♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ -Today on "America's Test Kitchen," Keith makes Julia braised lamb shanks in red wine with herbes de Provence, Jack talks about cooking wines, and Lan makes Bridget profiteroles.

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

♪ -"America's Test Kitchen" is brought to you by the following.

-Plugrà European-style butter was created for all chefs, cooks, and bakers.

Slow-churned with 82% butterfat for a smooth texture and more pliability for flaky crusts.

Plugrà -- from professional kitchens to your home.

-Sur La Table, where you can discover an assortment of provisions for your next meal or gathering, from cookware and tools from a wide variety of kitchen brands, to hands-on cooking classes.

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♪ -Braised lamb shanks in red wine is the kind of thing you expect to see on the winter menu of a good restaurant, but they're actually incredibly easy to make at home, and Keith's here to tell us more.

-Yeah, it's a shame that people don't make lamb shanks more, because they're one of the most flavorful cuts out there.

They have a lot of connective tissue, which means that they are super luxurious when they're cooked.

But it takes a while to coax out those flavors, so you have to slow-braise them.

So it's an investment of time, but it's well worth it.

So let's look at our lamb shanks.

-Those are beautiful.

-They are beautiful.

So I have six lamb shanks.

And these are coming from the hind leg of the animal.

So they are small.

They're about 3/4 to a pound each, which is exactly what you want.

They're a little bit harder to find because they're usually attached to a leg of lamb, which you would roast, but they're well worth kind of searching out.

So there's a little bit of excess fat on the outside.

You want to get rid of that.

So I have a boning knife right here.

And I'm just kind of taking that, sliding the tip of the knife underneath there.

And you have these little flaps of fat that you want to get off.

We're gonna salt these lamb shanks before we brown them.

So I have a teaspoon of table salt here.

And I'll just sprinkle this over the top.

Now we're gonna brown these in a Dutch oven here.

So I have a tablespoon of oil.

And we're gonna do these in two batches.

You can't fit all of these in here.

So I'm just gonna wash my hands before we sear these.

Our oil is shimmering.

And I'll put three of these shanks in here.

Now I'm gonna let that brown on one side.

And then I'll go in there after one or two minutes, keep rotating them, and get them brown on four sides.

If you can get four sides on something that's round.

-Out of a circle.

[ Laughs ] -Okay, let's check on our browning.

Yeah, that's good.

We're starting to get some nice browning here.

So I'm just gonna give these a quarter turn like that.

See?

That looks lovely.

-Lovely.

And a little bit of fond on the bottom of the pot.

-Yeah, that's exactly what we want.

So I'm gonna give that a quarter turn.

I'm gonna keep browning these, giving it a quarter turn every couple of minutes.

Take about 7 to 10 minutes to brown.

I'll take that first batch out, add another tablespoon of oil, and brown our second batch.

Same thing -- 7 to 10 minutes.

Okay, so lamb is nicely brown.

So at this point you want to assess how much fat you have in the pan.

If you have more than 2 tablespoons, you want to take anything over 2 tablespoons out.

We have about a tablespoon here.

So we're good to go.

-All right.

-So now we can look at the aromatics.

Pretty standard mirepoix.

So I'm adding two onions that have been thickly sliced.

I have three carrots that have been cut into two-inch lengths, two ribs of celery that are also cut into two-inch lengths.

I also have 2 tablespoons of tomato paste that will give it some acidity and also some umami meatiness.

Four cloves of minced garlic.

Got to have some garlic in there.

I have also 2 tablespoons of herbes de Provence.

So if you can't find herbes de Provence, you can use a teaspoon of dried thyme, teaspoon of dried rosemary, teaspoon of dried marjoram.

That's a good substitute.

And I also have a -- just a little pinch of salt in there, and that will help soften the vegetables.

So these are just gonna cook over medium-high heat.

And we're just looking to soften these really quickly.

Just a couple minutes.

It's been three minutes, and you can see that the vegetables have started to soften.

And also that tomato paste is starting to develop a fond on the bottom of the pot, which is great for flavor.

So now for the liquid component.

I have 3 cups of chicken broth here.

I'm also gonna add 2 cups of red wine, dry red wine.

So we're using a Côtes du Rhône today.

You can really use whatever red wine you want, whatever you like to drink.

But we do like something that's kind of a medium-bodied red wine that has some fruitiness to it.

And we're using chicken broth here because we like the lighter flavor of chicken broth as opposed to beef broth.

We want that lamb flavor to kind of shine through, and beef broth kind of got in the way a little bit.

So chicken broth is our choice here.

