Two Simple Pastas

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ -Today on "America's Test Kitchen," Keith makes Julia pasta cacio e uova.

Adam reviews the best chef's knives under $75.

Dan makes orecchiette with broccoli rabe and sausage.

It's all coming up right here on "America's Test Kitchen."

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♪ -Pasta cacio e uova, or pasta with cheese and eggs, is a well-loved Neapolitan dish that you can make at the last minute with just a handful of ingredients.

Keith's here to tell us more.

-Yeah, this is a simple, straightforward recipe, but like with all simple recipes, paying close attention to the proportions and the quality of the ingredients is absolutely necessary.

-Makes sense.

-So we're gonna start with the base of this sauce, and I have 3 tablespoons of lard here.

-Lard isn't cacio or uova.

-No, so lard is actually traditional in this dish.

-Oh.

-It's called "strutto" in Italian, which sounds a lot better than "lard," but most of the recipes we found started with lard.

If they didn't start with lard, they started with olive oil, which is a fine substitute for the lard, but we will find that the lard actually plays really well with the cheese and heightens the flavor of the cheese.

So we really liked it much, much better than olive oil.

-Alright.

-I'm just gonna put this on medium-low, and we're just gonna melt that down and we can come back to that.

While that lard is melting, I'm going to take 2 cloves of garlic.

I'm not gonna mince these.

I'm gonna smash these.

We were not looking for a very assertive garlic flavor.

We want something in the background, very mild, so by crushing, we're gonna release some of the allicin, the compound that makes garlic taste like garlic.

-Right.

-But we're not gonna release too, too much, so I'll just take these.

I'm gonna put that in our lard, and we want to cook this really, really slowly.

We want it to have a little bit of bubbling around the cloves, and that's okay.

But we don't want it to get too brown.

We want a kind of a nice golden color, and we want that garlic to soften and give its flavor up to the lard.

So that will take 7 to 10 minutes.

-Okay.

-Now, I'll have you keep an eye on that.

-Yeah.

-That's your job.

Now, for the other parts of this sauce.

So, eggs are a natural here.

We're using 2 whole eggs.

Again, recipes ran the gamut from whole eggs to yolks.

We liked using whole eggs because it gave us a little bit of a silkier sauce, and we also have plenty of richness from the lard.

So we don't need the richness from just plain yolks.

So I'm just gonna mix these until I don't see any whites remaining.

-Ooh, I can start to smell this garlic.

-That's a good thing.

-Mmm.

-So we have our two eggs in here, and now for the cheese, the cacio.

So we have 1/2 cup, or 1 ounce, of Pecorino-Romano cheese.

It's zesty.

It's sharp.

It adds a nice, pleasant bite, but we're also gonna temper that with an equal amount of Parmesan -- again, 1 ounce or 1/2 cup.

And that's gonna give a kind of a nice, sweet, nutty flavor to that.

-Now, did lots of recipes you find mix the two cheeses?

-All recipes used Pecorino.

Some added Parmesan.

We really like that balance of flavor between the two, 50-50 blend of the two.

Also gonna add 2 tablespoons of minced parsley, 1/4 teaspoon of table salt, and I also have 1/4 teaspoon of pepper.

I'm just going to stir this together really quickly.

-And that's it.

That's the sauce.

-That's it.

So between the garlic-infused lard, this cheese and egg combination, that's the sauce.

-That simple.

-We'll use the pasta water to kind of bring everything together, but that's it.

-Mm-hmm.

That's it.

-It's been 7 minutes, and you can see the garlic is nice and pale, golden brown, and it's infused that lard with a lot of flavor.

So I'm just gonna shut the burner off.

-The lard is actually taking on a slightly different color.

-So I'm just gonna take this garlic out.

So that's gonna hang out here.

We want to keep that warm.

We have our cheese and egg combination, and now it's time to cook the pasta.

That's it.

I have 2 quarts of water in our sauce pan here.

I'm gonna start with 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt.

We want to make sure that our pasta is seasoned.

Nobody likes bland pasta.

Now I'm gonna add 8 ounces of tubetti pasta.

-Tubetti.

-Tubetti.

-Look like ditalini, but a little longer.

-Yeah, it's almost twice the size of ditalini, and we really like these small, kind of short, stubby pastas that have the hole inside because that traps all of that nice, rich, luxurious sauce.

So we're just gonna let that cook until it's al dente.

Let's check this pasta to see if it is tender.

That's perfect.

It's a little bit past al dente, which is exactly what we're looking for.

It's not gonna see any more heat.

