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24 Articles

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

IT IS A bright, sunny, characteristically warm November afternoon in Austin, Texas, and I am in my kitchen alone, contemplating a white French porcelain bowl piled high with baked whole sweet potatoes. My hungry family is in the family room nearby, awaiting my announcement that Thanksgiving dinner is ready. But in the rush to ensure that everything is in order, I’ve forgotten to make one of our favorite dishes, the sweet potato casserole—a sweet potato custard baked with a sweet crumble topping. Somehow, I’ve overlooked the whole potatoes that I baked days earlier and tucked in the back of the fridge. Now, it is time to serve dinner. There is no time to make the casserole or to slice the sweet potatoes and bake them in a sweet spiced syrup…

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Thanksgiving Favorites WITH Less Work

HOLIDAY MEALS PROVIDE a golden opportunity for the cook(s) to shine and to express their love through the creation of delicious dishes for family and friends. And that doesn’t have to be hard. The Cook’s Country test cooks have arduously tested the recipes for this Thanksgiving menu with a single goal in mind: making the cooking easier. Less work and stress in the kitchen means more time to relax and reflect on the idea of gratitude—or to take a walk, toss a football around, or take a catnap on the couch. The recipes here are engineered to reduce the work and the stress, all while cutting no corners and producing a stunning spread that only you, the cook, will know was easier to pull off. How did we do it?…

Thanksgiving Favorites WITH Less Work

Sweet Potatoes and Yams—What You Need to Know While people use the terms “yams” and “sweet potatoes” interchangeably and they are often grouped together at the grocery store, yams and sweet potatoes are actually not related botanically. (Yams belong to the genus Dioscorea, while sweet potatoes belong to the genus Ipomoea.) Yams are starchy and dry and typically have white flesh and rough exteriors. Sweet potatoes have smoother skins and usually deep-orange flesh (though there are white and purple varieties). The two cannot be used interchangeably due to their different densities and moisture contents. Our recipes typically call for sweet potatoes rather than yams, but even the type of sweet potato you use can make a difference in recipes. Unless otherwise specified, we want you to use moist varieties of…

Fast and Easy Appetizers

A SMART STRATEGY for Thanksgiving day is to have some appetizers at the ready to stave off hunger when your guests arrive. Here are three easy make-ahead appetizers that are sure to satisfy. Deputy Food Editor Nicole Konstantinakos shares Classic Gildas, spicy, salty, pickly skewers. (They’re inspired by a mysterious character named Gilda, played by Rita Hayworth, in the 1946 noir film of the same name.) The combination of olives, peppers, and anchovies will awaken the palate. Senior Editor Jessica Rudolph developed a fruity, creamy, crunchy hors d’oeurve: Cranberry and Goat Cheese Crostini. The tangy-sweet flavor of the cranberry topping complements the funky tang of the goat cheese. And lastly, Executive Editor of Creative Content Morgan Bolling presents a family favorite: Ham Rolls. These easy rollups feature curry powder–seasoned cream cheese…

Fast and Easy Appetizers

3-in-1: Turkey, Mashed Potatoes, and Gravy

The Promise Turkey, mashed potatoes, and a gravy base all cooked in one pan, using a single streamlined recipe to simplify shopping and prep. The Path Rub butter and herbs onto the turkey and set it over the sliced potatoes. While the turkey and potatoes cook, the butter and herbs season not only the meat but also the potatoes and the cooking liquid you’ll use to make the gravy. Powerhouse Ingredient Herbes de Provence: This fragrant, savory herb mix flavors all three components. Grab Your Gear Roasting pan with rack, saucepan, colander, potato masher Roasting Pans and V-Racks To make this turkey, gravy, and mashed potato combo, you’ll need a roasting pan and a V-rack. Our favorite roasting pan, the Cuisinart MultiClad Pro 16" Roasting Pan with Rack ($82), is…

