Smart Upgrades to Italian American Classics | Full Episode | Cook's Country (S10 E13)

Today on Cook's Country, Ashley makes Bridget the ultimate pasta with sausage ragu. Jack challenges Bridget to a tasting of fettuccine. And Brian cooks Julia our favorite fluffy polenta with red sauce. That's all right here on Cook's Country. Kleenex, Velcro, Sharpie, bubble wrap, chapstick, escalator, super glue, aspirin, jello. What do all these brands have in common? They're all proprietary eponyms, which means that the brand names have become the generic name for a product. And another one is ragu, that all-American jarred pasta sauce from Rochester, New York. But an authentic ragu is not from a jar. It's a deeply flavored Italian meat sauce that's simmered for hours. So I'm going to head into the kitchen with Ashley, who's going to show us how to make a rich, hearty, flavorful pasta with sausage ragu in less than 90 minutes. If you were an Italian grandmother, well, you might spend your weekend making a big pot of Sunday gravy, or maybe even a long-simmered ragu. But Ashley, luckily, has found a much faster way to make a great sausage ragu, and it doesn't sacrifice flavor. That's right. If you were to taste it, you would think that it cooked all day long. All right. All right, and the secret is to develop flavor at every single stage of the recipe. First, I'm going to start with one half of a fennel bowl that's been chopped coarse. And we have one half of an onion that's been chopped coarse as well. And one tablespoon of fennel seeds. So you can see that we've added both fennel and fennel seeds, and that's just to bring out the overall sausage flavor, because as you know, there's a lot of fennel in sausage. That's right. Italian sausage, I think of fennel. Yep. I'm going to start by pulsing this for 10 pulses. I'm going to wipe down the sides of the bowl here just to make sure everybody gets a fair shot with that blade. Just transfer this to the bowl. I love fresh fennel. It's so underused. But fennel and onion together at the start of almost any sauce is pretty darn good. Great combination. Now we have our whole peeled tomatoes. Now, we tested this with crushed tomatoes, but honestly, it varied brand to brand, and it was pretty inconsistent. So we decided to go with whole peeled tomatoes. So we're going to process this for about one minute. It's been about one minute, and that looks great. Texture's nice and smooth here. I'm just going to transfer this to the bowl. I'm going to process now two pounds of sweet Italian sausage. Now, these do come in the links, but it's pretty easy to remove the meat from the links. You just slice down a little, line down the link, and take out the meat. Okay. Yeah. So I'm going to transfer this to an empty food processor here. I love it. So you don't have to clean out the food processor. Just let it go with the tomato and little bits of onion in there. These are going to process for 10 seconds. This looks great. I'm just going to heat up some oil real quick until shimmering over medium-high heat. One tablespoon extra virgin olive oil. The oil is now shimmering, so let's start this by putting the sausage right in. There's that sizzle I want to hear. Just put the sausage into an even layer. And this is going to cook for about 10 to 15 minutes until the liquid has evaporated and the meat begins to sizzle. The liquid has evaporated, and as you can see, we're starting to get some nice brown bits at the bottom of the pot. Now, to the pot, we are going to add the processed vegetables, thanks to the help of that food processor earlier. And we have a half a teaspoon salt. And that's not only going to help to season things at this stage, but it's also going to help to soften the aromatics, the vegetables, as they're all breaking down right now. So I'm going to let this go for about 5 minutes. Look at the browning at the bottom of the pot. This is going to be good. Now we are going to add some tomato paste. So we have 2 tablespoons of tomato paste. We have 4 cloves of minced fresh garlic. And one and a half teaspoons of dried oregano. Stir this together until well coated and cook until fragrant, which will take about 30 seconds. Bam, there it is. Here we have 3 quarters of a cup of dry red wine. And I'm going to pour this into the pot. We're going to hear a nice sizzle, but that's a good thing. We're going to cook it down for about 1 minute. We want to scrape the brown bits off at this point. And incorporate it into the other ingredients. Oh yeah, that's a good sound. It's almost an automatic release. And it's a really good tip for if you have a dirty pan or something. Acid, red wine, white wine, always helps to