America's Test Kitchen

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Today on "America's Test Kitchen," Lan makes me lomo saltado, Jack talks all about chili oil and chili crisp, and Becky makes Bridget tallarines verdes.

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

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♪♪ -In the late 1800s, many Chinese workers immigrated to Lima and other coastal areas of Peru.

And not surprisingly, the cuisines melded to make a Peruvian Chinese cuisine called chifa.

And today, Lan's going to show us how to make a really popular chifa dish called lomo saltado.

-Lomo saltado is a beef stir fry.

It's got peppers, tomatoes, and French fries.

-I love it.

It's a stir fry with French fries.

-Very approachable, very easy.

It's typically served with a garlic rice.

And so that's where we'll start.

-Okay.

-I have 2 cups of long-grain rice here.

I've already rinsed it and set the colander over a bowl just to drain off all that extra water.

And then in this medium pot, I have a tablespoon of vegetable oil.

-Okay.

-We're going to add 4 cloves of minced garlic.

I want to cook this garlic over medium heat.

-Mm-hmm.

-I'm looking for this garlic to turn golden.

It should take about two minutes.

It's not going to be a ton of flavor.

Just a nice soft toasty garlic.

So a good sign that you're close is the garlic kind of starts to stick.

And you can see that where it does stick, it's starting to just pick up color.

-Yep.

-At this point I want to add my rice.

It's just going to go right in.

And just like with any other pilaf, we want to toast this rice out.

It's going to take maybe two minutes.

I'm looking for the edges to become just a little bit translucent.

You can see that it's kind of lost that whitish cast.

-Yep.

-And so we can get our water in.

This is 2 1/2 cups of water.

-2 cups of long-grain rice, 2 1/2 cups of water.

-Yep.

Quick scrape to pull everything up off of the bottom.

And then I want to season this with 1/2 teaspoon of table salt.

So at this point we just turn up the heat.

We're bringing this to a simmer.

Once it hits a simmer, I'm going to turn the heat back down to low.

Pop a lid on and we'll let it steam until all that water is absorbed.

Takes about 15 minutes.

While that rice is cooking, I want to start assembling the sauce.

I have 7 teaspoons of soy sauce here.

And to that I'm adding 7 teaspoons of oyster sauce.

-Okay.

-And then I also have some white wine vinegar.

Just 5 teaspoons of this.

-Oh, interesting, so it's got a little punch to it.

-Yeah, just a little acidity to balance out all of that savoriness.

And we'll just give this a quick whisk and this is ready to go.

-Well, that was the easiest sauce ever.

-Right?

Next we're going to move on to some of the veg prep.

We've got one small red onion and I'm just going to cut it in half.

And then take off the top and the end and cut these wedges into 3/4-inch pieces.

-Oh, they're big pieces, yeah, 3/4.

And I like how you're angling the knife so that you get equal amounts of the outside layers and the inside layers.

-Yeah.

So that's our onion.

This will go in this bowl.

And then we start getting into some of the New World ingredients.

I have two plum tomatoes.

And for all that this is a New World fruit, vegetable, whatever you want to call it, in Chinese cooking, it's often just lightly warmed through.

And so this tomato is going to see a little bit of heat.

Again, I'm looking for 3/4-inch wedges and same deal as with the onions.

You just want to cut through, rotate.

And then the inside, this is just going to fall to bits.

It's going to make a really messy stir fry.

And so I just trim it out.

-Okay.

-You really don't want to use a vine-ripe tomato for this.

You want some fruit that can handle the heat and these tomatoes can really do that.

These tomatoes are going to go in this bowl, and I'm going to move on to our chilies.

Instead of a traditional bell pepper, we're going to be using aji amarillos.

If you can't find them there are a couple of good substitutions-- a red jalapeño, a red Fresno.

So I just want to split this open and seed them.

I don't actually want all these seeds in there.

That's going to be a little too aggressive.

So now that these peppers are seeded, we just want to thinly slice them.

I'm looking for little, thin strips.

A large strip might be a little too aggressive.

Because these chilies are going to be added at the same time as the tomatoes, I'm actually going to just put them in the same bowl.

So "lomo," the lomo in lomo saltado, means "loin."

And we're going to be working with a beef tenderloin.

-That is a beautiful piece of meat.

My goodness.

-It's gorgeous.

It's really tasty.