3-in-1: Turkey, Mashed Potatoes, and Gravy

Make-Ahead Kale Salad with Pecan Dressing

The Promise A fresh, leafy salad that holds up to being dressed ahead of time. The Path Toast and blend pecans to make a creamy, flavorful dressing. Dress the salad and refrigerate until ready to serve. Grab Your Gear Baking sheet, blender Powerhouse Ingredient Pecans: Some nuts are pulverized to make a creamy dressing, while the rest are added for crunch. Make Ahead Refrigerate for 2 to 12 hours. Does the Type of Kale Matter? Yes. You need to use lacinato kale, not curly kale, in this recipe. Curly kale’s leaves contain more cellulose, which helps it thrive in colder climates but gives it a more fibrous texture that must be treated (via soaking or massaging) to be enjoyed raw. Lacinato kale, a favorite in Italy that thrives in both…

Make-Ahead Kale Salad with Pecan Dressing

Cast-Iron Skillet Green Bean Casserole

QUICK CAST-IRON SKILLET GREEN BEAN CASSEROLE Serves 6 to 8 Total Time: 35 minutes For this casserole, we prefer a 12-inch cast-iron skillet for its large cooking surface, tall sides, and ability to retain heat. If you don’t have a cast-iron skillet, you can use a 12-inch nonstick skillet. In either case, you will need a tight-fitting lid for your skillet, and the skillet will be very full when first adding the green beans in step 2. 8 tablespoons unsalted butter12 ounces white or cremini mushrooms, trimmed, halved, and sliced thin1 onion, chopped fine3 garlic cloves, minced5 sprigs fresh thyme2 pounds green beans, trimmed1½ teaspoons table salt1 cup heavy cream¾ cup chicken broth2 tablespoons all-purpose flour1 tablespoon soy sauce1 teaspoon pepper2 cups canned fried onions 1. Melt butter in 12-inch…

Cast-Iron Skillet Green Bean Casserole

Melting Sweet Potatoes

The Promise An easy-but-impressive one-pan sweet potato dish that skews more savory than sweet. The Path Roast peeled sweet potato coins, flip, add liquid, and roast again until tender and glazy. Powerhouse Ingredient Honey: A measured amount helps call out the tuber’s sweetness while adding shine and viscosity to the pan sauce. Grab Your Gear 13 by 9-inch metal baking pan, metal spatula, tongs, whisk TIP We call for smashed garlic here; the smashing releases some of the garlic’s flavor compounds to give the sauce a mild garlic taste. Smash each clove with the flat side of your chef’s knife or a bench scraper and then discard the skin. • HONEY-GARLIC MELTING SWEET POTATOES Serves 6 to 8 Total Time: 1½ hours Look for sweet potatoes that are 2 to…

Melting Sweet Potatoes

Stuffing Muffins

The Promise Individual servings of crispy, moist stuffing that can be made ahead. The Path Make a flavorful stuffing, portion it into a muffin tin, and bake until the edges are crispy. Powerhouse Ingredient Better Than Bouillon Chicken Base: Using chicken base allows you to create a super concentrated broth to add maximum poultry flavor without too much moisture. Grab Your Gear 2 rimmed baking sheets, 12-inch skillet, 12-cup muffin tin, wire rack Make Ahead Store baked bread cubes for up to 2 days. Refrigerate finished stuffing muffins for up to 2 days or freeze for up to 1 month. TIP To minimize mess, hold the muffin tin over the sink when you spray it with vegetable oil spray. • CLASSIC STUFFING MUFFINS Serves 12 Total Time: 2½ hours Use…

