♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Today on "America's Test Kitchen," Lan makes Julia stir-fried cumin beef... Adam reveals his top pick for colanders... Jack talks about different kinds of cabbage... and Dan makes Bridget lao hu cai.

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, visit us at surlatable.com.

♪♪ -I've always been a little intimidated by cooking in a wok because it's a specialized piece of equipment that needs to be seasoned and well-cared-for, like a cast iron skillet, and it also requires a slightly different cooking technique.

But Lan's gonna show us how to use it today.

-I totally know where you're at.

I was, there too, and when I first started cooking in a wok, I made cumin beef a lot.

It's a tasty recipe, but it's also a good learning recipe.

-Oh, good.

It's for beginners.

-Absolutely.

-I'm in.

-Alright, let's start.

We're actually gonna start with the onion.

This is our one vegetable in this dish, and I only need half an onion.

I'm going to remove the root end entirely and thinly slice it.

Next up, we have our beef, and I'm using flank steak -- a pound of it.

Are you a flank-steak fan?

-I'm a huge flank-steak fan because it's not so expensive and it's really easy to cook through evenly.

-Yeah, yeah, it's perfect for stir-fries.

So this is a one-pound flank steak, and I'm just gonna cut it with the grain into 2 to 2 1/2-inch-wide strips.

And then I'm going to take these strips and slice them crosswise against the grain into 1/4-inch-thick slices, and that's just to help the meat eat nice and tender.

Cutting this against the grain helps to tenderize it, but we're gonna do a little bit more to make sure each piece is really tender, really lush.

Got a bowl here.

I'm gonna add 1 tablespoon of water and 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda.

Just a quick swirl to dissolve that soda, and then all this beef is gonna go right in there.

And I'll toss it to make sure the pieces are well-coated in that liquid.

So, the baking soda raises the pH of the meat and helps the beef stay tender when it's cooked.

Okay, that looks great.

I'm gonna go wash my hands, and we'll move on.

-Okay.

-While the baking soda does its work, we're gonna move on and set up the rest of our stir-fry.

Most of wok cooking involves flavoring the oil, and we're going to be flavoring our oil with ginger and garlic.

I've got 4 minced cloves of garlic, and I'm going to add that to 1 tablespoon of grated ginger.

Nice and simple, and we'll just set that aside for later.

And then we can move on to the cumin part of our cumin beef.

There are a couple different versions of cumin beef, or you'll even see cumin lamb.

It's pretty popular in central and also northwestern China.

The cumin beef we're doing today is more of a central Chinese dish, and it starts with 1 tablespoon of cumin seeds.

I like to grind them rather than using pre-ground cumin for a couple of reasons.

Whole seeds hold on to their aromatic compounds because they haven't been ground up.

I can also control the size of the grind.

I want something a little bit coarser than what you're gonna get if you buy pre-ground.

-Interesting.

Right, putting the "cumin" in cumin beef.

-Yes, exactly.

You could do this in a mortar and pestle, but I like to use a spice grinder.

[ Whirring ] -[ Chuckles ] -Right?

Just a couple quick buzzes and quick tap.

-Oh, yeah.

Boy, you can really smell it.

What a difference some fresh-ground cumin makes.

-So the cumin's our main flavoring for this dish, but we're also going to add a couple other ingredients.

I have 2 teaspoons of Szechuan chili powder.

-Mmm.

-Delicious.

It's got kind of a moderate heat, great color.

-Mm-hmm.

-To that, I'm adding 1 1/4 teaspoons of ground Sichuan peppercorns... -Ooh!

-...for that lovely tingle.

-Mm-hmm.

-Last up, just a little bit of seasoning.

This is 1/4 teaspoon of table salt.

-That's a lot of flavor.

-Yeah.

Yeah, it's nice and simple, too.

Just a handful of ingredients, ready to go.

-Okay.

-It's been about five minutes, and so our beef is ready.

Baking soda has done its job.

We can add the rest of the flavorings.

I'm adding 1 tablespoon of Shaoxing wine.

It's a rice wine that's commonly used across all of China.

1 tablespoon of soy sauce.

2 teaspoons of molasses.

And this combination mimics dark soy, which is often used, but if you don't stock it, then this is a nice way to get that complexity.

-Interesting.

-Next up is 1/2 teaspoon of cornstarch.

-Mm-hmm.

