Cook's Country

[ Theme music plays ] -Today on "Cook's Country," we're taking a trip to the Aloha State.

Bryan makes Bridget the ultimate Hawaiian-style fried chicken, Adam reviews plastic wrap, Jack challenges Bridget to a tasting of potato chips, and Natalie makes Julia the best Hawaiian-style macaroni salad.

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

-Back in the late 1800s, workers from China, Japan, Korea, Portugal, and the Philippines all came to work on Hawaii's sugarcane and pineapple plantations.

-They brought their meat and rice lunches in metal containers called kau kau tins.

But later on, the farms started serving a meal on divided paper plates.

Hawaii's plate lunch was born.

-By the 1960s, lunch wagons and roadside restaurants served plate lunch meals to everybody, and it was still a basic meat and rice affair.

-But today, plate lunches will often include a third component -- a portion of creamy macaroni salad, along with those two scoops of rice.

-The makeup of the original plantation workers is still reflected in the infinite choice of proteins -- everything from kalua pork, tuna poke, or even Japanese-inspired fried chicken.

-Ohh, fried chicken is on the menu today, so we're gonna head into the kitchen with Bryan to see how it's done.

Fried chicken in the Hawaiian Islands can mean several different styles.

A lot of them are Japanese-inspired.

There's mochiko, which takes chicken and it marinates it in a batter of egg and sweet rice flour.

And then there's katsu style -- you take chicken and you dredge it in panko bread crumbs.

But Bryan's here, and he's gonna show us what might be the easiest kind of fried chicken.

-That's right, we're gonna do karaage style, which is also known as dry fried chicken, meaning we're not gonna use any batters to allow the starch to stick to the chicken.

Just gonna pull it out of the marinade and put it into our starch and let that do the work for us.

-Simple.

-Okay, so we're gonna start off with our marinade, and that's gonna be a combination of garlic and ginger.

And I'm just gonna process the ginger.

I have 3 ounces here.

I just want to cut that into 1/2-inch coins.

And there's no need to peel this ginger because it's gonna be processed into such small pieces it won't even be noticeable on the chicken.

-I like it already.

Very easy.

-So 4 garlic cloves.

We remove the root end because it's a little bit woody.

And if that sticks on the chicken, you'll definitely be able to feel that.

We're gonna combine the garlic and the ginger in the food processor, and we're gonna process it for 15 seconds until it's finely chopped.

Okay.

That's nicely chopped.

Take a whiff of that.

And we're gonna add that to our marinade.

I've got 1 cup of water here, and the reason why we have the water in there is because if we just marinated it in soy sauce alone, it would make the chicken too salty.

So the water's there to kind of temper the marinade a little.

So, that's our garlic-ginger mixture.

To that, we're gonna add 1/2 cup of soy sauce, 3 tablespoons of light brown sugar, and 1 tablespoon of toasted sesame oil for the deep sesame flavor.

So we'll just whisk this together.

Okay.

So that simple marinade is done.

Now we're going to talk about the chicken here.

We're gonna opt for chicken thighs.

Typically, when this recipe's made in Hawaii, they use dark-meat chicken because it tends to stay moist during frying.

If you use breast meat, it tends to dry out.

When you have a boneless thigh, usually on the side, there's a little piece of fat.

You could just remove that.

And then we're gonna cut the chicken in half, cross-wise.

And cross-wise in this situation means that we're cutting it against the length.

Last piece goes in the marinade, and we just want to press this down to make sure the chicken is fully submerged in the marinade.

And now we're going to cover this chicken with plastic wrap and let it sit in the refrigerator for at least one hour or up to three hours.

After three hours, it gets to be a little bit too salty and a little too pungent.

-Okay.

-Okay, Bridget, our chicken's been marinating for three hours, and we're ready to coat it.

You notice that we're using very small, thin pieces of chicken.

Typically, we coat chicken that's gonna be fried with a combination of flour and cornstarch.

That takes a lot longer to brown than potato starch.

Potato starch gets brown and crispy in the same amount of time it takes to cook that thin piece of chicken.

And so, potato starch is a little different than potato flour because potato starch is the starch only from the potato.

Potato flour is the whole ground-up potato.

So I have 2 1/4 cups of potato starch.

To that, we're gonna add 2 tablespoons of sesame seeds, 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder, which will give it a nice, light, crispy texture, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1 teaspoon of ground black pepper.

Just whisk this together.

This is probably the easiest fried chicken that we've ever made.

So we're just gonna take the chicken from our marinade.

