(upbeat dramatic music)
(ingredients mixing)
(mixture sizzling)
- How about a victory drink?
I call it the Mississippi Queen.
- Mississippi Queen?
Why do you call that? - Oh, you'll find out.
- Hey, what's up guys.
Welcome back to "Binging With Babish,"
where this week we are celebrating 8 million subscribers.
We're recreating the Mississippi Queen from regular show.
But first, I wanna give you guys
a look behind the scenes at the new studio.
If that doesn't interest you,
you can skip to the next chapter.
Otherwise, follow me.
(door opening) Hello there! (laughs)
Hi? (laughs)
Oh, hey, couldn't hear you knock.
- Want me to knock? - No, I just make that up.
- Okay. - Yeah.
Hey, what's up MTV cribs.
This is my crab, let's check it.
No!
Well, hello!
Welcome to the new Babish Studios, BCU HQ.
Come on in?
This is the brand center, nerve center.
This is the nerve center of the BCU.
This is the garden apartment of my house
that I bought in Brooklyn,
which I have, as you can see,
I retrofitted into our studios.
This is studio A, studio B's downstairs, we'll get there.
As you can see this was a New York city apartment,
and we converted it into our play place, my play place.
Right here, I have a pre-ferment going
for some batch of bagels.
You guys know how I feel about bagels recently.
So, keep an eye out.
Fermata tequila that The Rock himself sent me.
I'm just kidding, Dharmana sent it to me,
but The Rock probably was not aware of that.
This is a Viking six-burner with (indistinct) technology.
Watch this. (blows)
(Viking lighter firing)
It knows that it went out. (laughs)
Hey! (laughs) See?
So, Oh! Okay.
All right, that doesn't work.
Top of the line, Viking ventilation,
which we haven't used yet, and it was very expensive.
So, (taps) whoops!
Over here, we have the fireplace.
Doesn't this make a handsome addition to the background,
the backdrop of recreating foods from the?
(laughs) Yes!
Jess is on camera duty and girlfriend duty.
Here. There she is.
- Hello?
- [Babish] Hello. This is very poor lighting.
You're not gonna be happy with that, I'm sorry.
- Back here? - Better.
- Down here? - Go back.
And angle your face up as high as you can.
That's the one?
- Does this work? - That's it.
- Okay. - All right.
Cut. We got it. - Great! (laughs)
- This is an oven.
This has always been my dream to have a dual oven.
This is a Viking, everything's Viking.
Lights. (laughs)
There's fan because it's convection, it's fan.
It's a fan oven.
Anyway, over here we have Kendall's office.
Kendall Beach is our new kitchen producer
helping the show runs smoothly.
She's helping me test out recipes,
she's helping me get my me's on plus, all-in plus.
We'll meet her in a second.
She's downstairs, helping out Sohla who's making a cake.
And I only know that 'cause I can smell it.
It smells like cake in here.
I wish you guys could smell it. One day!
I am aware that it's a little bit messy in here.
I only moved here five months ago.
Can you just cut me a little slack?
Thank you.
So, over here, we are in the BCU office,
and you might remember this familiar face...
Oh, maybe not.
This is Saywer- - Trust me, it's me.
- I appreciate you being safe. - Of course.
- Or you're doing important work,
like looking at pictures of Kelsey Grammar, swimming.
Okay. Carry on. - All right.
- Cool. - Cool.
- And then over here, we have my work station
which is the...
Oh, okay, I'm sorry.
Let's just hide that.
Okay. Yeah, no, we're good.
This is where I work. (laughs)
This is where I work.
This is where I lay down the VO right here.
As you can see, I've improved my setup a little bit.
I've got Neumann, I know how to pronounce it correctly.
This is a Neumann something.
We brought the TV back, the big, stupid bleak, big TV.
Just giving an idea about it is. (laughs)
This is dumb. (laughs)
So, that's the office.
Saywer, always wear your protection.
(Saywer screaming) (crew laughing)
- Bye, Saywer. - Bye!
- All right. Now, let's head downstairs
where we will see the Sohla cre...
Let's do that again.
Hello there? - [Sohla] Hello.
What are you doing? - This is unexpected
drop-in for me in the air.
- It's so unexpected.
Wow! Is this live?
- Is that my coconut oil that I use for my feet?
I'm just kidding. (laughs)
- Do you like coconut oil? - For my feet, no.
For your consumption? - Yeah, no, I do.
- Yeah?
- I like it as a cooking oil.
- Mm-hmm? - I like it as a coconut oil.
Anyway, over here. - [Jess] Hey, Sohla?
- [Sohla] Hi.
- That's Sohla, and this...
Hey, this is Kendall Beach,
she's the newest addition to the BCU.