-That makes sense.

Mmm!

-So stir that in.

And I'm scraping the bottom to get all that delicious fond off the bottom of the pot, in the corners.

So I'm just gonna turn this up and we're gonna bring that to a simmer.

Once that's up to a simmer, we'll nestle the lamb shanks in there.

Looks like we are at a simmer.

So I'm just gonna turn this down a touch.

And now I can start to nestle our lamb shanks in there.

It's a little bit of a jigsaw puzzle here.

-Heh!

It smells lovely.

-Yeah.

In a couple of hours it's gonna be even better.

-Hm-hmm!

-So I'm just gonna take any little bits of liquid here.

Those are nice flavor.

-Mm-hmm!

-Like so.

Shut this off.

I'm gonna put a lid on this.

We're gonna go into a 350-degree oven.

Like with a lot of our braises, we like to cook in the oven because we have more even, controlled heat.

So we're gonna bake this for an hour and a half with the lid on.

Then after that hour and a half I'm gonna take the lid off, and we're gonna start to brown it on top while it's still in the oven.

It's been two hours, and we can check on the progress of our lamb.

-Mmm!

It smells delicious.

-It smells great.

-So if I can have you close that oven.

-Ho ho ho!

-Okay, so it's been two hours cooking total.

So this cooked for an hour and a half covered.

And that's when that collagen melts and the meat gets luxurious.

I went in and I took the lid off after an hour and a half.

And you can see that it's starting to brown on top.

And again, we're getting Maillard browning, so we're developing a lot of flavor.

Now I just have one more step.

Almost cooked, but I'm gonna take these, rotate these, and that browning is gonna get into that liquid and help flavor the liquid.

-Oh!

They are picture-perfect.

-I know.

And they're almost ready to eat right now.

Not quite.

We have to go for a little while longer.

So I'm gonna go back into that 350-degree oven for 15 to 30 minutes and get the top side browned again.

-All right.

-The lamb shanks have had another half an hour in here, and you can see that the top is nicely browned again.

-Oh, goodness!

-Wonderfully browned, ton of flavor.

-The aroma is out of this world.

-It's outstanding, isn't it?

-Yes.

-Lamb is so fragrant and so aromatic.

It's wonderful.

Those have been cooking for two and a half hours, and I just want to take a fork and kind of poke in there.

-Ho ho ho ho!

-Absolutely no resistance.

These are so meltingly tender and delicious right now.

That's perfect.

So I'm gonna let those sit for 15 minutes in that braising liquid.

That meat is so tender.

It's a little loose right now.

If we wait for 15 minutes, it'll be much easier to get those out of the pot.

It's been 15 minutes, and I think this lamb has rested long enough.

So I'm gonna take the lamb out.

Look at all that beautiful meat on those.

Just great.

-Oh, goodness.

-Okay, so these are our lamb shanks.

Now I'm gonna take out the vegetables.

So my end goal here is, if there's any fat I can skim that off without taking anything else out.

So I'll just take these.

You can see those onions have melted almost completely.

Now I'm gonna take this nice fond on the side.

And I'm gonna try to scrape some of this off into that.

-Ho ho ho!

-So what you can do is you can take some of the liquid, just kind of pour it down the sides and soften that a little bit.

-Oh, yes.

-I have one more step.

I'm just going to taste this for seasoning.

Yeah, definitely more salt here.

-Mm-hmm.

-And black pepper.

Now it's time to build our plates.

So I'm gonna start with some vegetables.

Super tender.

So I'm gonna give two carrots.

-Oh, thank you.

-You want to pick your lamb shank?

-Mnh-mnh.

You pick for me, please.

-How about this guy right here?

This looks particularly gorgeous.

-Gorgeous.

I was gonna pick that one anyway.

-[ Laughs ] -Now I'll take our braising liquid.

Pour that over the shanks.

-Oh, lovely.

-Okay.

-This looks incredible.

-Oh, a little bread for the jus?

-A little bread.

Yes.

-Oh, thank you.

-Put that right there.

Now, you could serve this with polenta, risotto, noodles.

The really kind of possibilities are endless here.

But we're gonna do this with some bread, which is nice.

-I also see something else over there.

-A little red wine for you.

-Ah, bring back that red wine flavor from the braise?

-That's right.

That's the rest of the bottle.

We only used 2 cups.

We had a little extra for us.

-[ Laughs ] -Okay, so let's dig into this.

-I cannot wait any longer.

I mean, look at this meat.

It just... -Just flakes right off.

-It just pulls right off the bone.

Mmm.

