How to Make Kung Pao Chicken and Oven-Steamed Fish with Scallions and Ginger

um today in America's Test Kitchen elle

make

s Bridgette a foolproof

kung

pao

chicken

Adam reveals his favorite sturdy cutting board and dan

make

s Julia the perfect

steamed

baked

fish

with

scallions

and

ginger

it all comes up here in the kitchen of the United States in Sichuan cooking the combination of Szechuan peppercorns and hot chili peppers is known as ma la or numbing heat is now a key part of a dish you know well

kung

pao

chicken

and goblins here, she will show us how to make A great version at home that is adequate and beyond the numbing heat of kung pao chicken is essentially a stir fry and a flavorful sauce, although one of the problems with stir fried chicken is that the chicken often becomes dry, let's solve that problem today, okay, so we have here a pound and a half. of boneless, skinless chicken thighs and they have been trimmed and I'm going to finish this and they have all been cut into half inch pieces.

I love that you use thighs instead of chicken breasts it's just so much more flavorful and it's not going to dry out that's right so I'm just cutting the chicken into about a half inch strips and then I'm going to cut them into half inch pieces. inch. Yes, those little pieces of chicken are definitely a hallmark of kung pao chicken, but I make sure you have everything prepared ahead of time, that's really key for any stir fry you're making, the whole cooking will be super quick so it's a great idea to prepare everything before starting, okay so I have washed it.

I got rid of the cutting board with my hands, it's time to prepare the marinade well. I have some traditional ingredients here. Two tablespoons of soy sauce, a pleasant intense flavor and a little salt. Oh yeah. A tablespoon of cornstarch. This cornstarch is really the magic ingredient. the cornstarch will coat the chicken so when it hits the heat it will create a gel around the chicken this is what will make our sauce stick because we don't want our sauce to be starchy and sticky we want it to have a nice glaze bright. I also have a tablespoon of Chinese rice wine and finally half a teaspoon of white pepper, so I'm going to mix it well.

This cornstarch is creating a nice shiny glaze that sticks to the chicken right where it should, that's right. stuck to the chicken stuck to the chicken so I'm going to put this aside and now we can start preparing our sauce to have more traditional ingredients. This is a tablespoon of black Chinese vinegar, to which I will add two tablespoons of soy sauce. a tablespoon of dark brown sugar and two teaspoons of toasted sesame oil, it smells so good, so I'm going to stir it in just to make sure the sugar dissolves. Now Chinese black vinegar is made from glutinous rice, sometimes it is made from Sorghum.

It has a very deep malt flavor and is similar to balsamic vinegar, but it is not as sweet, so if you can't find Chinese black vinegar, the best base is a substitute for sherry vinegar, so let's prepare the second one. part of our sauce we start with a tablespoon of vegetable oil, two teaspoons of grated

ginger

and a tablespoon of minced garlic, the oil will make this spreadable and this combination is the basis of Szechuan cuisine, yes it really is, I love this method. because you put everything in oil and then when you add it to a pan, it's not going to form clumps, that's it, so it's all ready.

I'm going to set this aside before I start making the composite chicken. I'm just going to roast half a cup of dry roasted peanuts. I have a teaspoon of vegetable oil in this non-stick pan. Okay, I'm just going to toast these for about three to five minutes on medium-low heat. Roasting these peanuts will add a nice extra texture and flavor to our dish, they won't get soggy in the sauce, you know, when they're ready, when they're nice and golden brown and toasted, so these peanuts are ready, so we're just going to put them in. on a plate to cool them and set them aside okay let's set them aside over here please okay so it's time for us to start building the bases for our kung pao sauce so I'm just going to take a teaspoon of Szechuan peppercorns and I will put it in a spice grinder I want to grind it coarsely so it will be easier to eat and it will give us a stronger flavor, okay, just a few pulses, this is perfect, you can already smell it, Let's move on to our frying pan. it's the same pan that we had our peanuts in over medium-low heat and I'm just going to add a tablespoon of vegetable oil, we're going to start browning these peppers, so I'm going to add our crushed peppercorn and I'm going to add 15 chiles de arbol dried and we found that crushing the peppercorn, splitting the tree chiles and removing the seeds really helped them bloom and gave us better flavor so we're going to let them bloom for about one to two minutes okay so these bloomed and They smell pretty good.

I'm just going to add our garlic and ginger mixture. A little sizzle, yes, and because we added oil, it's spreading pretty easily and we just need to let it sit for about 30 seconds stirring. quite frequently until the lumps are gone, that seems about right, so now we can add the chicken that's been marinating, so we'll add the chicken and spread it in an even layer in the pan. Browning is not a staple of Szechuan cuisine, so we don't need to brown it very much, but we do need the chicken to be fully cooked, so I'm going to increase the heat to medium high, cover this chicken, and let it cook for a while. minute, okay, it's been a minute.

