America's Test Kitchen

-Today on "America's Test Kitchen," Julia makes Bridget Goan pork vindaloo, Adam reveals our top pick for rice cookers, Lisa reviews electric can openers, and Dan makes Julia chana masala.

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

-Today, we are making my favorite curry of all time, a pork vindaloo, and it's redolent of warm spices, balanced aromatics, and juicy, succulent pork.

And Julia is here, and she's going to show us a version of this Goan dish that we can make at home.

-That's right.

So, this is the traditional vindaloo -- not spicy, just fragrant, and it has three key ingredients.

The first is pork.

This is a 3-1/2-or-so-pound pork butt.

That's from the shoulder.

You'll see coconut vinegar, which you can find at any grocery stores or online, and Kashmiri chili powder.

Alright, so to get started, we're going to make a spice paste that's going to flavor the pork, starting with some fresh ginger.

You want about a 2-inch piece of ginger.

I know you love this trick of using the spoon to peel ginger.

-Very much so.

You're just taking that little bit of peel off and leaving the rest of it.

-That's it.

-And the spoon can get into those nubs.

-That's the thing.

Oh, that smells good.

Alright.

I'm just going to slice this thin.

Give it a head start before we put it into the blender.

-Okay.

-Into the blender jar it goes.

Now we're going to add six cloves of garlic.

You just want to make sure they're peeled and trimmed, which these are.

I've got a few spices lined up here, but this one is the most important.

It is Kashmiri chili powder.

-Mmm.

-Now, you can find this online or in an Indian market.

It has a very mild but bright flavor and beautiful color.

Just 3 tablespoons of Kashmiri chili powder.

-And we've got a great workaround if you can't find that Kashmiri chili powder.

It involves guajillo chilies, black tea, which adds an astringent flavor, and a little bit of paprika.

We've got instructions for that on our website.

-Alright.

Next up, 1 tablespoon of paprika.

Tablespoon of ground cumin.

-Mmm.

-2 teaspoons of table salt.

Teaspoon of black pepper.

Now we're into the little spices that just add nuance.

So, this is 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon, oh, of my favorite, cardamom.

-Oh, yes, yes, yes.

-Oh, I love those warm spices.

And just 1/4 teaspoon of ground clove and 1/4 teaspoon of ground nutmeg.

Alright, so that's it for the spices.

Notice I left out anything too spicy.

And if you do like a little bit of heat in your vindaloo, you could always add some cayenne.

But I like this one on the mild side, so I'm leaving it out.

-Lovely.

-Alright.

Last but not least, a little bit of water to help things go around.

This is 3/4 cup of water.

Alright, so we're just going to blend this into a nice, smooth paste.

Takes a minute or two.

I'm going to stop and scrape down the sides of the blender jar as I need to.

Alright, let's get in there and see how it looks.

Actually, you can see this is a pretty smooth paste.

-Mmm!

-Yeah.

Can you smell it from there?

-I sure can.

-Yeah, it's very fragrant.

Alright.

So, I'm just going to set this aside while we focus on the pork.

-Okay.

-So here I have a 3 to 3 1/2 pound pork butt.

That's from the shoulder.

Perfect for braising and making stew if it's nice and soft throughout the long cooking time.

-Right.

-Alright.

So, now, you can see there's some hunks of fat in there.

We want to cut the meat down into stew sized pieces or about, you know, an inch big.

What I like to do when I'm kind of tackling a big piece of meat like this is I cut it into almost steaks that are about the size I want the pieces of meat, and then it just makes it easier to go in and trim out the pieces of fat.

-Agree.

-So I'm going to take my time and just cut up the pork, taking off some that fat and silver skin as you go along, leaving a little bit of fat, of course.

Little goes a long way for flavor.

-And in general, the hard fat is what you want to take off.

-That's it.

-The soft fat will melt a lot easier.

-Alright, there we go.

Trim and meat.

Now I'm going to take this spice paste, pour it all over the pork.

Ohh.

-Mmm.

-That's it.

Oh, goodness.

Okay, so now we can just clean this up and get cooking.

-Excellent.

-Alright, so here I have 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil.

Just going to heat it up in the pot over medium heat.

-Alright.

-While that heats up, just going to chop an onion pretty fine.

This is a nice, big onion.

Should yield about 1 1/2 cup.

