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(baby fussing)
Oh, I know, I know.
Hey, everybody.
I'm very excited to introduce to you Andrew Jr,
the newest member of the Babish family.
Um, um, um, okay, um.
- Hey, baby, hey. - Uh, oh, all right.
That's, okay, uh.
Really botched that.
(laughing)
♪ It takes a lot to botch a cheesesteak ♪
♪ He's not a chef, but he's got what it takes ♪
♪ Just make one with ketchup from a movie ♪
♪ To get Philadelphia (beep) angry ♪
♪ He's just a cook, he's just a cook ♪
Philly cheesesteaks.
(sighing)
The official dish of Philadelphia.
It is a amalgam of meat, cheese, and bread
that has captured the imagination
of the Philadelphian people.
I put ketchup on it, ketchup and mayo, I think.
But that's what they wanted in the movie,
so I was recreating what was happening in the movie.
But I understand
these are Philadelphians we're talking about.
I screwed it up.
I did it wrong.
All the hot spots in Philly,
they take ribeye and they shave it
very thinly using a deli slicer,
and at the time, I didn't have that.
I just had a knife like a normal boy.
I also, I cut the meat with the grain, okay?
That is why, you know, it could end up chewy.
By slicing across the grain,
the meat fibers are so short
that it becomes very, very tender.
So today we're making proper Philly cheesesteaks.
I'm saying that with some confidence.
We'll see.
Tony Luke's is one of the more popular steak places
in Philadelphia and there are Tony Luke's right here
in sunny New York City.
So we have hit one of those up, we got some test batches.
All right.
Two different ones here.
One with whiz, I can see which one that's gonna be.
And one with white American.
I am more of a white American, literally and figuratively.
Let's get a cross section going.
Tony Luke's was skimping today, I think, a little bit
and if I were any more hungover than I currently am,
I'd be upset.
Mm, that's the whiz, I like the whiz, it's good.
But I do think I'm gonna enjoy
the white American a bit more.
I like the whiz better, I don't believe it.
(dramatic music)
Velveeta.
For when you kind of want cheese.
We're using this hilariously, outrageously processed cheese
to make an even further processed cheese.
That's Philadelphia, I'm kidding, sorry.
Oh man, I'm gonna be in trouble,
you can't leave all that stuff in there.
They'll (beeping) kill me.
Have you seen what they do when their team wins?
I can't talk, I'm from Rochester,
my team is the Bills, the worst fans in professional sport.
Okay, 13 ounces of evaporated milk.
A term that I continue not to understand,
please don't explain to me, I want it to be a mystery,
thank you.
So you might be asking yourself,
why are we using all these ingredients to make
something like cheez whiz,
a processed readily available product.
And the answer to that is.
So this, because it's sensitive and beautiful
and sweet, like me, it needs to be cooked
over a double broiler.
If you apply direct heat to this, it will explode.
All right, so just gonna kinda agitate this
until it heats up a little bit more.
In the mean time, let's make a little light conversation.
What's the worst thing about New York?
- Skinny rats. - Skinny rats?
- I saw one just the other day.
- You'd rather have a fat rat than a skinny rat?
- Well, remember I told you I was in Union Square
and I saw those skinny rats and you didn't believe me?
- She's been lying about skinny rats all week.
And I don't believe it as far as I can throw it.
- Which is probably pretty far actually.
- A skinny rat? - Yeah.
- Those things move.
- Wait, so they are real?
- No, no!
(fast upbeat music)
I'm a steak guy, all right?
I gotta have my steak, all right?
We're doing top round, some places apparently use top round
and we have a boneless rib eye.
Nothin' dry aged, nothin' primed,
nothing like that.
Good old fashion steaks for good old fashioned boys.
So we need to slice this stuff razor thin.
And in order to do that, we need to freeze it
a little bit and in order to do that,
we need to put it in the freezer.
- We have so many slabs of ice.
- It's, it's, it's fine.
Don't worry about slabs or about the ice,
everything's fine, we're fine, it's fine.
This is how they do it in Philly.
Mmm, I'm a steak guy.
(upbeat music)
Getting all the steak.
(laughing)
Yeah.
I'm a steak guy.
This is where the secret to great Philly cheesesteaks lies.
Lie, lies.
This is all you need to make great
Philly cheese steaks at home.
They're only like 400 bucks.
I'm trying to set this so it's nothing short
of outrageously thin.
We're gonna start with the top round.
Woo!
That's thin, that's thin.
This what we're gonna do all day.