I'm just going to take the lid off, stir so this mixture allows the chicken to cook on the other side, and put it back in an even layer like it was before. Okay, put the lid back on and leave. It cooks for another minute, every time you lift the lid it smells better and better, I know it's very exciting, so it's been a minute and it looks good. I'm going to add two stalks of celery cut into half inch pieces and add a little bit. beautiful color, a nice crunchy texture and I think a nice cooling sensation when you eat a little bit of chili, you know, absolutely, yeah and I like that you added it after the chicken, a lot of recipes add celery at the beginning and at the end. with overcooked celery, yeah, that's not good, so I'm going to continue cooking this for another two or three minutes uncovered, okay, then we'll add the sauce, which is the staple of the dish and because we put cornstarch on the chicken before. the sauce will stick and it will be so shiny and so beautiful.

I'm going to stir this constantly. You only need three to five minutes to reduce it. I have you. Look what we did here. Beautiful. This kung pao chicken is spicy but not sticky. It's bright and. bright and it smells delicious, it's great that it's not swimming in sausage, so to finish it off I'm going to add five

scallions

that I cut into half inch pieces, it's just the white and light green pieces and our roasted peanuts from Before I'm just going to stir it in to combine it well, so I'm going to take it off the heat and we're ready to eat, so make sure you don't eat the chiles, yeah, okay, and don't write to us if By chance, I'm serving this with white rice that looks a little bit more beautiful.

There you have it, okay. I'm going for the star of the show. The chicken meat is so juicy and tender. The thighs were the best selection for this dish. the flavor of the sauce is so complex the black vinegar, the rice wine, the Szechuan peppercorns, the Sichuan peppercorns and the fact that everything was prepared in a similar size means that you can do this, get everything On your fork in one bite, oh, you brought the fire, I try. oh that's good, you'll want to make this kung pao at home and start with the classic stir fry preparation, mix the chicken thighs with soy sauce and cornstarch, then make a sauce with chinese black vinegar, brown sugar and oil of ground sesame. then cook Sichuan peppercorns with tree chilies, then add garlic and ginger, cook chicken, add celery and sauce, add scallions and roasted peanuts and serve with white rice, so from the kitchen From America's test to their kitchen, the kung pao chicken so good and tingly fiery, I think I could do business with this when it comes to cutting boards.

I like the big and sturdy ones because they give you a solid surface to work on, but they can be expensive, so Adam is here to tell us which one is worth it, big and sturdy. He hadn't used that as a description for these, but they're big and beefy. I hate small cutting boards. They offend me personally. They can be light. They may jump compared to a plastic cutting board or a composite cutting board. You get a luxurious cutting experience. because they all tend to be a little bit softer, lots of room to work with, which I like, and if you take care of it you get a board that will last you a lifetime.

We have seven boards in our line, the price range was about eighty-five dollars for a minimum to two 240 for a maximum and the materials vary from bamboo to four different types of wood, we have teak right here we have maple, we have birch and then there is a Japanese cypress tree called hinoki. Great testers chopped parsley diced it. They chopped onions, cut loaves of bread, pounded chicken cutlets and cut bone-in chicken parts to test stain and odor resistance, chopped chipotle peppers and adobo sauce, and washed the boards to see how stained and smelly they might have been.

All of these boards were hand washed at least a hundred times, maintained with mineral oil as needed and also went home with test cooks for some real cooking tests and the test cooks reported back over time what they thought of sizing terms of our recommendation is to get the largest board your countertop and sink will allow, also the largest board you can comfortably lift. Don't discount the weight factor with these things, they can be very heavy. The heaviest board in our line weighed about 32 pounds and was this one? Okay, Julia, let's look at some muscles. I'm pretty strong.

OMG, this is surprisingly heavy. I would actually worry for my safety if I had to carry this across the kitchen to the sink. The sweet spot for the weight was approx. 15 pounds which were around this one here 15 pounds were manageable and still ensured the edge height the thickness of the board was also a consideration there were taller cooks and some shorter cooks on the test team here some of these boards were so thick about two inches and if they had feet like this, he raised them even higher, like three inches, which was fine for taller cooks who put the knife in a nice, you know, comfortable position for some of the cooks who weren't as tall. high enough to be able to do it.

It will be a challenge and I want you to chop some parsley and tell me if it sounds natural to you. I've had boards like this before and yes, the knife is too high for me to feel comfortable. This is going to hurt me. shoulder after a couple of minutes, so you definitely need to pay attention to the height again. The sweet spot in terms of height was about an inch and a half to two inches, which was good for most cooks in terms of feet, some testers liked them because it was easier to lift the boards, it was easier dry them because they were elevated from the work surface, but they're not reversible, like footless boards are, so either one has an advantage or you know, we wanted to find out how durable they are.