This is our new kitchen producer.
She keeps the wheels turning
and the everything humming like clockwork.
- I try.
- How do you like working at the BCU?
- I like it a lot.
I give it a ten out of ten
- We just added cat sitter to your list of duties,
- That's true- - Which I thought
would bump it up to 11,
'cause you're like..
- Well, it that like a? - Was that 9.5?
- Yeah. - Okay.
- Yeah. - All right, noted.
It's still the best grade I've ever gotten
Here. (laughs) - Yeah.
Yeah, that.
- Back over behind Sohla here. (laughs)
- [Jess] All right. Do you wanna do any of the savory
like the wheel? - Yeah, the wheel. Okay.
The wheel. (laughs)
We keep the wheel over here.
Here it is. (laughs)
This is the wheel from Sohla's chef...
Ah! (laughs)
- [Jess] Bye, guys.
- Bye! - Bye!
- [Sohla] Figuring out this.
- [Jess] I believe in you.
- Now, I have a small tear in my pants,
but these pants fit really good.
And you can only see it, if you were say,
I don't know, a camera following me upstairs.
How about you of first?
No, no, no, no!
Not the pants. (laughs)
Go, go on.
So, now I'd like to show you
the newest, newest addition to the BCU.
She just joined us 72 hours ago or so,
but be real quiet, tip-toe.
Who's there, kitty.
So, this little lady,
is Buckwheat. (Buckwheat chirruping)
Yeah, I know. - [Jess] Hey?
- what's the big, scary thing?
Oh, it's not that scary.
- [Jess] Can you get closer to her?
- Closer to her? - Yeah, yeah.
- Oh, my reap! (Jess laughing)
So, this is Bucky, Buckwheat,
because she looks like buckwheat flour.
And we named her before we found out she was a girl,
and she was shivering outside our front door three days ago.
We waited for her mom to come back, but no dice.
So, we set up her a little apartment here in the bathroom.
Give me a kiss? (mumbles)
Thank you guys so much for helping me
reach 8 million subscribers.
I hoped you enjoy this little,
look behind the scenes.
I hope it don't look to weird,
too weird in my bunched up apron.
Bucky says hi.
Bucky is thankful for all the belly rubs
that you guys are sending her with your minds.
Let's get back to the episode, shall we?
Well, let's let Bucky stay here.
Come here. (gentle ambient music)
We wanna get back to our regularly scheduled programming.
(gentle ambient music continues)
All right, that's enough kitten cuddling for now.
Let's make us a practically poisonous Mississippi Queen.
A good drizzle of each chocolate sauce and soy sauce,
and then not quite a full jar of mayonnaise,
but more than I'm used to in my cocktail.
The generous helping of kimchi,
a generous pour from a jar of pasta sauce.
A bag of what looked to me like muscles at the time,
but in retrospect, I think might've been clams
but I ordered mussels.
I really don't think it's gonna make
that much of a difference.
A plates of assorted sushi and sashimi.
Don't forget the chunk of wasabi,
and maybe a little bit more pasta sauce.
And that's really all there is to a Mississippi Queen.
This thing is supposed to be so spicy
that it makes rugby Mordecai and Benson trip face.
So, I think it needs a little bit of help.
What we have here as a bottle of Mad Dog 357,
number nine, plutonium,
the world's hottest hot sauce at 9 million Scoville units,
and costing $109 for one ounce.
Basically, this is just a 60% capsaicin extract,
roughly 3000 times hotter than Tabasco sauce,
and more than four times hotter than the hottest hot sauce
I've ever eaten the last step.
So, I'm understandably only putting in
about a half a teaspoon,
which alone will have the spice equivalent
of 50 bottles of Tabasco sauce.
Anyway, once we've got this delicious looking mixture
all mixed up, we need only add
a cocktail umbrella and a straw.
And there you have it, The Mississippi Queen.
Time to give it an admittedly difficult tastes
as it's a rather thick mixture and kinda hard
to pull through the straw.
But eventually, I got myself a mouthful.
And not only did it taste like seafood burger special sauce,
it was, as you might imagine, base meltingly hot.
There are just so many reasons
that I can't recommend making this at home.
The gross expense, the gross waste, the gross grossness.
But the best thing about it is the unbearable heat.
So, now more than I've ever meant it,
when I've said it before,
I think we can do a whole lot better.
This seems to be a play on a Bloody Mary.
So, I'm gonna start with 32 ounces
of high quality tomato juice,
add a little bit of chili sauce
for that slight shrimp cocktail vibe,
a little rice vinegar in honor of the dearly departed sushi,
a little clam juice to replace,
what I, in retrospect realized were probably clams.
