Join Carla Lalli Music, Gaby Melian, Christina Chaey, Andy Baraghani, Alex Delany, Sohla El-Waylly, Molly Baz, Chris Morocco and Brad Leone for another episode of Test Kitchen Talks.
In this episode, they bake corn bread muffins without using any measuring cups, spoons or other tools of culinary measurement.
Can they eyeball a recipe to perfection?
- [Corey] Hello!- Hi![laughs]- What are we doing, Corey?- [Corey] You're going to make a recipeeyeballing the measurements.- Like, we don't get cup measures?- [Corey] No.- Teaspoon measures?- [Corey] No.- Anything?- [ Corey] No.- Wow.- Oh, just no measuring spoons?- [Corey] Yeah.- Great.[upbeat music]- Can I use the muffin tin?- So I can't go like this?I have to go...- [Corey] You have to pour it.- Out of the bag?- [Corey] You have to go out of the bagand pour it.- Okay.- Oh, I get the recipe!- You get the recipe, you'rejust eyeballing everything.- Oh my God, that changes everything.[upbeat music ends]Wow, is this one of our recipes?- This is like the old time days.Like, back in the day, they,like, a cup was a cup,and peoples' cups were different,and then you had to, like, figure it out.- Um, so this isgonna be fun.- [Corey] Are you precise withmeasurements when you cook?- Well we're baking.It looks different.It's kind of the one time you do kind ofhave to be precise with certain things.- At home, I freestyle, but,I spend 40 hours a daymeasuring things on a scale.- [Corey] 40 hours a day?- A week.- The last time I bakedsomething was maybe, like,five years ago.I do not bake, ever.- Okay, so I used to have ajob where I had to measure,I had to weigh out cheesefor cheese plates at a restaurant,and you had to measure out,like, one ounce portionsof each cheese, and there was, like,a soft, semi soft, and a hard,and by the end of it, Icould weigh that [beep]to the gram, essentially,without the use of anything.So,lets hope that servesme in some way today.- All right, so todaywe're gonna make somecornbread muffins with maple butter.- First and foremost,I don't like cornbread.- Skipping the maplebutter, we can do that afterwe throw these in the oven.Which I'm assuming, we're gonna do.- "Preheat the oven to 375."So we gotta guess that too?I put my hand in there or something?- My oven is preheated to 375.- Is the oven already on?I see.Very important to read the whole recipebefore you start cooking,not only when you arebeing challenged to do so.- Yeah, so I'm just gonnaeyeball this together, here.I'm thinking I'm goingto use the muffin tin,just as like a good, rough indicator.- It's not cheating!I'm using the toolsthat we're given to me.- The dry ingredients, so it's one cupof yellow corn meal.- "Sift cornmeal."Need a sifter.Okay, here we go.I hate this [beep].- All right, so I need a cup.So, one thing I'm terribleat is spacial relationships.And volumes.- I have no idea how muchthis actually weighs,but it looks pretty close to a cup.- Probably a one cup.- I'm going to say this lookslike about a quarter cup,so I am gonna use four of these.[jazzy drums]- I think these are each half a cup,so I think that's about one cup.- I care more about the ratios of things.Like, I care more aboutthe ratio of dry to liquidthan I do about, like, measuring to a cup.- That works, I like this.Okay, flour.Oops, more than a cup.This is great, this ishow we should do it all.- Okay, equal parts cornmeal and flour.- Add a quarter cup of this.[ragtime piano music][laughs]I'm just on the vaudeville thing now, so.- So what is a quarter cup of sugar?This kind of looks like a quarter cup,so we're gonna go with that.This is salt!Oh, my God!- Quarter cup.[noncommittal noise]- Put that in thelanding zone right there.Little quarter cup.Yeah, right there.- A tablespoon of baking powder.I think I can figure it out.[hums thoughtfully]- We're just going to guess.- Tablespoon.- Maybe, should I do the hand?- One,two,and a half.- One tablespoon, added.- Quarter teaspoon of salt.So I'm just gonna do one little pinch.- Salt.- Bam!- This, I don't care as much about.And it should just taste good.- And that's all our dry stuff.- Whisking dry ingredientsactually takes longerthan you think, this is acommon thing people mess up.Give it a minute.- Here, first we'll do the mix-o,and then we'll do the sift-o.[humming]- So now, sifting.Oops.[yells]- Don't really want to siftthese, because I don't...You know?If they're not gonna be perfect,they're not gonna be perfect.- There you go, look at that.[wooden spoon tapping]- So I'm gonna put that off to the side,and we're gonna do wet ingredients.- All right, so I've got one egg.- Egg.- Buttermilk, one cup.Okay.- [Chris] Cup of buttermilk.- Oh, was this shake,shooken, shaken?Can we use the shaked buttermilk?[shaking buttermilk]- You know, there's measurementson the side of the buttermilk.Bottle.- Literally has a cup measure on the side.I don't know if anyone spotted that yet.- Oh yeah, I mean,this is great if you find yourself campingand you want to make muffinsand you only have a muffin tin.- For baked goods, I tend not to eyeball,because, you know,why invite failure, you know?- So I'm just gonna--Oh, wait a minute, [beep].I didn't mix.Do I need to?Yeah.Well, it's already [beep], sowe're just gonna keep going.All right, those aresupposed to get whiskedin another bowl.That's what happens whenyou don't read a recipeand you're not used to reading recipes.So, this is just gonna all getwhisked together right now.