collect all the brown bits off of your sauce pan or your pot. Alright, it's been about 1 minute. And as you can see, that red wine has cooked down. So right now I'm going to add the processed tomatoes from earlier. Alright. And you'll see I have some water over there. I have 1 cup of water, thank you very much. That I'm going to add in here as well. And this just helps to give a silkier texture to the sauce. Make it a little bit thinner so that even though we are only cooking this for 45 minutes. It really helps the texture of the sauce. It's not going to get too thick. It's not going to burn at the bottom of the pan. So it really helps things a lot. And it looks like we are at a simmer now. So I'm going to reduce it down to low heat. And cook this for 45 long minutes. No lid. We are getting closer, I promise. We've got the sauce simmering away. But as you can see, we have 4 quarts of water that I brought up to a boil. And I'm just going to start by seasoning it with 1 tablespoon of salt. Give it a nice stir here. And here we have 1 pound of pasta. Now this is parpadelle pasta. It's a long, wide, flat noodle. You could also use tagliatelle if that's also available at your grocery store. But we prefer the long, wide, flat noodles for this type of dish because it's a ragu. You want something to catch that sausage if it falls to the bottom of your bowl. In the water. Give it a little stir just to wake everybody up in here. And I'm just going to cook it until al dente. And that's the right ratio. 4 quarts of water to 1 pound of pasta and a tablespoon of salt. Alright, let's check for doneness here. And how do you do that? You just slap it against the wall? Well, you could. I'm just going to do the old-fashioned taste test. Interesting concept. Yep. Al dente. Alright. First, I'm going to reserve 1 cup of the pasta cooking water. Now this is really nice and starchy at this point, so it's going to help to adjust the consistency of the ragu. Turn off the heat here, and I'm going to go drain the pasta. Alright, so this recipe makes 6 cups, which is enough for 2 pounds of pasta. But I only made 1 pound. So I'm going to take 3 cups of this. I'm just going to add this to the cooked pasta. And as you can see, I'm going to need some of that pasta cooking water. So I'm going to add a half a cup at this point. A very thick and hearty sauce. Yes. And just give this a nice stir. This is looking great. Alright. Will work for pasta. The best things are sprinkled with a little bit of Parmesan cheese. And then I'm going to drizzle with a little bit more of extra virgin olive oil, just for a little bit more richness. This is beautiful. Alright. I think you snuck another sauce in here. I didn't. I think you did, because there's no way that this was made in such a short amount of time. And the fresh fennel makes all the difference. And all that tomato paste, and all that garlic. And it tastes slow simmer. For a classic sausage ragu in less time, start by breaking up sweet Italian sausage in a food processor. Then sauté fennel with some aromatics. And then simmer the mixture in red wine before tossing it all with long, flat noodles, like pappardelle. And that catches all of that delicious sausage. So there you have it. From Cook's Country, a weeknight version of your Italian grandmother's speciality, pasta with sausage ragu. Grazie, Bridget. Va bene. Love what you're watching? Take your cooking to the next level with our Essential Membership. Get instant access to thousands of recipes, tips, techniques, product reviews, and step-by-step videos. Our Members app allows you to search by ingredient, set dietary preferences, and save your favorite recipes. For those looking to level up, our newest feature, ATK Classes, offers more in-depth instruction led by ATK experts, so you can gain greater confidence in the kitchen. Start your free trial by visiting the App Store or going to americastestkitchen.com slash YouTube today. Fettuccine. Now, in Italian, fettuccine means little ribbon. So we're here today with Jack to see which brand deserves a blue ribbon. All right. So, dig in. These have been cooked in salted water and tossed with neutral-flavored canola oil. Okay. So no olive oil, no butter. Nothing sexy here. Nothing. The oil is there just basically to keep them from clumping together into one mass. This is the way the studio audience tasted them. We did do an additional tasting with the expert panel with butter and cheese. Sorry. I missed that one. Yeah, no butter, no cheese here today. Big difference that you can first see is thickness and width. Some of them are a little skinnier. Some of them are a little thinner. We actually found that the wider ones