♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Welcome to "America's Test Kitchen" at home.

Today, we're making crepes two ways.

I'm starting out with galette complète, Jack's diving into the world of alternative flours, and then Dan's making Vietnamese bánh xèo.

We've got a lot in store today.

So stick around.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Growing up, I loved eating galette complète, or as I used to call them, ham and cheese crepes.

It's a French crepe that's filled with some ham and Gruyère, has a little egg on it.

And the crepe itself is made with buckwheat flour, which has a lovely, wheaty, nutty flavor.

Now, when you make these, you can't use all buckwheat flour because buckwheat flour's gluten-free and you need some of that gluten to hold the crepe together or it's just gonna fall apart in the pan.

So when you make these, you really want to use about three parts buckwheat flour to one part all-purpose flour.

So I'm going to add 3/4 cup of buckwheat flour.

And if you weigh this out, it's 3 3/8 ounces.

3/8.

Alright, and to this, we're going to add 1/4 cup of all-purpose flour, which is about 1 1/4 ounces.

Perfect.

Alright.

Last but not least, we're going to add a little bit of salt to this.

This is 1/2 teaspoon of table salt.

And that's it for the dry ingredients.

I'm just going to whisk this together.

Now on to the wet ingredients.

We're going to use whole milk.

This is 2 cups of whole milk.

To this, we're going to add three whole eggs.

Going to whisk this together.

Now we're going to combine these two and add half of this liquid to the dry-ingredient bowl.

Just going to whisk this in.

Mm, oh, you can smell that buckwheat right away as it gets wet.

Alright, now I'm going to add some butter.

We're going to add 4 tablespoons of melted and cooled salted butter.

Now, I've tested adding it to the milk mixture.

Doesn't work so well because the butter's a little on the warm side.

The milk and eggs are a little on the cool side, and the butter forms crystals that make these big holes in the crepes.

And then we're going to finish by adding the rest of the liquid.

Alright, so the batter's done.

Now we can get cooking.

When cooking crepes, you want to be sure to use a nonstick skillet.

And here I have a 12-inch nonstick skillet and I've been heating it up for five minutes on low heat with just a little bit of vegetable oil in the pan.

Having a nonstick skillet is crucial if you want to get that crepe out in one piece, but also you want to heat it up over low heat so that there's no hot spots and you get the most even browning possible.

Now I'm going to crank it up to medium.

Let that heat for about a minute before we start cooking.

Crepes are a little finicky, and you have to dial in that perfect medium heat, and that may take a crepe or two, but even the bad ones taste good.

So no love lost there.

And now I'm just going to wipe it clean, leaving just a film of oil on the bottom of the pan, almost like seasoning the pan, just not letting it be absolutely dry.

We're going to do a test crepe.

I'm just going to use a teaspoon measure.

Always whisk the batter before each crepe.

That way it's nice and evenly incorporated.

Alright, we're going to add just a mini test crepe.

Set the timer for 20 seconds, and after 20 seconds, the bottom of this test crepe should be good and brown.

And that's how you know you're in the range of the perfect medium heat.

That is a perfectly browned little crepe.

Alright, set that one aside.

And now time for the real deal.

Let's whisk this batter.

Here I have 1/3 cup to help measure the batter and get it into the pan.

Going to take the pan off heat, pour it onto one side, and then do a quick swirl.

As you come on the back, you do a little shake, and it's that shake on the back side, took me a while to figure that out, but that just ensures that on this back side, the skillet gets evenly coated.

So swirl and shake.

Back on the heat.

We're going to cook this for about 35 seconds.

You're going to see that the edges will start to brown and the top looks pretty dry, and that's when it's time to flip.

So this has been cooking for about 35 seconds, and you can see it's starting to get nice and brown around the edges.

Now, lots of ways to flip a crepe.

I found this silly spatula that I bought for cooking pancakes with my 11-year-old.

It's terrible for pancakes but it is perfect for crepes because it's so flimsy.

So I like to slide the spatula right under the center, lift it up, flip it over.

We're just going to cook it about 20 seconds on the second side.

Now, part of mastering the heat is that you have to play with it a little bit.

As you go along, the pan gets hotter and hotter, and this amount of steam coming off, that's perfect.

You see any more than that, you got to turn that heat down.

Put it on a wire rack.

