♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Welcome to "America's Test Kitchen" at home.
Today, Lan is making bó lúc lác, Adam's going to talk to us all about how to maintain and store your knives, and finally, I'm making gói cuón.
There's a lot of good food today, so stay tuned.
♪♪ ♪♪ -I grew up eating a dish called bó lúc lác.
In Vietnamese, "lúc lác" means "to shake," and it's a reference to the fact that when you cook this dish, you gotta shake that beef around in the skillet.
The other really cool thing about this is that stir-fry gets served on top of a watercress salad, and it's delicious.
So we're gonna start with the watercress.
I've got 4 ounces here.
I'm just gonna go ahead and pick these greens.
I like to wash the watercress before I pick it.
This was one of the jobs my sister and I would do when my mom made this dish.
It was definitely the one we did not want to do.
Watercress has a thick stem, and it's a little tough.
I want to pull the little sprigs that come off the bottom of the stem, and then when I get to the top two, three inches, I can pluck that entire bit off.
And this is all going directly onto the serving platter.
Watercress is traditional for this salad.
It's got this nice peppery bite.
It's just tough enough to hold up to the heat of the stir-fry when you add it.
This is good to go.
I'm just gonna get this out of the way, and we will get our marinade set.
Shaking beef is all about loading up on umami.
It's super-savory and really satisfying.
So, I've got 4 teaspoons of fish sauce.
The other ingredient I've got is Maggi seasoning.
And I grew up having a bottle of this stuff in the kitchen cabinet.
It's kind of what you get if Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce got together and had a baby, and that baby was supercharged with umami.
I am using 4 teaspoons here.
Last up, just for a hint of sweetness, 2 teaspoons of molasses.
I'm just gonna give this a quick whisk.
That's our marinade -- three ingredients.
It's really easy.
Now for the other thing my sister and I were allowed to help with, and that was juicing limes.
I need 1/4 cup of lime juice.
This is looking pretty juicy, but I still think I might need two limes for this.
Now we'll flavor that lime juice.
I need 1 teaspoon of black pepper, and I like to use freshly ground.
And that is it.
This is our dressing.
Next up for the prep is the beef.
I've got a pound of sirloin here.
Sirloin is fantastic because it's really nicely marbled.
It's really beefy-tasting.
I'm going to cut this into about 3/4-inch-wide pieces, and then I'm gonna cut these into 3/4-inch pieces.
So we'll just have a bunch of chunks of beef.
This is going into the marinade, making sure that this beef is well-coated.
That looks pretty great.
This has to sit for about 15 minutes, and while that's happening, I'm gonna wash my hands, my knife, and maybe do a little cleaning.
This beef stir-fry always contains onion, and it's traditional to use a red onion.
I've taken the top and bottom off of this half, and I'm gonna make radial cuts.
And what this does is it helps the onion hold together a little bit better than if you were to come across and cut straight down.
That's the onion.
I'm serving this stir-fry with a traditional rice.
It's called com dó, and that means red rice.
And I need some garlic for that.
And since I also need garlic for my shaking beef, I'm gonna do all of that knife work now.
I'm gonna do a bunch of smashing first.
I'm looking for 4 teaspoons of garlic for the rice and 2 teaspoons of garlic for the shaking beef.
Garlic cloves come in a number of sizes.
And when I see a recipe that calls for, say, 4 garlic cloves, I usually shoot for about 4 teaspoons of minced garlic.
This is looking pretty good.
Okay, let's start the rice.
So, I have 1 1/2 cups of jasmine rice here, and before I start cooking it, I'm gonna give it a nice rinse.
Step one is getting rid of all the extra starch that kind of coats the grains.
I'm just looking for the water to run clear.
I think I'm good to go.
So while this rice finishes draining, I've got 2 tablespoons of butter melting in a medium saucepan, and it's going at about medium-high heat.
So, rice goes in.
I just want to toast this rice for maybe a minute or three.
Kind of keep it moving around in there.
I'm looking for the grains to become opaque.
I want nice, fluffy rice.
This is looking great.
These grains -- they're starting to look opaque, which is what we want, so I'm gonna go grab my garlic.
That's 4 teaspoons of garlic.
Goes right in.
And I'm just gonna stir this around, make sure that garlic gets nice and toasty.
I don't need color here, but I do want to make sure it's fragrant and any clumps are broken up.
That smells fantastic.
Next up -- the red.
So I've got tomato paste here, 3 tablespoons.
And it is just going right in.
And I want to toast this tomato paste.
That tomato paste is where this dish gets its name.
It tints this rice a nice kind of brick-red color.
And I want to make sure that, besides toasting out the tomato paste and developing a tiny bit of a fond, I also want to break up any clumps so that I don't have to, you know, bite into a chunk of tomato paste later.