First cut, down towards the root end, but not through.

Second cut, horizontally.

And then third cut, straight down into a nice, fine chop.

Alright.

Our oil is nice and hot.

We're going to cook them on their own for a good 7 to 9 minutes just until they start to soften and get a little brown.

-Okay.

-Oh, you can see those onions have really cooked down, and they're nice and golden.

In goes the spiced pork.

We didn't marinate the pork, and a lot of recipes marinate the pork in coconut vinegar, which is a classic flavor.

And though we are indeed going to add it, when we marinated the meat in coconut vinegar or we added it to the pot at the very beginning, we found it dried out the pork butt.

So instead, we're gonna hold back on the vinegar and just add it partway through.

Alright, so it's been a couple minutes, and the pork has started to release some of its liquid, and the mixture is bubbling.

Time to put this in the oven, which is just a much easier way to cook the braise, 'cause there's not a lot of liquid.

Prevents anything from scorching.

So, we're gonna put this in a nice, low 325-degree oven.

We're just going to cook it for 40 minutes.

-Okay.

-Ohh.

Oh, goodness.

Smells good, doesn't it?

-It smells like heaven.

-Yeah.

So, the vindaloo is not done at this point.

The pork needs a little more time in the oven to turn tender, but now is when we're going to add that important coconut vinegar, which lends, you know, a nice brightness and fruitiness to the sauce.

-It wouldn't be vindaloo without it.

-It would not.

Alright, so we're going to stir in 1/3 cup of coconut vinegar.

And if you can't find coconut vinegar, you could substitute cider vinegar.

Alright, that looks pretty good.

So, cover goes back on.

Back into that 325-degree oven.

It needs another 40 to 50 minutes for that pork to get good and tender.

But after 20 minutes, I'm going to take the lid off and let that sauce reduce down.

-Okay.

We like plenty of tart vinegar in our vindaloo, but it turns out that when we add the vinegar to the pot is very important.

Many recipes start by marinating meat with vinegar, which imparts a tangy flavor into the meat.

Proteins in muscle meat contain mostly negative charges.

Since similar charges repel each other, the proteins stay separated.

That allows the space between them to fill with water.

Vinegar, however, is an acid, which means it's full of positively charged ions.

When the vinegar meets the protein, the charges cancel out.

Now there's nothing holding the proteins apart.

So when the cooking starts, the muscle fibers begin to squeeze together, forcing out juices from the meat.

This can result in meat that feels dry.

For our recipe, we skip the acidic marination step and add the vinegar to the pot late in the cooking process.

This allows the meat to retain its juices and imparts a flavorful tang to our vindaloo.

Oh, the oven back there has never smelled so good.

-[ Laughs ] It smells good, doesn't it?

Alright, now I'm going to test to see how tender the pork is using a fork.

Ohh.

The fork went in with very little resistance.

That's a sign that it's done.

-It's a great sign.

-Alright.

So, just going to let this sit for about 10 minutes.

Let it cool off a bit.

It's a little hot to eat.

Stir it around, make sure everything's coated with sauce, and then we can try it.

Alright, it's been resting for 10 minutes, and time for a taste.

I have a nice bed of basmati rice here.

-Oh.

-Yep.

A little more.

I know this is your fave.

-It is absolutely my favorite.

-I'm gonna go in for some of that sauce.

Alright.

Moment of truth.

-Moment of truth.

Ah, it does fall apart.

-Oh.

-Mm.

Everything is balanced.

-Now, all the spices are in concert with each other.

And it's not spicy.

It's just fragrant.

-It's bright.

It's tangy.

It's vibrant, because you held off on the vinegar.

-So it has just a little bit of a fresh kick.

-Right.

This is gold star.

-It is, isn't it?

-It is the best.

And you're the best.

Thanks, Julia.

-You're welcome.

-Well, if you want to make this gorgeous vindaloo at home, make a flavorful spice paste to season the pork.

Use the oven instead of the stovetop for even cooking, and add the vinegar halfway through the cooking time.

So, from "America's Test Kitchen," a warm, vibrant, and fragrant Goan pork vindaloo.

Yum.

-Mmm.

-It's estimated that over 500 million metric tons of rice are consumed each and every year.

Well, you're going to need something to cook that in.

So Adam's here, and he's going to tell us all about rice cookers.