Stuffing Muffins

Pumpkin Gingersnap Icebox Cake

TIP Use a small strainer to easily and evenly distribute the cocoa over the top. The Promise A no-bake autumnal dessert that you can make and stow in the fridge until you’re ready to dust it with cocoa and serve. The Path Whip together an easy, creamy pumpkin filling in a stand mixer; then layer it in a dish with gingersnaps and refrigerate until the cookies are soft. Powerhouse Ingredient Gingersnaps: These gingery spice cookies soften and become cakey in the pumpkin cream—but don’t require any baking. Grab Your Gear Stand mixer, 13 by 9-inch baking dish Make Ahead Refrigerate overnight or up to 2 days. Building the Cake Layers of pumpkin cream and gingersnaps give this dessert a gooey, mousse-like texture. 1. Spread 2½ cups pumpkin filling in baking…

Pumpkin Gingersnap Icebox Cake

Root by Scott Kathan

To put it simply, root vegetables are the edible parts of plants that grow underground. To complicate things a little, this group encompasses more than just actual “roots,” scientifically speaking. The category of root vegetables (which is culinary rather than botanical) can include tubers, rhizomes, and bulbs, so anything from a potato to ginger to an onion can be considered a root vegetable. Here we dig deep into seven root vegetables that we commonly use in the test kitchen. Why Are Beets So Sweet? Beets’ sweetness is actually a defense mechanism against cold weather. The sugars in the beets lower the freezing point of water in the plant and help prevent that water from freezing and forming ice crystals that would damage Beets Gorgeous, vibrant beets are available year-round in…

Root by Scott Kathan

Caramelized Carrot Soup

The Promise A rich and creamy carrot soup to kick off the meal. The Path Sauté carrots until well browned and tender and then blend with broth until smooth. Top with spices bloomed in browned butter. Powerhouse Ingredient Butter: Caramelizing the carrots in butter adds flavor, which is augmented by an easy-yet-sophisticated browned-butter garnish atop the soup. Grab Your Gear Dutch oven, blender, 8-inch skillet Make Ahead Refrigerate soup for up to 3 days or freeze for up to 1 month. Soup for a Crowd The soup can be portioned into small glasses or shot glasses to serve a large group. You can set them out or pass them around as an appetizer before the Thanksgiving meal. • CARAMELIZED CARROT SOUP WITH CORIANDER-LEMON BROWNED BUTTER Serves 4 to 6 Total…

Caramelized Carrot Soup

Quick Turkey and Bean Chili Do not use ground turkey breast (also labeled 99 percent lean or fat-free) in this recipe. Chili powder carries the spice profile in this chili, so use a high-quality one that’s freshly opened. Serve this chili with cornbread, rice, or tortilla chips, as well as your favorite chili toppings. 8 ounces (2 cups) frozen sliced peppers and onions2 tablespoons vegetable oil1 teaspoon table salt1 pound ground turkey¼ cup tomato paste2 tablespoons chili powder3 garlic cloves, minced1 (15-ounce) can kidney beans, undrained1 (14.5-ounce) can fire-roasted diced tomatoes1 teaspoon packed brown sugar1 tablespoon cider vinegar 1. Cook frozen vegetables, oil, and salt in Dutch oven over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until vegetables start to turn spotty brown, 6 to 8 minutes. Add turkey and cook, breaking up…

“Our Food Is Actually Our Story”

IT’S THE SUMMER of 2023, and I’m standing with Minneapolis chef Yia Vang, talking about the menu. His restaurant, Union Hmong Kitchen (previously Mee-Ka), features a variety of Hmong-American dishes, such as a meatloaf of beef, pork, and glass noodles topped with a fried egg and oyster sauce–ketchup; smash cheeseburgers with fermented radishes and kua txob (pronounced “kuwah-tsaw”) ranch dressing; and the more traditional nqaij tsaws (pronounced “ngai chah-uh”), braised pork and mustard greens with roasted vegetables and pickled onions. Vang, who also owns a second location of Union Hmong Kitchen in Minneapolis’s North Loop, says the inspiration for the menu was about “digging into these dishes that we grew up eating. So it was Hmong sausage that my dad made, or the way he grilled pork, or the way…