That's no good.
This looks great.
Time for the water.
I've got 1 3/4 cups of water, and it's just going right in.
And I have a couple last flavorings to add to this.
You can use soy sauce or Maggi seasoning.
I happen to love Maggi, so I'm using that.
So I'm gonna add 2 teaspoons of Maggi seasoning and 1/2 teaspoon of table salt.
Quick stir.
And now that this is at a nice boil, I want to bring it down to a simmer, cover, and that's gonna take about 20 minutes to cook.
♪♪ The beef has been marinating for 15 minutes now, so it's time to get it out of this bowl.
I'm just gonna use tongs to pick up the beef and kind of let any extra marinade drip off.
This marinade -- we're not done with it.
It's gonna become the sauce for this dish.
I want to add the 2 minced garlic cloves I did earlier, 1/4 of a cup of water, and a little bit of cornstarch.
I'm using 3/4 teaspoon.
Now I'm just gonna give this a quick stir, break up those cornstarch clumps.
So, that looks great.
I'm just gonna set this aside.
One last thing to do with the beef, and then we can start cooking.
I want to add 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil to this beef.
Here it's really important to make sure this beef is well-coated with oil so that it browns up nicely when we go to cook it.
This looks great.
Now I'm gonna go make sure that pan is hot, and we can start cooking.
I have a teaspoon of vegetable oil in this 12-inch nonstick skillet, and I'm heating it over medium heat.
And I'm just looking for the very first wisp of smoke.
That looks pretty great.
Next step -- get rid of the oil.
I know this looks weird because I just put all this oil in there and now I'm getting rid of it, but the oil's job is just to tell us that the pan is ready to go.
Because we oiled that beef earlier, we don't need any extra oil in the skillet.
I want to add just half of the beef so that there's a lot of space between the pieces.
That will let them brown more quickly.
Okay, so we're gonna leave this heat on medium.
I don't want to go any faster 'cause otherwise the outside will burn before the inside cooks.
But now is the time to start shaking.
As the meat heats up, all these juices are gonna come out, and they're gonna become the fond.
By shaking that meat around, it's gonna pick up that fond and kind of deglaze the pan for me, and it's gonna take, oh, two to four minutes to cook this first side.
One other thing to keep in mind -- I've got two sets of tongs here -- raw-meat tongs, cooked-meat tongs.
As long as I see little bits of red in here, I'm gonna keep using these.
So, this smells fantastic.
There's little bits of fond starting to form on the sides of the skillet.
And I just want to make sure that I'm deglazing it from the pan so that it sticks to the meat.
So, these look great.
I want to get them out of that hot skillet.
Now I just want to wipe out the skillet, and we'll repeat that whole process.
♪♪ Okay, time for the onions.
First up -- tablespoon of butter.
This is kind of the French influence of this dish.
You don't see a ton of butter in Vietnamese cooking.
I just want that to melt.
Great.
So we're ready for the onions.
Now, I don't want to cook these a ton.
I just want to take the raw edge off the onions.
But I want them to retain their kind of bright-purple color.
Give them a quick shake.
And as soon as all of them are softened, we'll be ready to move on.
That looks great.
Here's our sauce.
Give it a quick stir to get all that cornstarch off the bottom.
It tends to kind of settle out as it sits.
And we'll just add that.
It really quickly comes down to a nice, glazy consistency.
It helps cook the onion a little bit more.
And I just want the onions to be nicely glazed in that sauce.
This usually takes one or two minutes.
Don't worry if it's looking like it's a little too gloppy or tight.
There's a bunch of meat juices in here that are going in that pan, so it'll loosen up a little bit.
So, that looks great.
Beef is going back in.
Quick toss and we're done.
Alright, this beef is done.
Let's go grab the rice.
After that 20-minute cook, I turned off the heat, and I let this rice rest for 10 minutes covered.
And that just helps it cook really evenly.
After that, I gave it a little fluff with a fork, and that is it.
It's super easy, and it's so good.
Okay, so this meat goes directly over the greens.
This smells so good.
One last bit of zhuzhing before we serve.
That dressing I made earlier -- I'm gonna drizzle about half of it over the beef and greens.
This lime juice and pepper is just gonna add a touch of acidity, kind of round out those flavors.
And the rest of this, I'm gonna divide into serving bowls for dipping.
Grab a little bit of rice.
My family always serves this family-style.
And then for the beef, don't sleep on the salad.
It's really good.
Because the marinade is so savory, that lime-and-pepper dipping sauce really just cuts through everything and brightens it up.
I could seriously eat this entire plate.
I'm not going to, at least not on-camera.
This red rice is awesome.
It's got a pop of garlic, nice bit of savory tomato flavor, but mostly, it's just very, very comforting.
It's so good.