In these woods we also wanted to see the effect of the wood on the edge of a blade, so we got some robotic help for that. We brought a robot here from the Autodesk technology center in Boston and the robot was equipped with a brand. New factory sharpened knife for each board. The robot used the knife to make 5,000 strikes on each board. We stopped every 200 cuts so we could test the sharpness of the knife by cutting paper, which is our standard type of sharpness test, and also inspect. the board look how it did under the stress of all that cutting all the knives you could still cut the paper it wasn't exactly the same story for the boards I want you to turn this one over at the end yes please okay. jeff oh oh oh no, I would be mad if this was my board at home.

Now the robot was adding more pressure than a human. Would you use a very strong blow? Yes, this is quite extreme, but over time this could happen. scale for measuring hardness and softness called jenka scale, the range on the janka scale in our lineup was a minimum of 349. okay, up to a maximum of 1480. oh wow, the board made of teak was 989 on the scale Janka and we consider it a good middle ground, this was soft enough to make it a nice and luxurious cutting experience, but hard enough to be durable. Well, we have two different types of construction for these boards, this one that your hand is on is called end grain and whatnot.

There you have a bunch of pieces of wood that are fused vertically so that the ends are exposed, the teak that is called edge grain and you have a bunch of pieces of wood that are fused horizontally. The testers actually preferred the edge grain because the end grain boards were moresusceptible to moisture absorption also when oiled with mineral oil the end grain boards absorbed more oil than the edge grain boards did the teak board actually absorb the least amount of mineral oil of all the teaks? It contains a natural resin called tectaquinone that keeps it conditioned and naturally repels moisture, so this one required a little less maintenance than the others, you know, testers really think that choosing a large cutting board like this is very personal, It depends on how strong you are and how much space you have. how big your sink is what your aesthetic is, but this one takes home proteak edge fiberboard for about 105, which has been our winner in the past retains the title of winner.

It is a great option for many people. It is spacious because it measures 24 inches long by 18 inches wide. It is an inch and a half tall. It weighs 15 pounds, so it's stable enough but you can still move around. It was the second cheapest of the entire line at 105 and we can really stand behind that because we've used it in the test kitchen for 10 years and had no problems to report, so it's standing the test of time. here it is, so there you have it if you're ready to invest in a large, sturdy cutting board, look for the proteiq house teak edge grain cutting board for about $105 if I said today we're steaming

fish

.

I'd probably just go and change the channel because what's there to know, but Dan says he has a new recipe that offers more flavor than grilling or roasting, that's right, I love

steamed

fish, but you have to do it right. The steam

oven

is my favorite. way to do it, there's no intervention, you get a super moist, very, very tender fish, but you have to do it the right way, so we'll start with some intensely flavorful ingredients working with scallions, ginger and garlic, we'll use them in a couple in different ways, so first I have six chives here, you're going to chop them up coarsely, you're going to put them on my baking sheet and that's going to be our steaming bowl, so from these two here we're going to get one A little bit fancier, we're going to make some nice cuts on them thin on the bias, so stack them here.

I'm going to transfer them to a bowl and we'll set them aside for garnish at the end so the next really tasty ingredient is Ginger, we're going to use this in two ways as well, so I have a three inch piece here and two inches of it that I'm going to cut in large pieces. We're not looking for perfect knife skills here, we're just trying to gain access. that flavor and that's going to go here too, okay, and then for this piece here I'm going to make a nice julienne, so I want to trim off the bottom a little bit and make really nice thin slices and then what I like.

What I have to do is stack up some pieces, a little deck of cards, little gingerbread cards and then I'm just going to cut the same rough thickness that I was doing on this side, same thing here, very well done, cool, so that one It is a garnish that we are going to make. Set that aside now and to this we're also going to add three cloves of garlic cut into thin slices, that's going to be super tasty, so let's go over here and we're going to make our sauce. This sauce is going to be really very important.

At the end, season the fish but also add all the steam from the

oven

and start with 3 tablespoons of soy sauce 2 tablespoons of rice wine I have a teaspoon and a half of toasted sesame oil a little, it's very long, but it's really nice, it has a nice flavor and it also has a teaspoon and a half of sugar, so a little bit of sweetness to help balance things out. I also have a quarter teaspoon of salt. Soy sauce is quite salty, so we need some. to balance it out and finally one of my favorite ingredients is a quarter teaspoon of ground white pepper.