-And that's just gonna help everything cling to the beef.

And then some seasoning -- 1/4 teaspoon of table salt.

Just give this a quick mix.

You'll notice no sauce ingredients here.

-Yeah, I was gonna say something.

[ Both laugh ] -I knew I couldn't sneak one by you.

We're making -- we're mimicking, rather, a traditional dry fry.

When you do that, you would start by briefly blanching the beef in oil, and that kind of parcooks it before it is stir-fried again.

It's a lot of work to blanch beef in oil.

It takes more time.

You've got to dispose of the oil.

So this is kind of a shortcut to get a similar vibe without the extra work.

That looks pretty good.

You ready to cook?

-I'm ready to see it.

-Alright.

I have a 14-inch-wide, flat-bottomed carbon-steel wok here, and we're gonna heat the wok over high heat until it starts to smoke the oil that keeps the patina on the wok nice and not rusty.

Will start to smoke, and so you have a nice indicator of when you're ready to start cooking.

-Gotcha.

-If you're cooking in a different pan, and you can do this in a 12-inch skillet, you would want to heat this at medium-high heat with 1 tablespoon of oil in there so that something is going to tell you when the pan is ready to go.

-Gotcha.

-So I don't know if you can see, but there's just a couple wisps of smoke coming up.

I'm gonna add my tablespoon of vegetable oil.

You can see it shimmers as soon as it hits the pan.

Now, I'm going to add half of the beef to this, and this will be loud.

[ Wok sizzling ] And I just want to keep the beef moving as it cooks.

Because I'm on a home burner, I don't have to be all dramatic about it.

We don't have to toss and stir super vigorously because the burner's just not putting out the same BTUs as a restaurant burner, where you have to be moving that wok around.

-Why the constant moving of the beef in the wok?

-I want to make sure that it is cooking evenly, but I also want to move it to the empty areas that are a little bit hotter than the spots where the meat is kind of absorbing the heat and cooking.

You can see the beef is picking up some color.

The pinkness has gone away, and I'm just looking for any juices that are exuded from the beef to dry up.

And so, the beef is nice and dry.

I think we're ready to get this out.

-Ah, there it is.

A little goes a long way, huh?

-It does, And the thing is, that cooking step can take anywhere between two minutes to six minutes, depending on your burner.

-Gotcha.

-So we'll repeat that with another tablespoon of oil and the remainder of the beef.

So that's our beef.

We're gonna reduce the heat to medium.

We don't really want to char our aromatics.

Gonna add 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil.

Gonna add my aromatics, and this is gonna cook for 15 to 30 seconds.

I'm just looking for it to smell really good and for the aromatics to kind of lose their translucency.

Oh, it's gonna get better in just a minute or two.

So our onions are gonna go in, and I spoke earlier about how I want them to have some texture.

They're only gonna cook for one to two minutes just until they're becoming tender.

I don't want them to actually be tender.

I just want them to start becoming tender, and then we're ready to move on.

-Okay.

-So you can see they're starting to lose their opacity, and it is time to move on.

-Mm-hmm.

-I'm gonna add the beef to the pan.

[ Wok sizzling ] Give this a nice toss.

Kind of dry out those juices a little bit.

-Yeah, the beef really did give up some juice as it sat there just for the few minutes.

-And you can see they're thickened slightly.

That's the cornstarch doing its thing.

And then our spices are gonna go right in.

-At the end.

-Yep, at the very end.

They're gonna get a nice, light toast.

What that does is it retains more of the lighter volatile compounds, and so you get kind of a slightly different flavor than you'd get if you toasted them at the beginning.

I don't think one is better or worse than the other, just a little different.

But we're almost done.

I'm just looking for the onions to pick up a light-orange color.

-[ Chuckles ] That looks beautiful, Lan.

-Doesn't that smell awesome?

-Yes!

That cumin -- it doesn't smell like your ground cumin that you've toasted.

It has a more floral aroma.

-Yeah, there's kind of this lemony-ness to it that is sort of missing if you pre-toast it.

Julia, that's it.

We're done.

-Wow, that was fast.

-Nice and simple.

-I mean, wok cooking is notoriously fast, but... -Yes.

Let's get this onto our platter.

-Oh.

And just for a hint of freshness, 2 tablespoons of coarsely chopped cilantro.

-Mmm.

-If you're not into vegetables, this is -- this is the dish for you.