“Our Food Is Actually Our Story”

FEW INGREDIENTS capture the fresh, optimistic flavors of summer as beautifully as basil, which offers an invigorating vibrancy that few garden herbs can match. Grab a bunch and bring it home to make pesto, which you’ll use in this satisfying baked lasagna. Besides its buoyant flavor, a good basil pesto should offer a lively emerald hue. To ensure maximum greenness (and to keep the blended pesto from going brown), you’ll blanch the basil for just a few seconds in boiling water before quickly drying it. This locks in the bright color, which stands up even when the leaves are blended with toasted pine nuts, garlic, salt, and a very carefully measured amount of olive oil. The result is a smooth, deep-green mixture that’s slightly thicker than, say, the pesto you’d…

Ham and Brie Monte Cristos

I’M 17 AT a restaurant with friends, and there’s a mysterious sandwich on the menu called a Monte Cristo. My teenage stomach growls as I read the description: “Bennigan’s World Famous Monte Cristo starts with honey wheat bread layered with tender ham, roasted turkey, and Swiss and American cheeses. It’s then batter-dipped, gently fried and coated with powdered sugar, and served with red raspberry preserves for dipping.” What a marvel of tension held within those two sentences. The first one describes a simple lunch, one befitting the young scholar I wanted to be seen as. Oh, but the second sentence. It conjured images of something my buddies and I might come up with after one of our garage band jam sessions, and from what I recall, it delivered on its…

Ham and Brie Monte Cristos

Dollywood-Style Cinnamon Bread

GUESTS FLOCK TO Dolly Parton’s Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, for the rides, the “country” experience, and the array of delicious food. Popular eats include the whopping 25-pound apple pie at Spotlight Bakery and crisp fried chicken at a spot called Aunt Granny’s. But perhaps the biggest culinary attraction in the park is the cinnamon bread. Patrons line up daily at the Grist Mill to get freshly baked loaves of the famous yeasted bread, which is coated in butter and cinnamon sugar and served with your choice of vanilla icing or apple butter. The mill grinds the flour for the bread on location, and this commitment to quality pays off; they sell up to 350 loaves of the bread every hour. My quest to develop a recipe for this…

Dollywood-Style Cinnamon Bread

Double-Crust Apple Pie

A DEEP-GOLDEN DOUBLE-CRUST apple pie is the epitome of classic fall fare. It’s a recipe every home cook should know, and our back-to-basics version has all the dream components: a golden, buttery crust; a sugar-crusted shell; and a lofty height. Cut a slice and uncover another delight: layers of tender, juicy, saucy apples. • DOUBLE-CRUST APPLE PIE Serves 8 to 10 Total Time: 2½ hours, plus 6 hours chilling and cooling We prefer Golden Delicious or Gala apples in this pie, but Fuji, Braeburn, or Granny Smith varieties also work well. Using only one variety of apple in the filling ensures a more consistent texture. You can make the filling (and let it sit for up to 2 hours, as indicated) while the dough disks are chilling after step 2,…

Double-Crust Apple Pie

Pigs in Puffy Blankets

PIGS IN BLANKETS, little franks wrapped in crescent rolls, are perfect as is. But if you want to take them up a notch, all you need is puff pastry and an air fryer. The puff pastry adds a certain elegance to the crowd-pleasing appetizer, and the air fryer ensures golden‑brown exteriors. Plus, when you’re busy prepping for Thanksgiving, a New Year’s Eve party, or any gathering or holiday, you can have these at the ready and simply pop them into the air fryer. After just 6 minutes of “frying,” they’re ready to pass around and eat. • AIR-FRYER PIGS IN BLANKETS Serves 8 to 10 Total Time: 45 minutes To thaw frozen puff pastry, let it sit either in the refrigerator for 24 hours or on the counter for 30…

