America's Test Kitchen

-Today on "America's Test Kitchen," Dan makes Bridget sauted tilapia with chive lemon miso butter, Adam reveals his top pick for food processors, Jack shares his knowledge of Italian pastas, and Becky makes Julia pesce all'acqua pazza.

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

-Tilapia is the third most consumed fish in the United States.

That's after tuna and salmon.

And it's easy to see why, because tilapia is tasty, it's nutritious, and it's sustainable.

So Dan's here, and he's gonna show us a great way that we can make tilapia at home.

-So, cooking fish is one of my favorite things to do in the entire world.

And there are certain fish that are great for poaching, others for grilling, others for searing And tilapia is wonderful seared.

It browns up beautifully in the skillet.

So that's what we're gonna do today.

Before we get there, we're gonna do a quick salting on this.

So, I have a teaspoon of kosher salt here, and I'm just gonna hit it on both sides.

I have four 6-ounce tilapia filets.

And this is a really awesome treatment for fish.

You know, we talk about brining and salting lean proteins.

And with fish, because they're so thin, it happens really quickly, which is really nice.

And you can brine or salt.

I'm gonna do salting today.

I really like it.

It doesn't introduce any water, and we're gonna be searing, so that's a nice benefit of it.

-Plus, it helps keep the flavor nice and concentrated.

-Absolutely.

Yep.

-Yeah.

-We're gonna let the fish sit for 15 minutes so we're gonna get better seasoning and better moisture retention.

-Great, just 15 minutes.

Fantastic.

Just 15 minutes.

So, while that's happening, I am gonna put together a little finishing butter.

So, I'm starting with 2 tablespoons of white miso.

It's a really sweet, mild miso with tons of umami.

And to that, I'm adding a teaspoon of grated lemon zest, 2 teaspoons of lemon juice, and 1/8 teaspoon of black pepper.

And we're just gonna stir this around.

Great.

That is well-mixed.

Next, I have 4 tablespoons of softened butter here.

So, we're making a compound butter, which is just a fabulous thing.

So just a really well-flavored butter that's gonna hit the fish at the end and melt and just be fabulous.

So we're gonna mix that in.

Okay, and my final addition is 2 tablespoons of minced chives.

-Little oniony profile going in there.

-Exactly.

Okay, perfect.

Our compound butter is all set.

-Okay.

-We need a few more minutes on this, and then be ready to cook.

-Fabulous.

-So, it's been 15 minutes, and you can see that there's a little bit of moisture on the surface there, so it's pulled some moisture out.

Some of it's gone back in.

Whatever is on the surface I want to pat off so we get a really nice sear.

-Gotcha.

As the moisture was pulled back in, it pulled some of the salt, as well.

-Yup.

And I'll get the other side, as well.

So, there's not a lot of tricks to cooking this fish, but one is really, really key, and that is splitting it down the middle.

So, a lot of filets that we work with, and, you know, from cod and bigger fish.

It's just one nice piece.

This is the whole side of a tilapia, 'cause they're not very big fish.

So we've got the belly portion, and then we have kind of the back portion.

And there are different thicknesses, as you can see.

So, it's a super simple technique.

Literally just run it right down and split it into two.

So you have thick and thin.

-Fabulous.

-And this allows us to cook the thick at one time together and then the thin, so everybody's happy.

So, I've got 2 tablespoons of oil here in a carbon-steel skillet.

I love cooking in carbon steel.

Once it gets seasoned, it's like a nonstick pan.

-Right.

-But, you know, you can have it to really high temperatures without any safety issues.

And I don't know, they just get better with time, which I think is such a wonderful thing.

-That's true.

We could use a nonstick skillet, though, if that's what you had.

-Yes, you absolutely could.

As long as you have the oil in there and you get the fish in right afterwards, you'd be in good shape.

-Okay.

-Okay, so, we're heating over a high heat until we just see some little bit of smoke coming.

And I can see it right now.

So I'm gonna go in with the thicker portions first, and I'm gonna go on the skin side.

That's kind of the nice-presentation side.

-So seam side up, really.

-Yep.

[ Sizzling ] So, I'm gonna cook this for about two to three minutes on this side until I have gorgeous, gorgeous browning, and then we'll do the same on the other.

-Okay.

-So, I'm gonna use a thin fish spatula, which is what it's designed for here.

-Literally in the name.

-Yeah.

So I'm gonna flip them all over.