-[ Laughs ] Lan, that's beautiful.

-Alright, let me serve up some for you and make sure you get some onion in there, as well as all that beef.

-The aroma is incredible coming off that platter.

Alright.

Mmm!

I love the cumin that way.

-Mm-hmm.

-I get little crunchy bits, pops of cumin.

Oh, a little bit of heat.

-Little heat.

-There's the Szechuan peppercorns.

-The buzz.

-Yeah, the little buzz on my tongue.

And the beef is perfectly cooked -- tender, juicy.

-Yeah, and so easy.

Like, you don't have to worry about temperatures or anything.

You just kind of throw it in.

It's not pink, and you're done.

-Mmm.

This has flavor for days.

It kind of goes through stages.

It's very complex.

-You can see why this is such a popular dish.

-Yeah, and a fun way to learn how to use a wok.

Lan, thank you.

-You're welcome.

-So if you want to give this deliciously fast stir-fry a try, start by slicing flank steak thinly against the grain and toss it with some baking soda.

Grind your own cumin and keep the food moving in the wok as you cook.

From "America's Test Kitchen," a fast recipe for stir-fry cumin beef.

Oh, I'm gonna make this.

-Yeah.

Mmm.

-It's spicy in the best of ways.

-Mm-hmm.

♪♪ -You worked hard all day, and then you had to battle traffic, and now you got to get dinner on the table.

Well, it can be hard on its own, but when your equipment falls apart, that's the last thing you need.

So Adam's here, and he's gonna talk about colanders.

They should drain your pasta and not your will to live.

-[ Laughs ] "Your will to live."

I'm gonna make sure that you hang on to your will to live, Bridget.

We have tested a colander or two in our day here at "America's Test Kitchen".

-Yes, we have.

-And we have identified this style, covered with perforations like this, as the one that drains most efficiently.

And in fact, this one has won previous testing... -Yes.

-...but it has a lot of competition in the same perforation style these days.

-Yeah, it was the only game in town at one point.

-At one point -- no longer.

So we are testing this lineup of six colanders priced between 15 and 26 bucks.

They're all 4 1/2 to 5 quarts.

They're all in this perforation style that we prefer.

-Yes.

-We drained cooked orzo, we drained cooked angel hair, and we let salted cucumber slices drain in them, and you know what?

Because it has the right perforation design, they all drain effectively.

-Yes.

-There were a couple of differences, though.

The capacity, as I said, 4 1/2 to 5 quarts, but the sides were different heights on some of these.

You can see these two in front of you, kind of short.

There were more along the lines of like 3 1/2.

Some of the taller ones were like 5 1/4 inches.

If you are pouring a pot of pasta out of the pot, it rushes through the colander.

On these little short ones, it can splash back, and we lost some orzo into the sink.

-Right, makes sense.

-So you don't want a really short side wall.

Just 3/4 of an inch made a difference.

Go for something that's at least 4 1/4 inches.

-Save the orzo.

-Save the orzo.

Now, you may want to tune out because I have to bring up the unseemly topic of backwash.

-Backwash?

-Again, all of these have a means of stabilizing in the sink.

They either have little feet like those or a ring like that.

-Like a pedestal.

-Yeah, and they all are perfectly stable in the sink.

No problem there.

However, the feet can be as short as 3/8 of an inch, and when, again, you're pouring water out of a big pot... -Sure.

-...there's not enough clearance between the bottom of the colander and the floor of the sink.

The water comes back, flows back into the bottom of the colander, and you maybe have some grunge in the sink.

Hopefully not, but it's suddenly touched your pasta.

-I just had visions of what lies in the sink.

-What lies in the sink, the grunge in the sink.

-Yeah.

-So you want to go for something that's at least an inch tall, like this.

-Okay.

Good point.

-And in fact, Old Faithful, the RSVP International Precision Pierced five-quart colander, $26.

It's won in the past.

It won again.

We stock them in the test kitchen.

We know that this thing will stand up to use and abuse, and really, you can't do better in colander world.

-There you go.

-Do you still have a will to live?

-I do, especially now.

-Thank you.

-So if you want a colander that actually drains well and doesn't drain you, then go for the winner.

That's the RSVP International Precision Pierced five-quart colander, and it runs about $26.

♪♪ -If you want a little sweetness in your life, add some cabbage.