We're gonna be mixing the sauce off the heat, so we want to make sure the pasta is tender now, before we drain it.

-Makes sense.

-Before I drain it, the very important step, which I sometimes forget.

-I do, too.

Sometimes, I actually put the measuring cup in the colander.

-It's a very smart move.

So I'm just gonna reserve some of that because that is gonna help make a smooth sauce.

-Alright.

-Come over here and drain our pasta.

So I'll just give this a quick shake.

Some water on there is okay, and then back into our sauce pan.

And now for all of our other ingredients.

So we want to do this somewhat quickly because we want to capture that heat in the pasta and in the sauce pan.

-Right, because the heat from the pasta is gonna cook the eggs.

-So there is our egg and cheese mixture.

We will add our lard mixture, our garlic-infused lard.

-That smells good.

-Smells wonderful.

-It's amazing how much garlic aroma really got into that lard.

-And I'm gonna start with 1 tablespoon of this pasta cooking liquid.

If we find we need more, we can add more.

And now I'm just gonna stir this vigorously.

-Melt the cheese, cook the eggs.

That smells incredible, Keith.

-That fat and the starch in that liquid will interrupt the eggs from kind of coalescing into one another, and we'll get a smooth sauce rather than a lumpy sauce.

We don't want a lumpy sauce here.

-No scrambled eggs.

-No scrambled eggs.

Right.

I can see some small grains of cheese in the bottom there, and we just want to continue mixing this until those are all gone away.

Now, this will also thicken as it cools off, and that's why it's important to keep this pasta water.

And that way, you can loosen it up a little bit if it ever gets too tight or too starchy.

-Yeah, this isn't something you want to make and let sit on the stove and then call everyone for dinner.

This you want people sitting waiting for it.

-You can see it kind of subtly changing here.

The sauce is thickening up and it's starting to coat that pasta.

-It really did change consistency there in the past minute.

-I'm gonna call that good.

That looks nice to me.

-I can see, as you said, it's filling in the holes of the pasta.

-So start off with a small portion right now.

-Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that was only 1 1/2 of dried pasta to serve four people, so this isn't meant to be a big bowl of pasta.

-No.

You just need a small portion of it.

It's so rich and decadent, you don't need a lot.

-Ooh.

Mmm!

It really has a big flavor, considering you didn't put that much in there.

-Yeah.

-A little bit of garlic, the cheeses you can taste.

-Yeah.

What I like is the lard.

-[ Laughs ] -It's not overly porky or anything like that, but it really pairs well with the cheeses.

-I also really like this pasta shape because as you said, you can see it's getting right into the holes of some of that pasta.

When you bite through it, you get a nice ratio of pasta to sauce.

-Yeah.

-This is lovely, Keith.

Thank you for showing me how to make it.

-You're welcome.

-So there you have it.

If you want to make this incredibly simple but delicious pasta, infuse lard with a little bit of garlic, use whole eggs, and cook the pasta just past al dente.

From "America's Test Kitchen," a wonderful recipe for pasta cacio e uova.

♪ It's delicious.

-It's great, isn't it?

-Mm-hmm.

♪ A good chef's knife needs to do three things.

It needs to cut through all sorts of ingredients with ease, have a good, comfortable handle, and stay sharp, and it's even better if they don't cost an arm and a leg, which some of them can.

-You can spend a ton of money on a good chef's knife, Julia.

You know that.

We have recommended Old Faithful, which is the Victorinox Swiss Army Chef's Knife, for decades now.

-Mm-hmm.

-This is a fabulous knife, but there are always new knives on the market.

So we retest it frequently, which is what we're doing here.

We have this lineup of 10 chef's knives.

We set a price cap of $75 because, as you mentioned, we don't want to spend too much money.

All the blades are about eight inches long, which is a super useful length for us.

They're all stainless steel or stain-resistant.

At the very beginning and then again at the end of the testing, we used an industrial sharpness-testing machine to test the sharpness.

-Ooh!

-We also had a squad of testers who had varying hand strengths and dominances.

They sliced tomatoes, they diced onions, they minced parsley and garlic, they broke down whole chickens, and they prepped and diced hard butternut squash.

-Ooh, that's a tough one.

-There are a couple of factors that go into sharpness.

Very important is the blade geometry, and that is the blade at the very bottom gets ground down to the cutting edge.

And if you have a narrow blade geometry, something like 12 or 13 degrees, that can help a knife feel super sharp.

The range for our knives here was 13 to 16 degrees, and testers were surprised that some of the knives at the wider end of that range felt super sharp.

I want you to try your copy of Old Faithful there while we talk about sharpness.