That's going to cool nicely.

Now I'm going to finish making all these crepes, and this recipe makes about 10.

I finished cooking all of the crepes, and, of course, you can fill them with anything.

Nutella and buckwheat is pretty popular in our house.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to take four crepes.

I'm putting them spotty side down.

The other great thing about these crepes is they can hold well in the fridge for at least three days.

Or in the freezer, if you stack them between pieces of parchment paper, they'll hold for up to a month.

So a nice little elegant brunch is just a minute away.

I spread them out here.

Obviously, they're overflowing the pan because we're going to fold them up.

We're going to start by placing a piece of ham right in the center.

Now, this is Black Forest ham, but any sort of deli ham will work well.

Alright, on top of this, we're going to put some grated Gruyère cheese, about 1/3 cup per crepe.

Now, the thing about the egg is you don't want the egg to roll all over the place.

So we're going to make a little cheese nest for that egg yolk to sit in.

The egg white can run around, but you want the yolk to stay nice in the center of the nest.

Now it's time to add the eggs.

Alright, one at a time, I'm just going to crack it right into the center of the cheese.

Perfect.

Now we're going to fold up the edges of the crepes so that each one is a square.

I'm going to press on the crepe lightly just to help it adhere, leaving that yolk exposed.

So they're like little packages.

And if they're a little up on the side, that's okay.

Once all the sides are folded up, we're just going to brush them with a little melted butter, help them get nice and crisp in the oven.

The butter also helps those flaps stay down as they cook.

And these are ready for the oven.

Now, they bake very quickly -- 8 to 10 minutes in a 450-degree oven.

And what you're looking for is that the crepe has gotten nice and crisp around the edges and that yolk has been covered over with a thin film of white but it's still a little jiggly.

Into the oven they go.

-I hate to waste things in the kitchen.

I keep a bag of scraps to make stock.

I reuse whatever I can reuse.

And even when herbs are beginning to look a little tired like this tarragon, what I'll do is I will strip the leaves, chop them up, and mix them into butter to make an herb butter.

So I have a little bit of tarragon here, looking a little yellow around the edges, kind of green around the gills, so to speak.

Chop it up pretty fine.

There's no recipe for this.

I just use whatever I happen to have.

This is a stick of unsalted butter, so I will probably throw in just a pinch of kosher salt and I will throw the herbs in and just mash it until... it's really well incorporated.

And you'll end up with tarragon butter that is delicious.

You can put it on potatoes, you can put it on fish, you can put it on all kinds of things.

Generally, I will roll it up like this in a piece of parchment, wrap it in plastic wrap, and stick it in a zipper-lock bag in the freezer.

These are a couple that I had around.

This is lemon thyme from my friend Pam's lemon thyme bush.

And this one is miso.

I think I was trying to use up the last of a container of miso before I opened up a new one.

And so, that's my little trick for making sure you don't waste herbs that are headed south.

♪♪ [ Sizzling ] -Oh, I love it when you bring them out and they're still sizzling a little bit.

Garnish with a few chives while they're nice and warm.

That way the chives will stick.

Oh, yep.

And there's no waiting for this.

You want to dig in while they're good and hot.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, that is the perfect yolk.

Mmm.

Mmm.

Ah, the French really know what they're doing.

It's perfectly cooked eggs with a little cheese, a little ham, and instead of a big honking piece of toast, it's just this very delicate buckwheat-flavor crepe.

I could probably eat all four of these myself.

If you want to make a perfect galette complète, be sure to use a 12-inch nonstick skillet.

Let that skillet heat up for five minutes before you start cooking.

And last but definitely not least, when you add the batter to the pan, do the swirl and shake.

From "America's Test Kitchen" at home, a wonderful recipe for galette complète.

♪♪ -There's a wide world of flours beyond wheat.

I have four favorites here on the table.

You're going to notice differences in color and texture, but most importantly, their differences in baking properties.

So there are two things driving those differences.

One is protein content.

So remember, all-purpose flour is 10% to 12%.

These range from 5% to 21% protein.

Perhaps even more important, when you mix these flours with water, they don't form gluten.

And so, therefore, they have very different baking properties than wheat flour.

They really can't be used interchangeably or for wheat flour.

Let's dig in.

This is buckwheat flour.

Has a really earthy, kind of woodsy flavor.