There's one pound of it, so it's not a ton to feed four, but it's plenty.

-Good enough for a stir fry.

-Yeah.

I'm going to cut it in half and then cut the halves into about 1/2-inch-thick half moons.

I'm cutting this into 1/2-inch pieces and then I want to come back across.

These are already about two inches long, so I'm going to cut them again into about 1/2-inch pieces.

They're never going to be perfect.

The idea is to make sure that whether they are short or long, they cook through at the same time.

-Gotcha.

-I'm going to finish trimming this up and then wash my hands and we'll move on to those fries.

Julia, it's been 15 minutes and you can see our rice is done.

There's no water left.

I'm going to turn the heat off.

Now, I want to leave this alone for about five minutes.

And not only that, give it a little bit of privacy.

-A little spa day.

-Yeah.

So what we're actually doing is we're using this towel to trap all the moisture that is on the lid to prevent it from falling back down onto those grains on top and sogging them out.

This is just going to hang out for five minutes.

At that point, we can give it a fluff and just keep it warm until it's time to serve.

-Okay.

-I promised you fries.

-Mm-hmm.

-Here they are.

They are frozen fries.

-They are frozen fries.

Mm.

-So this is 8 ounces of frozen fries.

I've got a teaspoon of oil here.

I'm just going to drizzle it all over the top and then give these a quick toss.

I'm just looking for them to be evenly coated.

And then at this point you've got a couple of options.

I like to use an air fryer.

I think they come out best when they're in an air fryer.

-Me too.

-But, you know, if you don't have one, you can absolutely use your oven.

-Mm-hmm.

-So spread them out into an even layer, pop them in.

And then we're going to let these go at 400 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes until they're brown and crispy.

I'm going to get in there every five minutes to give them a shake.

-Okay.

One of the best parts of lomo saltado is how the fries absorb the sauce.

And in order for them to do that, you have to use frozen fries.

Here's why.

All French fries contain tightly tangled starch networks that entrap water.

Homemade fries made from fresh potatoes have intact starch structures, so if we add these fries to our lomo saltado, the sauce will struggle to permeate the sturdy network.

Frozen fries, however, are much more absorbent.

That's because freezing alters the fries' structure.

As the fries freeze, the water trapped in the starch network expands and damages the starch chains.

When the frozen fries are cooked, the ice melts, leaving behind a porous starch network.

So now when we add these cooked fries to the lomo saltado, the sauce is easily absorbed into the fries' open starch network.

So that's why frozen fries work better here.

-We talked about how "lomo" means "loin."

Well, the "saltado" in lomo saltado means to sauté or to stir fry.

-Aha.

-And here we get another bit of that Chinese influence.

We've got a flat-bottom, 14-inch wok here, and I'm going to crank the heat to high.

-Okay.

-What I'm looking for is for this wok to be really hot, so hot that the residual oil in here starts to smoke.

That's my cue that we can start cooking.

-Now, if you don't have a wok, you can still make this?

-Absolutely.

You could use a 12-inch cast-iron, carbon steel, or even a nonstick skillet.

-Okay.

-I'm seeing little wisps of smoke, and so we'll start and we're going to start by sautéing half of the beef.

I want to drizzle about 1 1/2 teaspoons of oil around the sides of the pan.

And then we're going to get this beef in.

-That's smokin'!

-Yeah.

I just want to spread the meat out.

We're adding half of this pound of meat to the wok.

This is looking good.

I want to give it a quick toss.

We're going to give this one more minute to pick up a little bit more color.

And then this will go into the bowl and we'll repeat with the second batch.

-Okay.

♪♪ -Give this wok another wipe and we'll move on to our vegetables.

One of my favorite things about this dish is the vegetables are really lightly cooked.

Again, I have a smoking hot wok.

Just a teaspoon of oil this time.

And I'm going to add my onions.

They're going to take about a minute.

I'm really just looking for them to start to brown.

[ Light sizzling ] -You can tell that wok is really hot just by the noise.

It is just a bare sizzle.

-Yeah.

So this is actually looking pretty close.

Just like the beef, the onions are going to get a little bit of a simmer in that sauce.

So we don't have to worry about making sure that they're perfectly al dente.

The charring that I'm seeing on here is perfect.

-Yeah.

-So next up I have 2 cloves of minced garlic.

Just a quick 30-second sauté to kind of lose that rawness.

Pick up a little color.