had a sort of nicer chew and ended up holding on the sauce a little better. So it's a very slight difference. I mean, I would say all of these are fine pastas. One of them is made with egg. The rest are just made with semolina flour. Big difference besides the width of them was that addition of egg. You really can taste whether or not it has egg in it or not. So I'm really putting a little bit of pressure on you here. Yes, you are. Otherwise, I would say these are fairly similar in the sense that you're going to get probably more variation in the cooking than in the shopping. Other thing here we are really interested in is imported versus domestic. Even a lot of the Italian companies that we think of as Italian companies now make the pasta with American wheat in America. One of these is actually an Italian brand made in Italy. Costs about twice as much. The other two are ones at American company, ones at Italian company, but they're both made here with American wheat in American factories. But you know, as someone who loves all things Italian, I was rooting a little bit for the Italian brand. The other home team. So anything that you're noticing here? I mean, they're very plain. They're fettuccine. This one's my favorite. Okay. I think it's very springy. I think it's very clean. It's light flavored. This one is a little bit thick. I mean, none of them are bad, believe you me. I would not toss any of these off my dinner table. This one I think has egg in it. This one is between these two. Since you told me they're egg, now I'm looking for egg. I mean, the egg isn't super pronounced because it's a very mild flavor. But in a tasting where there's not a lot of differences, there's really only one ingredient in some of these. It is perhaps a differentiator. I actually think the texture is a bigger deal. Because remember, whatever subtle egg thing may be here is going to be obliterated by whatever you toss it with. Assuming that you don't eat it with canola oil like I'm serving it to you now. If you put olive oil on it. I would hope you wouldn't. No. I would at least give you olive oil, maybe even some cream and butter. Oh, there you go. Yeah, I think this one is my favorite. I like the texture of this one. And this is my least favorite. Alright, so let's start with what you... Want to go with the winner first? Let's start with what you like. Or at least my winner. Let's start on a positive note. Oh, that's good. So it is, this studio audience, the experts have it. Everybody agrees. This is Garofalo Fettuccine. Not a fettuccine. It's a variation on that. This is the imported one. It is more expensive. But we felt like it had the best texture. Okay. And this was my next favorite? This is a fine choice. This is Ronzoni. It's made here by a company called New World. They make Prince and Giorgio. They're different regional brands. They're all exactly the same. We thought this one was the thinnest and narrowest. So we didn't really love it quite so much when it came to putting it with sauces. But it's fine. And this is the most popular brand in Italy. Barilla. It's made here in the U.S. It's such a big company that they've decided rather than importing the pasta, which is why the winner is so much more expensive, it's cheaper since they're using wheat grown in the United States or Canada to just make it here for the U.S. market. So even though this is a famous Italian company, it's made in the United States. And it was a fine choice. It was in the middle of the pack. Well, you can't go wrong with most supermarket brands. That's the good news. But if you want our winner, you're going to go with Garofalo Fettuccine. Love our in-depth reviews? Get the latest from our reviews team delivered straight to your inbox. Our well-equipped Cook newsletter provides top product picks, no-nonsense buying guides, and must-try recipes. No extra fluff, just the smartest ways to shop, save, and cook. Sign up for free now at americastestkitchen.com slash newsletter. The Veterans of Foreign Wars, or the VFW, dates back to 1899, and today there are over 1.7 million members. And the most popular activity at the VFW? Well, hanging out at the canteen where they serve local subs and grub. And at the VFW post in Cranston, Rhode Island, Mike's Kitchen is famous for their polenta. And we took a trip there to learn how it's made. That's right. So I have to say, I'd never expected to have one of the best Italian-American meals of my life at a VFW in Cranston, Rhode Island. But there it was. Michael Abuzar has been the chef at Mike's Kitchen for over 30 years, and one of the true standouts on the menu is the polenta. It arrives at the table as a big, thick yellow brick