I'll just work with a couple pieces of chicken at a time, let the excess drip off, and then go right into the potato starch.

-That's it?

-That's it.

-There's no egg dredging?

-You don't even have to cook it at this point.

-Dip it.

-It's all done.

-It really is amazing.

-And place it on the sheet pan.

I've lined this sheet pan with a little bit of parchment paper to make it easier to clean up at the end.

You notice I'm only putting in about three pieces of chicken at a time into our potato starch mixture.

When you're doing this at home, you don't want to dump all the chicken in there because you'll essentially create a batter from all the excess moisture on the chicken.

All right, so it's just gonna take us a few more moments to finish coating the rest of the chicken.

Okay, and this is our last piece.

So if you take a look at the chicken, it's a little bit mottled.

That means that the starch isn't fully hydrated.

So we want to go back through and press on the chicken to kind of make sure that that starch gets in full contact and is fully hydrated for that moisture on the chicken.

-You don't want any of these big pockets of dry white starch on it.

-Right.

-Okay.

-Now we're gonna cover this chicken with plastic wrap, and we're gonna let it sit in the refrigerator for at least a half-hour or up to one hour, and that'll just allow the starch to fully hydrate and really stick to the chicken.

-All right.

-Okay.

So, the chicken's been sitting in the refrigerator for an hour.

You can see that the potato starch has really gotten hydrated during that time.

And we're gonna fry in three batches so we don't cool the oil down too much.

So I have 375-degree oil over here.

It's about 2 inches deep, which is about 3 quarts.

And we're gonna go about six pieces of chicken at a time.

-It's a good sign when you get that pleasant, little bubbling.

-Oh, yeah.

-The cauldron.

-Can't walk down the street in Hawaii without hearing this sound, huh?

Okay, right after I put the chicken in, I want to just give it a quick stir to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot, or to each other.

We'll let that go for about five minutes until it's nicely browned.

And I'll monitor the oil during that five minutes and make sure it stays between 350 and 375.

-Okay.

-Okay, Bridget, you can see that the chicken is nicely brown and starting to float up to the top of the oil, which means it's fully cooked.

-Beautiful.

-Just drop it here on this wire rack.

-Oh!

Beautiful!

-We're gonna wait for the oil to come back up to 375, and we're gonna add another batch of chicken.

We'll cook this in two more batches.

-Okay.

-Okay, Bridget, our last batch is all set.

Nicely browned.

Shut off our oil.

And now to accompany the chicken, we're gonna make a bright acidic sauce.

We have 1/2 cup of seasoned rice wine vinegar.

We're gonna add 1/4 cup of lemon juice, 1/4 cup of soy sauce, and then a good pinch of black pepper.

Just gonna stir this together.

This couldn't be more simple, right?

-The chicken was basically pre-cut.

There was no battering.

Can't get any easier.

-I want to give you a little bit of sauce.

Then a little chicken to go with your sauce.

-Thank goodness.

-I love this piece right here.

It's my favorite piece in the batch.

-Is it?

-And I gave it to you!

-It's still crispy.

This was the first batch that you cooked.

-Yeah, this stuff will stay crispy for days.

I usually keep a batch in my glove box in my car.

-[ Laughs ] [ Crunching ] Mmm!

Noisy fried chicken is the best fried chicken.

-I can't hear you.

What?

-Exactly.

Super crisp, light as air.

-Yeah, you can really pick up on those notes of ginger and garlic, and the sesame seeds -- they add little hits of sesame.

This potato starch makes me reconsider every fried chicken recipe I've ever made.

-Yeah?

And the sauce -- love it.

This is easy and excellent.

-Thank you.

-Thank you, Bryan.

Well, this great chicken recipe starts with a marinade of processed ginger and garlic, water, soy sauce, brown sugar, and toasted sesame oil.

Trim and halve boneless chicken thighs, submerge in the marinade, and refrigerate.

Make a coating with potato starch, sesame seeds, baking powder, and seasonings.

Dredge the chicken in the mixture and press the coating onto the chicken so it's nice and even.

Refrigerate for an hour, then fry in three batches until cooked through.

Make a dipping sauce with rice vinegar, soy sauce, lemon juice, and serve it all together.

So, from "Cook's Country" via the Aloha State, it's Hawaiian fried chicken.

Mahalo.

-Moana.

-[ Laughs ] "Moana"!

-Plastic wrap was first invented back in 1933 and became available to consumers under the name Saran Wrap in 1949.

Today there are lots of brands of plastic wrap on the market, so Adam's here to tell us which one is best.

-Well, you're right.