-[ Chuckles ] I know.

-Slice a tomato, see what you think.

-Oh, I know this knife very well.

Ooh, yeah.

-It's almost like those knives are connected to our hands.

It's an extension of our arm.

-I know.

There's no muscle involved.

And usually, you can do some pretty fine work if you want to.

Yep.

-Very nice!

-Yeah!

-So, you know, one of the things that made this knife as sharp as it is was not, in fact, the blade geometry, because it was at the wider end of the spectrum.

It was how the blade was sharpened and honed at the factory, which was news to us.

It has to be really well- sharpened, really well-honed.

When testers took a super close look at the cutting edge, it was very smooth, very even.

Give this one a try, just as a point of comparison.

-Well, they looks like the same thickness from above.

-Yeah, they kind of do.

-Alright, let's see.

Oh, no, I have to use -- I mean, I'm still able to cut the tomato just fine, but I'm really having to put a lot more hand power behind it.

And if I had a lot of cutting to do, that would eventually make my hand a little tired.

-I mean, you're definitely getting through the tomato, but it's really more about the journey than the destination because, as you say, this one probably just doesn't feel as sharp.

-Yeah, and actually, I have to really push -- if I want to get a thin slice, I have to really push down on the tomatoes, which squeezes out all the juice.

Yeah, not as good.

-Yeah, and that doesn't have to do with the cutting angle.

It has to do with how it was sharpened and honed at the factory.

-Interesting.

-So there are a couple of other factors that testers look for in a knife.

One is all of these knives have a little bit of curvature to the blade.

That's so you can rock them and mince through parsley or garlic or something like that.

Testers liked a gentler curve like the one in your hand to something like this, which is more dramatic.

You can see how sharply that curves up towards the end.

-Yeah.

And it looks cool.

-Yeah, I mean, it looks great, but they felt that it felt awkward.

-Oh, it's like a rocking horse.

-Yeah, it is a bit like a rocking horse.

-Yeah, no, I like having a firm edge.

-So another factor to look for is height of the blade, especially towards the heel, by the handle.

-Mm-hmm.

-Again, Old Faithful -- Wrap your hand around the handle.

-Yeah.

-Plenty of space for your knuckles.

-Right.

-Try this one.

-Oh, this is my biggest pet peeve.

Yeah.

My knuckles can hit the board before the knife blade.

-So testers were looking for a two-inch height at the heel.

The last thing is how thick the blade is and how it tapers from the heel towards the tip.

Thicker blades felt a little clumsier.

They preferred thinner blades.

They preferred thicker at the heel so if you're cutting through a chicken bone or something tough, you can get through it with a little more authority, but a taper towards the tip.

They also liked a spine that was a little rounded so that if you're choking up on the knife and you're gripping it really hard, you're not gripping into a sharp edge on the spine of the knife.

-Ah.

Yep.

-The handle -- obviously very important.

You know, a softer material, a little more rubbery, a little more grippy, no weird swoops or shapes in the handle was preferred.

-Mm-hmm, yeah, because this stays firm in your hand, even if your hands get a little slick.

This one stands out to me because it's rounded, which looks cool, but no, it's a spinner.

It would spin around in your hand if your hands were a little wet or slippery.

-Yeah, it's a hard material.

It's comfortable as long as your hands aren't slippery, and then it gets a little dangerous, a little dicey.

Julia, try and contain your shock when you hear this.

-[ Laughs ] -Old Faithful won again.

-Not surprising.

-This is the knife.

This is the Victorinox Swiss Army Fibrox Pro eight-inch chef's knife.

It's terrific.

-Yes, it is.

-It's got a well-proportioned blade that stays nice and sharp.

The handle is comfortable for all kinds of users.

We still recommend that knife highly.

It's $38, so it's a bargain.

I will say it's on the light side.

It weighs around six ounces.

Some testers preferred a slightly heavier knife, and there was a heavier knife that kept up with Old Faithful.

This is the Mercer Culinary Renaissance eight-inch forged chef knife.

It weighs about eight ounces.

So here, try that.

-May I?

-Yeah.

-Oh, it -- yeah.

-It was nice and sharp, but it gives you a little more heft.

And the price is right on this one, too.

It's just $31.

-Interesting, Adam.

Thank you.

-My pleasure.

-So there you have it.

If you're in the market for a new chef's knife and want to spend less than $75, there are two to check out.

The first is a Victorinox Swiss Army Fibrox Pro eight-inch chef knife at about $38, and the other one, which is a little bit heavier, is the Mercer Culinary Renaissance eight-inch forged chef's knife at about $31.

