♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Today on "America's Test Kitchen," Keith makes Julia keema aloo, Adam reviews handheld vacuum cleaners, and Dan makes an Uzbek favorite, plov.

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

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♪♪ -Keema is a well-loved dish across the Indian subcontinent, and for centuries it's graced the tables of both everyday folks and emperors alike.

It's a very simple, comforting dish with ground meat, tomatoes and lots of spices.

And for a lot of people, it exemplifies Indian home cooking.

And today Keith's going to show us how to make it.

-Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned home cooking because that's traditionally where you see this dish, and every cook and every family has their own kind of version.

So today we're going to take some of those principles that you see commonly throughout the dish and we're going to put our own spin on it.

So we're going to start with toasting some whole spices in this medium saucepan.

Two tablespoons of vegetable oil over medium heat.

The idea is that we want to take those aromatic compounds in the spices and get them into our oil, and that's going to perfume the whole dish through and through.

-Aha!

-So the oil is getting -- shimmering here.

I'm starting with six black peppercorns, whole black peppercorns for some spice.

I'm also adding one cinnamon stick.

And then I'm going to add two types of cardamom.

I'm going to add green cardamom here, which is probably what people are most familiar with.

Has a nice fresh minty, menthol-y-like flavor.

And then we're also going to add some black cardamom pods.

So these differ in flavor a little bit.

They're earthier.

They're a little bit smoky.

But they're absolutely delicious.

So in that goes into our hot oil.

Okay.

So we're just going to toast these until we can start to smell them.

And I can smell that cinnamon.

So then in go our onions.

One red onion.

Okay.

And we'll start to stir these onions in.

Now, we're going to let these cook for a little while.

We want to get these pretty well browned because they're going to add a lot of savoriness to this dish.

We're not looking for caramelized onions, but we want to go a little bit beyond the normal browning here because it's going to be a great depth of flavor.

So that's going to take anywhere from 7 to 10 minutes.

It's been seven minutes, and you can see that these onions are getting nice and dark.

-Ah!

It smells delicious.

-Yeah.

We're also starting to develop a little bit of fond on the bottom of our saucepan.

So I'm going to let those go for one more second.

And then we're going to focus on some garlic and ginger, some more aromatics.

I'm going to take this rasp grater.

And I'm just going to grate this garlic here.

Now, we want to grate this because we want to break down those cell walls and we want to get that flavor into the oil right away.

And this will do that quite quickly.

-Mm-hmm.

-And then over here with our ginger.

We want 1 teaspoon of each.

And I just want to stir those in and cook those for about 30 seconds.

-Mm!

-Yeah.

Those onions are nicely browned right now.

That's going to add a ton of flavor to this dish.

Okay.

That is good.

Now we can add 1 pound of 90% lean ground beef here.

Nice level of richness without making the dish too, too greasy.

Put this into our saucepan.

And I'm also going to add 3/4 teaspoon of table salt.

And I'm just going to mix this into the onions.

Okay.

That's pretty well worked in.

I'm just going to turn the heat up to medium high.

And I'm going to continue to cook this, breaking up these pieces of ground beef.

So we're going to cook the meat until it starts to sizzle and the pan is dry.

And that will take 7 to 12 minutes.

Seven minutes is up.

And we can see that there's no moisture in the bottom of the pan here.

-Mm-hmm.

-And if you listen carefully... [ Light sizzling ] ...you can hear the beef starting to sizzle a little bit.

-Oh, yeah.

-That means it's ready to go.

Now, we're not really looking to brown the beef.

We don't want that Maillard reaction like we would with like some French cooking.

We want the onions and the spices to kind of carry the flavor here.

So now for some ground spices.

So we started with whole spices to get those flavors into the oil.

But now we're going to add some ground spices.

And the idea here is that they're more volatile than the whole spices.

So we want to keep all of their flavor in here.

So we add them more towards the end.

So I've added 2 teaspoons of ground coriander.

I'm gonna add 1/2 teaspoon of turmeric and 1/2 teaspoon of ground cumin.

I'm also going to add 2 teaspoons of Kashmiri chili powder.

-Ooh!

-Kashmiri chili powder is a great ingredient.

It's fruity, slightly tannic, no heat.

It's more like a mild paprika.

And definitely if you can find it, buy it.

If you can't, we do have a substitute on our website.

So I'm just going to stir these in.

Now we're looking to do much with any whole spices or ground spices.

We just want to cook this until it's fragrant.

These are ready to go.

And now we can add tomatoes.