There are tons of different brands on the market.

We have eight of them here.

These seven are all consumer-grade plastic wraps.

This one is a commercial-grade food-service plastic wrap.

The cost was anywhere from $1.30 to $4.19 for 100 square feet.

-Hmm.

-Now, testers were concerned with a couple different things -- cling, of course, 'cause these things have to cling to different materials, durability, and ease of use, which related largely to cutting the sheets with the cutter on the box.

To get at the question of cling, testers put 8 ounces of grapes into bowls that were made of plastic, metal, and glass, as well as our favorite broiler-safe ceramic baking dish, sealed them with each wrap, turned it upside-down, shook it.

Go for it, Julia.

You have a bowl of grapes.

Let's see.

-Wow.

All right.

That's pretty good.

It's holding steady.

-Not bad.

You know, all of these plastic wraps did a fine job holding steady on glass and metal and the ceramic baking dish.

Two of them would not hold onto the plastic bowl.

And that's because the materials from which these are made, which is either polyvinyl chloride or polyethylene, are not inherently sticky.

Manufacturers add a proprietary adhesive to each one, and it's the formulation of the adhesive and the amount of the adhesive -- which they would never spill the beans on to us -- that actually determines how well it will stick.

Testers also wanted to get at the durability of each wrap, and to do that, they took a single sheet, covered and re-covered a bowl of grapes 10 times.

-[ Laughs ] -And they were looking to see whether it would fray at the edges, whether it got sort of misshapen or stretched or tangled, whether holes appeared anywhere on it, and actually, a couple of holes did appear in a couple of the wraps, big enough for grapes to escape.

It was the grape escape!

And they were curious as to why that happened.

So testers had an independent lab measure the thickness of all the wraps, and it turns out that the ones that were a little more durable were a little thicker.

The thickest one was 0.68 millimeters.

The thinner ones that got some holes or got some fraying were 0.5 millimeters, right around there.

-Wow, that's kind of a small-sounding difference -- 0.6 to 0.5.

-But it made a real difference in performance.

Now, testers also used all of the wraps for common kitchen tasks.

One of them was to pound boneless chicken breasts to an even thickness for even cooking, and they used our favorite plastic cutting board for that, which is about 14 1/2 inches in width.

And the way we do that in the Test Kitchen is to cover the board with plastic wrap, put the chicken on it, cover the chicken with plastic wrap.

That just makes cleanup easier, and it sort of limits cross-contamination.

You're not putting utensils right on raw chicken.

So, the chicken test highlighted the widths of the rolls.

Most of the consumer-grade rolls are 12 inches wide.

So testers couldn't cover the 14 1/2-inch-wide cutting board with a single sheet.

The commercial wrap -- This one is 18 inches wide, but it comes in a range from 18 to 24 inches.

But it was a little thinner.

It wasn't as durable.

And look at the size of that box.

-That would not fit in my kitchen drawer.

-No kitchen drawers.

Actually, you have to take a car out of the garage, leave it in the driveway, and store this in the garage.

This wrap split the difference.

This was 15 inches wide.

So you could cover the whole board with one sheet, no problem.

Now, this also had another virtue, which was the right kind of cutting mechanism.

-Mm-hmm.

-There are generally two kinds.

There's the serrated edge on the box.

You have one of those in the Glad Press'n Seal.

Why don't you give that a try?

Just give us a nice, neat sheet of plastic wrap, Julia.

-Oh, geez.

Okay, ready?

[ Laughs ] -Did I say something about nice, neat sheets?

-Well, it's kind of a nice edge.

-You know, testers had a hard time with these serrated edges because the plastic wrap would bunch up on itself, it would stretch.

But the freeze-tite over there had not only a serrated edge, but a sliding cutter.

Why don't you try and give us a sheet out of that one?

-Oh, yeah, I like these.

You can have your bowl, your tray right there.

You can put it down, and you go, "R-R-Rip!"

Nice and easy.

-Perfectly straight.

Perfectly neat.

That was actually our winning plastic wrap, Julia.

This is the freeze-tite clear, high-cling freezer wrap.

It was $4.19 for 100 square feet.

But it had all kinds of virtues.

It's 15 inches wide.

It was thick and strong.

It was easy to tear neat sheets of.

And this is definitely the plastic wrap to beat.

-All right.

There you have it -- our winning plastic wrap is by freeze-tite.

It's clear, high-cling freezer wrap for $13.21 for 315 square feet.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Ah, snack chips.

I love just about any kind of chip, of course.