It will add a lot of complexity to this dish, so the difference between white peppercorns and black peppercorns comes down to how they are processed. Peppercorns are the unripe berries of the pepper plant and are dried, which is why they look a little shrunken and their outer skin has a bitter, spicy taste. White peppercorns, on the other hand, are the ripe berries and are soaked and fermented in water. and then the skin is removed so that its flavor is floral and light and a little more complex, so if you want bold and spicy, choose the black peppercorns, if you want light and fragrant, choose the white one, okay, like this that we have all our components. and now it's time to build the best baked steamed fish placed in a brownie pan, yes, it's crazy right?

It's a little crazy, so if you think it's weird that we're in a brownie pan, let's make a sling too. the same way we do it with brownies the fish is going to be perfect so we have a piece of aluminum foil here that I folded so it's about six inches wide and about 18 inches long and I'm going to press it now We don't want the fish to stick, so I'm going to use a little bit of cooking spray. Now it's time to look at our beautiful fish, so we have cod here, it's one of my favorite fish, but anything from the cod family, so haddock and haddock pie would be great too and will work perfectly in this recipe .

You want something that you know is crumbly when it's cooked, it's a little soft but really delicious and meaty too, so I'm four and six. ounce of steaks here beautiful, there's not much trick to doing this, but you want to look for any of the thinner pieces that you have and those should go in the center, they will cook a little slower that way, yes, protect the thinner pieces . in the middle, so now I'm going to take this sauce here and pour it around the fish, as I mentioned, it will create that really nice steam environment in the oven later on, after the fish has given its liquid, it will also make an amazing sauce ah just a little bit to make it uh little enough we want it to be nice and concentrated when it comes out of the oven okay and now we're just going to cover it with aluminum foil I'm going to go into a 450 degree oven on the middle rack.

A very hot oven will create a lot of steam. We're going to go until it reaches 125 degrees in the center, which may take 12 to 14 minutes. Well, it's been about 12 minutes. a little look inside oh so we're going to look for about 125 degrees here and that's beautiful okay now our trusty aluminum sling will come in handy we're going to let a little bit of that moisture drain away and then we'll just walk over to our plate here and we just slide everything down, boy, that nonstick spray really worked, uh, beautiful, right, yeah, okay, so I like to space them out nice and evenly in there so we have an amazing flavor here, we have our juices. of fish.

We have all these amazing ingredients that we add for the sauce and those aromatics, so we want to access all of that, so I'm going to strain it and just press those aromatics to make sure we get every last drop out, it's beautiful, I like it. which is not a complicated sauce, it's just the juices that are left at the bottom of the pan exactly, it's full of flavor that you wouldn't mind grabbing, I'll bring the fish here, okay, so I'm going to serve this sauce all over. about our fish here you want a nice deep plate for this because there's a lot of sauce and it looks beautiful too now my beautiful bias cut chives go on top ah now it's coming to life little garnish goes a long way I have two tablespoons of Heating the oil in this eight inch skillet over medium-high heat, we're going to get this smoking really good, so it's just starting to smoke, it's a very, very hot oil, so I'm going to turn off the heat and remove.

Take it off the heat and add my julienned ginger, so we're looking for them to brown a little bit and get a little crispy brown so that the frying will mitigate that strong ginger flavor and make a flavorful oil and this will take about 20 to 30 seconds, it's okay, it looks beautiful, you see how it gets nice and crispy and a little golden, so now it's time to put it on the fish, oh oh, when the hot oil hits the scallions, you'll be able to smell it too, so the final step . It's a third cup of cilantro leaves and the thin stems, unlike parsley, the stems of cilantro are quite sweet, beautiful, beautiful, it's beautiful, okay, time to dig deeper.

I'm really impressed with how this dish came together, yes. It's definitely company-worthy, so just some steamed rice and the sauce scoop, get some sauce here, don't hold back, oh, I won't, oh, yes, bon appetit, very good, perfectly cooked and the flavor of the sauce, although tasty, is not. it dominates the delicate cod, it really goes together very well, that curly ginger on top adds so much flavor, the oil adds a ton of richness mmm, I just got a dose of that ginger and it tastes very mild and has a nice crunchy texture which I love . the balance of the really deep flavor of that soy sauce and then all the fresh stuff on top well this certainly elevates my old steamed fish a bit damn this is wonderful thank you so if you want to make this great recipe from scallions layered with steamed fish. ginger and garlic in a baking dish, cover with aluminum foil and place the fish on top, pour the soy sauce and rice wine over the fish, cover with aluminum foil and bake for just 12 minutes, remove the fish from the plate, strain the liquid and pour it on top.

Finally finish with a quick warm ginger oil from America's Test Kitchen to your kitchen. A great new recipe for baked steamed fish with scallions and ginger. You can get this recipe and all of the season's recipes along with our tastings and select episodes on our website. americastestkitchen.com Wow, thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen. What do you think about it? Well, leave a comment and tell us what recipes you're excited to make or just say hello. You can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description. and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later see you later