These are going to break down and they're going to kind of make this luxurious sauce that's going to coat that meat.

So two red ripe tomatoes.

I'm also going to add 1/4 cup of yogurt.

Yogurt is not a common ingredient, but we did like the richness this added.

We also like the tang that you get from yogurt.

I have an 8-ounce Yukon gold potato that's been cut into 1/2-inch pieces.

Yukon gold potatoes are optional.

You don't have to have the potatoes in here.

We're making keema aloo.

Aloo is potato.

You can take the potatoes out and add peas and you have keema matar.

-Ah!

-You can take the vegetables out and just have keema.

And I'm also going to add an optional long green chili, also called the green finger chili.

Just add a little bit of spice to this.

We like spice, right?

-[ Laughs ] I know you do.

-Stir everything in really well.

-There's not a lot of liquid in there.

-No, but you will be amazed.

Those tomatoes will break down and release liquid and that will create the sauce.

-Boy, it smells heavenly.

-So I'm just going to cook this for about 2 minutes until those tomatoes start to break down, start to release some liquid.

It's been 2 minutes and you can start to see the tomatoes breaking down, and there's a little bit of liquid on the bottom of the pot.

-Yep.

-So I'm just going to reduce the heat down.

And we want to maintain a gentle simmer.

And I'm going to put a lid on this.

And we're going to simmer this covered very gently.

It will take 12 to 18 minutes.

-Alright.

-Are you ready for the transformation?

-[ Laughs ] Let's see it.

-Okay.

-Wow!

-Look at that.

-There's a lot more liquid in there than there was when we left it.

-Yeah.

And you can hardly see any of those tomatoes.

They've cooked down and created this nice rich sauce.

And you can see if I draw the spoon across, it doesn't fill back in, a nice trail.

-Oh, yeah.

-So we want it saucy, but you don't want it to be running off.

So that is it.

Cut the heat.

Now, I'm going to see if I can't find some of those cardamom pods in here.

-Mm-hmm.

-You can leave them in if you want.

It's not necessary.

We'll get rid of the cinnamon.

There's another black cardamom pod.

That's good to me.

Now, I have 1/4 cup of fresh chopped cilantro here.

-Mmm!

-Stir that in.

Okay, that's our cilantro.

And I just want to taste this for seasoning.

Mm.

A little bit more salt.

Definitely some more pepper.

-Uh-oh.

-[ Laughs ] Okay.

I think that is it.

We are ready to eat.

-Boy, that really is fast.

-Just going to put this into our serving platter and sprinkle with a little bit more cilantro for some pretty green color on top.

-Mmm.

Boy, that came together in no time.

-Yeah.

Not long at all.

Half an hour, 45 minutes.

-Yeah.

-Really quite easy.

-It's like a weeknight recipe.

-Yeah.

Totally weeknight.

So I will give you a portion.

You can serve this with rice if you want.

That would be a great dinner.

But we are actually going to serve with naan.

That's one of the nice things.

Dry enough to kind of pick up with naan.

That's when you know it's the right texture.

I love that deep red color.

-Mm-hmm.

Mmm!

This is my kind of food.

Simple, comforting, but has a ton of flavor.

-Yeah, so you get those toasty flavors from the whole spices.

You also get the top notes from those ground spices, too.

-Yep.

-Very nice.

-There's a backbone of, must be the cinnamon and cardamom.

And then you get a little bit of cumin, a little bit of Kashmiri chili powder.

-Yep.

-Mmm, man.

Potatoes are perfectly cooked through.

That's not a long cooking time.

-It's nice and bright too.

Those tomatoes add a lot of brightness along with that yogurt.

-Keith, this is delicious.

Thank you.

-You're welcome.

If you want to make this classic homey Indian dish, start by lightly browning sliced red onions with the whole spices.

Cook ground beef until it sizzles, then bloom the ground spices in the fat.

And finally, add fresh tomatoes and a little yogurt and cook until the sauce is thickened.

From "America's Test Kitchen," a simple but satisfying recipe for keema aloo.

Man!

There's so much flavor packed into each bite.

♪♪ -Nature may abhor a vacuum, but I love them, especially if this is anywhere near my kitchen.

What is that?

Well, here with some sort of help for me, I hope, is Adam.

And you're going to show me some great handheld vacuums.

I feel like there used to be one in town.

-Now there's a whole bunch of them.

In fact, our lineup includes nine.

They were priced from about $41 to $150.

They're all pretty compact and lightweight.

They all come with one or more attachments.