A glug of soy sauce.
And because it's gonna play nice with all these flavors,
a little fish sauce.
And honestly, it let's bring back the kimchi.
If we liquefy it, it's gonna taste really, really good
in a Bloody Mary, I think.
Plus, it just wouldn't be the Mississippi queen
without some stuff floating in it.
In that spirit, let's peel and grate,
maybe a quarter cup of freshly grated horseradish.
And in what I feel like it's another fitting homage
to the Mississippi queen, some wasabi.
We got a lot of briny, seafood flavors going on here,
and I think this stuff's gonna play real nice.
Then we turned to the matter of heat,
and I'm not eating that Mad Dog 357 (beep) again.
So, to bring a decent amount of heats
and a good amount of flavor,
we've got a whole seeded and chopped habanero,
plus, a little shake of celery salt because why not?
Some kosher salt and some freshly ground pepper,
and blitz until relatively smooth.
You don't wanna have to chew your Bloody Mary.
And there we have it, our base Bloody Mary mix,
which I gotta say, really solid start.
It's like a Bloody Mary and a michelada had a baby,
and it was raised in a sushi restaurant.
But it just doesn't have the psychoactive punch
that I got from watching that scene.
For that, I think we need mushrooms.
What kind of mushrooms you ask?
Well, let's just say that they're skinny,
they're dried, and they're expensive,
because they're just porcini mushrooms, or are they?
They are.
Or are they?
I'm kidding, they are.
Don't read the mushroom dust after you've ground them up
into a fine powder, pass it through a fine mesh sieve
to catch any big old chunks,
and blend it into your Bloody Mary mixture.
Now, you might be asking me,
why are you doing this outside of a mushroom joke?
Well, dried porcini mushrooms are a great way
to amp up the umami and depth of flavor in our Bloody Mary.
And as I'm finding out, they are really good
at making geometric patterns look more interesting.
Last up, this beverage is going to provide
the perfect environment for some actual seafood contents.
Here, I've got some shrimp that I'm going to peel,
and then de vein by placing a shallow cut down
the back of the shrimp and removing its digestive tract.
Yummy! (smooth rock music)
The scalps, we're gonna simply sear
in a high smoked point oil, like grape seed oil.
Now, moving over a medium heat for a solid minute and a half
until a beautiful brown crust is formed,
and then butter pasting like steak
from maximum luxuriousness.
Cooking for about three minutes total,
or until the thickest one registers 130 degrees Fahrenheit,
at it's thickest points.
Set those aside on a paper towel while we do our shrimp,
which we could steam or poach,
but I'm just gonna saute them very quickly on each side,
and flipping occasionally so they don't burn,
and likewise, cooking to an internal
doneness of 130 degrees Fahrenheit.
Set those aside 'cause it's time to assemble.
Now, the only tributes missing to our original cocktail
are Manet's and chocolate.
Two things I'm not really thrilled to bring to the situation
because I think we've got a pretty good
Bloody Mary going on here.
So, I'm gonna do a rim of Aleppo pepper
and freshly grated chocolate,
which I'm gonna tiny whisk together
and use the Mayo to fix the mixture
to my intended cocktail glass rim.
Which is as close to my drink as Mayo is going to get.
And it actually tastes surprisingly not terribly awful.
That being said, it's time to finally have a drink.
We're breaking from the cartoon in a big way,
and adding a couple measures of this clear Russian liquid,
which is the only reason that exists to drink a Bloody Mary.
I understand virgin daiquiris or pina coladas,
but Bloody Mary's?
Come on, pouring our prepared Mary mix over top,
giving it a little stir with an elongated cocktail spoon.
Make sure everybody's all good and mixed together.
Before beginning the rather complicated garnishing process,
so I'm gonna use a metal straw.
And then we need some kind of vegetation,
so I'm just gonna go with a celery stock.
And our seafood must be skewered before being tucked in
with the rest of the bunch.
And then once we got two shrimps, two scallops on there,
they're being nestled like a savory brunch time bouquet
into our awaiting drink.
And even though this is a pretty handsome Bloody Mary as is,
we're gonna add one final touch,
the little blue cocktail umbrella.
And there you have it, a cocktail. I would have gladly order
after a night of one, too many party pitz.
But how does it taste?
Well, once I'm able to find my straw,
I can tell you that it's the very model
of a modern Bloody Mary.
It is rich and spicy, and savory,
and it plays real nice with the included seafood.
In fact, I don't know why more Bloody Marys
don't come with seafood,
it's practically a cocktail sauce cocktail.
So, thank you guys so much for helping me celebrate
hitting 8 million subscribers
and for your kindness, generosity, and support.
And I will see you next week.
(upbeat music)