Doesn't that smell great, though?

-Oh, it smells amazing.

-Definitely.

This time around, I'm not worried about wiping out the pan because I'm going to add my sauce.

It's going to make sure that nothing burns, and I want to let this cook and thicken just a little bit.

The sauce should be thick enough to cling lightly to the onions and beef.

Takes about a minute or so, maybe two.

So see how you're getting that kind of glazy effect?

-Uh-huh.

-That's looking great.

Let's get our vegetables and beef back in.

And we'll give this a couple of really good tosses.

Let everything warm back up.

-Now you still haven't added the tomatoes or the peppers.

And you said they were just going to get a kiss of heat.

-Kiss of heat.

So they're pretty delicate.

You saw how thin those peppers are.

And tomatoes are pretty delicate.

So now that I've got this nicely coated stir fry, I want to add the rest of my ingredients off heat.

So we'll get our tomatoes and chilies in.

Another quick toss.

-It is so fun to watch you do that.

-And then we're going to fold in our fries.

Last step.

Now, with the fries, we don't want to fold them in so that they're fully sauced.

We just want them to be partially sauced.

So you get some bits that are kind of salty, savory and other bits that retain some of that crunch we get -- we got in the air fryer.

-Mm.

-This I'm not going to toss as aggressively.

Julia, this is it.

We are ready to eat.

-Wow.

It smells incredible.

-Doesn't it?

I just love the colors here, the combo of red, purple and, that vivid orange aji amarillo.

They're just awesome.

Last up, I just want to garnish this with a little fresh cilantro.

-Oh, gorgeous.

-Right?

Let's not forget that garlic rice.

-Oh, right.

It's been waiting so patiently under this blanket.

-Yeah, under its blanket, staying warm.

I just want to give it a quick fluff.

I found that when you're making rice in a pot, if it just sits, it cools a tiny bit and the grains, they separate a little bit more readily.

They don't get crushed as you're working with them.

And the rice just ends up a lot prettier.

-Mm-hmm.

-Alright.

-Beautiful.

-Lomo saltado is often served at restaurants.

And when you do get it at a restaurant, one thing that they see that I really adore is the rice is packed into a little cup and molded on your plate.

-Yes.

My husband loves to do this for our dinner.

-So nice, generous serving.

We'll pack it in and then just unmold onto the plate.

Okay.

-Super cute.

-And then let's get you served up a little bit of vegetables and definitely some fries.

-Mm-hmm.

-What do we think?

-That looks gorgeous.

Mmm.

The fries just soak up that sauce.

That sauce is delicious.

-Isn't it?

-Just three ingredients -- soy sauce, oyster sauce, and vinegar.

-Yeah, it's not too assertive or aggressive.

-No.

-It's just really savory.

-It's lovely.

Well rounded, a little tangy.

I love all these flavors together -- the fresh tomato, the really soy-flavored beef, all that garlic and the pepper.

-Yeah.

-That pepper just has -- I know you could use substitutes, but if you can find the real thing, it has a distinctive flavor that really makes the dish.

-Yeah.

-Lan, this was really fun to watch you make.

Thank you.

-My pleasure.

-If you want to make this classic chifa dish, start by making a pot of garlic rice, reheat frozen fries, and make a quick stir fry using beef tenderloin, plum tomatoes, and aji amarillo chilies.

From "America's Test Kitchen," a great recipe for lomo saltado.

I'm going to use this stir fry sauce on other things.

-Oh, yeah.

♪♪♪ -As I get older, I find that my palate is changing.

And one thing is I like my food even spicier, which means I keep chili oil and chili crisp in my kitchen.

Let's start here with chili oil.

This is pretty straightforward if you buy it from the supermarket.

It's soybean oil that's heated.

They add pepper flakes, strain it out, and you get this bright red condiment that you can use as a dipping sauce.

Add a little bit of flavor to some noodles.

Sometimes you'll see chili oil in the ingredient list for recipes, but honestly, the big flex -- make your own.

So in this case, we've got the recipe on the website.

You cook aromatics in the oil first.

So garlic, shallots, ginger, strain them out.

Then add the pepper flakes and leave them in.

They're beautiful and it says, "Hey, I'm going to be spicy."

Now, as good as chili oil is, I'm kind of obsessed with chili crisp.

Now, this is our favorite brand.

It's the original.

It's made chili crisp so popular.