♪ -The southern region of Puglia -- that's the heel on Italy's boot -- is famous for many things, including its coastline, olive-oil production, and orecchiette.

Now, they use the pasta to make the area's signature dish, orecchiette con cime di rapa, or orecchiette with broccoli rabe, and I've got the original broccoli rabe, broccoli Dan, here.

And he's gonna make this dish for us.

-I'm so excited to make this dish.

It's just so comforting.

It's one of the first pasta dishes I really got into and learned to make.

I'm working with some really great ingredients.

So I have a pound of broccoli rabe here, and it's really, really simple to prep.

You know, the original version of this dish would really just use the light leaves and they wouldn't use the stems.

-Mm-hmm.

-I'm gonna use all of them, and we're gonna do a blanching step to make everything nice and tender.

-Great.

But this is one of those recipes where there's so many different variations anyway.

-Absolutely.

There are so many different variations, and the most simple, I would say, like, the most original version of it, is just the leaves.

There's no cheese.

There's no sausage.

So it's very kind of clean, and we're gonna be making a variation that's really, really common.

So it has sausage and then Pecorino Romano, so it ends up being a little more luxurious.

-Great.

-So I have a pound of broccoli rabe here, and the trimming is really simple.

Some of the ends can be a little bit rough there, so I'm just gonna slice those off.

So now I'm just gonna cut it really simply into 1 1/2-inch pieces and go right through.

-Yeah, big departure from the big stalks of broccoli that we see sometimes with orecchiette.

Broccoli rabe has a bit of a different taste, definitely a different texture.

-Absolutely.

I mean, I love it.

We don't have enough bitter foods, I feel like.

I love how it contrasts with, you know, garlic and spice and adds a whole 'nother level of complexity.

Alright.

That's wonderful.

I'm gonna set this aside over here.

-Lovely.

-And now let's move on to our sausage.

And I'm using some hot Italian here.

You can use mild, whichever you like.

So I'm just gonna slice down the side.

We don't want to work with this as links.

We actually want to work just the nice sausage that's inside.

And this is 8 ounces of really nice Italian sausage.

-Mm-hmm.

-And this is a little bit spicy.

-So if people could find bulk spicy Italian sausage, that's what they should go for.

-Oh, absolutely.

-Okay.

-I think a pork and garlic would be nice, too.

-Mmm.

Yep.

-That would be really nice.

This obviously has some fennel in it, which is gonna, you know, bring fennel flavor to it, so if you didn't want that, you could go with a really mild garlic sausage.

So I have my trusty 12-inch carbon-steel skillet here with 2 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil heating up.

You could use a nonstick pan here, but I like that we can get this higher heat without any safety issues.

-Right.

-So I'm gonna add my sausage.

I'm gonna use a wooden spoon.

I like one with a flat bottom like that, and I can really break it up.

I'm looking for half-inch pieces.

-Okay.

-So we're looking for the sausage to just start to brown, which takes about 5 minutes.

-Okay.

-Okay, great.

That looks fabulous.

You can see a little bit of browning right there.

We've got lots of nice pork fat in the skillet.

-Yes.

-And that is gonna be perfect for adding our next ingredients.

So I have 6 cloves of minced garlic.

-Ooh.

Powerhouse of flavor there.

-Yeah.

And 1/4 teaspoon of red-pepper flakes.

So a little bit of heat.

-Not too crazy.

-Not too aggressive.

And so we just cook that for about 30 seconds, super aromatic, and I will shut the heat off here.

-Okay.

-Back to our broccoli rabe here.

We're gonna do a little blanch on it.

So I've got 4 quarts of water here.

I'm gonna add 1 tablespoon of table salt.

-Okay.

-And then we're gonna go in with our broccoli rabe.

So how long you cook this is definitely personal preference.

In Italy, a lot of times, they cook veg a little bit further.

It loses some of its bright-green color, but I don't know, it gets really nice and soft and beautiful.

Crisp, tender, is also really nice, and that's what we're gonna go for today here.

So it'll be nice and green.

It's gonna take about 2 minutes.

-Okay.

-Okay.

Our broccoli rabe has been in there for 2 minutes.

I love the color change that happens any time you blanch.

-What a beautiful green.

-It's so beautiful.

So I'm just gonna use a slotted spoon, and we're gonna shake off some water and then transfer directly into our skillet with the sausage.

-Alright.

-Now, this can be a pretty brothy dish, so a little excess water coming from here -- not gonna be a problem.

-That's the beauty of using orecchiette 'cause those little ears... -Mm-hmm.

-...they just cup all of that sauce, that broth.