-Wow.

-That is spectacular.

-Ton of flavor.

-Yes!

So tender.

All right.

Going for a carrot.

My favorite.

[ Chuckles ] Does not disappoint.

A lamb backbone with all these other complex flavors layered in on top.

-Yeah.

-Cheers, Keith.

This is spectacular.

-Cheers.

-If you want to make braised lamb shanks like this at home, start by browning the shanks over high heat.

Use mirepoix, chicken broth, and red wine for the braising liquid, and cook it in a 350-degree oven.

From "America's Test Kitchen," a classic recipe for braised lamb shanks in red wine with herbes de Provence.

Ohh!

Stellar!

-Gonna have some of this bread.

♪ -I'm sure you've been told, "Don't cook with a wine you wouldn't want to drink."

But is that really true?

To find out here in the test kitchen, we gathered a variety of cheap and expensive wines and started cooking.

And we found in the end results no correlation between price and the quality of the finished dish.

We made dishes like sauces and stews and found that any wine with too much personality -- let's say a lot of tannins or a lot of sweetness or maybe oakiness -- gets unpleasant when it's cooked down and concentrated in a sauce or a stew.

What you really want is a wine that's unremarkable.

Yes, you heard me.

Unremarkable.

Now, what does that mean practically?

So when it comes to a red wine -- a table wine, something with multiple grapes like a Côtes du Rhône is a solid choice.

It's always going to perform well in the kitchen.

Avoid that Cabernet Sauvignon.

White wines?

No Chardonnay.

Those buttery, oaky notes aren't gonna work.

Stick with a Sauvignon Blanc.

It's crisp.

It's clean.

Now, if you're somebody who doesn't do a lot of cooking with wine but want to keep something on hand, vermouth is a great substitute for white wine, will keep in the fridge for nine months.

It's fortified, so that's why it lasts such a long time.

Sherry is also fortified.

It's been oxidized.

You want to go with a fino, which is kind of dry rather than a sweet sherry, which is better for sipping.

Next up we have rice wines, and we're gonna start with sake from Japan.

Now, you don't have to get a super expensive sake, but get the real deal.

Nothing with additives.

Mirin is another Japanese rice wine, and there is a version that is meant for sipping.

What I have here is from the supermarket that's meant for cooking.

It has sugar added, and that's just fine for recipes like chicken teriyaki.

Finally, Chinese rice wine -- Shaoxing.

This is also kind of a high-alcohol wine.

It's nutty and amber and savory.

You want to get the real deal here.

Nothing with salt added.

And if you can't find this, sherry is gonna be your best substitute.

Finally, cooking wines sold in the supermarket.

They contain salt.

Forget about them.

They will actually ruin your food.

But otherwise, let's celebrate the unremarkable wines -- perfect for cooking.

♪ -I'm a girl of simple tastes.

My favorite dessert is ice cream in all its forms, and I especially love it when it's introduced into a more elegant dessert.

Lan is here, and she's going to make profiteroles for me.

And I love profiteroles so much.

-Profiteroles are great.

They're just -- They're fancy ice cream with some chocolate sauce, right?

-That's it.

-So wonderful.

Now, they are also super easy.

They're based on pâte à choux, which is a dough that is used in a lot of different pastries, and we're gonna make some right now.

So I have a pot here, and I've got 6 tablespoons of water in here.

I'm gonna add 5 tablespoons of unsalted butter.

I've cut this up into 10 pieces and that's so that the butter melts really quickly.

I don't want a lot of this water evaporating while we wait for the butter to melt.

Next up I have 2 tablespoons of whole milk and then 1 1/2 teaspoons of sugar.

That's just gonna help with browning and balance out the flavors a little bit.

And then last up, 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

So I'm just gonna turn this on.

And what I want is for this mixture to come to a boil and for that butter to melt, I'm just gonna set this to medium high.

While we wait for that, we're gonna get our eggs ready.

-Okay.

-I have two large eggs here.

I'm specifically using a measuring cup because we need a very precise amount of egg -- 1/2 cup, in fact.

So I'm gonna bulk this up with another egg white.

The white's gonna add water and protein, and that's important for the structure of our profiteroles.

-Right.

-So I'll give this a quick whisk.

And I want to make sure that I have 1/2 cup.

And this looks like it's a little too much.

So I'm gonna pour some of this off.

The reason I'm being super precise about this is these eggs are adding protein and water.

And we need that water to leaven the pastry, and we need the protein for structure.

So this is just gonna take another maybe 30 seconds or so.

-Okay.

-This is looking great.