They all charge either at a charging station, a little dock, or with a cable.

-Okay.

-Let me tell you about the tests that we did.

This was one of the tests.

We used measured amounts of different materials.

-Uh-huh.

-This is a delectable mixture, as you can see, of soil, onion skins, raw rice and pet hair.

[ Both laugh ] That was one of our tests.

We also used dry cereal.

We used ditalini pasta.

We used baby powder.

-Ah.

Ooh!

Good one.

-Yeah, that was actually a really telling test.

And we used different flooring materials, as I said -- wooden floors, carpeting, furniture upholstery.

In cars, we did the car seats and the carpeting around the seats and the floors.

We tested all of the attachments.

We timed how long these things took to clean up that measured amount in that measured area.

Our testers even took them home and used them for daily cleanings for a month.

They assessed the battery charging and depletion.

They assessed the dirt collection bins and how to empty them.

We left no stone unturned and we cleaned up all of that stuff.

The name of the game for any vacuum is suction.

It's the power.

-Yes.

-And some of these had it.

Some of these didn't have as much.

This one actually did not have that much suction power.

-Really?

-It struggled with some of the tests that others just sailed right through, including pet hair.

-Oh, yes.

-Another thing that testers didn't like about this that much is the dirt collection bin.

You have to press this button and you take the whole thing off, and then you have to take the filter out to empty it out.

It was much easier, testers thought, when you just had to open it up, a door, with a little button or a latch or something, and dump it out.

In terms of the filters, they also like larger filters because it allowed more air through, less clogging.

This model actually sailed through the test that other ones struggled with.

It picked up 100 grams of the goo in less than 30 seconds from a foot and a half square of carpeting.

It was a lot easier to get the goo out once it was in there because you just have this latch.

You open up the door, you can dump out the stuff in the garbage can, close it, and you're good to go.

-Right.

-All of these vacuums had attachments to get into really tight spots, but ideally we thought the vacuum itself should be able to reach in even without the attachment.

This is where the size and the length came into play.

Why don't you try this?

We have that corner there that's filled with rice, and I want you to try and get into the very corner with that one.

-Alright.

-Feel a little awkward?

-Yeah.

It's not great.

It's not perfect.

-No.

-It'll do it.

But it's not easy to maneuver in.

This one is 12 inches as opposed to that 18 inches.

Try the shorter one.

-Alright.

-See how that goes.

[ Vacuum whirring ] -Oh, my.

-[ Laughs ] -Well, because it's smaller you can get it right in there.

-Yeah.

Exactly.

You know, in terms of those attachments to work -- You're going to clean the whole place, Bridget.

-One moment, please.

-I'll just stop while you take care of the whole rest of the kitchen.

That's great.

-That's handy.

-Another point against maneuverability for our testers was if the handle was too bulky and made it sort of hard to maneuver.

Try that one.

-Yeah, I could see get tired with that grip.

-Exactly.

Hard to get into the corners.

-Right.

-Another thing that testers really appreciated is when the attachments for tight spaces were right on the body of the vacuum itself, like this one.

You fold that out, you put it in, you're done.

You can fold it back out there.

It's always there at your fingertips.

It's a no-brainer.

This vacuum did one better.

This is a great design.

This one, the nozzle folds out like a book and it actually rotates 200 degrees.

-That's clever.

-It's really clever.

And so you can customize your angle of approach however you want to do it to get into those messes.

And it's always right there.

And this is in fact our winning hand vac.

This is the Black+Decker 20-volt Max cordless Pivot Vac.

It's $77.

It had plenty of power and suction to get through nasty messes like that.

It was not the leader in terms of the battery charging time.

It only lasted for a little less than 11 minutes, but that was enough to handle any job that we threw at it, so we thought that was just fine.

-Yeah, it's not for the heavy-duty jobs.

It's a handheld vac, right?

-Exactly.

-Well, there you go.

If you want to pick up the winner, it is the Black+Decker 20-volt Max cordless Pivot Vac, and it runs about $77.

And we're going to see if it works right now.

-[ Laughs ] [ Vacuum whirring ] -This thing really sucks.

-[ Laughs ] -In a good way.

♪♪ Rice was a mainstay along the Silk Road, and its importance is still reflected today in the many variations that you find for pilaf.

Now, today we are highlighting one from Uzbekistan called plov, or sometimes it's called plao, and Dan is here to show us a great version.

-So this is a really special pilaf and it's used a lot in celebration.