This is my new job now.
There's a piece stuck there.
- Oh please be careful.
- Careful of what, Brad?
So this is very lean, I don't know how
I feel about this one.
- Well that's the fun thing because people say that.
Let me actually tell you.
If you use top round, you fry it in beef tallow
to increase the fat, that's round.
- Just trying to slice meat over here
and Kendall's hittin' me with the Philly facts.
- Is that like fake news or?
- Don't get political on me, Brad.
- Don't put! - It's fine!
(groaning) (laughing)
You thought I cut my finger, didn't you?
Yeah, I did so, somebody call 911.
(upbeat music)
Ah, so there's our top sirloin, very lean.
Don't have high hopes for it.
Let's try the rib eye, I think that's gonna turn out
much better, what do you think, Brad?
Did you just try to shrug with the camera?
Okay, that's pretty funny.
This was supposed to be my first job,
meat slicing boy, but they found out
that I was really a boy, they found out
that I was 14 years old and they fired me on the spot.
Cause I was too young to operate the equipment.
And I cried and cried and cried.
(laughing)
Cause I was 14 and I didn't have control
of my emotions and I rode a bike.
So nothing sucks quite so badly
as getting fired and having to ride your bike home.
- I almost believed that story.
- It's absolutely a true story.
- It is true.
- Stop, stop.
- What's so unbelievable about that story?
Why would that story be made up?
- You can ride a bike?
- Yes, I can ride a bike, Brad.
I'm so insulted by you right now.
- All right, I just didn't know.
Maybe I never learned so it seemed like
an impossible thing.
- You can't ride a bike?
- No but did you believe me for a second?
- The hell are you talking about?
- No, I told you a story that wasn't true,
just like you told me one.
- I can't even with you now, I can't, can't do it.
I'm not doing it tonight.
- It's my last night here.
(soft music)
- I made up that absolutely true story.
This is not the first time that I cried on my way home
from being fired very quickly at a job.
(laughing)
I got a job at LLB, you know, one of the requirements
there is like, okay, you need to wear LLB stuff.
I was broke at the time
and my manager at LLB didn't seem
to understand that concept.
That I had to take a loan from my father,
that he charged me interest on,
to fill up my car with gas to get to that job.
That's how little money I had.
So he fired me but I was so sad that.
(banging)
- Sorry.
I'm, I'm, I'm sorry.
- I almost believed that story too.
(upbeat music)
- What's my favorite bread?
Are you my favorite bread?
Untoasted bread on a Philly cheesesteak,
as far as I understand.
Untoasted bread.
Sometimes they scoop it out, I think I'm gonna do
that actually because I'm a really.
(gasping) What?
- The best part?
- For the first one, I'm not gonna scoop it,
we'll do, we'll make some experimental ones later.
So we have our.
(mumbling)
- What kind of onions are those?
These are Spanish onions.
- Nope.
- These are yellow onions.
These are, these are.
- Vidallia.
- Yeah. - You're right, okay.
I'm wrong, I quit, I'm bad at.
- You can do it over again.
Hey, what kind of onions are those?
- Uh, chip.
(upbeat music)
Time to cheese our steak.
Apparently when most steak places
make their Philly cheesesteaks, they do it over medium,
medium low heat, that way you're not building up
a crust on this stuff.
It's very, very thin so if you build up
a crust on it, it's just gonna be all crust.
And keep it moist, you cook it a little bit lower,
a little bit slower, that's why it kind of comes out
gray instead of brown and so that's what we're gonna try
the first time around, see what happens.
Cheesesteaks.
Okay, beef's down, the onions with the beef.
It's not the most appetizing looking thing in the world.
Except maybe I was wrong about the amount of beef.
But better too much than too little.
If you give me a cheesesteak that's more bread
than cheese or steak, we're gonna have words.
Cause I'm a steak guy.
And apparently we're also seasoning
at the very last minute so as to preserve moisture
in the beef.
Any pepper? - No.
- No pepper.
According to Kendall.
I'm going to start by spreading some of our whiz
on our bread, steak onto the breads.
And of course we're gonna drizzle it with some more whiz.
Oh that's a lot, okay yeah, that's a lot.
That's all right, it's fine, it's a cheesesteak,
for god sake, it's not a steak with a little bit of cheese.
It's a cheesesteak.
Here we go, there we go folks.
That to me resembles a cheesesteak, last I checked.
There we go, let's get a cross section going here.
Oh yeah, that's, guys that's not enough beef.
- You know what might help? - What?
