- [Babish] Hey, guys. I'm excited to announce that we've
completely revamped the Babish website.
It's got a ton of new recipe and community features
and perks for members like exclusive monthly live streams.
The first of which will be December 20th at 5:00 PM Eastern.
The old websites are still live for now,
but I hope you'll check out babi.sh.
- There's, no reason to bring wood to this.
I've never robbed anybody in my life.
Please don't make this a bad experience for me.
- Bad experience?
- Why do people say ATM machine?
- Who said that?
- The M stands for machine.
- Spider-Man, ah!
Ugh, oh. (crash)
- Hey Lenny, how much I owe you for this beef patty, man?
- [Lenny] Spidey, if you catch him,
it's on the house brother.
- [Babish] Hey, what's up guys?
Welcome back to Binging with Babish.
This week we're taking a look at the Jamaican beef patties
from "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse".
As you can see, I've procured one
from my local Brooklyn Deli.
while ideally reheated in the oven,
The beef patty's greatest party trick
is emerging from the microwave,
relatively flaky and tender.
Just gotta scoot the camera back real quick,
don't want you to miss even one little bit
of hot microwave action.
Nuke the thing for about one minute,
turning halfway through until the filling is piping hot
and the pastry is relatively flaky.
And that's all there is to it.
Exactly the way I remember them
when I was surviving off them back in school.
But if you don't have a favorite bodega nearby,
how do we make our own?
Well as for the pastry, the most authentic way
is to use beef tallow
shredded through the large holes of a box grater.
Now here in the states beef tallow can be
harder to get ahold of than beef patties.
So if you can't find any,
you can use the same amount by weight
of shredded frozen butter.
Look at that, it looks like freshly fallen beef snow.
Put the stuff in a bowl, picking out any large chunks,
and keep it cold in the freezer
until you're ready to use it.
Now in a large bowl,
we're gonna combine 450 grams of all-purpose flour,
one and a half tablespoons of Jamaican curry powder
and one tablespoon of ground turmeric,
20 grams of sugar,
and three quarters of a teaspoon of kosher salt.
Whisk thoroughly until thoroughly whisked.
Then we're gonna add 25 grams
of cold vegetable shortening cut into little cubes.
And we're gonna press and rub that
in between our fingers into the flour
until it's broken down into pea size pieces.
Then we're gonna add 100 grams
of our frozen shredded beef suet.
Go ahead and mix that up to make sure
that it's evenly distributed.
And then we're gonna kind of treat this like pie dough.
Starting with about 150 mil of ice water
and slowly adding as necessary, mixing together gently,
making sure not to overwork
until a cohesive ball of dough forms
that isn't sticky, but just a little tacky, kinda like me.
Now we're gonna pad this into a vaguely rectangular shape
and wrap in plastic wrap,
sending it into the fridge for 30 minutes.
Once again, very much like pie dough.
While that's chilling, we can make our filling.
I didn't realize that rhymed until I said it,
which starts with two very important, very big flavors.
First up, whole allspice processed into a powder
in a mortar and pestle or spice grinder.
Make sure to sieve out any large pieces.
Next up, scotch bonnets.
One or two of them.
I'm kind of a wimp, so I'm gonna go with one.
We're slicing this in half
and pulling out the seeds and ribs,
which is gonna lower the capsaicin content.
Then finally, mincing and setting aside.
Go ahead and leave the ribs in there if you want more kick.
Then the only other prep we gotta do
is finally chop half a large onion
and thinly slice the greens and whites of three scallions.
Then we're headed over to the stove top,
where I'm gonna preheat a couple tablespoons
of vegetable oil over medium high heat.
Once it starts shimmering,
I'm gonna add our onions.
Saute or one to three minutes
until the edges are beginning to turn translucent.
Add our scallions and scotch bonnet.
Give that another two to three minutes
until everybody is softened.
Then we're gonna scoot everything aside,
make some room in the center of the pan,
drop down another tablespoon of oil
and plop down one pound of ground beef
broken up into pieces.
Letting that sit undisturbed for one to two minutes,
so as to pick up some nice browning.
Give stir and start breaking up the beef
as you cook it for another three to five minutes
until completely cooked.
Then we're gonna add our spices.
One teaspoon of garlic powder,
three quarters of a teaspoon
of onion powder for some reason,
about one teaspoon of our freshly ground allspice
passed the fine mesh sieve,
one and a half teaspoons of chopped fresh thyme,
a third of a cup of unseasoned breadcrumbs,
and two teaspoons of Jamaican browning sauce.
If you can't find this,
use the same amount of gravy master.
