(mellow piano music)
- Hey there, folks, and welcome back to back
to "What's in the Fridge."
There's a smudge on the lens.
Aw, Jess, you got peanut butter all over the lens-
- [Jess] I don't like peanuts.
- With your peanut butter toddler fingers.
Hey there, folks.
Welcome to a very special episode of "Basics,"
where two things are happening.
First off, we have no idea what to make.
Second off, it is quite literally less than 24 hours
before this episode is published.
It is 2:24 p.m. on Wednesday, January 12th, 2022.
This episode will be what, ah, dammit.
We wanted to see what kind of practical meal
could we throw together with what we have kicking around.
We haven't shot properly since before the holiday,
so we don't really know what's in,
I, we genuinely don't know what's in there.
And whatever's in there is probably no good (laughs).
So we're gonna harvest whatever goodness
we can out of the fridge.
Whatever interesting things we could find out of the pantry.
Might be a very simple dish.
Might be very fun and stony.
Might be very, whatever, I don't know,
but we're gonna make it whatever it is,
and you're gonna eat it.
Let's take a look,
on this very special episode
of "What's in the Fridge" on "Basics."
Action.
(lively eclectic music)
This is our fridge,
which we've hardly used since before Christmas break.
Like I mentioned, right now, it's January 12th.
Let's see what's inside.
- [Jess] It looks like
a lot of condiments. - Well, yeah.
We got a lot of condiments.
Oh, this chicken salad has some brown liquid on the bottom.
Yeah. No longer good.
Well...
Yup.
We have some sausage casings,
probably not for today.
Every time you go and clean out the fridge,
you're like, ah, I gotta use this caviar.
Old, but still viable, maybe, avocados.
These guys are still good. Yup.
Here's a half onion.
That'll be handy.
Ooh, we got some pickled jalapenos.
We got some parsley, cilantro.
Ton of hard cheeses.
These guys, they last pretty much
as long as they look edible, like hard cheeses,
even if they have a little mold growing on the outside
and shave that off,
and there's still perfectly good cheese underneath.
And once you've used all of it,
you can use the rind in soups and stews and stuff like that.
Is mozzarella supposed to be brownish red?
I'm curious.
- No. - No?
Oh, we got one slice of mozz (blows raspberry).
(laughs) We got one...
We got one Kraft single, aptly named.
This could open up the door to pretty sweet mac and cheese.
American cheese is full of emulsifiers and stabilizers
that help make for a really gooey, cheesy sauce
with no roux.
So we can make quick mac and cheese of some kind,
maybe with some pickled jalapenos,
some of this great avocado chicken from two weeks ago.
Get some of that nice brown stuff on there-
(fridge alarm beeping) Ah!
- [Jess] Ah!
We have some Emmentaler.
This looks still viable.
Buncha goat cheese in here.
That's interesting.
Oh, we have more bacon
than anybody should be allowed to have.
We've got some chicken stock.
Always nice to have on hand.
Some iced cubes.
We could use these in some kind of like a cocktail
or a, whoa.
No, they're not ready yet.
They're not ripe.
Some chicken livers.
Yeah. That's the freezer.
Yeah. Get in there.
Get in there. Get my point of view.
Show what I'm seeing.
Okay, so we have a lot of viable ingredients,
a lot of rotten ingredients,
because it's been a long vacation.
We haven't cared about anything in a while.
Why are you doing this?
I think we're going to make a jalapeno popper
mac and cheese, 'cause we have these nice pickled jalapenos.
Let's get started, shall we?
First thing we need, pasta, milk.
That's it.
And we're back to basics as usual.
Here's all the stuff that I harvested
from the fridge and pantry.
Let's see if we can mix it all together and then eat it.
I'm gonna start by dicing my half a spare onion.
And then I've got a couple of cloves of old garlic,
which can sometimes run a little bitter.
The solution is to take out the germ,
the little green sprouty guy
that you sometimes see growing
in the center of a clove of garlic.
Once you've exercised that demon,
you can chop or crush as usual.
We're then thinly slicing the scallions,
separating the greens and whites.
Then here, I've got a pound of frozen thick cut bacon.
To cut down on prep time.
I'm gonna skip thawing the bacon
and cook it straight out the freezer.
All you gotta do is cut up about a half pound of bacon
into bite-sized strips.
Doesn't matter if they're all frozen and stuck together.