You know it in soba noodles.

I love it in pasta noodles from northern Italy.

Up in the Alps, they use buckwheat flour.

Crepes, blini.

It is a wonderful flour with a great flavor.

Next up, we've got white rice flour.

It's super fine.

It's almost like cornstarch in texture.

This is the lowest protein on the table -- 5%.

It's used in a lot of Asian recipes, but it's also used in a lot of gluten-free baking.

The test kitchen's gluten-free flour blend, this is the cornerstone.

And if you are cooking for people who can't eat gluten, you're going to be needing white rice flour.

You're also going to be needing brown rice flour.

Now, you know the difference here.

This has the bran and the germ.

So it's a little nuttier.

It's a little coarser.

And also because it has a little extra fat, it belongs in the freezer or it's going to go rancid.

It's also an ingredient in our gluten-free flour blend, along with tapioca starch and potato starch.

Last up on the table, this is almond flour, sometimes labeled almond meal.

It's got 21% protein, so highest on the table.

Also has a ton of fat.

That's why you're getting these clumps.

This is almost like cookie dough.

It's super rich.

I love it in the test kitchen's almond cake recipe.

We use it in cookies.

Also if you're doing paleo baking, you can use it in pancakes, you can use it in muffins, usually with arrowroot and coconut.

Has a really delicious, nutty flavor.

Wonderful if you love to bake.

So there you have it -- four flours that all deserve a place in your pantry.

♪♪ -Years ago, I had an idea for a cooking blog called "Cooking with Moms," which, as it sounds, I would spend time with moms in the Boston area and end up cooking some of their recipes with them, learn from them, write stories about them.

I was really, really excited about it.

And then life got in the way.

So I only did it one time, but the one time that I did was really amazing.

I met a home cook named Hannah Tran, and she showed me how to make bánh xèo, which is Vietnamese sizzling crepes.

It's an incredible dish.

It features this beautiful, custardy, lacy, crispy crepe wrapped in lettuce leaves with tons of herbs and dipped in nuoc cham, which is one of my ultimate all-time favorite dipping sauces.

This is not Hannah's recipe.

It's Andrew Janjigian's, who works at the test kitchen.

It's really, really easy to follow, and the flavors are incredible.

So let's get started.

We're going to start with a little Thai chili here.

I'm just going to do kind of a nice slice on this to start.

If you want, you could throw it in whole in the mortar and pestle.

It's just going to break down a lot more easily cut into more even-sized pieces.

I'm going to transfer it seeds and all right into my mortar.

Next up is garlic.

So I have just one garlic clove here.

And again, I'm going to do a little mince on it.

I'm not going to get too fussy about it 'cause we're going to go in the mortar.

So I could try to grind this just straight as is with the pestle, but it's nice to add an abrasive in there, and I'm going to use some sugar for that purpose.

Sugar goes into the sauce anyway.

So I'm going to add a tablespoon and then get my pestle.

So the trick here is to start with a kind of a pounding motion and then let the pestle do most of the work for you.

So you want to have it just kind of bouncing along, smashing everything up a little bit before we really start grinding.

Alright, now that it's mostly incorporated, then I'm going to switch to a grinding motion.

So here, I'm crushing it against the sides.

Gonna really start to break down.

Kind of reverse motion, go back and forth.

Beautiful.

So now what I'm going to do is transfer this over to the bowl here.

You can see it's turned almost like pink orange, and that's all the color coming out of the chili.

I didn't get everything out, but that's okay.

So to help dissolve the sugar, we're actually going to use hot water.

So I've got my measuring cup over here and my electric tea kettle, and I'm just going to dispense 2/3 cup of water.

It's eventually going to end up in the bowl, but I like to put it in the mortar first.

And this is going to allow me to get every little bit that's still in there.

And pour it in the bowl.

So the original amount of sugar was there as an abrasive, but we do need a little bit more just to balance the whole flavor of the sauce, and so I'm going to add 2 more tablespoons of sugar.

And stir until that is dissolved.

Okay, great.

Next up, we're going to add fish sauce.

We're going to go with 5 tablespoons.

It's going to bring salt, obviously, but also tons of umami, really, really meaty richness.

Okay, so now we have sweetness and we have umami and saltiness.

We need acidity, and that's going to come in the form of limes.

Going to start with two limes.