So, to really understand what I'm talking about, you've gotta make this.
And when you do, load up on umami, buy the right cut of beef, and remember to oil the beef and not your skillet.
So, from "America's Test Kitchen" at home, a family favorite of mine -- bó lúc lác, or shaking beef.
♪♪ -You can't prevent the cutting edge of your knife blade from dulling with use, but you can slow down the dulling if you treat your knives well.
And the first thing you should do is get rid of your glass and hard plastic cutting boards.
Not only does it sound and feel awful to cut on those things, but they are murder on the cutting edge of your blade.
Another thing that's murder on the cutting edge of your blade is to drag it across a cutting board to pick up vegetables to move them into a pan or a bowl.
And that's why I like to use a bench scraper for that.
This is our favorite bench scraper.
It's the $11 Dexter-Russell Sani-Safe series 6-inch dough cutter and scraper.
And it's fabulous because it moves a lot of vegetables into your bowl and saves your knife blade.
Another great thing to do is to hone your blade often.
Honing is a little different from sharpening.
What happens when you cut is the cutting edge gets bent over into what's called a burr, and honing it will straighten it back up and make your knife feel sharper between actual sharpenings.
Our favorite honing rod is this.
It's $48, and it's the Bob Kramer Double-Cut Sharpening Steel.
"Sharpening steel," "honing rod," potato, "potahto" -- They're used interchangeably, Whichever, it's easy to use.
You plant the tip on a cutting board.
You grab a knife, hold it at about a 15-degree angle to the rod, and just sweep it up and down repeatedly.
When it's time to sharpen your blade, you're gonna grind some metal off to create a new cutting edge.
And nothing makes that easier at home than an electric knife sharpener.
This is our favorite model.
It's the Chef'sChoice Trizor XV.
It's about $150.
And it's got three different slots that hold your knife at a precise angle, about 15 degrees, up against wheels that spin inside that are coated with diamond abrasives.
You just pull your knife through, and voilà, it's sharp at the end.
If you'd rather use a manual sharpener, our top choice is this one.
It's the Chef'sChoice Pronto Manual Diamond Hone Asian Knife Sharpener, and it's 50 bucks.
It's great for a light sharpening.
And because it's so small, you can just chuck it into a drawer when it's time to put it away.
However, when you're putting your knives away, please don't chuck those into a drawer, 'cause it doesn't do any favors for the cutting edge.
Instead, you should use our favorite universal knife block, and that's this model.
This is the Design Trifecta 360 Knife Block.
It's $300, and it's a great storage system because it's magnetized.
So you can just pull the knife off and put it right back on without dragging the blade down the slot of a regular knife block.
Also, you can see that it rotates lazy-Susan style, so you have perfect access to all of your knives.
So if you use this array of equipment, I guarantee that your knives will feel sharper for longer.
♪♪ -When it's hot outside, I love making gói cuón, which are Vietnamese summer rolls.
That's that thin rice paper that's stuffed with all those fresh herbs, a little lettuce, some pork, some shrimp, and, of course, those flavorful dipping sauces.
Now, they're really fun to make at home, but there's a lot of components that you got to get ready before you start rolling.
So we're gonna start with the first component, which are these rice noodles.
Now, these are thin rice noodles, also known as rice vermicelli sometimes.
And they cook very quickly, in just two or three minutes.
Here I have a pot of boiling water, about 2 quarts of water.
We're gonna add 6 ounces of the rice noodles.
Now, when you're buying rice vermicelli, it comes in a couple different brands that weigh different amounts.
And for this recipe, you want to make sure just to weigh out 6 ounces.
Just gonna boil these for two or three minutes, and then we'll rinse.
♪♪ Alright, so, they've been cooked, and then I rinsed them immediately under cold water.
That just stops the cooking and makes sure they don't get mushy by the time we're ready to make those rolls.
Give them a good shake.
Make sure they're dry.
Then I'm gonna spread them out good.
Let them cool.
Let them dry off a bit.
Then you can just set these noodles aside and fill that pot up with more water so we can cook the pork and the shrimp.
So, that water has come back to a boil, and now we're gonna cook the pork and the shrimp.
I have 10 ounces of country-style pork ribs and 18 medium-large shrimp, and we're just gonna cook them one after the other in the boiling water.
I'm gonna season that water with 2 teaspoons of kosher salt, and first go in the pork ribs.
They're gonna take, oh, about 10 minutes, and we're gonna cook them at a gentle simmer until they register about 150 degrees.
Reduce the heat just to a low simmer and put the lid on.
And again, this will take about 10 minutes.
So, it's been about 10 minutes.
And remember, we're looking for a temperature of 150 degrees.
Perfect.
Take the pork out.
Transfer it to the cutting board.
We're gonna let it cool.
Alright, now using that same water, I'm gonna add the shrimp.