This is what I meant when I said that it's a great fish for searing.

It just takes on incredible color.

-Mm!

All done.

-Gorgeous.

Okay, so we're gonna go for another two or three minutes, and I'm gonna temp these thicker portions.

We're looking for about 130 to 135 degrees.

-Okay.

-Okay, so, it's been two minutes, and I'm gonna check in the thickest part of this fillet here and see where we are.

Again, we're looking for about 130 to 135.

And that looks -- yeah, 131.

-Fantastic.

-Pretty good.

Alright.

So I've got my platter right here, right where I need it, and I'm just gonna transfer these out.

Skillet is smoking-hot again, so I'm gonna go in with the thin, belly portions.

[ Sizzling ] -Same thing -- presentation side down?

-Exactly.

Yup.

-Alright.

-So, we're not gonna be able to temp these.

We're only gonna cook for about one minute on each side, until we get great browning.

The good thing is the belly has a lot more fat in it, so it's a lot more forgiving to overcooking.

Okay, so, I'm gonna go in and flip these.

It's been about a minute.

-Nice color.

-Nice browning on that.

-Uh-huh!

-Okay, great.

So just one more minute on this side.

We'll get some nice browning, and we'll get them right up to our platter.

-Fabulous.

-These are perfect.

I'm gonna shut off the heat there, and we'll just transfer them over to our platter.

-And they're so thin, you don't need to take the temperature.

We know that they're done by this time.

-Exactly.

Yep.

-Mmm-mmm!

This is my kind of fast food.

-Right?

-Yeah.

-So, we've got our gorgeous fish over here.

While it's still nice and piping-hot, I'm gonna spoon a little bit of the compound butter onto each of our filets.

That way, it melts right into it.

-Yes, please.

-Ooh.

That looks so good.

-Melting instantly.

Yummy.

-Doesn't this look elegant and just really, really beautiful?

-That looks gorgeous.

-Would you like some of the thicker portion or the belly?

-Yes.

-Yes.

A little bit of both.

I like that.

This looks so good.

We got to get into this.

And we have some lemon wedges, too, if you want.

Would you like a little bit of lemon, too?

-Sure.

What do you think?

-Yes.

-Alright.

Let's dig in.

-Lovely crust on that.

-Mmm.

-You really just don't even expect that.

Mmm.

And then, in the center of this thicker fillet, which I chose because I had a big glob of that miso butter on it.

-Mmm.

-Mmm.

Fish is really moist.

It's well-seasoned, too.

-Mm-hmm.

-And I love that butter.

Getting that little piece of crispy belly there.

Oh, yeah.

-Yeah, this belly portion is so nice.

It's so rich.

And such a mild, clean-tasting fish, you know?

-Mm-hmm.

-So it takes well to so many different things.

It's wonderful with the miso.

But you could dress this up in so many different ways.

-Mmm.

-Yeah.

Nothing better than fish.

It's so good.

-So fast.

So delightful.

Just like you.

-Oh, stop it.

-Thanks, Dan.

-[ Laughs ] You're welcome.

-Well, if you want to make this great dish at home, salt the tilapia and let it sit for 15 minutes, cook the thinner and thicker pieces separately, and finish the dish with a tasty miso lemon butter.

So from "America's Test Kitchen," moist, delicious, and super-fast sauted tilapia with chive lemon miso butter.

Mmm, mmm, mmm.

-Food processors are a workhorse in the kitchen.

Every cook should have one.

The question is, which brand is best?

-You know, in fact, "best food processor" is one of the most often searched terms on our website.

You really do want to buy the right one, 'cause the wrong one is frustrating, and the right one is a miracle machine.

-Oh, the right one makes everything okay.

And I've owned the wrong and the right one, and I totally agree.

-[ Chuckles ] We are on the same page.

What we liked from the last test is this guy from Cuisinart, but there are new models on the market.

We wanted to see if any of them surpassed the old Cuisinart.

We bought a fresh copy of the Cuisinart and six others, so our lineup is seven machines, and we paid a range of $35 to $350 for this.

-Ooh!

That's a big range.

-There's a lot that a food processor does, and testers tried everything.

They did dozens of tests, assessed them in a million different ways.

We'll go through some of the highlights here.

Chopping and grinding -- got to be one of the top-priority food-processor jobs.

Those tests were mincing parsley, making mirepoix out of celery, onions, and carrots, and chopping cold chunks of beef with butter to make hamburger meat.