That's usually enough.

Depends on the time of year and how juicy they are.

Like to roll them first, get the juices going, slice them in half, and we'll juice.

Now, we want 1/4 cup.

I like to do a little strainer just to get rid of the pulp and have this really kind of clean, clear-looking sauce.

Beautiful.

Alright, so that goes in with all the other ingredients.

That is it.

That is our nuoc cham.

It's going to flavor everything in this dish.

So we'll set this aside and we'll get everything else ready to go.

It's time to make the batter for the bánh xèo, and the key to it is the right amount of starch and getting it to form a really nice gel.

As that gel heats up in the skillet, the water is driven off and what's left behind is crispy on the edges and nice and custardy and soft on the inside.

And so, the bulk of it comes from rice flour.

So you want to look for white rice flour.

I'm weighing on the scale here and I want 3 ounces of rice flour.

Rice flour is awesome for crisping.

It gets super, super crunchy.

So the edges will be really nice and crispy, but it doesn't absorb water super fast.

We actually found that it helped to have a little bit of cornstarch in the mix, 3 tablespoons.

The rest of the dry ingredients are really simple.

We're going to do 1/2 teaspoon of turmeric.

Going to make a gorgeous yellow color in these crepes and a little bit of flavor.

1/4 teaspoon of table salt for seasoning.

I'll just whisk these together until combined.

To help it hydrate faster and to get rid of any grittiness, we're actually going to use 1 cup of warm water.

We're looking for something in the 120- to 130-degree range.

And whisk it until it's smooth.

I'm going to let this hydrate for a little bit while I work on the rest of the ingredients.

While the batter hydrates, we're going to focus on all the fresh ingredients that are just going to make this taste incredible.

We have our lettuce leaves, which is what we're going to use to wrap up little bites of the crepe.

I'm using bib lettuce here.

You can use green leaf or red leaf lettuce, which would be really nice, as well.

And I've got herbs.

So herbs are really, really important to Vietnamese cuisine in general and definitely to this dish.

So I've got some Thai basil and cilantro.

If you have access to other Vietnamese herbs, absolutely get them here.

So we're going to work with the Thai basil first.

Just going to take off these nice big leaves, pop them over here, and this is going to be my serving platter.

So it's really -- lay everything out and let everyone pick and grab and assemble their own.

It's very good communal food.

Now for the cilantro.

You can leave them whole if you want.

The stems are edible the entire way down.

I like to make it maybe a little bit more delicate and just take that top part.

So some thin stems.

Beautiful.

So I've got my lettuce leaves and I've got this gorgeous pile of herbs.

So I'm just going to set that aside and get the rest of the ingredients ready for the crepe itself.

When Hannah made this dish for me, she used red onions, and I really love that sweetness.

So that's what we're going to use here.

I'm just going to slice them really thin.

So I just halve them down the middle and then slice thin.

Beautiful.

So now it is time for the proteins.

Now, traditionally, bánh xèo has both pork and shrimp in it.

And so we're going to include both of those here.

I'm using some boneless country-style ribs today.

You only need 4 ounces for this recipe.

So look for ones that have a little bit of a darker color to them.

They'll be a little bit juicier in the finished product.

So I'm going to cut these into basically two-inch matchsticks.

So they're really small pieces and they're really there for texture and just little hits of flavor.

And then I'm going to cut them crosswise so we get that nice two-inch length that way.

And then I will just go across this way to make nice matchsticks.

Okay, so that's the pork, and the next step is the shrimp.

So I'm working with 6 ounces of pretty small shrimp.

These are 31/40s.

And what we're going to do first is cut them in half lengthwise and then crosswise to just make nice little pieces.

I'm going to finish up these last few shrimp, and then it'll be time to start cooking.

I've got my 12-inch nonstick skillet with a teaspoon of oil in it, and I've been heating it over medium-high heat until it's just shimmering.

So I'm actually gonna use this to cook all of the filling for all three crepes.

Kind of helps just to cook it ahead of time.

And then it's much easier to make each crepe as you go.

We're going to start with our pork and our onion.

I'm going to cook this until the pork is no longer pink and the onion has softened, which will take anywhere from five to seven minutes.

The onion and the pork are looking great.

So I'm going to add my shrimp now and another 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

And because these shrimp are going to continue to cook once they're in the crepe, we're going to take them until they just turn pink, which takes about two minutes.