Scooping it?
(groaning)
Let's see what this bread guts is all about.
- Nope, bread meat.
- You're right, this is amazing.
(upbeat music)
- All right, we'll scoop this.
Is there a better way to do this?
- No, there's not.
But who's gonna get the meat?
My dad used to scoop it all out
and then he would compact it all into a ball.
And then he'd give it to me.
- Here you go sport.
(laughing)
- Really, this is really exactly,
you guys gotta see.
- You gotta see this ball of bread.
Over here, we're makin' cheesesteaks,
and you go in with your (beep) bread ball.
(laughing)
This looks like it's from Tony Luke's over here.
- [Girls] More cheez whiz!
- Thank you!
Cheez whiz, cheez whiz.
Everybody has a cheez whiz.
That is cheez whiz, there's a will to live now.
Let's see what we got.
Still not enough, I want this to be stacked.
So the next one I'm gonna do the same amount of beef,
I'm gonna put it on one sandwich and you're gonna eat
every single bite, Brad.
We've been using the rib eye,
and now I wanna see about the top sirloin,
this is a much leaner piece of beef
so I'm gonna cook it in a lot of fat
in the hopes that it will create the same drippy greasiness
that you're looking for in a good cheesesteak.
And I'm gonna try it with provolone this time.
Follow me, won't you?
It's not far, it's not a far trip.
Let's go right here.
I'm gonna move and stand right here
and operate from over here.
I'm just gonna do all of it, who cares?
Who cares?
Scatter the onions, scatter 'em boys.
- He said to himself. - Huh?
- I was just adding a bit of narration.
- Okay, you're most welcome to do that.
Give me a break from doing voiceover for once.
- [Brad] And with that, Andrew unknowingly gave Brad license
to ruin this portion of the episode.
More unfortunate still, he didn't know he was about to die.
- That's too much beef.
- [Brad] He said confidently, failing to understand
that it's removal would ultimately lead
to his untimely end.
- It's a good thing that docking your pay
sounds really complicated.
- [Brad] But not as complicated as the dire circumstance
Andrew's about to find himself.
- Hey, you're not allowed to narrate yourself
and me in the third person omnition.
(upbeat music)
Okay, there's a cheesesteak for the boys.
- What about the girls? - No.
- It's guy food.
- You know, Philly cheesesteaks, guy food.
As I have painted nails.
(laughing)
Let's see what we got here.
We lost a lot of steak.
I don't know if I'm gonna like this as much
cause I don't think the top sirloin is gonna do it.
It's good but it's definitely drier.
There's about half as much fat or even less.
So we used extra oil to fry it in
and you really need that beef tallow
cause it's pretty dry.
I think the best combo is going to be the rib eye
with American cheese and spicy peppers.
Let's try it out.
(upbeat music)
Sure.
All right, all right, I'm gonna try again
and this time, I'm going for gold.
And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.
Back on the flat top we go.
(soft music)
- Thank you!
- What the hell?
Here goes the American cheese.
And we're gonna grab this guy
and we're just on go, boop.
And he's gonna act like sort of a cloche
that's gonna help trap steam and melt the cheese
and it's gonna soften the bread too.
And I got these nice sliced hot cherry peppers.
These are going to be a lovely addition
to our sandwich.
Just trying to get the juices out of there,
I just want the juices off, I don't want a juicy.
(mumbling)
Sorry you had to see that, Rebecca.
- I forgive you.
- Little louder please.
- I forgive you.
- Thank you.
- She's good at making things up too.
(laughing)
(upbeat music)
All right, I'm gonna take this off the heat.
This is already looking to be off to quite a good start.
Oh my goodness, yeah, that is ready to go.
Season with salt.
I'm gonna hit this with some pickled peppers.
Here we go.
Oh boy, that's a lot of beef.
There we go, we can do this.
You and me, Andy.
All right, that's kind of on there.
Now I'm gonna close it up, try to.
Seriously though.
- It's beautiful. - It's gorgeous,
it's gorgeous.
Oh yeah, that's what I wanna see
when I open up my cheese steak.
That's the one.
Steaming this over the beef was key,
this bread feels so much more soft and I know
it's not gonna like squish out all the toppings
like the last one did.
Mmm.
Unbelievable, it's exactly like,
you know, the cheesesteak that you think
of when you close your eyes.
It's perfect.
So anybody who says I didn't unbotch this,
is, Brad, what are they?
- They're making up a story.
- Yeah, they're making up a story, asshole.
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(soft music)