I've got 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour here and I've sifted it.

What I'm gonna do is shut this off now that it's come up to a boil, dump all of my flour in, and I'm gonna stir to get all that flour hydrated.

And I want the mixture to form a ball and pull away from the sides of the pot.

I also want to make sure there are no lumps of dry flour in here.

So this looks pretty great.

Kind of nice ball.

And now I'm gonna turn the heat back on.

And I'm gonna set it to low this time.

And what I'm doing is I'm gently cooking this mixture, kind of mashing it into the bottom and the sides of the pan to make sure it's cooking evenly.

And what I'm doing is driving away excess water.

If we have too much water in here, it won't hold its shape when we go to pipe the profiteroles.

This usually takes about three minutes, and what I'm looking for is for the mixture to look almost like wet sand.

It looks a little bit grainy, and you'll actually see fat break out of the dough and kind of bead up on the bottom of the pot.

-Right.

-This is ready to go.

I'm gonna shut this off.

We're gonna do this in a food processor.

And this is actually quite hot still, I'm just gonna cool it off by running this food processor for 10 seconds.

After 10 seconds, I'll add the eggs slowly through the feed tube.

-Okay.

-Okay.

There's a little bit of egg on the bottom, and I just want to make sure that this gets a good mix before we process everything together.

-Okay.

-And I want to make sure I'm getting the sides and the bottom.

All the way around.

-Under that blade.

-Yeah.

All right.

So we'll let this run for 30 seconds.

It'll form a smooth, shiny paste.

-Okay.

-That was 30, right?

-Mm-hmm.

-Great.

So you can see it's come together really nicely.

And I want to pipe my profiteroles.

It's a lot easier than using a spoon.

So I have a piping bag here.

It's fitted with a half-inch tip, and I think it's a lot easier to shape these with a piping bag.

But if you don't have one, you can use a 1-tablespoon measure and just scoop tablespoons onto your baking sheet.

So I'm going to twist the bottom so that nothing comes oozing out.

And then I cuff the top.

This keeps the exterior of the bag neat.

But it also gives me something to hold on to when I'm transferring the batter.

And then it's just a matter of scooping and kind of scraping against my hand to clean off the spatula.

I don't want to have air bubbles in there, because they can make shaping the profiteroles tricky.

You get like weird little blowouts.

And so I'm not trying to, like, fill the bag.

I'm just putting it onto one side and letting it kind of run towards the bottom.

That looks pretty good.

-That looks great.

-So, uncuff this and let the batter come down towards the tip.

And I just want to kind of gently push this down.

You can use a bench scraper or the back of a knife but your hand's fine too.

Quick twist and we're ready to go.

-Lovely.

-So...

I want to bake these on parchment, but if I were to lay the sheet of parchment down, it'll stick to the batter and lift from the pan, which is no good.

-Every single time you pipe it out.

-Right.

[ Chuckles ] -So one of the tricks I learned back when I was working pastries was you just put a little dab in each corner.

And, like, what's the saying?

A dab will do ya?

-Little dab will do ya.

-Yeah.

Okay, so time for piping.

We're gonna get 24 profiteroles out of here.

I'm gonna make four rows of six across the pan.

I want to make sure they're about 1 1/2 inches across.

So here we go.

-Wonderfully done.

Look at that.

-You know, after a couple hundred it gets pretty easy.

-Yep.

-Last thing before we bake -- These little points that are here, they're not ideal.

These are gonna get really crispy on the outside, and those points might burn.

So I'm going to wet the back of a spoon and just kind of mush them down slightly.

I find that you can usually get two profiteroles cleaned up before you gotta go back and rewet the spoon.

-Gotcha.

-We're gonna bake these on the middle rack of a 425-degree oven for 15 minutes, and then I will go and lower the oven temperature to 375.

They'll go for another 8 to 10 until they're golden brown.

-Okay.

-Ooh.

Look at them.

-Ooh!

Beautiful.

-Before I pull these out, I just want to give them a quick squish, make sure they're not soft.

So let's get these out of here.

What I don't want is for them to collapse, which is what happens when they're a little too soft.

Now, these are still full of steam.

And that was great for leavening them.

But we don't need that steam anymore.

It's gonna sog them out.

So what I'm gonna do is cut kind of a 3/4-inch hole in the side of each one just to let that steam out.

All right.

So that was all 24.

Now, to help them crisp up further, I'm gonna pop them back into that warm oven.

I'll prop the door open with a spoon and they'll hang out in there for 45 minutes.

-Is the oven off at that point?

-It is off at this point.

