We test and retest every recipe we publish, often more than 100 times. We make every mistake possible so that you don’t have to—all of our recipes are guaranteed to work. Come inside our test kitchen—in each of our video podcasts, we’ll show you how to make one of our foolproof recipes, as well as the right equipment and ingredients for the job.
To bring the bold ingredients that characterize this dish together in a weeknight Italian meal, we first needed to balance the flavors. Since the overall dish is so spicy, we replaced hot Italian sausage with sweet and reduced the amount of hot cherry peppers. For streamlined preparation, we chose split bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts that could easily be cut into halves or thirds to speed up cooking time. Our final technique was to sauté the sausage and chicken, reserving a little of the fat, which we used to cook the vegetables. We then nestled the chicken and sausages in the vegetables to finish cooking in the oven, which kept the chicken skin crisp. All that was needed was some vinegar and parsley to thicken and brighten the sauce.
Pan-searing a thick-cut steak (a steak almost as thick as it is wide) presents a unique challenge: How to keep the perimeter from overcooking while the very center of the steak reaches the desired temperature. We found that the key was to start with dry meat. We moved the steaks straight from the fridge into a 275-degree oven, which not only warmed them to 95 degrees but also dried the meat thoroughly. At this temperature, when the steak met the hot skillet, it developed a beautiful brown crust in less than four minutes, while the rest of the meat stayed pink, juicy, and tender.
We wanted a frosted yellow layer cake with an ethereal texture and the great flavor of natural ingredients. Chiffon cakes are especially weightless, springy, and moist. But unlike butter cakes, they are too light to stand up to a slathering of frosting. We decided to blend the two types of cake. Adapting a chiffon technique (using a large quantity of whipped egg whites to get a high volume and light texture) to combine the ingredients from our butter cake recipe worked beautifully, creating a light, porous cake that was hefty enough to hold the frosting’s weight. But the cake lacked moistness and some tenderness. Using a combination of fats kept the butter flavor intact while improving moistness. For extra tenderness, we increased the sugar and substituted buttermilk for milk.
Center-cut pork loin is an especially lean cut, making it difficult to cook without drying out. To solve this problem, we started with a short and wide roast, more square than cylindrical. This shape only required four straight, short cuts to open to a long, flat sheet that was easy to fill and roll up. For the stuffing, we needed deep flavor to counter the pork's rather bland taste and a texture thick enough to stay put. Poaching fruit, especially apples and cranberries, in a blend of apple cider, apple cider vinegar, and spices developed a filling with the dense, chewy consistency we wanted. And this process had an added bonus—we had ample poaching liquid left, which could be reduced to a glaze.
The right pan is a nonstick skillet. Its flat shape allows the entire surface to stay hot enough to achieve a good sear. The correct technique is a combination of rules, starting with the right cut of meat. We like flank, sirloin tip, or blade steaks, which we freeze for about 20 minutes before cooking—freezing the steaks firms the meat enough so that a knife slides easily through it.
