've seen all these tools that claim to ace the job, so we bought 10. And after grating pounds and pounds of ginger, we learned that seven of these were no better. And, in fact, this one took four minutes to grate the ginger. So, all of these were out and that left three that were better. And of those, this was our favorite. It's the Microplane Home Series Fine Grater for $14.95. It's super-speedy. This thing grated a tablespoon of ginger in just 15 seconds. Look how easy this is. It has sharp edge holes. They slice the fibers so you get less waste. It's got a big grating surface, so you get more ginger per swipe. It's got an open paddle, so it's easy to get all the pure. This comfy handle feels nice and secure, and the open design makes it easy to clean. To see how it held up, we grated another whole pound of ginger on our winner and it was still as sharp as the first time we used it. So, if you cook with a lot of ginger, this thing pays for itself. -Today, we're making a Chinese noodle dish called Zha Jiang Mian, also known as old Beijing noodles, Beijing and meat sauce, or fried sauce noodles. But whatever you call it, it's delicious. And Keith's going to show us how it's made. -You're right, it does have a lot of different names. But no matter what you call it, it's a very simple dish that starts with an ultra-savory meat sauce served over chewy lo mein noodles and that's all sprinkled with slivered fresh vegetables. -Mm. -It's a really delicious sauce. But there are a couple of items that we had to find substitutes for to make it accessible to the home cook. -All right. -So, we're going to start with our meat. -I have 8 ounces of ground pork. It's an intensely flavored sauce, so we don't need a lot, but we're not going to just use straight ground pork. We're going to use a little bit of baking soda in here to make sure it stays juicy and tender when we cook it. So, I have 1/8 teaspoon of baking soda. I'll just sprinkle that over. And I also have 2 teaspoons of water and that will just make sure that baking soda gets distributed in that ground pork. I'm just going to mix this together. We're just going to set this aside. Now, we're going to focus on our substitutions. Traditionally, this is made with two sauces that we have here. They're kind of hard to find for most home cooks. The first one was a ground bean sauce. Like I said, it's not available to most home cooks. But what was available was red miso paste. Fermented soy beans, big umami flavors. And so I have 5 tablespoons of red miso paste. So, our second sauce is what we call a sweet bean paste. Hard to find. You're not going to walk into your local supermarket and find this. We used hoisin. This has sweet flavors, salty flavors, umami flavors, much like hoisin does. And most people probably have hoisin in their pantries. So, we have 3 tablespoons of hoisin here. We're going to add that to our red miso. Now, there was one flavor that hoisin did not provide and that was kind of a -- a smokiness or a bitterness that the sweet bean paste had, but the hoisin does not. And we tried a lot of different things and we ended on molasses. -It does almost have a smokiness to it. -Yeah, and it's going to really lend a lot of depth to the sauce -- so, we have 3 tablespoons of hoisin and 1 tablespoon of molasses. Also, we're going to finish this up with 5 tablespoons of soy sauce, which is a traditional ingredient, and 1/2 cup water. Okay, so we have our two main components for our sauce ready and now we can focus on the vegetables. So, we're going to start with 1/2 English cucumber. We're going to leave the skin on and I'm just going to cut this in half and then we're going to just cut this into match sticks. Really simple. Create a nice flat surface. Then you can just create slices. Now, you have these planks, you can just run your knife along like this. Okay, cucumbers done. And we're also going to be using scallions. We're going to use the tops, the green part as a vegetable component to top our noodles and then we're going to use the white part for the aromatics. I'm just cutting these on a bias, fancy word for an angle. So, we have 8 scallion greens. I'll just put that in a bowl and give those to you to set aside. So, now I have the light green and white part, I'm just going to take the root end off these, line 'em up like that, get rid of that. And I'm going to cut these into 1/2-inch pieces. Now, I'm going to take this and I'm going to go over to the food processor. We're going to let the food processor do the work in this case. So, I have our scallion light green and white parts. I have 2 cloves of garlic. And I have 1/2 inch of ginger that has been peeled and sliced thinly. Now, this is a pretty traditional aromatic base for a lot of Asian cooking. So, I'm just going to pulse this 5-to-10 times, until all those ingredients are nice and finely chopped. And I'll scrape it down once or twice all the way through, because there's not a lot in there and they get kicked up and stick to the side. So, our aromatics are nice and finely chopped. And we have one last ingredient

that we're going to put in

