Cook's Illustrated Video Podcast

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.

The challenge when making a pear crisp is striking a balance between a crunchy topping and a soft—but not mushy—filling. We found that choosing the right pear was important; the strongest were ripe yet firm Bartlett pears, which retain their shape when baked. To compensate for all the liquid, we added cornstarch mixed with lemon juice. But even with the thickened juice, our standard fruit crisp topping washed down into the filling. A streusel-type topping, made by incorporating melted butter into the flour, kept its crunchiness; the melted butter helped bind the flour to the other topping ingredients.

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.

Barbecued brisket with slow-cooked pit-barbecue flavor almost always calls for a backyard smoker, but most people don't have this specialized equipment at home. Our technique produced a long-lasting fire in a conventional grill, and retained enough heat over six hours to render the brisket perfectly tender.

We wanted crusty, browned meat that had a barbecued char but was nonetheless tender. Butchering the short ribs properly proved to be the most essential step. To cut English-style short ribs (the cut most widely available in markets), we fabricated four slices from each rib, evening them out with a quick pounding. The marinade was also critical—pear puree proved to be a secret ingredient. The pear balanced the acidity of the rice vinegar, adding sweetness and a fruit flavor. We got the intense heat we needed to properly char the meat by creating a modified two-level fire, which also allowed us to move the meat to the cooler side when flare-ups occurred.

We wanted an easy-to-make cake with a hefty plum presence. After initial testing, we settled on the concept of a creamed cake batter spread in a springform pan, topped with plums, and baked. To create a moist cake that was strong enough to hold the plums aloft, we replaced some of the flour with almonds. As for the fruit, we liked Italian plums that are especially well-suited for baking, but found their season too short to be practical. Poaching common supermarket plums in a few tablespoons of jam and brandy, as well as their own juice, sufficiently heightened their flavor and kept them moist, even after a spell in the oven.

The tomatoes, pasta, and basil in this simple recipe didn't pose many challenges, at least compared to the cheese. In every recipe we tried, the cheese clumped into a softball-sized wad in the bottom of the pasta bowl. These tangles of mozzarella were difficult to chew, much less swallow. We found the solution in the freezer. Dicing supermarket cheese and placing it in the freezer for a few minutes before combining it with the hot pasta allowed the cheese to soften but kept it from fully melting (and turning chewy) during cooking.