Now we're gonna cover the pot, turn the heat off, and let these shrimp cook off the heat for 3 minutes.
And it's that gentle cooking that will ensure that the shrimp won't overcook.
So, the shrimp have been in there for 3 minutes.
Let's take a look.
Perfect.
You can see they've curled up tightly.
They've turned nice and pink.
It's a good indication that they're done.
We're gonna drain off the cooking liquid, and we're gonna give them a quick rinse in the cold water.
That'll just stop the cooking completely so we can get rolling.
So the pork has cooled, and now we're gonna slice it into nice, thin pieces.
What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut each piece into 2-inch lengths.
There we go.
Now we're gonna take each piece, and we're gonna slice it against the grain into about 1/8-inch thick slices.
Alright, so, that's it for the pork.
Time to move onto the shrimp.
What we're gonna do is we're gonna cut each shrimp in half width-wise.
So, you can use a big knife.
You can use a little knife.
You can use whatever knife you want.
All you have to do is make sure that knife is sharp.
You want to slice right through the middle.
Alright, so, that's it for the shrimp.
Now I'm gonna slice up some scallions, just two scallions.
I already washed these.
Just gonna trim the ends, then pull off any of the pieces that look older around the bottom.
Now I'm going to slice them very thinly on the bias.
Set those in a nice, little pile.
Onto the fresh herbs.
Now, we're gonna use three fresh herbs, cilantro, Thai basil, and mint, and we're gonna use them in equal parts, about 1 cup of each.
For the cilantro, I'm just using the leaves and the delicate stems at the top.
Okay, that looks like a nice, good cup.
Alright, onto the mint.
Again, we're gonna use about 1 cup of mint leaves.
Now, you really don't want the stems of the mint leaves in here, because they are really much too strongly flavored.
Okay, that looks good.
Last but not least, Thai basil, which has a unique flavor that's totally unlike Italian basil.
So, that's it for the fresh herbs, about 3 cups total, and I'm just gonna go through the bowl with my fingers and tear all the leaves up into smaller pieces that measure about 1 inch or so, and then we can get rolling.
So, all of the fillings have been prepped, and now it's time to actually make the rolls.
So, here are those rice papers, and obviously, they're stiff now.
We're gonna soak it in water for just 2 seconds, and that will help start to soften them up.
Hot water works a bit more quickly and a bit more evenly.
Now, you can see it's still stiff right now, but it will continue to soften as we roll things up.
First up, we're gonna add some lettuce, and you can use either green leaf or red leaf.
Tear out that tough part of the stem, 'cause that has a tendency to poke through the wrapper.
Alright, so, we're going to put the lettuce down on the bottom half of this wrapper.
Next, I'm gonna take some of these noodles.
I cut those noodles into 12 portions.
On top of this, we're gonna add just a few pieces of scallions, two or three pieces of pork, depending on how much pork you have, and then 1/4 cup of these fresh herbs.
Dump them right on top.
Now this is the fun part, the rolling.
With your hands, sort of gather up all those loose bits.
You're gonna roll the bottom up over the top, and then I like to tuck it in and snug it back.
Pull it back like that so that it's nice and tight.
And then we'll take the edges, fold them up over the side.
Now, the trick to rolling these is just to roll with gusto.
Roll with real confidence.
That looks pretty good.
Now, I haven't forgotten the shrimp.
They're gonna go in right at the end -- three pieces of shrimp lined right up.
And you'll see why I'm doing this in a minute -- because it looks super pretty on the other side.
Again, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight.
Then you see the shrimp through the top.
Keep covered with plastic wrap just so that they don't dry out.
And then on we go.
1 down, 11 to go.
I've finished rolling all of the gói cuón, and now it's time to taste.
But I also want to point out these dipping sauces.
Now, the first is a nuóc chám.
Now, that is an easy sauce to make.
It's mostly fish sauce, some water, little garlic, and a Thai chili.
Now, the second is a peanut hoisin sauce, which has peanut, hoisin, a little garlic, and again, some more Thai chili.
And you can find recipes for both of these sauces on our website, americastestkitchen.com.
To serve these, I like to cut them in half on the bias 'cause that's pretty.
But also, what it does is it exposes everything on the inside, and it makes a little room for the sauce.
I'll dip it into a little of the nuóc chám first.
Mmm.
Mmm?
I would put that sauce on anything -- a little sugar and a little bit of that spicy heat.
Now for the peanut hoisin sauce.
Mmm.
It's nice to go back and forth, 'cause they both just add so much flavor.
So, to make really good gói cuón, use three fresh herbs, that cilantro, mint, and Thai basil.
Also, don't forget, when you roll those up, you have to have confidence.
From "America's Test Kitchen" at home, a great recipe for gói cuón.