-And that is because rice is a global staple.

-Of course.

-It's eaten in practically every country.

In different cultures, there are ingrained preferences for different types of rice and different textures.

And an electric rice cooker is supposed to make it easy to cook to your preferences.

We tested nine different models here.

The prices we paid ranged from $19 to $164.

Testers use these to make small and large batches of long grain white rice, small batches of short grain white rice, and full batches of short grain brown rice.

-Okay.

-What they were looking for were all the grains to be tender but with a little hint of chew, and they wanted consistent cooking throughout the whole batch.

-So no hot spots.

-No hot spots, no overdone spots.

-Okay.

-A bunch of these made actually great rice out of the gate.

Some of them had a learning curve where testers had to get to know them a little better and adjust the ratios of water to rice.

What they did find, though, is that those that had a longer cooking cycle, say 65 minutes as opposed to a shorter one of 30 minutes, generally made better rice.

Some of these were equipped with a technology called Neuro Fuzzy logic, which monitors the conditions inside the cooking bowl and will adjust both the water and the cooking temperature as you go to make sure that the rice turns out perfect.

And both of the ones that testers chose in the end had that Neuro Fuzzy logic.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-So your appliances are smarter than you are.

-Which is not hard in my case.

Exactly.

Testers also really appreciated controls that were clear and easy to use and simple.

They liked to have some sort of indication, like a counter that would tell you where you were in the cooking process and when you were going to be done, and when it would switch to its Keep Warm mode, which they all had.

One other thing that made a difference to testers was because the ratio of water to rice is important, and all of the cooking bowls were dark in finish, if the water marks, if the measurement markings were in white on the bowl, they were a lot easier to see than that red one there.

So that one has the dark bowl, but the measurement markings are embossed into the dark bowl, and you can't really see them.

-You can't see anything in there.

-Nothing.

In terms of cleaning these machines, testers preferred the ones where the lids came off completely or at least had an insert that they could pull off.

One of them didn't, and that one was more of a pain to clean.

-Okay.

-Two of the machines made actually really good rice right out of the gate, and that was these two right here.

They had less of a learning curve than all of the others.

In the end, it was this machine that won the day.

This is the Zojirushi 5 1/2 cup fuzzy logic rice cooker and warmer.

It was $164.

It made fantastic rice, no matter what kind, in what size batch, and it had all of those little features that the testers really liked.

-So you pay a little bit more, but you get foolproof rice.

-For all of your 500 million metric tons.

-[ Laughs ] That's perfect.

Well, if you want to pick up the winner, it's the Zojirushi 5 1/2 Cup Neuro Fuzzy Rice Cooker & Warmer, and it retails for $164.

-If you open a lot of cans or you have issues with hand strength, an electric can opener is a wonderful thing.

But too many of them are terrible.

Look at this.

Super cute, but check out how slow it is.

Now, we tested eight products in two styles, countertop and little battery models.

The prices were about $16 to about $50.

Now, our testers, including one with arthritis, used them to open more than 100 cans, from small tuna cans to big cans of tomatoes.

We even tried cans with dents and cans with pull tops.

Stop.

Stop, stop, stop.

Yes.

Okay.

Who has time for that?

Some of them choked right from the start.

They were hard to use.

The cans had to be positioned just so.

And sometimes, it was hard to tell exactly what they needed to work right.

And some tipped over with heavy cans.

[ Laughs ] Okay.

Nobody needs that.

Now, these little guys, you know, they were adorable.

This one was wobbly.

And two of the three models we tested broke during testing.

The replacements were no better, and they were kind of ridiculously slow.

This guy took an average of 46 seconds to go around one can.

The best took just 12 seconds.

In the end, we had one battery model that wasn't bad.

It was called the Kitchen Mama Electric Can Opener, about $26.

The cutting wheel got slightly bent during testing, but it still worked, so we took a few points off.

But the good part is it fits easily in a drawer, and it doesn't have to be plugged in.

But countertop model the Hamilton Beach Smooth Touch Electric Can Opener, at about $30, aced all our tests.

This thing easily latched onto cans of all sizes.

It's fast.

It never tipped over.

It's also a safety opener.

It's cutting into the side of the can, so it's leaving no sharp edges.

And it even open pull-top and dented cans.