4 ounces of shiitake mushrooms that I've stemmed and sliced 1/2-inch-thick. Add a little bulk to the sauce, a little meatiness, a little umami flavor that complements the other ingredients. And I'm just going to pulse that. You can see that everything is nice and finely chopped. Okay, now we are ready to cook. So, I have a medium sauce pan here. I'm just going to put it over medium-heat. I'm going to add 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil and I'm going to add our pork to this. We're just going to cook it for 1 minute. So, it's been 1 minute. The pork is starting to lose its pink color, so I'm just going to take our aromatics, scrape that into the pot, stir this in. Now, we're going to let this go 5 to 7 minutes and what's going to happen is those aromatics are going to release some liquid. We want that to evaporate. We don't want that liquid in there. So, we're just looking for this to dry out and start to stick to the bottom of the pan. Okay, so you can see that all that liquid has now evaporated and it's starting to kind of stick on the sides of the pan. And we have a little bit of color there -- that's okay. And now we can add our miso mixture that we mixed earlier. Just going to stir this in. -Now, that's looking good. -Yeah. We're just going to bring this up to a simmer. We're going to go 8-to-10 minutes. It's going to get a little darker and it's going to get a little thicker and then, at that point, we can cook our noodles. -Sounds good. -It's been 8 minutes and I think that our sauce is ready. -That's beautiful. -Yeah, it's gotten darker, it's thickened up a little bit, and it smells really intense. -Smells awesome. -I'm going to put a cover on this. This is ready to go. We can focus on our noodles now. Today, we're going to be using 1 pound of lo mein noodles. This is what it looks like out of the package. -They're beautiful. -Yeah, and this is what it looks like in the package. You can find them in most supermarkets, large supermarkets. You can certainly find them in any Asian food store. If you can't find lo mein noodles, we recommend that you use dried Italian fettuccine. It has a similar texture as long as you cook it al dente. But you only want to use 8 ounces of fettuccine, you don't want to use a full pound. -That's right, 'cause these are fresh noodles. They have moisture in them. These are dried. -Yeah, exactly. What you want to avoid is these Chinese-style noodles that you find in the refrigeration section. -I know those. -You know those. They don't have a lot of flavor. They're kind of a mushy. They don't have that nice chew that the lo mein noodles... So, avoid this. If you can't find lo mein, then use dried fettuccine. -All right. -Okay, so let's cook our noodles. -Okay. -So, I have 4 quarts of boiling water here and I'm just going to drop 1 pound of lo mein noodles in here. I'm just going to give this a quick stir, 3-to-5 minutes. We'll come back and we'll eat. -All right. -So, I think our noodles are tender -- I can just try one here. Mm. They're perfect. They're tender, but they also, you can tell there's a little bit in the center that's not quite cooked. But by the time we drain it and eat it, it'll be perfectly cooked. Can I ask you to drain that? -You got it. -And transfer the noodles to the platter. -You got it. Ooh, they look hot. -And our sauce is still warm here. You can use a ladle, but I'm just going to put it right on top, right out of the sauce pan. It's a small amount of sauce, but it's going to be really intensely flavored. So, we have the cucumbers and I'm just going to put these in little stations around the edge here. You can arrange them however you like to. I'm adding 6 ounces of bean sprouts. No prep, just open up the package, rinse 'em off, and you can go right onto your platter. And I'm going to add our scallion greens in a couple piles like this. -This is really pretty. Oh, I'm getting the smells of this sauce. -So, we've gotten everything nicely mixed in there and I think I can't wait any longer, so... -Get some more garnish on there. -You want some more garnish? -Yeah. That's the stuff. Hmm-hmm! Mm! The sauce is rich and deep, and then it's mitigated with the fresh cucumber and the fresh bean sprouts. -And the small about of baking soda in there has made sure that that pork is nice and tender, still juicy. Even though we've cooked it for 10, 15 minutes, it's still really great. -This is absolutely delicious. -It's really great sauce, isn't it? -Yeah, thank you. -You're welcome. -So, if you want to give Zha Jiang Mian a try, start by seasoning ground pork with baking soda. Make a quick miso-based sauce and finely chop some scallions and shiitake mushrooms. Then cook both with the pork for a few minutes to make the sauce. Boil fresh lo mein noodles until tender, then top with the pork and some fresh cucumbers and bean sprouts. From "America's Test Kitchen" to your kitchen, a cool new recipe for Beijing-style meat sauce and noodles. You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season, along with our tastings, testings, and selected episodes at our website -- americastestkitchen.com. -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.