-Fabulous.

We've got all our broccoli rabe into the skillet here with the sausage.

They're gonna mingle and hang out while we cook our orecchiette.

So this is some beautiful orecchiette, and you can tell that it's handmade based on the shape.

It looks a little rough in that way, but it has these beautiful lines on it.

So the way that it's traditionally made is you make a pasta dough, usually with a lot of semolina in it, and you roll it out into a thin log.

And then you cut off a little piece at the end, and using a knife that is serrated and small, you run it over the pasta.

And in one sort of motion, you're both curling it around and making those indentations.

-Yes.

-So it's really just a beautiful pasta, and that shape, as you mentioned, just catches so much sauce.

-Right.

-And so if you're looking for the real deal, this is what you should be looking for at the market.

-Okay.

-So this is gonna go into the same water where we blanched the broccoli rabe.

I'll give it a stir.

I'm gonna cook this until it is al dente.

I'm gonna use my personal sensor to figure out what that is.

-Mm, okay.

And this is already seasoned, too, because you seasoned it before you added the broccoli rabe.

-Exactly.

-Okay, great.

-So this is a pound of orecchiette, and we're gonna go until it is perfectly al dente.

Alright.

This has been about 9 minutes, and I want to check.

Really don't want to overcook this pasta if we want al dente.

-Right.

-Mmm.

Perfect.

-Yeah?

Okay.

-Nice bite to it still.

Great.

So I'll turn the heat off.

And we'll head over to the sink.

-Alright.

-Okay, so I always like to keep a measuring cup in my colander so when I go to strain it, I remember that I need to save some pasta water.

-Right.

-So I'm gonna save 1 cup of pasta water, and then we will strain.

Okay.

Right back into our pot.

We have all of our components together, so it's just a matter of putting it in one nice, big pot here.

-Oh!

-Add our sausage, our broccoli rabe, garlic, all that nice pork fat.

-Yes.

-Good stuff.

-Well, the sausage alone is kind of a super ingredient because of all the flavor that's in there, and then the fat, as you mentioned, it's going to add ton to this dish.

-Tons and tons.

We're also gonna add 2 ounces -- this is also gonna add tons -- 2 ounces of Pecorino Romano.

And I'm also gonna add 1/3 of a cup of our pasta water here.

-Alright.

-And then we'll stir.

This dish can take on a lot of different textures, sometimes you see it really brothy.

-Right.

-Sometimes, it's much drier.

We're going for something a little bit in the middle.

That's why we saved so much pasta water.

We can really use it to adjust.

-Gotcha.

-And stirring like this really helps build an emulsion.

You know, finishing any pasta sauce is building in emulsion, right?

-Right.

-You've got your fat and your water, and you have starch in there.

And you want it to be this really nice, silky sauce.

So really stirring and mixing it up is a smart idea.

A little bit more in there.

It's the best sound.

So you can see how there's plenty of liquid, but it's not thin, right?

It's got a nice body to it.

-Absolutely.

-And we've got that nice emulsion there.

-Mmm.

I can see the little pastas just cupping some of that sauce.

It's just perfect.

-Alright.

It's time to serve.

-Mmm.

That is lovely.

It smells amazing.

-And looks good, too.

-It sure does.

It looks bright and fresh.

Want to make sure I get some of that broccoli rabe in there.

Mmm!

Mm-hmm.

That is lovely.

And so light and brothy.

-Mm-hmm.

-You have this power punch of flavor from the sausage in there and that bitterness from the broccoli rabe.

-Yep.

The garlic comes through.

-Yeah, it sure does.

-But what I love about this dish is you can taste the pasta.

-Mm-hmm.

-It's about the pasta.

Everything else is kind of complementing it, and the texture is just so fabulous.

You were talking about those pockets that just catch sauce.

-Mmm.

-There's a nice bite to it.

-Mm-hmm.

-So nice.

-This is one of my favorite shapes.

-Dan, this is spectacular.

It's quick, easy, bright, flavorful perfection.

-Thank you.

-If you want to make this beautiful dish at home, brown Italian sausage with garlic and red-pepper flakes.

Simmer the broccoli rabe and then use the same water to cook the orecchiette.

Stir everything together with Pecorino Romano and the pasta cooking water to make a creamy emulsion.

So from "America's Test Kitchen," orecchiette with broccoli rabe and sausage.

You can get this lovely recipe, along with all the recipes from this season, plus product reviews and select episodes.

Those are all on our website, americastestkitchen.com/TV.

♪ I almost said "slash sausage."

-Understandably.

-Yes.

-Let us help you with dinner tonight.

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