- "Whisk in melted butter", all right.- All right, so we wantfive tablespoons here.- Oh, five tablespoons of butter,I was ready to dump thatwhole thing right in.[whisk clinking on bowl]- It's kind ofunmelted.Could I zap it?[bowl clanking][butter exploding]Oh, too far![laughs]No!Oh, Claire just cleaned the microwave.She's gonna be so upset!- Okay, and now we're readyto combine ingredients.- I want to do it slowly.Make sure it's not too clumpy.- Okay, just to incorporate,do not over-mix!- That's the single most important thingto keeping a muffin tender and not tough.- Tough little muffins.They've had a tough life.And they came out tough later.- Here, let me hold this for you.- Hold it.[yelps]- Easy![laughs]I'm not wearing an apron!When's the last time you baked something?- I don't know, years.- Never?- Not never.- Have you ever?- Yes, I've baked things, but, like, not--- Ow!- Sorry.- Oh, this is dry.- My gut tells me thatthis needs more liquid.- If it looks a little dry,then add a little more wet.- Seems a little loose, but,the hell do I know?Oh, don't over-mix!- Yeah.[laughs]I would chillwith whatever you're doing right now.- I mean, basically, you can eyeballa baking dish that you'vedone a million times,so you kind of have, like, a rough ideaof how it looks like.- I think this is muffin consistency,I don't make a lot ofmuffins at home, TBH.- How far off am I?- And I would just go for it now.- Oh, yeah?- Yeah.I think they're gonna be great.- All right.Molly, they're not gonna be great.- When I put this inthe oven, I'm praying.- Oh, here we go.And how many are wesupposed to make, here?- I'm just hoping that we reach 12.- I'm gonna run out of batter.- I don't know if I have enough.- The batter does seem a little bit scant.- We're not gonna reach 12.- I'm gonna make it work.I know, like, one ortwo, I could definitelypull something out of.- We're gonna have torob Peter to pay Paula little, I think.- We're gonna steal.I'm looking like, I think,probably a little empty, here.- I don't think I evermade muffins in my life.- I read the recipe alittle bit more in detailand it says that one muffin cupis a third of a cup, so Iam totally off.[sighs]- [Brad] Yeah, this isn't gonna be good.Yeah, this might notwork out, boys and girls.- Just give them a leg up.They're gonna be a funny shape,I'm not fixing the divot that I took outof each of them for no apparent reasonexcept I am lazy.Salt.- You know what, I'm gonnadisregard that last step.Two empty cups.- Okay, I'm gonna pop them in the oven.[muffin tin clanking]- I guess.My masterpiece, don't look at this one.- So, starting the timers, 15 minutes.Let me bang those down,all right?[muffin tin clanking]- [Corey] Why do you bang them down?- I don't know.- Timer.- Hey Siri, set timer for 15 minutes.- Muffins will be pale.[scoffs]We'll see about that."Cool on racks for 10 minutes," great."Serve with maple butter,"all right, let's do that.- Okay, maple butter,"three quarters of a cup,"one and a half sticks unsaltedbutter, room temperature."- One and a half sticks of butter?I got this one.- It's like, you haveto wonder about a recipethat's calling for that much butter,that much maple syrup,calling for unsalted butter, but no salt.Just, like, you know.- I'm gonna put some salt in there.- Sweet and salty.It's gonna taste better.- So we'll start small.We'll start with the--We need three and a half,we'll start with the half.- So I'm gonna eyeball it using this.Oh, but I need to have it in--This is not easy.- I don'treally think thissyrup measurement matters all that muchin terms of precision.- Slow little drizzle.- God, I love maple syrup, it's so good.- If I had flaky salt, I would add it.Pretty good.Mapley.- All right, that looks very nice.- I love a corn muffin.Yeah, utterly adore them.[mixer clanging]- The butter might befine, but the muffins...Rest in peace.[clock ticking]- All right, cool.So it's been 15 minutes,we're gonna go see how theselittle muffins turned out.- Ah, okay.[exclaims in Spanish]- Okay.They look okay.- Okay, not bad.- We got two weird ones.- Look at those.I'm not making anyone proud with these.- They're very even.So, like, great job, me.That's guy's a little small.- These muffins arenot very cute.But whatever, we're moving on.[speaking Spanish]- Is this what we're looking for?- [Molly] How'd they turn out, Brad?- I don't know yet.- [Molly] They look kind ofsquat?- There wasn't a lot of batter in it.- [Molly] Oh.- We had to pull--What's the matter?- I'm hungry.- Well, don't start here, bud.- Okay, so if this isour best looking muffin,we know we're in trouble.- They're brown on the undersides.That's good.- It has a really nice crumb.Super fluffy.- I think in terms of the, like,integrity of the muffin,and the ratios of things,this looks pretty correct.To me.What do I know?- They have a nice little, like,crust on the bottom.They're not as tender as I would like.- Wow, look at that crumb,look at that light texture.Mine were better.- Wait.No, no, no, wait, wait, wait![hums]- That's actually pretty good!Loosely.- Pretty good.- Good to pretty good?I can live with that.Thank you, you guys can eat them.[speaks French]- Okay, my final thought is thatthis is a properlybaked muffin that sucks.- That is NFB, I'm sorry,that's just as good asBrad's, maybe even better.- Um, yeah, there you go.There's a half a muffin.There's butter.[knife clinking on bowl]Shut it down!Shut it down.Bye.