Pigs in Puffy Blankets

• GARAM MASALA PEANUTS Serves 8 to 10 Total Time: 45 minutes, plus 30 minutes cooling We developed this recipe using Planters Unsalted Dry Roasted Peanuts. You can substitute lightly salted dry-roasted peanuts; if you do, reduce the salt to 1 teaspoon. Do not substitute salted dry-roasted peanuts. You can use store-bought garam masala or our Homemade Garam Masala (recipe follows) here. This recipe can be doubled: Adjust the oven racks to the upper-middle and lower-middle positions and bake the nuts on two baking sheets, switching and rotating the sheets halfway through baking. ½ cup granulated sugar1 large egg white4 teaspoons garam masala, divided1 tablespoon water1¾ teaspoons table salt3¼ cups (1 pound) unsalted dry-roasted peanuts 1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 300 degrees. Line baking…

Braised Short Ribs

BRAISED BEEF SHORT ribs are one of the truly great comfort foods—easy to make, rich, filling, and luxurious. But the tough ribs can take hours on the stovetop or in the oven to become tender. An electric pressure cooker, such as the Instant Pot, can whittle down the braising time. One of my family’s favorite braised dishes is a recipe that I developed (in the oven) for braised beef short ribs for The Complete Mediterranean Cookbook (2016). It features tender beef bathed in a warmly spiced, velvety sauce that includes pomegranate juice and prunes; the prunes soften and break down to provide the dish with a sweet, fruity, raisiny complexity. I wanted to make a quicker version in the Instant Pot. Recipes in the Instant Pot require a carefully measured amount…

Braised Short Ribs

Crispy Chicken with Cabbage and Potatoes

THIS DISH IS a mélange of flavors: bacon, chicken, cabbage, and potatoes, all perfumed with caraway and dill. And it comes together easily as long as you stick to the plan and add each ingredient at the proper time. Start by crisping bacon in a skillet; the bacon (reserved to finish the dish) makes a crunchy topping, but cooking it first lays down a foundation of fat in which to cook the other ingredients. Next, tightly pack eight bone-in chicken thighs into the fat, skin side down. When the chicken skin is golden and crisp, pull the (still only partially cooked) thighs from the pan. The fat that’s now left in the skillet, a mixture of drippings from the bacon and chicken, is flavor gold. Add a pile of cabbage…

Crispy Chicken with Cabbage and Potatoes

All About Cornmeal, Grits, and Polenta

GROUND CORN PRODUCTS are used in a variety of cuisines to make breads, porridges, doughs, and more. In the United States, the most common forms are cornmeal, grits, and polenta. Although some recipes and product packaging may claim that these three products are inter-changeable in a pinch, each is a distinct ingredient with specific uses. We interviewed industry experts and tasted products in all three categories to help you understand those differences and what to look for while shopping. What Kind of Corn Is Used to Make Corn Products? To learn more about ground corn products, we talked with Sarah House, research and development lead at Bob’s Red Mill, a company that produces and distributes nationally-available corn products and other grain products. While there are many corn varieties, flint and…

All About Cornmeal, Grits, and Polenta

Cranberry Mostarda

• DRIED CRANBERRY MOSTARDA Serves 10 to 12 (Makes 2½ cups) Total Time: 35 minutes The mostarda will thicken as it cools. Spread it on sandwiches (such as our Monte Cristo Sandwiches on page 31) or serve it on a cheese board or alongside roasted poultry or pork. 2 cups dried cranberries1 cup water1 cup white wine vinegar2 tablespoons mustard seeds1 cinnamon stick½ cup sugar⅛ teaspoon table salt1 teaspoon grated orange zest 1. Combine cranberries, water, vinegar, mustard seeds, and cinnamon stick in medium saucepan and bring to simmer over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until liquid has reduced to about 1 cup, 12 to 15 minutes. 2. Stir in sugar and salt and continue to simmer, stirring often, until sugar has dissolved and mixture has thickened…

Cranberry Mostarda

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