Yes, you heard me right -- cabbage.

Now, it's a member of the cruciferous family that includes broccoli and radishes and cauliflower, but it is the sweet member of the family.

It's also the member of the family that has diverse textures.

It can be crisp and crunchy in a coleslaw, meltingly tender in a braise, pickly in sauerkraut.

So let's start with the two most common.

I've got green cabbage and red cabbage here.

They can be used interchangeably.

The green is gonna be a little bit more vegetal, and it's gonna be a little bit more mellow.

The red is a little bit floral and sweet, but you can use them in the same recipes.

Next up, little baby cabbages.

Yes, that's really what a Brussels sprout is.

It's a little green cabbage.

Now, here, get them kind of small.

They're gonna be a little sweeter and nuttier on the small side.

All of these headed cabbages, you want them to be kind of bright and glossy.

If they look dull and tired, they're going to taste a little dull and a little bit tired.

Here I have my favorite cabbage.

Yeah, we all have our favorites.

This is the Savoy cabbage.

It's got these crinkly leaves.

The name comes from the region where France and Italy and Switzerland meet.

If you think you don't like cabbage, try the Savoy cabbage with pancetta and onions.

Trust me on this one.

Next up, this is Napa cabbage.

There are many Chinese cabbages.

This is one that's most familiar in slaws.

It's a little on the plain side.

I'm not gonna say bland, but that means it can work beautifully with a spicy dressing and a crisp slaw -- mmm!

Next up is bok choy.

Now, this you want to cook.

You want to cook this because the texture of these stalks is incredibly meaty and meltingly tender, and in fact, I really think of this as two vegetables in one.

It's almost like Swiss chard.

And in the prep, you want to separate these frilly green leaves, which have a spinach-y flavor, from the stalks because the stalks are gonna need more time in the pan or however you're cooking them.

You want to look for large bok choy, maybe 1 1/2 pounds that feel heavy and really glossy and shiny.

That said, I do love the little babies here.

Now, these are great for searing.

I want to cut them in half.

You're looking for, you know, maybe a 4-ounce baby bok choy, and then you can sear them.

You can also grill them.

They're wonderful glazed.

You will sometimes also see jade-colored stalks.

This is called Shanghai bok choy.

Now, it can be in the baby form, like we have here, or you can see larger heads, as well.

It can be used interchangeably in recipes for regular bok choy or baby bok choy.

Cabbages -- take one home with you today.

It's your sweet friend.

♪♪ -It's about time that celery had another moment in the sun, and I'm not talking about that celery juice that you might drink or the swizzle stick that goes into the Bloody Mary.

No, I'm talking about celebrating celery, as they once did.

It was often used as an aphrodisiac, even a health tonic or a hangover cure.

That might come in handy.

But today, Dan is here, and he's going to take this beautiful, splendiferous celery and turn it into a lovely salad.

-It sounds like you like celery about as much as I do.

-Just a little bit.

-It's such a great vegetable.

It's nice and crispy and crunchy, and it's gonna be perfect in this salad that I'm making today.

So we're making lao hu cai, which is a tiger vegetable salad.

It's popular in northern China.

In lots of different regions, it varies in terms of its composition, but it's always really herbaceous, tons of crispy elements, and then a really classic dressing that hits on salty, umami, sour, sweet.

It's perfect.

-Great.

-And you can use this any time of year, so it's a fabulous salad to know.

I'm gonna work with the celery first, and I want four ribs.

You don't have to do this, but I really like to work with the ones that are closer to the core.

These ones on the outside -- they're fabulous for, you know, whenever you're gonna cook them and saute them down or put them in stock, but the inner ones I really love because they're just a little more tender.

They're a little sweeter, and in a salad, it's really nice.

Okay, so first, I'm gonna get off some of these leaves here, and again, this is something I can throw in the salad or save.

I think I'm gonna save this -- great in soups and that sort of thing.

Okay, so knife cuts are gonna matter on a few of these things because that really determines the texture you have in your mouth, so I'm gonna cut these on the bias about 1/4-inch thick.

And the way I like to do that is start with these a little bit curved there, so I'm gonna cut at a pretty natural angle.

Great, so I'm gonna add this to my nice, big salad bowl over here.

Okay, next up, we have cilantro, and I'm not cutting it into a fine chiffonade or anything like that.

I want the stems and leaves cut into 2-inch pieces.