It's Lao Gan Ma.

And so this is a little bit different.

The ingredients are left in -- fried shallots.

There's also peanuts.

So it's crunchy.

Fermented soybeans.

Sometimes you'll see fermented black beans.

That can be pretty overpowering, so I prefer the brands like this one, Lao Gan Ma, with the soy beans.

The other thing here is in addition to chilies, you're getting Szechuan peppercorns, so it's spicy and tingly.

We also have a recipe on our website for this.

Honestly, I put this on scrambled eggs.

I put it on all kinds of noodles.

I eat it straight from the fridge.

Yeah, it's that good.

You see those peanuts?

The fried shallots.

There's garlic in this.

Believe me, if you haven't had this, you're going to be eating it.

If you like spicy foods as much as I do, either buy or make your own chili oil and chili crisp.

♪♪ -I love to study the adaptations that recipes take on as they are migrated from one area to the other, country to country, region to region.

And I'm really excited because Becky's here and she's going to show us a pasta dish that traveled from Italy to Peru.

-Oh, so good.

We're going to be making tallarines verdes.

That means green noodles.

-Okay.

-And this dish was invented in the middle of the 19th century when Ligurians settled in Lima, and they wanted to make pesto, but a lot of the ingredients weren't available.

-Okay.

-So they had some clever substitutions, and they ended up with this creamy spinach sauce to serve over fettuccine.

-That sounds amazing.

-Yeah.

It's fantastic.

It starts with a red onion.

This is what they like to use in Peru.

And we need 1/2 cup of that.

I'm just going to chop this up.

-So for a green sauce, start with a red onion.

-That's right.

[ Laughs ] So this is going to all get blended up.

So I don't need to be too careful here.

I just want 1/2 cup of chopped red onion.

And we're going to need a couple of garlic cloves.

I'm just going to cut those in half.

-Ooh.

Easy prep.

-That's it for that.

So I'm going to have some medium heat.

I have a tablespoon of vegetable oil here.

Alright.

So our oil is nice and hot.

I'm going to add our 1/2 cup of chopped red onion.

This is a really light sauté.

We just want to let this cook for a minute or two just until the onions start to soften here a little bit.

Alright.

It's been about a minute.

You can see the onions are just starting to soften a tiny bit here.

Now we're gonna add in our 2 cloves of garlic.

Just let this go for 30 seconds, maybe 60 seconds till when we start to smell it, then we know it's time to move.

-The nose knows.

-That's right.

Alright, so our garlic is ready.

Smell that?

-That smells amazing already.

Yep.

-So good.

So I'm just gonna bring this over to the blender here.

Pop those in.

There we go.

Alright.

Now, if you want to come over here, we're going to get to the green part of the sauce.

-The verde.

-The verde.

So I have 6 ounces of baby spinach.

So that's the bulk of the sauce is the earthy minerally spinach.

And we're just going to blanch it just for 30 to 60 seconds.

-Alright.

Why are we blanching?

-One of the hallmarks of this dish is that it's supposed to be really silky smooth.

And some cooks even pass the sauce through a strainer to make sure that it's nice and creamy.

-Yes.

-But we found that heat breaks down the pectin and the hemicellulose in -- in the spinach.

-Okay.

-So that way the cells can separate and give you a nice fine sauce.

-Not so fibrous.

-Exactly.

-Okay.

-So we're going to add a tablespoon of salt to the water.

And we'll put our 6 ounces of spinach in.

And a cup of basil.

And we just want this to wilt.

So you can almost start taking it out right as soon as you put it in there.

-Oh, yeah.

-Just 20 seconds.

Oh, and you can smell that basil.

-Immediately, immediately.

-Yeah.

Doesn't that smell good?

The heat -- The heat brings it out.

So now we just want to get a little bit of the water out of the spinach.

-Okay.

-So I'm just going to strain it here.

Press out some of that water and I don't have to go crazy here.

We're making a sauce so it doesn't have to be perfectly dry.

I just want to -- I don't want it to be watery, so just give it a... -That looks great.

-Dry enough.

-Saucy, not watery.

-Yep.

Alright.

Now we'll go down to the blender.

-Pesto time.

-Yeah.

Here we go.

Now it all comes together.

So I'm going to put the spinach in the blender with our red onion and garlic that's already there.

And now I have 1/2 cup of queso fresco.