While the profiterole are crisping, let's talk ice cream.

The nice thing about profiteroles is you can serve a lot of ice cream to people really fast, but it's hard to scoop all of that ice cream.

-Yes.

-One trick that I really like is to prescoop the ice cream onto a chilled baking sheet.

I had this in the freezer for about 20 minutes.

It's nice and cold.

It's lined with parchment.

And I'm just gonna scoop some nice generous servings.

I'm using a two-inch-wide scoop here, which is about the diameter of our little profiterole, so that we get nice servings.

There we go.

Since it's just us, I thought three scoops apiece.

All right.

So I'm gonna get these back in the freezer so they can stay cold.

-Okay.

-Last thing before we get to plating and eating, I want to make a simple chocolate sauce.

-Excellent.

-I have 3/4 cup of heavy cream in a small saucepan, and to that I'm adding 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter, 3 tablespoons of light corn syrup.

Last up, just a pinch of salt.

And we're just gonna bring this to a boil over medium-high heat.

So our heavy cream has come up to a boil and the butter is melted.

I'll shut off the heat.

And I've got 6 ounces of bittersweet chocolate that I've finely chopped.

I'm just gonna pour it right in.

I'll give this a quick stir to get all that chocolate in there.

And you'll notice I'm not whisking.

-Right.

-You just want to get the chocolate submerged.

Now we'll go ahead and put a lid on this.

And the reason I'm doing this this way is I want that chocolate to slowly melt.

I don't want to incorporate any bubbles in there.

I don't want bubbles in our chocolate sauce.

So we'll give this five minutes for the chocolate to melt, and come back and give it a whisk.

-Great.

-It's been five minutes.

Let's have a peek.

-Hmm.

-Doesn't look like much, right?

[ Both laugh ] So I'm gonna give this a quick whisk to bring everything together.

And look at that.

-Yeah, it doesn't look like much until it does, and then it looks spectacular.

-Yeah.

-Oh, beautiful.

Look at that gloss.

Oh, gorgeous.

-Perfect.

So now that we have our profiteroles, I'm gonna split them about 3/8 of an inch up from the bottom.

And you can usually just... [ Crackling ] Nice and crispy, right?

-They're so crispy.

-So I'm gonna... -I like your whittling technique.

-[ Laughs ] Three for you and three for me.

Now we have our ice cream.

I've got a little offset to help me out.

Just pop these tops back on.

How cute are they?

Now for the chocolate sauce.

What's really nice about this is the profiteroles keep the chocolate sauce from melting the ice cream as well so that you can get them to the table looking really sharp.

-I think these look like perfection.

-Here we go.

-It's hard to be dainty when you're eating profiteroles.

I just usually go in through the bottom and it's gonna fall, and that's all right.

-I'm gonna come right in over the top.

-All right, get a little of that bottom shell, some chocolate.

-Oh, this might be too much.

-Mmm!

-You're gonna have to talk through this.

I'm just gonna eat ice cream.

-Oh!

Oh, my goodness.

The little pâte à choux buns.

Super crispy.

Lighter than air.

The only thing holding them down on this plate is the ice cream and the chocolate sauce.

If ice cream couldn't get better on its own -- profiteroles.

-Yeah.

The French know how to dress up their ice cream.

-Absolutely fantastic.

One of my favorite moments.

Thanks, Lan.

And you definitely want to start making profiteroles at home, don't you?

And it starts with using a food processor to make an easy choux paste.

Prescoop and freeze balls of ice cream.

And use a little corn syrup to make a silky chocolate sauce.

And of course assemble everything into a beautiful profiterole.

So from "America's Test Kitchen" -- profiteroles.

You can get this unbelievable recipe and all the recipes from this season, along with product reviews and select episodes.

Those are all on our website, americastestkitchen.com/tv.

Oh, yeah.

-I have gone to town on this.

[ Laughs ] -My goodness.

Let's see how fast we can eat these.

-Right.

-Let us help you with dinner tonight.

Visit our website anytime for the newest season's failproof recipes, full episodes, ingredient advice, and equipment reviews at americastestkitchen.com/tv.

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"America's Test Kitchen" is brought to you by the following.

-Plugrà European-style butter was created for all chefs, cooks, and bakers.

Slow-churned with 82% butterfat for a smooth texture and more pliability for flaky crusts.

Plugrà -- from professional kitchens to your home.

-Sur La Table, where you can discover an assortment of provisions for your next meal or gathering, from cookware and tools from a wide variety of kitchen brands, to hands-on cooking classes.

Visit us at surlatable.com.

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