-Mm-hmm.

-And testers were looking for nice, uniform pieces of food.

Not all of the processors delivered that.

The ones that did had a couple of things going for them.

Number one, they had a responsive pulse feature.

When you took your finger off the pulse button, the blades stopped turning.

The ones that kept turning for another couple of seconds overprocessed the food.

-Interesting.

-Number two, they had tight tolerances between the end of the blade and the side of the work wall.

Those tolerances ranged from 2.9 millimeters to 6.1 millimeter.

-6.1 millimeters?

-Yeah.

-That's a big gap.

-It is.

And the tighter it is against the side of the bowl, the more engagement the blade and the food have and the more efficient and neat the chopping is.

There was also some correlation to how snug the blade was on the bottom of the bowl.

-Mm-hmm.

-Blending and mixing are really important tasks, and there were a couple of tests there.

The first one is to put a cup of plain yogurt in the work bowl, a single drop of blue and yellow food coloring on either side of the blade, and run it for 30 seconds.

A lot of the machines left stripes of blue and yellow.

The better ones blended the yogurt to a uniform, perfect green, which indicated efficient blending.

-Interesting.

-Testers also made mayonnaise, because that's a more real-world thing than green yogurt is.

Our recipe uses two yolks and 3/4 cup of oil and makes 3/4 cup of mayonnaise.

Some of them didn't make the mayonnaise very well, and one of them, to our dismay, was our old, favorite Cuisinart that had done a beautiful job in past tests.

It turns out that Cuisinart redesigned the blade a little bit so it sits a little higher on the stem -- 3.2 millimeters higher.

That meant the blade passed over the egg yolks.

Testers also tried slicing tomatoes and potatoes with this.

You want nice, neat, even slices.

And a lot of the success there had to do with the design of the feed tube, because the food has got to stand up straight and even as it hits the blade.

So the testers liked feed tubes that had more different options for fitting things in and just kept them nice and straight.

-That makes sense.

-One of the last important tests was to make a double batch of pissaladire dough.

-Ooh!

I love that recipe.

-That's such a good recipe, and I know who developed it.

It's that French, rustic pizza with the caramelized onions and the anchovies and the olives.

The dough is really wet and sticky.

The machine that had difficulty with this test is this one right here.

This has the 9-cup capacity, so it couldn't quite handle the double batch of dough.

Also, the motor stalled out a couple of times, so we had questions about how durable it would be in the long term.

You know, in the end, our old favorite from Cuisinart won again.

It's the Cuisinart custom 14-cup food processor.

We got ours for about $150.

It did everything well except the mayonnaise.

-Aha.

-Now, you and I both like making mayonnaise.

I like having a mini bowl.

If that's important to you, you may want to consider the Breville.

This is the Breville Sous Chef 12 Plus food processor.

We got ours for about $330.

-Phew!

-It's more expensive.

It performed almost on par with the Cuisinart, and it's got that mini bowl.

-I see.

And there you have it.

Our new winner is our old winner.

It's the Cuisinart 14-cup food processor that cost us about $150.

-My Italian grandmother instilled a love of pasta in me, and that includes being a smart shopper.

So let's start by figuring out how to read a label.

So, I've got De Cecco.

This is our winning brand of spaghetti.

And on the front here, it has a lot of interesting words.

Some of them are more important than others.

Let's start at the top.

Slow dried.

It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't help.

At least we couldn't tell the difference.

It's supposed to improve the texture, but the research we did in the taste tests didn't bear that out.

The next thing on the label, coarse-grain semolina -- that's really important.

So, durum wheat is used to make pastas.

Coarse semolina, which is basically a coarse form of durum, gives it a better bite.

It's more likely to cook up al dente and chewy.

If you just see "durum wheat flour," that means they cut some corners and saved some money, and you're gonna not like the pasta as much.

So semolina's key.

Now, the cold mountain springwater -- that certainly can't hurt, but probably the water you're cooking the pasta in is gonna have a bigger impact than the water that's used in the pasta-making.

Last, but not least, bronze dies.

So, pasta is extruded, and most manufacturers want to save money, so they're using Teflon-coated dies that produce really smooth noodles.

Old-fashioned machines have bronze dies that give the pasta a rough, pockmarked texture that the sauce grabs onto.

And you want the sauce to grab onto your pasta.