So this is made in the mountains of Peru.

And it's a fresh, a little bit salty mild cheese, delicious.

-Salty, a little bit briny, like a little sheepy sometimes.

But what if you can't find queso fresco?

-You could use feta.

-Very similar.

-Yes, very, very similar.

So 1/2 of that.

In that goes.

Now I have 1/2 cup of evaporated milk.

Super-important ingredient in Peruvian cooking.

They put it in their coffee.

They bake with it.

They cook with it.

It's a little bit creamy.

It's got this nice tawny color, has a little bit of a toasty flavor.

-Yes.

-Then we have 1/3 cup of pecans.

Now, pecans grow in the Inca Valley in Peru.

So that's why pecans ended up in this dish.

-Instead of pine nuts.

-Yes, exactly.

Alright.

And now our salt and pepper.

Now we have 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper and 3/4 teaspoon of salt.

-Okay.

-And now we want this to get nice and creamy.

I want to let it go in the blender for about two minutes.

[ Whirring ] Alright.

It's been two minutes.

And I think -- -That was such a great job.

-Oh, so great.

I'm going to show you how silky this is.

Look at that.

Oh, my gosh.

That's beautiful.

-That is pureed 100%.

-Yes.

That's just what I wanted.

So that's -- I'm happy.

[ Both laugh ] Alright.

Now all we need to do is bring the water back up to a boil so we can boil our fettuccine.

-Gotcha.

The blanching water.

-That's right.

-Perfect.

-Alright, so our water is back up to a boil so we can boil our fettuccine.

-Yes.

-I have 12 ounces here.

Put that in.

We're just going to let that go until it's al dente.

Stir it every once in a while.

♪♪ Alright.

Our pasta is al dente now.

Now we're going to save some of this starchy pasta water like we always do.

It's great for thinning out the sauce if you need to.

So we usually take about a cup.

Set that aside.

Now we can drain the pasta.

Alright.

That's drained.

So we'll just leave it in the sink for a minute.

-Sounds good.

-There we go.

Now I just want to warm up the sauce a little bit.

It's been sitting for a minute, so I want it to be nice and hot before we toss the pasta into it.

Look at that.

-Silky, silky smooth.

-So I'm just gonna let this heat up for about two minutes, let it warm through.

-Okay.

-Alright, Bridget, the sauce is nice and warm, so if you wouldn't mind handing me the pasta.

-Yep.

You got it.

-Put that in.

Thank you.

-And I'm assuming a little of the pasta water?

-Yeah.

Usually about 1/3 of a cup is what we need for that.

So I'm just going to toss that in.

That's just going to thin the sauce out a little bit.

-Okay.

And it's great to use the pasta water because it's so starchy, so it's going to give even more of a creamy consistency.

-That's right.

It's going to help the sauce cling to the noodles.

Oh, my gosh.

This is one of the prettiest recipes.

I'm telling you.

-That is spectacular.

-You ready to try it?

-I am ready.

-Alright, let's do it.

Got to get a little twirl here.

-Yes.

Look at that.

-Mmm.

-Mmm.

-Mmm.

-Ooh, herbal.

-Mm-hmm.

-But rich.

Super rich.

-Mm-hmm.

-It's seriously.

-But it's so creamy from that evaporated milk, right?

-That's what it is.

-Yeah.

And because we blanched the spinach and the basil, it's so silky, which is how it should be.

-Impossibly smooth.

But there's also this almost smoky depth of flavor that I'm trying to -- It's this mineral flavor.

That's the spinach again, but heating it, blanching it also draws out all those flavors.

-Yeah.

The pecans kind of almost disappear.

I think they just -- They just give it a little something, something, you know.

-That's that kind of smoky, earthy thing that I -- -Yeah.

-It's definitely the pecans.

-Uh-huh.

-Becky, this is exceptional.

Thank you so much for making it.

And I'm definitely going to make it at home.

-Aww, I'm so happy you like it.

-Now, you're going to want to make it at home, too.

And it starts by blanching spinach and basil to preserve their color.

Blend with sautéed red onions, queso fresco, evaporated milk and pecans, and toss with cooked fettuccine right before serving.

So from "America's Test Kitchen," a bright and verdant tallarines verdes.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season, along with product reviews and select episodes, and you'll find them all on our website, americastestkitchen.com/tv.

The queso fresco, that little bit of tang, the saltiness.

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