There's tortilla chips, pita chips, poker chips, Erik Estrada -- any kind of "chip."

[ Laughter ] -Erik Estrada?!

-He was the original CHiP.

Well, today we're talking potato chips, because Erik's not here.

So Jack's gonna tell us which bag of supermarket potato chips we should be taking home.

-Dig in.

-All right, gladly.

-These are a mix of regular and kettle style.

So, we have the nine top sellers across the country, five of one kind, four of the other.

What is the difference?

A couple things.

One is the kettle chips are sliced thicker, more like 1.5 millimeters as opposed to 1 millimeter.

Because they're thicker, the fry time is longer, and during that longer fry time for the kettle chips, the moisture and the starches inside the potatoes can start to gelatinize, and you get what I would say is a crunchy chip, rather than a crispy chip.

The regular chips are thinner and more delicate and lacy and crispy.

Kettle chips are crunchy, and, in some cases, actually kind of hard.

There was a division here.

Half of the audience chose the best of the regular chips, and the other half chose the best of the kettle chips.

-Really?

Now, I do have to say I'm a kettle person, and I like my chips to be so crunchy that 15 minutes later, I'm still hearing them as I'm crunching away.

-These are all the same ingredients, so there's really just three things -- all oil, salt, and potatoes.

The oil can vary.

Our winner was made with peanut oil, but we're not sure that that makes much of a difference.

Some of the salt levels are different, but no real correlation.

Our favorites were kind of in the middle of the pack.

So, you finding crispy?

You finding crunchy?

-I'm finding crispy.

This is, I would say, the traditional that you've snuck in here.

It doesn't feel like kettle.

These three are kettle here.

I would say these are the most delicate, which I could see people liking that.

I like a chip that's gonna take the roof of my mouth off while I'm eating it, so this would be my favorite.

I still really like these, though.

-Okay.

Are we starting with what we like?

-Sure, let's start with what we like.

-Oh, you have made me so happy!

-Is that the winner?

-No, you fell for the trick!

-Ohh!

[ Laughter ] Oh, please.

No!

No!

-This is such good news!

-Is it low-fat?

-It is!

-Noooo!

-This is the low-fat, reduced-fat version of our winner.

The Utz kettle chips are our favorite.

They make reduced-fat -- 40% less fat.

It is the exact same chip as the full-fat, except at the end of the process, the chips leave the kettle and they go into a centrifuge.

And they're still sturdy enough that the oil flies off.

-Wow, it's like a spin cycle.

-It's a spin cycle.

And it's 40% less fat.

And this was your favorite.

-That was my favorite, yeah.

-So, the good news is you can eat 40% more potato chips.

-I've been looking at this completely in the wrong way.

I can eat 40% more potato chips!

Yes!

-You want to see the rest of the file?

-Sure.

This one was really -- They were all really good, but this was just, you know -- It was there.

-Herr's.

The studio audience, half of them loved this.

This was our favorite of the regular chips.

If you like a thin, delicate, crispy chip, that's the one for you.

This is the Kettle Brand.

This is the hardest one.

This had the least number of fans in the studio audience or the expert panel 'cause although you like them really, really crispy, it was a little too hard and crunchy for most people.

-You know, it's interesting because this is the brand that I buy at home.

And in comparison to the other ones, it wasn't my favorite.

-And this one is the favorite kettle chip.

-Is there peanut oil in that one?

I tasted that.

-There's peanut oil.

It's Utz.

It was the favorite of the studio audience of the people who liked the kettle.

This was their number-one choice.

Overall, it was our number-one choice.

But, you know, that reduced-fat version -- These two are the same product.

Just add the centrifuge.

-All right, I learned something new about myself, Jack.

I like reduced-fat potato chips.

Well, one in particular, at least.

And I also liked the winner, and that was the Utz Kettle Classics Original potato chips.

It's $3.79 for an 8-ounce bag.

[ Cheers and applause ] -There are lots of different types of macaroni salad, and Hawaii has a version all its own.

And today Natalie is gonna show us how to make it.

-Hi, Julia.

-Hi!

-So, I'm sure you've had plenty of versions of macaroni salad, but a Hawaiian macaroni salad usually has a creamy mayonnaise-based dressing thinned out with a little bit of milk, crunchy celery, and pasta cooked until it's fat.

So, past the point of al dente.

So, before we get started on our dressing, we're gonna start our pasta.

This is 4 quarts of boiling water, and to this, we're gonna add 1 tablespoon of salt, and then we're gonna add 1 pound of elbow macaroni.

We're gonna let this go for about 15 minutes, or until it's very soft.