It's our new test kitchen favorite.

-Chana masala is one of Northern India's most popular vegetarian dishes.

Now, there are lots of versions of chana masala, but they all feature chickpeas and an array of spices.

And today, Dan's going to make my favorite version, with garam masala, tomatoes, and cilantro.

-I'm so excited.

It's such a comforting dish.

And the way we're going to make it, it's, like, perfect weeknight meal food, so you want to make it all the time, basically.

So, we're gonna start with our aromatics, and I have a red onion here.

I'm just going to cut this into four pieces through the stem end there.

We're going to use it in two ways.

For part of it here, I'm going to mince it fine, and that's going to be for the garnish.

And the other, we're gonna use our food processor to break it down.

-Oh, I love that trick!

Quartering the onion, and you slice it one way, and you tip it on the other side, and you slice it vertically the other way.

It eliminates that whole horizontal, messy business that everybody hates, especially if you're a beginner at knife skills.

-Yep, it's a great trick.

So, we're gonna transfer this over to a little bowl for garnish.

So, for these pieces, I'm just going to do it really rough.

This is going to go in the food processor, so we just want to break them down a little bit.

Next up, cilantro.

-Mmm.

-So, we're going to use stems and leaves here.

The stems are obviously packed with flavor.

-Mm-hmm.

-I'm just cutting these into kind of rough, 1-inch pieces.

Also goes into the food processor.

Onto the rest of our aromatics.

We've got ginger.

So, this a 1 1/2 inch piece of ginger that's been peeled and cut kind of just coarsely, and it's mashed with a classic paring, which is garlic.

So this is two cloves that we peeled and just cut coarsely.

And that ginger and garlic combination is so important in cooking across the Indian subcontinent, where a lot of times, it's so common that people have a paste made up ahead of time, and you can just use a spoon of it and add to things.

-Oh, that'd be handy.

-Yeah, it's fabulous.

And then finally, so, this is a couple serrano chilies that I stemmed, seeded, so got rid of some of the heat there.

We're going to add half of them to the food processor here, so they're going to cook into the dish.

I'm going to save the other half along with the onion for garnish.

-Mmm.

Spicy.

-So, I'm gonna use the food processor to get a really nice, fine grind on it and it's going take about 20 seconds.

I'll scrape down as needed.

So, when I'm scraping down and working the bottom here, one really simple tip that I love is to always come against the back of the blade, if you're going to stir through, and move it that way.

To go the other way, your spatula gets caught on the blade, and it cuts really, really easily.

So it's a super simple thing.

-And many of my spatulas have little nicks in it from the food processor.

-They all do, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, I'm going to transfer this over to our saucepan here, and I've got 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil already in here, but it's not heated.

And, so, if this were heated, and we added all this wet, kind of almost juiced veg... -Mm-hmm.

-...you're going to get a lot of splatter.

So this is just starting it all cold together... -Mm-hmm.

-...and then we'll bring it up.

So, we're not going to clean this.

We're going to use it for our tomatoes in a second.

-Okay.

-Great.

So now that we've got this in here, I'm going to bring it up over medium-high heat, and we're going to cook until it's really nice and soft and some of the aromatics start to stick to the bottom of the pan.

It's going to take anywhere from 5 to 7 minutes.

Alright.

We're going to multitask.

While that's going... -Okay.

-...we're going to go with one can, a 14-1/2-ounce can of whole peeled tomatoes.

We're gonna go right into the food processor.

So, with chana masala, you see a lot of different textures.

Some of them can be a lot coarser and chunkier.

We want something that's really nice and smooth, so that's why we process the veg that way, and that's why we're going to do the tomatoes really fine.

This will take about 30 seconds.

It's been about five minutes.

You can see the veg is nice and soft.

It's cooked down a lot, and it's starting to stick to the pan a little bit.

-Mm-hmm.

-Right, we're getting a little of that fond and that great flavor.

So that is perfect.

It's time for our spices.

So, first up, we have 1 teaspoon of Kashmiri chili powder.

-Ooh.

-This is -- I mean, you can see that color is absolutely brilliant.

We also have 1 teaspoon of cumin, 1/2 teaspoon of turmeric, and 1/2 teaspoon of fennel seeds.

Now, we've got the fat that's already in there, those 3 tablespoons of oil.