-Great.

-And we want 3 1/2 cups of cilantro.

Alright.

Great.

Next up, I have scallions.

So, I have three scallions here.

We're gonna use both the white and the green parts.

So all I'm gonna really do is trim off the ends, and again, because I'm gonna do bias cuts on these, I like to line them up so they're already in that formation.

That way, I can cut off all of those in one fell swoop.

These go into the bowl, as well.

So the dressing itself hits on a lot of our tastes.

So we have sour, we have sweet, we have salty, and we have umami.

-Okay.

-We're gonna have some bitterness coming from the green, so it's really really, really, complex.

But we're gonna add another element to it, and that is heat.

So, heat is not a taste.

It's a feeling.

-Right.

-Adds a ton of complexity to the dish.

What I'm gonna start with here is a serrano chili, and you have a lot of choice when it comes to working with chilies, right?

Obviously, you can choose the kind that you want, but even when you're working with a chili, you can control how much spice actually ends up in your food.

So this is a very personal preference at this point, but I'm gonna cut this into quarters.

This is gonna go in the salad, the serrano, and so I'm going to seed it and get rid of the ribs, make it a little bit more mild.

But then there's another chili, and that one, I'm gonna do something else with.

-Okay.

-So once you cut into quarters, it's really easy.

Full access to the chili itself there.

You can just go through, take out that rib... just like that.

And now I'll just slice them thin.

Okay, so next up, I have a small Thai chili here.

Now, this is much spicier than the serrano.

-Yes, it is.

-Yes, it is.

And here, I'm going to actually take off the top here.

So for this Thai chili, it's gonna season our dressing, and that's gonna cover everything.

So I'm gonna leave the seeds in here.

So I'm basically just gonna cut this in half... and then cut it into thin strips.

Okay, great.

I'm gonna transfer our Thai chili to the small bowl here, and we'll build our dressing right in here.

-Great.

-So it starts with 1 tablespoon of unseasoned rice vinegar.

So this is a really classic dressing.

You'll see this in a lot of tiger salads, and it hits on all those notes we talked about.

Next up, I have 1 teaspoon of sugar.

So we have sour.

We have sweet.

And then we're gonna split the savory between both salt and soy sauce.

So I have 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of soy sauce.

Obviously, it brings salt to the equation but also glutamate, so you get that nice umami flavor, as well.

-Big flavor.

-Big flavor.

I'm gonna use a tiny whisk, and we'll whisk this together.

We basically want to just dissolve the sugar.

Okay, great.

Our salt and sugar are dissolved, so next is 3/4 of a teaspoon of sesame oil, toasted sesame oil.

Alright, let's get our salad up here.

And we're gonna add our dressing.

-Mmm.

How lovely.

-Now, it doesn't look like a lot of dressing, right?

-No.

-But it's so intense.

It's packed with flavor.

-[ Chuckles ] Yes.

And it really -- it's gonna highlight everything.

It won't overpower anything in the dish.

-Yeah, I saw what you put in that dressing.

That is a powerhouse there.

-Now, we have 2 teaspoons of toasted sesame seeds.

That's for a nice crunch, more sesame flavor, obviously.

And we'll toss to combine.

Let's head over here, and we'll plate it up.

So the final touch is 2 tablespoons of chopped salted dried roasted peanuts.

-Mmm.

-Lots of nice crunch from that.

-Gets better and better.

-Alright.

Enjoy.

-Thank you.

I went straight in for the celery.

-Of course you did.

-Ooh!

There's a little pick-me-up on that Thai chili creeping in there, but it's not overwhelming.

-And it's nice because you have the spice, then you have the cooling effect of all the other ingredients in there.

-Yeah, the balance of flavors -- salty, savory, sweet, little spicy, and, of course, umami.

-It's so good.

-Well, I got to work on this so I can get some more of that, but in the meantime, thank you.

-You're welcome.

-Outstanding salad.

You definitely want to make some tiger salad at home, and it starts with cutting celery thinly on the bias.

Flavor the vinaigrette with chili, and sprinkle the salad with chopped peanuts.

So from "America's Test Kitchen," the fresh, flavorful, celery-packed lao hu cai.

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

♪♪ Mmm.

-Visit our website, where you can sign up for our free e-mail newsletter for even more of the recipes and stories you love from all of our cast and cooks.

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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