You have these master chefs called oshpaz, and they will cook in these massive wok-shaped cauldrons, and they'll serve like hundreds and hundreds of people.

-But I see this.

-We're not going to do that today.

-[ Laughs ] -So I am not at that level.

We're going to do a home version here.

But it's really comforting.

And at the base it's carrots and beef and warm spices.

-Fantastic.

-You're going to absolutely love it.

-Okay.

-So we're going to start with our carrots.

I'm going to take one of my biggest ones here.

We're going to use them in two ways.

We're going to grate some.

And then we're going to keep some larger so that you get them infused into the whole dish and some really nice sweetness.

But then you also get the texture and the bite of whole carrots.

Alright.

First up we're going to grate one.

Grating is a nice way to, you know, quickly reduce something down to a pretty small size without needing, like, perfect knife skills or anything like that.

-Right.

-Beautiful.

Set this aside.

For these last four, I'm just going to trim them up.

And we're going to cut these into 2-inch lengths that are about 1/2-inch wide.

-Okay.

-So depending on your carrot, you know, down here that's a perfect one.

You don't have to do anything with it as you get a little bit bigger, definitely in here, I'll be cutting these in half.

And sometimes you might even need to quarter them.

Looking for roughly the same size.

We have our carrot side of the equation and now it's time for the beef side.

So this isn't an incredibly meat-heavy dish, but it uses some really nice, rich, unctuous beef in order to infuse into the whole pilaf.

So we chose boneless beef short ribs, which you can see the marbling.

We know how delicious these are, and they're going to provide so much flavor, even just the small amount here, which is a pound.

So I've got a tablespoon of oil heating over here in my saucepan.

We're gonna do all of our cooking right in here.

It's perfect for making pilaf.

I'm heating that oil up there.

And I'm going to season our beef all over with 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Okay.

Our oil is shimmering.

Let's get these guys in there.

[ Sizzling ] So we're looking for browning on all sides.

It's going to take about 10 minutes.

And I'll just keep rotating them as they go.

-Okay.

-Alright.

We're getting some gorgeous browning.

Lovely.

-Look at that.

Isn't that beautiful?

-Gorgeous.

-I'm going to get them out of here now.

And we're going to add a couple of onions that we quartered through the root end and then sliced, so they're nice big slices along with a teaspoon of salt.

And we're going to let the onions really do the work of deglazing for us.

They're going to have a lot of moisture in there.

And we've got a lot of fond on the bottom.

So they're going to join up and do their thing.

So we'll just cover this and cook for about 5 minutes.

-Sounds great.

-Alright.

It's been 5 minutes.

And you'll see that the onions have done their job.

-Yeah.

Really deglazed the pan.

-Totally deglazed it.

And they're nice and soft.

So now we're going to add our carrots.

This is our grated carrot.

This is going to cook for a while.

So it's essentially going to completely melt into it.

-Okay.

-Now comes some really amazing flavors.

We have a tablespoon of barberries... -Huh.

-...which are lovely and tart.

And they're going to plump up in here and add a beautiful acidity to this.

Alright.

We have three garlic cloves that have been minced.

Have a tablespoon of cumin, 2 teaspoons of coriander.

-Mmm.

-And 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper.

We're going to cook this for about 2 minutes.

You want it to be super aromatic, which it is.

Okay, great.

So we're going to add our beef back in and just kind of nestle it in here along with our veggies.

We're going to get all the nice juices that came off the beef.

And I've got 1 3/4 cups of water.

-So much flavor in there already.

You don't need anything else, right?

-That's right.

Yeah.

And we're going to basically make a beef broth in here.

The final thing that's going in here right now is a head of garlic.

This is one of the coolest things about plov, where you have these heads of garlic that go in, they stew with everything, so they pick up flavor.

They also dish their own garlic flavor into it.

And then it's super soft at the end, so you can spread it into your portion of plov.

It's really nice.

So we're just going to cut off the top of this head here.

And then you know how there's kind of two different types of skin on garlic?

-Yes.

-So we're just removing that papery outside skin.

Just flake that off.

And so you can see it like this.

-Perfect.

-Alright.

Make a little bit of space for it.

We'll put them right in.

Alright.

We've got our garlic in there.

We're going to bring this up over high heat to a vigorous simmer.

Okay.

We want to make a really nice seal here.

This is going to come in handy now but then also when we get rice in here.

So we're just going to crimp this on.

And then our lid fits in place.

Now, masters at plov can cook the rice and the beef together in this magical way and have everything come out perfectly.

This is a little bit more failproof.