And what's really great about this step in the process is you're getting those spices in contact with the fat, and they're loaded with oil-soluble flavors, so the oil pulls it out, and then that just permeates the whole dish.

-Mm-hmm.

You can smell it as soon as they get stirred into that pan.

Just this waft of spice washing over us.

It smells delicious.

-In just about a minute, it'll get really aromatic and bloom those spices nicely.

Okay, so next up, we're going to add our chickpeas, obviously the key to the dish here.

We're using canned chickpeas.

-Yeah.

-You could totally use dried for this recipe.

Obviously, they need to soak and then cook.

Canned chickpeas are fabulous, and these are cooked about 90% of the way there, so we really like that.

And we also have this wonderful liquid, this aquafaba.

It's gonna add a lot of body to the dish.

Great.

And then finally, our tomato.

-Mmm.

-Great.

Okay.

So, I'm going to bring this up to a boil.

Then we're going to lower the heat, maintain a simmer, cover, cook about 15 minutes.

-Okay.

-Okay, so it's been 15 minutes.

-It smells delicious.

-It smells incredible, right?

-Oh, it does.

-So, a lot of the spices that we added earlier, they permeate the dish because they got into the fat.

We talked about that, but a lot of them, everything you smell in the air is also, you know, volatized, so it's not in the pot anymore.

-Right.

-So one of the beautiful things about so much Indian cooking is the staggering of spices.

And so we're going to add 1 1/2 teaspoons of garam masala at this point in the process, and we're going to retain a lot more of those volatiles so you'll taste a lot more of it in the dish.

-Interesting.

-And then, we've also got 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

-Alright, so the garam masala is in.

How much longer on the simmer time?

-8, 12 minutes, and we're going to thicken this up, and it's just going to be really, really nice, and then we get to eat.

-I can't wait.

-This is my perfect consistency for chana masala.

It's really thickened and beautiful, but it's still got tons of nice brothiness to it.

-Mm-hmm.

-So, the next step, the final step here is to taste it and season it up, make sure that we have the salt exactly how we want.

So I'll just give it a quick stir.

That's always a good idea when you're seasoning.

Make sure it's nice and even.

Mmm.

Doesn't need anything.

-Really?

-Doesn't need any salt at all.

Yeah, it's perfect.

So, I'm gonna transfer to this lovely, shallow bowl over here.

-What a nice serving bowl for this.

-So, we're going to add some of our minced onion.

So, these are stemmed, seeded, and sliced serranos.

And then we've got some gorgeous just cilantro leaves.

Obviously, we have the stems and everything in there, so this just brings all those bright flavor notes right to the top.

-Beautiful.

What's also beautiful is that bowl over there.

-Yes, I was wondering if you were going to see that.

-Oh, how could you not?

I mean, how could you not look at that bowl and think, how beautiful are those?

-So, this is a classic accompaniment to chickpeas.

This is bhatura, and they're these gorgeous fry breads.

They puff up in this gorgeous, gorgeous way.

-And you can find a recipe for those on our website.

-Time to eat.

-Time to eat.

[ Chuckles ] This is one of my favorite meals.

Ohh.

-Some lime wedge... -Ooh, thank you.

-...if you would like there.

-Mm-hmm.

I'm gonna put a little lime on mine.

-So, there's a spoon, but you don't need it, 'cause you have bhatura.

-No.

Yeah.

[ Chuckles ] So good.

That combination of flavors -- the garam masala, the lime, little bit of heat, the fresh onion.

-It's all coming from, like, the spices and kind of -- And the tomatoes add a ton of depth to it, too.

But, you know, if you're -- if you're not a vegetarian... -Mm-hmm.

-...you eat a lot of meat, like, you're so happy with this.

-And this bhatura is just gilding the lily for me.

-Isn't it?

It's incredible.

-Yes.

Dan, this is absolutely delicious.

Thank you.

-You're welcome.

-To make this incredibly satisfying dish, make a puree of onion, ginger, and garlic.

Cook the puree for a few minutes before adding the spices and chickpeas but save the garam masala for the final few minutes of cooking.

From "America's Test Kitchen," a North Indian classic, chana masala.

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

I've got to learn how to make this bhatura next.

-Yeah, oh, yeah.

-Oh, yeah.

The two have to go together now.

-It's such a perfect combination.