Now, cooking, I know there's a lot of stuff out there.

I'm gonna just say two things I want you to remember.

You're probably not using enough water, and you're probably not using enough salt.

There are hundreds of shapes -- actually 1,300 different pasta names.

Some of those may be describing the same shape, but needless to say, the choices are daunting at the supermarket.

So let's break it down into sort of four categories, and then there's a bonus one.

First off, I've got spaghetti here.

It's long.

It's thin.

It needs a sauce that is pretty easily spread -- something thin, like a pesto, or fairly thin, loose tomato sauce, because otherwise, the sauce is gonna clump on the noodles.

Next up, we've got linguine.

Now, this is flatter and wider and so can tolerate a thicker sauce -- maybe something with cheese or a little bit of cream in it.

Up here in the front, I've got tagliatelle.

Now we've got nice, wide ribbons, so chunks of meat, let's say, in a ragu, or bits of carrot or celery in that ragu.

The wider the noodle, basically, the chunkier the sauce.

Next up, rigatoni.

And the most important thing here is these large tubes.

It's perfect for trapping big pieces of eggplant or zucchini.

Finally, I promised you a bonus item.

This is my favorite shape.

This is gemelli, and it's basically twin strands, kind of like a DNA helix, that are bound together.

And why I like this is because it's double thickness, it's got double the chew.

And if you like al dente pasta, this is definitely the pasta for you.

I hope you will love your pasta as much as I do, now that you know a little bit more about how to buy it and how to sauce it.

-Pesce all'acqua pazza, or "fish in crazy water," is a popular dinner along Italy's southern coast.

Now, as the story goes, the "crazy water" is simply seawater that's flavored with a few aromatics.

And I'm hoping today, Becky, that we're not gonna use water from the Boston Harbor.

-I don't think that would be a good idea.

[ Both laugh ] -But this dish requires very little work, and we got a huge payoff.

-Oh, I love it.

-So really nice recipe.

-Okay.

So we want to start with 12 ounces of haddock.

Now, this recipe is often prepared with whole whiting, and that's an inexpensive fish, has nice, mild, sweet flesh.

But since whole fish can be hard to find, that's why we're using the skin-on fillets here.

-Okay, so we're leaving the skin on.

-We are.

Skin on.

-Oh, I like that.

-Now, if you can't find haddock, you could use branzino, or you could use red snapper.

Any firm, white-fleshed fish will be really nice here.

-Okay.

-So, we're just gonna season the fish up with 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

And the skin has so much collagen in it, it really gives a lot of body and flavor to the sauce.

1/8 teaspoon of pepper.

Just get these nicely seasoned.

Alright.

And now we will start our water-based sauce.

-Okay.

-So, I have a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, and I'm gonna add a couple cloves of garlic.

Just sliced up.

And then 1/8 teaspoon of pepper flakes.

I'm gonna put that on medium heat.

Alright, so there's that sound we love.

-Mm-hmm.

-It's sizzling.

Alright, so now I have half of a medium onion, diced up.

[ Sizzling ] Going in for just some nice, subtle sweetness.

A bay leaf.

And I'm adding 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

We found a lot of recipes that add a lot of extras here, like you name it -- capers, lemon, oregano.

But we really found we really like a nice, uncomplicated version.

So the bay leaf will add a nice, herbal background note and then the onion adds nice sweetness.

-Mm-hmm.

A little bit of kick from the pepper flakes.

-That's right.

Just a tiny bit.

So, we're gonna let that cook for two to three minutes, just until the onion starts to soften.

-Okay.

-Now, here I have 4 ounces of grape tomatoes.

You can also use cherry tomatoes.

-I love the grape tomatoes, though, because I feel they're a little bit sweeter, and often I think the skins are a little bit thinner.

-And, you know, we're using the small cherry or grape tomatoes here because they're good year-round.

-Yeah.

-So they're always reliable.

And they're gonna add really nice pops of sweetness and color to the dish.

Alright.

So, it's been about two minutes.

You can see that onions are starting to soften here.

-Mm-hmm.

Smells good.

-Smells good already.

Yep.

So let's put those tomatoes in.

[ Sizzling ] We'll let these go for another two to three minutes, just until the tomatoes start to soften a little bit.

Alright, so, it's been about two minutes.

You can see the tomatoes are softening up nicely.

So let's add our water.

-I love how simple this is.

-So simple, so delicious.

-Very few ingredients.