We're actually going to braise the beef separately.

-You're still learning.

-I'm still learning.

And we're going to use our oven for that.

So I have a 350-degree oven on the middle rack.

We're going to pop this in.

-Okay.

-It's going to take about an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half until that beef is perfectly tender.

-Lovely.

-Oh, now I can smell it.

It's been about an hour and a half, so we're going to get this out.

-Alright.

-You can see there's no moisture coming out.

-Right.

-Foil is doing its job there.

There it comes.

I'm going to use this again.

So I'm going to save it.

-Big whiff of aroma right there.

-Isn't that awesome?

-Oh, my goodness.

-So good thing to keep in mind is this handle is very hot.

-Okay.

-We've got really beautiful tender beef here.

So I'm going to take this to my cutting board.

And we're going to grab our garlic, which is really, really tender at this point.

-Mm-hmm.

-Now the rice part of our pilaf, which is really important, I have a cup of basmati rice which I rinsed until the water ran nice and clear.

-Okay.

-And then I let it drain.

So that's all I've done to it at this point.

-Now it makes sense too why you had the foil on to keep the right amount of liquid because it really is about ratios when it comes to rice.

-That's right.

And we're going to use it again to make sure we trap as much as possible.

And we'll add our nice big pieces of carrot.

-Nice.

-And stir it all together.

Okay.

We're going to bring this to a simmer over medium heat.

So we're starting to simmer there.

So we'll adjust the heat.

Make sure we stay at a nice simmer.

I'm going to go back on with our foil.

We're going to cook this for about 10 minutes at this gentle simmer.

The rice will be about half done.

And our lid.

-Okay.

Right here on the stovetop, not back in the oven?

-Right here.

Yeah.

Exactly.

-Okay.

-Now, while that goes, I'm going to cut our beef into nice bite-sized pieces.

-That looks great.

-Doesn't that look nice?

-Mm.

-Okay.

Beautiful.

Just a little bit longer on our rice and we're getting close to eating time.

-Lovely.

-Alright, 10 minutes is up.

Doesn't that look good?

-Smells better every time you take that lid off.

-So now we're going to add our beef.

And we're going to stir it all in.

Make sure we get that right down to the bottom there too.

-Okay.

-Oh, this is looking good.

Beautiful.

You know the drill.

We go back on with our foil.

-Foil it, Dan.

-And our lid.

-Okay.

Foiled again.

-And that rice is about half done.

So we're going to go for another 10 to 15 minutes.

It's going to be nice and tender, fluffy, and everything is going to be perfectly cooked.

Alright.

We are at the 15-minute mark.

-I think that means eating.

-Hey, it does mean that.

So you can take a look here and see that it's really absorbed all that liquid.

-Sure has.

-Yep.

You can go all the way down to the bottom and there's no liquid left.

-No excess liquid at all.

-That means we have succeeded.

So I'm going to take this and get it onto our big platter.

We're going to be celebratory about this even though we're not serving hundreds.

We're going to make this beautiful.

Okay.

And then we've got another tablespoon of fresh dried barberries, which are going to go on top like little garnets.

-Beautiful.

-Alright.

And I have two thinly sliced scallions.

-Beautiful.

-Okay.

And finally the must-have -- head of garlic.

-I see what you mean about it being a celebratory dish.

-It really makes like, you know, a weeknight or anything feel pretty special.

-Mm.

Gorgeous.

-And then for the garlic here, you can go in and just kind of grab a little one out if you want to smear that on.

-I'm going to try some of the rice because that's really where the proof is.

-That's true.

-Mmm.

The rice is cooked perfectly -- nice and fluffy, but I'm loving all those flavors in there.

Get that -- that hit of that tartness from the barberry.

Mmm.

And the carrots too.

Nice sweetness in there.

-Right?

It's such a lovely combination, that sweetness and that beefiness is really nice.

-This is absolutely gorgeous.

-Worth celebrating?

-Cheers.

-Cheers.

-Now, if you want to make this incredible dish from Uzbekistan, starts with preparing carrots in two ways to incorporate their flavor and texture.

Punch up flavors using barberries, garlic, and spices, and cook the meat and rice separately to ensure proper texture.

So from "America's Test Kitchen," an amazing pilaf from Uzbekistan, plov.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season, along with product reviews and select episodes, and those are all on our website, americastestkitchen.com.

Mm.

I don't know if that's going to be enough for us.

-You don't think so?

I've got another batch going in the back.

-Alright.

-Just thinking ahead.

Mm.

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