coated in red sauce, and you think this is going to be a lead sinker. But then you cut into it, and it's light and fluffy, you get a little sweetness from the cornmeal, a little tanginess from the cheese, and it's just some of the most amazing polenta I've ever had. So here in front of you I have two products. One is labeled polenta, and the other is simply labeled cornmeal. Now if you touch both of them, you can see that the polenta is much coarser than the cornmeal. What we found through testing is that we wanted the finer grind on the cornmeal because it absorbed more moisture during cooking and was better able to hold that brick shape that we were after to be more like Mike. So we're going to make polenta, not use polenta. All right. Okay, so let's start cooking. I have four tablespoons of butter that I've melted down and two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. And to that I'm going to add two smashed garlic cloves. And we're just going to lightly toast those cloves and get them nice and brown. And we just want to really perfume the oil, almost give it like a garlic kiss. A peck on the cheek. And I know she's using butter and olive oil. Why is that? We like the flavor of the combination of fats. Oh, okay. This will cook for about four minutes until it's nicely toasted and infuses that oil mixture. And you smashed the garlic rather than mince it because if you mince the garlic it would release more flavor. Right. It would be a little bit too sharp and a little too aggressive for this dish. Just a kiss. Right. Okay, Joy, you can see that the garlic is nicely browned. Smells good. Yeah. And so we're just going to remove that. And you can save this for later. Oh, I'd eat that. Eat it alone on your couch or ward off vampires. And now we're going to add seven cups of water, one and a half teaspoons of salt, and one half teaspoon of black pepper. We'll just bring this mixture to a boil before we whisk in the cornmeal. Water is boiling, so we can go ahead and slowly whisk in the cornmeal. It's important to add this cornmeal in a slow, steady stream because you don't want it to clump up. Whisking constantly, I'm just going to kind of shake it in. I'm actually surprised at how fragrant that water smells. I mean, with the garlic and the pepper and a little bit of that butter, you can really smell it. Welcome to flavor country. We have this all whisked in and we can turn the heat up and bring it to a boil. And that happens pretty quickly. Okay, and now we can reduce the heat to medium low. We want to let this simmer for about 20 minutes. During that time, the moisture will dry off and it will get thicker and the polenta will get tender. But you definitely want to stay here and stir this every few minutes because it does have a tendency to stick to the bottom of the pot. All right, Julia, you can see that the polenta's thickened up nicely. So we're ready to go ahead and kill the heat. And we can stir in one and a half cups of grated pecorino cheese. Again, to be like Mike, we had to add an ample amount of cheese. And we wanted the sharpness of the cheese to really come through. And then we're also going to stir in a quarter cup of half and half. And we'll just whisk those two in until combined. Oh, now that's looking good. You know, Julia, when we first had this polenta at Mike's kitchen, we assumed, we swore that there were eggs in it because it was so light and fluffy. Oh, okay. So we actually called the restaurant and said, hey, I've got a food allergy to eggs. You did not. This is hardcore journalism. These are the lengths we go to. That's funny, Brian. Did you use a different voice too? Yeah, I change my voice when I go in there. I wear a disguise. Hi. They said it was safe, so. But these are the lengths we go to to figure out a recipe. All right, we're ready to go ahead and drop it into this eight inch square baking pan that we've greased lightly. So, Julia, if you want to scrape it while I hold. Sure. All right, no polenta left behind. No lumps either. No lumps. Good job. How are your arms doing? They're good. All done. Great. Okay, so we'll let this chill on the counter for about two hours to come to room temperature. Then we'll drop it in the refrigerator for about three hours to chill fully because we want it to set up like a nice thick brick. While the polenta is chilling, we can turn our attention to the sauce. And the sauce in Mike's Kitchen is very smooth, slightly thick, and a little bit sweet. Really compliments the polenta well. Like most sauces, we're going to start with onions as a base. We're going to heat up one tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil on medium heat. And when that's