-15 minutes is a long cooking time.

Usually, macaroni goes about 10 minutes.

So, 15 minutes is gonna be very soft.

-We're gonna start our dressing.

And so this is 2 cups of whole milk.

And to this, we're gonna add 2 cups of mayonnaise.

This is whole milk, not low-fat milk.

Low-fat milk is gonna cause the dressing to be too thin.

To this, we're gonna add 1 tablespoon of brown sugar and then 2 teaspoons of black pepper.

And then this is 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

And we're going to mix this until it's thoroughly combined.

And then we're going to reserve 1 cup of this dressing.

So, now that our dressing is made, we're just gonna wait until our pasta's cooked.

-All right.

-So, it's been about 15 minutes, and our pasta looks pretty cooked, but we should try it to make sure it's good to go.

Oh, yeah.

We're just gonna turn this off and we're gonna drain it.

So while this is cooling, we're gonna add 1/2 cup of cider vinegar.

Instead of adding it to the dressing, we're adding it to the pasta so it gets soaked up, but also, the vinegar caused the dressing to curdle, and that was just not pretty.

-That sounds gross.

-It does.

We're mixing in the cider vinegar, and we're just gonna stir it in until it's all the way absorbed.

While this cools, we're going to prep our vegetables.

So we're gonna start with four scallions.

And we're just going to take off the tips, not take off a lot of the white.

And we're gonna slice these pretty thin.

These are four scallions.

I'm just gonna add these scallions to the bowl that already has a grated carrot in it.

-Just one carrot?

-Just one carrot.

And then this is one celery rib.

So I'm gonna cut it in half for a little bit of ease, and then I'm gonna cut these guys into planks and then cut these this way.

We want more of a finer chop.

So one large celery rib chopped fine.

-So that's celery, scallions, and the carrot.

And of course, the carrot is what's traditional in a Hawaiian macaroni salad.

-So the pasta's cool now.

It's been about 10 minutes.

And to this, we're gonna add our dressing and our vegetables.

And we want it to be cool enough to handle so the vegetables don't cook in the pasta.

And then we're gonna add our vegetables as well.

-Very pretty.

I actually really love the colors of the scallions and the carrots in there.

It's a looker.

-We're just gonna mix this until it's fully incorporated.

This is good to go.

We're gonna refrigerate this for at least one hour, but it can be made up to two days in advance.

All right, so this is our macaroni salad.

It's been cooling for about an hour, and this is the cup of dressing that we had reserved earlier.

So one cup goes in here, and just stir until it's fully incorporated.

All right, now that it's fully incorporated, we're just gonna season it to taste.

So the dressing was very thoroughly seasoned, so we're just gonna add a little bit of pepper.

It doesn't really need salt.

All right, this is good to go.

We can just put it in our serving bowl.

-That is gorgeous.

-All right, now it's time to eat.

-Mmm!

Don't hold back on my portion.

-Oh, no, I won't.

-It really is a good-looking macaroni salad.

And I don't think I've ever said that before.

-Yeah, it's not like the typical ones that you see where it's just kind of, like, mushy-looking, not really appetizing.

This is creamy and decadent.

-And it has some color.

-That's right.

-Mmm!

Wow, Natalie, this is delicious.

That tablespoon of brown sugar in there -- It actually just brings out some of the vegetable flavors, like the carrot.

-That's right.

It balances everything out 'cause it's really acidic.

It's creamy.

You need that little bit of sugar.

-Yeah, and, you know, most macaroni salads are pretty bland.

All you get is a little mayonnaise.

This -- I get the pepper, I get the vinegar.

I love the scallions.

That little sweetness goes a long way.

And I think adding that dosage of fresh dressing right before serving really enlivened all the flavors.

It made a big difference.

Natalie, this is delicious!

Thank you!

-I'm glad you like it, Julia.

-So if you want to make this delicious Hawaiian macaroni salad, start by cooking the macaroni until it's fat.

Make a simple dressing using milk and mayonnaise, and reserve some of it separately for serving.

Once the pasta's cooked and drained, toss it with some vinegar and let it cool before adding the dressing and the vegetables, including celery, scallions, and carrot.

Finally, let that salad chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour before serving with that remaining dressing, and there you have it.

From "Cook's Country," a really great recipe for Hawaiian macaroni salad.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season, along with our tastings, testings, and selected episodes at our website, CooksCountry.com.

This is really good!

-Let us help with dinner tonight.

Visit our website anytime for access to this season's recipes, taste tests, and equipment ratings.

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