Cook this for one to two minutes,
add one and a half teaspoons of grated ginger,
and then we're gonna deglaze the pan
with about two thirds of a cup of beef stock,
using it to scrape up all the good stuff
off the bottom of the pan,
letting it cook for anywhere
from one to four minutes until some of it's evaporated,
but the beef is still nice and moist.
Season with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
and allowed to cool completely before attempting to pattify.
Speaking of which,
I'm going to generously flour my work surface,
retrieve the dough from the fridge,
and then we're gonna laminate it with more suet,
almost the way we would rough puff pastry.
First we're gonna roll it out to a rectangle
about six to eight inches wide, 14 inches long,
and about a third of an inch thick.
And then in the center of the rectangle width-wise,
we're gonna pile more of our shredded suet.
About 100 grams in total, added in six steps.
Once we've got a nice light snowfall,
we're gonna fold half the pastry over it,
sprinkle once again on the folded half,
then fold the remaining flap over top like a pamphlet.
And we're gonna roll it out again
to another 14 by eight inch rectangle
and do this lamination process two more times.
This is going to create layers of fat
stretched between the dough,
which will create many, many flaky
layers of tender pastry.
Once you've laminated it with suet three times total,
we're gonna fold it into thirds,
one more time without any fat.
Wrap it up tight and send it back into the fridge
for another 45 minutes.
Then we're gonna divide this batch of dough in half.
Take a moment to admire our
speckled layers of fat woven throughout the dough.
Then roll it out one last time
to a rectangle about 16 by 10,
and then it's time to fill and fold.
And we place three sort of piles of our beef mixture,
maybe about a third of a cup each
on the far end of the dough.
And then you guessed it, fold the other half over.
Try to press out any excess air that's
trapped inside the pastry,
and press down firmly between the piles
before cutting into distinct beef patties.
Now these guys are in for a thorough crimping.
Once divided into the three,
we're gonna go around the edges with a fork,
almost pressing it all the way through the dough,
down to the table.
Pinching and rolling the edge
and re crimping if necessary
to secure the contents within.
Then use a pizza cutter to cut off any excess,
giving the patties their distinct
rounded edge, rectangle shape.
Rinse and repeat with the remainders.
And these guys are ready to be frozen or baked.
I'm opting for the latter.
Popping into a 350 degree fahrenheit oven
for 25 to 28 minutes until they're lightly puffed
and the beef is completely heated through.
Then you wanna cool these on
a wire rack for about five minutes,
but you're probably not gonna be able to wait that long
because these things smell good.
But only one thing could possibly make them better.
And that is a slice of yellow American cheese.
Now, I was really worried about cheese leakage,
so I tried some extra sealant on these guys.
One with egg, one with water, and one with nothing.
Let's see who can hold it in after a stint in the oven.
And the answer is, all three.
As long as you're thorough with your crimps
and there isn't a lot of flour on the pastry,
these are gonna seal pretty well.
So let's see what delicious mysteries lie inside.
Crack one of these guys open
while they're still hot and melty.
Oh yeah.
Nice flaky pastry, hot gooey filling.
And these things taste ridiculously good.
And I love the store-bought ones,
but the freshly ground allspice
in particular makes a huge difference.
And so does apparently all that turmeric,
which is gonna stain in your fingers.
But do they hold up in the microwave?
Here's one that's been fully baked
and cooled in the fridge overnight.
And if beef patties don't contain cheese,
they're often sliced in half and stuffed.
Before being microwaved for one
to two minutes on medium power.
And even from the microwave,
this guy is flaky and delicious.
But I wanted to take things one step further
to see how movie accurate we could get.
And that could mean only one thing,
strapping on some so-called anti-gravity boots
and eating them upside down just like Spidey.
Now, this process taught me three things.
First, that I'm not a very good climber.
Second, that I seem to have a
latent fear of hanging upside down.
Oh, I hate this.
I was ready,
oh I hate it, give the beef patty quickly.
- Okay.
- [Babish] And that when you're upside down,
it's damn near impossible to swallow.
Now, I'm sure that Spider-Man has
superhuman swallowing muscles,
but for us mortals, this is a huge choking hazard.
And I gotta say, do not try this at home.
I'm not sure why I'm holding onto that handle so tight.
If I fell, that wouldn't do me any good.
I can't swallow.
- [Cameraman] Do you help?
- [Babish] So yeah, be sure to eat your beef patties
right side up or end up like this.
(beep) that.
(beep) these.
Binging with Babish.
We'll be right back after these messages, ugh.
(upbeat music)