All go in the pan, bringing out the most of every ingredient.

-That's right.

So that was 3/4 cup of water, 2 tablespoons of dry white wine.

We really like the nice, little touch of acidity that that adds.

And now we have six parsley stems.

We're gonna eke out every last bit of flavor from the parsley here.

And then I have 1 1/2 tablespoons of parsley.

I'm gonna add half, and then we'll save half for later.

Alright, you can see that coming up to a boil.

-It looks pretty.

-Very nice.

And now we can add our fish.

So we'll just nestle these guys in there.

I told you this was very little work.

-I love this.

-Yeah.

-This is my kind of recipe.

-Yep, this is it.

Now we'll just put some of that goodness on top.

The fish doesn't need to be completely covered here.

-Okay.

This is just exactly how it should look.

That is really just about all we have to do.

Now we just let it cook.

We're gonna put the lid on.

Came to a boil.

I'm gonna lower that so it gently simmers for three to seven minutes until the fish reaches 110 degrees.

Okay, it's been about seven minutes.

Let's take a look here.

Ooh.

-Ooh.

That looks beautiful.

Also, that's a really bare simmer.

Just a few bubbles here and there.

At home, I think I would've been tempted to crank up the heat a little bit, but that's what you want, nice and gentle.

-That's right.

I turned the heat down to low.

We wanted it nice and gentle.

And now we want the fish to be at 110.

So let's see where we're at.

111.

I'll take it.

-Nice.

-Alright.

So it's not quite done.

We need the fish to be at 135 to finish cooking.

But what we're going to do is slide the pan off the heat, and we're gonna let that finish off-heat.

And what that means is you can't screw it up.

It's gonna be perfect.

-Oh, I love that idea, letting something finish off the heat so it slowly comes up to temperature.

-Yep.

-Also keeps it nice and moist.

-That's right.

You can't go wrong.

Alright.

It's been five minutes, and I think our fish is perfect.

Look at that.

It's about 135 degrees.

It's cooked all the way through.

-It is pretty.

-Alright, so I'm gonna get rid of the parsley stems, 'cause they have done their job of giving us all their nice flavor.

And we'll get rid of the bay leaf, as well.

We don't need that.

Alright.

Can I give that to you?

-Sure thing.

Thank you, ma'am.

And now remember that extra parsley that we had saved?

I'm just gonna sprinkle that on top.

-Oh, nice.

-I mean, that's gorgeous.

-It's beautiful.

I can't believe how quickly that came together.

-Yeah, we made a really nice dinner for ourselves here.

-Yes, we did.

Yes, you did.

-[ Laughs ] I'm just gonna give it a little taste, see if it needs any more salt and pepper.

Mmm.

That is so good.

[ Both laughing ] I'm just gonna tell you about it.

It need a tiny bit of salt.

-[ Laughs ] It really is -- from just a water base, it's amazing what you can do.

-Yeah.

Old school.

-Yes, that's it.

Alright.

And I want to make sure I give you that gorgeous broth.

-Mmm.

You definitely want to serve this in a shallow bowl, because that broth looks delicious.

-Yeah.

And now I have some nice bread for us here so we can get every last drop of that sauce.

-Oh, yeah, for dunking in.

Alright.

Don't mind if I do.

Oh, the fish is perfectly cooked.

I mean, you can just flake it right off with a spoon.

-So moist.

So tender.

-Mmm!

So flavorful.

-Yeah, just perfect.

Great for a newbie, if you've never done fish before.

-Mm-hmm.

-Can't mess it up.

-That broth.

-Mmm.

-It has so much flavor.

-Mm-hmm.

-And the body, thanks to the collagen in the fish skin, really turned that water into a proper sauce.

-Mm.

Oh, that's good.

A little bit of heat on the back end.

-Ooh.

You can taste the wine a little bit.

-Yep.

-You can taste the parsley and the bay leaf.

-Becky, this is amazing.

Thank you.

-My pleasure.

-To make this simple, but flavorful dish, build a braising liquid using sliced garlic and cherry tomatoes.

Gently lay haddock fillets into the pan, cover, and cook, then let the fish finish cooking off the heat.

From "America's Test Kitchen," a classic Italian recipe for pesce all'acqua pazza.

You can find this recipe and all the recipes and product reviews from this season, along with selected episodes, at our website, americastestkitchen.com/tv.

I'm definitely making this.

-Oh, yeah.