They're all headed into a cold 12-inch cast iron skillet,
along with about a quarter cup of water,
which is gonna help the big and heat up more slowly,
separate, more readily, and cook more evenly.
Bring that up to a simmer over medium high heat,
drop the heat down to medium,
and stir occasionally until the water has evaporated,
the fat has rendered outta the bacon,
and the bacon is crisp, about five to seven minutes.
We're gonna fish the bacon out of the fat.
Go ahead and drain that on some paper towels.
Be sure to reserve that bacon fat.
Maybe don't pour it right over the hot burner, ya jackass.
Come on, Andy.
There are people watching.
Set that pen back over medium heat
with one to two tablespoons of bacon fat,
add our diced onion and the whites of our two scallions,
and saute for three to five minutes,
stirring frequently over medium heat until soft
and starting to brown.
Add a couple of cloves of crushed garlic,
saute for about 30 seconds or until fragrant.
Then we're gonna add 12 ounces
of the uncooked pasta of our choice.
I don't really recommend rigatoni, but that's all we had.
Then we're adding two cups of water,
and almost enough milk to cover the pasta.
Bring this guy to a simmer over medium heat,
cover, and cook, stirring every two minutes or so
to make sure that the pasta is cooking evenly,
until, well, it's cooked evenly.
Make sure nobody's sticking to the bottom of the pot.
And if you got a Kendall handy,
make sure that she stirs the pasta
when you run to the bathroom.
Once the pasta is not quite al dente,
we're gonna add three slices of American cheese.
Please don't punish me, pasta gods,
but like I mentioned earlier,
the various chemical goos in American cheese
make it good for cheese sauce.
Add about a quarter teaspoon each
cayenne pepper and sweet paprika.
And then we're cooking this over low heat,
stirring constantly until the cheese is completely melted.
Then we're killing the heat and grating about four ounces
of your more traditional mac and cheese cheese,
something like Gruyere or cheddar.
I'm also gonna add about a 1/4-cup
of cubed cream cheese,
so as to make our mac and cheese more jalapeno popper-like.
Add our scallion greens,
and about a 1/3 of a cup of pickled or jarred jalapenos.
Get everybody a little bit more redistributed
before seasoning with kosher salt
and freshly ground black pepper.
Add the crispy bacon, of course.
Mix everybody up.
Let those flavors get to know each other,
taste for seasoning.
And if the sauce seems to be a little thick,
don't be afraid to add a little bit more milk.
Top it off with some more good melting cheese, of course,
and yeah, nice shot, Jess.
Then in a separate bowl,
we're combining about a half cup of panko breadcrumbs
with about two ounces of finely grated Parmesan cheese.
Toss that together,
make sure that there aren't any clumps.
And as you might've guessed,
this mixture is getting sprinkled evenly over the top,
just enough so that you can still see
the shapes of the pasta.
Then this guy's headed into
a preheated 375-degree Fahrenheit oven,
preferably with convection,
until the top is browned and crunchy
and the cheese is bubbly, about 20 minutes.
Then we just gotta let it rest for five minutes
before kicking things back to live audio Andy
to see how it tastes.
This is outta the oven.
It has been resting for five minutes
until it's no longer hissing and bubbling
and doing all kinds of stuff.
So when you're making a cooking show,
you wanna sort of enter from the rear.
So we're making a cooking show.
Oh, I'm not getting a good cheese stretch here.
Come on, give me a cheese stretch.
Cheese stretch. Come on.
Oh, for real?
Okay. Well, whatever.
I'm gonna get...
Ah.
All right.
Let's see how this bad boy came out.
(mellow piano music)
Mm.
Hot.
That is quite good.
A little bit of heat from the jalapenos,
a little bit of acidic bite
from the fact that they're pickled jalapenos.
Lots of flavor from all that onion and garlic,
and the bacon.
You gotta hate bacon.
I mean, you gotta love bacon.
Sorry. Excuse me.
Mm.
This really does have a lovely sauce to it,
even though we put cream cheese in it.
It's nice and smooth, nice and creamy.
Mm.
It's a pretty quick and easy and really delicious lunch.
My only question is, what are you guys gonna have?
It's funny.
Ow. My teeth.
Okay. We got some, nope.
Ah. What the...
I knew there'd be a science project.
Yeah, no, that's this, this smells like a cow's teet.
Nice Meyer lemons could make something.
Oh God, Jesus (laughs).
Dude, this is just gonna be a fridge cleaning episode.
We're not even gonna cook anything.