nice and shimmering, we're going to do something a little bit unusual. We're going to add one onion that's only been halved, not diced. We're going to add that cut side down in the oil. And we're going to cook that until it's nicely browned, which takes about four minutes. This is just going to impart a little bit of caramelization from the onion. But again, like the polenta with the garlic, we're not trying to overwhelm the sauce with onion flavor. While the onion continues to brown, we're going to turn our attention to the other sauce ingredients. And for this sauce, we're using two canned tomato products. The first is canned tomato sauce, which is great because it comes with its own blend of spices and herbs. It has a nice flavor. However, alone, it was too assertive. So we needed to thin it out with something. So we decided to puree one can of whole peeled tomatoes. So we'll add this to the blender. That's a small can, a 14-ounce can? Right, 14-and-a-half-ounce can. And we'll just puree this for about 30 seconds. Okay, so the tomatoes are nicely pureed. Turn our attention back to the onions, and I want to show you how nicely brown they are. Oh, yeah. Okay, now we can go ahead and add all of our tomato products. The tomato sauce. You want to grab the blender there. That's a hot pot. The pureed tomatoes. And next, we're going to add a half cup of grated pecorino cheese. Same cheese that we have in the polenta. To that, I'm going to add one-and-a-half tablespoons of sugar. Now, this is kind of unusual for us, because we typically don't add sugar to tomato sauces. But again, like Mike, his tomato sauce is a little bit sweet. And it actually really works well with the polenta here. All right, I'm going to trust you. Three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt. And one-half teaspoon of garlic powder. And three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. The reason why we add the oil here at the end is because we really want to taste it. And we're going to give that a stir, just to incorporate all those ingredients. And then we'll bring it up to a boil. Then reduce the heat to medium-low. And let it simmer until it thickens up nicely and the flavors meld. And that takes about 15 minutes. Okay, Julia, here we have our chilled polenta. Oh, I want to touch it, too. Oh, it's pretty hard. Yeah, very solid. So we can remove this plastic. And we're going to turn it out onto our cutting board. So we need to cut it into six equal portions. Just a little voodoo on top of it. Et voila! Okay, now we need to cut this into our six equal portions. We'll start off by splitting it once down the middle. And give that a 90-degree turn. And they'll go into thirds here. You could use a ruler if you wanted to, but I am super stubborn. And I refuse to. Okay, we could just transfer the polenta to a greased piece of parchment paper. So that is a portion size. Right, right. And you are more than welcome to have two if you don't think that's enough. No, but when you called it a brick earlier, now I see what you're talking about. Okay, so we're going to blast this in a 375-degree oven for about 30 minutes. Just to heat it all the way through. Okay, Julia, here we go. Well, they held their shape, which is impressive. And that's the most important part of the recipe. Because a lot of times you bake polenta, and they sort of turn into goops on the platter. And it turns into a big pile of cement. Not the brick. Okay, so can I portion some out for you? Is this enough here? Would you like two? One's good for me. And then at Mike's, they like sauce. They do, huh? They like a lot of sauce. My fork kind of just glided right through it. Mmm. That is so good. It's one of my favorites. Oh, wow. Taste the tanginess of the cheese. Yeah, it's so fluffy. That is something. Serve it with regular cornmeal. And cook it in water lightly seasoned with butter, olive oil, and a kiss of garlic. Add a decent amount of pecorino romano, along with a little half and half. And let it set up in the fridge for at least three hours. Finally, slice the polenta into bricks and bake it for half an hour. And serve with a simple yet slightly sweet tomato sauce. And there you have it. From Cook's Country, a new recipe for fluffy baked polenta. You can find this recipe, all the recipes from this season, along with our tastings, testings, and select episodes at our website. CooksCountry.com This is delicious. If you're ready to take your cooking to the next level, head over to AmericasTestKitchen.com and get a free trial of our ATK Essential membership. While you're there, you can sign up for our free email newsletters and download our app. So, what are you waiting for?