Alright, those look beautiful.

Smell good, too.

So I'm going to transfer them to a large bowl, and with some paper towels, I'm just going to wipe my skillet.

We're going to use it for the crepes, so we don't want to wash at this point.

Time to get back to our batter.

So it's been sitting for a long time.

That rice flour has had a chance to hydrate really nicely.

Now it's time for some richness.

Got 1/3 cup of full-fat coconut milk.

So in addition to the 1/3 cup of coconut milk, I also have 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil.

And while I'm doing this with my oil, I'm going to add 2 teaspoons to my skillet over here and I'll put it over medium-high heat until it just starts to smoke.

That's when I know it's gonna be hot enough to keep going.

And we'll just whisk this until nice and combined.

Skillet is nice and hot.

So it's time to go in with 1/3 of our filling.

And I'm just trying to heat this through.

So about 30 seconds.

Now we push the filling to one side of the skillet.

I'm a righty, so I like to have the filling over here 'cause I'm going to flip the crepe onto that, so it's a lot easier with my right hand.

Great.

So now it's time for our batter.

I'm going to add 1/2 cup of the batter.

You want to get it in there pretty quickly and then give yourself the opportunity to shake the skillet a little bit if you need to, just to evenly distribute it.

Because it's a hot skillet and it's sizzling, it's going to set really, really quickly.

So you want to work pretty fast.

And in we go.

Beautiful.

So you can see it's already got lots of little bubbles in the top like when you make pancakes.

They're popping through.

That's going to give us some of that nice lacy texture.

The edges are going to crisp a lot faster, but the interior will stay a little bit custardy.

So onto the filling side, I'm going to add a cup of bean sprouts.

These are going to soften a little bit, but they're still going to retain a lot of that crunch and be really nice inside there.

So we're gonna let this go for about four to five minutes until it completely releases from the bottom of the skillet.

And then, at that point, we'll turn down the heat and we'll go until it is nice and crispy on the bottom and custardy on the inside.

So it's been about four minutes, and I'm just going to give a good shake on the pan and see if it's loose enough to come free, and it is.

You can see some browning around the edges, which is what we're looking for, so I'm going to lower the heat to medium-low and go for about another two minutes until I can tell that it's nice and browned around the edges.

Alright, so it's definitely nice and crispy and brown on the bottom.

That looks awesome.

So now it's time to flip.

And for this, I like to do it with a little bit of authority so that you really get it over and covering the entire thing.

One nice, smooth motion.

Just like that.

Beautiful.

So that one is done.

I'm going to slide it out right over here onto my wire rack, which is set in a rimmed baking sheet.

Looks great.

And I'm going to keep this warm in a 275-degree oven while I finish the other ones.

So all three bánh xèo are cooked and looking absolutely gorgeous, crispy, lacy on the outside.

They smell amazing.

We've got all of our other fresh stuff and our dipping sauce, our nuoc cham.

So now it is time to eat.

I'm going to get one and bring it over to the cutting board here.

I've got my knife here, so I'm just going to cut it into roughly 1 1/4-inch-thick strips.

Now it's just all about assembly.

So I take a nice lettuce leaf here.

Gonna grab a nice little end piece of my bánh xèo.

Put that in there.

Couple leaves of Thai basil, couple sprigs of cilantro.

So we'll just wrap it up.

Then we dunk.

Mmm.

It's so good.

It's unbelievably flavorful.

You get all these amazing different textures.

You get the creamy crepe versus the crispy parts of it.

Those onions that fried up got a little bit crispy, the tender lettuce leaf, all those aromatic herbs.

And then the nuoc cham is just unbelievably flavorful.

And you know what?

Hannah is right.

It is all about this.

It's all about that fish sauce.

So much of it gets sucked up in there.

If you love this sauce as much as I do, you'll love this dish.

One of the world's great dishes right here.

So the keys to doing it well are to use a combination of rice flour and cornstarch in the batter, use warm water to help it hydrate faster, and precooking the fillings to make it a little bit easier when you get to the stove and you're making the crepes.

So from "America's Test Kitchen" at home, my favorite recipe for bánh xèo.

Big shout-out to Hannah Tran for showing me how to do it in the first place and to Andrew Janjigian for this awesome recipe.