- Ron.
- I am submitting this menu
from a Pawnee institution,
J.J.'s Diner, home of the world's best breakfast dish,
the Four Horse-meals of the Egg-Porkalypse.
- Hey, what's up, guys?
And welcome back to this,
the final episode of "Binging With Babish"
to come out of the old kitchen.
I'm all moved in to the new spot
and have already filmed the subject of next week's episode,
"The Meat Tornado," but for now we're taking a look
at the Four Horse-meals of the Egg-Porkalypse,
described in Leslie Knope's book
as "An astonishing onslaught of protein,"
that includes a 12-egg scramble, bacon,
sausage, ham, hash browns, chicken fried steak,
and a giant tower of buttermilk pancakes.
First thing we can start with is the flapjacks.
This is a factory standard buttermilk pancake recipe.
If you wanna see how to make it,
click the link in the upper right hand corner right now.
Whisk it to a lumpy smooth consistency,
cover with plastic wrap, and fridge for up to 24 hours.
Plenty of time to address
the many other Horse-meals of this Egg-Porkalypse.
If we consult the book,
"Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America",
you can see that there are two different
iterations of hash browns.
A mountain of scattered and shredded hash browns
and five deep fried hash brown patties.
So, we're gonna start with the patties
by peeling and chopping five medium russets
into one-inch chunks,
immediately dunking them into a cool water bath
so as they do not discolor.
This is also gonna help wash off some of the excess starch,
which is gonna give us crispier potatoes.
So, go ahead and drain these
and then we're gonna pat 'em dry
on a few layers of paper towels.
And then we're following a method for tater tots
from master of all things crispy,
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt,
who calls for the potatoes to be par fried
in 350 degree Fahrenheit vegetable oil
for three to four minutes
until lightly browned and cooked through.
Once nicely blonde around the edges,
we're gonna fish them out and drain them
on a paper towel set in a rimmed baking sheet.
Then we're gonna let them cool completely
at room temperature about 20 minutes
before processing them into a chunky paste.
This fry, fry again process
is going to keep the interiors of our hash browns
light and flaky rather than gummy and dense.
So, once they're nice and cool,
go ahead and load them into your favorite food processor
and hit it with eight one-second pulses
until all of the potatoes have been broken down
into little tiny chunks.
Do this in batches to ensure
that the potatoes are processed evenly,
and fish out any extra large chunks with your hands
and your human intelligence.
Once everybody's all processed together
we can season and form into patties.
We're gonna add two teaspoons of sugar,
a few twists of freshly ground black pepper,
a hefty pinch, or about one teaspoon, of kosher salt,
and a tablespoon of potato starch,
which is gonna help give our hash browns
structure and meaning.
Once evenly mixed together,
it's time to start forming them into patties.
Hash browns typically are sort of oblong oval pucks
designed to be quickly and easily mashed
into your mouth hole.
Now we're gonna freeze these bad boys for about an hour
until they are frozen solid.
This is both going to make it easier
to retrieve and deep fry them,
and it's also going to crystallize
the potatoes' molecular structure,
making them more tender.
Back into some 375 degree Fahrenheit oil they go
for about five minutes until deeply golden brown and crisp.
Drain them on a wire rack, and there you have it,
beautiful, crispy, airy, flaky hash browns,
which we're gonna keep warm in a low oven
while we make the million other things that we're making.
The most excited for which I am is chicken fried steak,
which starts with one of the cheapest
and toughest cuts around, top sirloin,
which we're going to gently coax into being tender
using a whole bunch of little tiny sharp knives.
This is a meat tenderizer used for making cubed steak,
a steak filled with hundreds, if not thousands,
of little tiny incisions,
rendering even the most impossibly tough
cuts of beef butter knife soft.
After many spirited stomps
they look very much the same,
but look more closely and you will see,
they have been bespeckled
with lots and lots of little holes.
And so, now they're ready for breading.
In my dry breading station
I have one cup of all purpose flour,
a teaspoon each kosher salt and cayenne pepper,
tiny whisked until homogenous.
Then on the wetter side of things,
I have one large egg,
one teaspoon of baking powder
and a half teaspoon of baking soda,
which I'm going to tiny whisk into a slurry
before tiny whisking in one cup of buttermilk.
This is gonna give our breading a nice light, airy texture.
Once everybody on both sides is homogenous
we're ready to start dippin' our steaks.
And since we're obviously
not trying to skimp on the cholesterol,
we are of course double battering.
That means taking a prolonged dip in the dry stuff,
shaking off any excess,
heading over for a swim in the wet stuff,
making sure that every crack and cranny
is comprehensively coated
and heading back over into the dry,
creating a bulky, craggly exterior,
not unlike that of fried chicken.
But fun fact, that is actually not
where chicken fried steak gets its name.
A known foodie and longtime Francophile,
Thomas Jefferson is actually credited with...
I'm just kidding, it totally got its name
from being a steak fried like chicken,
which is exactly what we're gonna do with it.
Into some 350 degree Fahrenheit oil it goes,
where it shall fry about four to five minutes per side
until deeply golden brown and crisp all over.
Use extreme caution when flipping
because if you crack the shell
you're gonna have a bad time.
Drain it on a wire rack,
keep it warm in a low oven,
and rinse and repeat with any remaining steaks.
And then the very key to the deliciousness
of chicken fried steaks lies in the bottom of this pot.
That's right.
Remember all the brown sloppy gold
from the KFC episode?
All this deep fried gunk
is the key to making delicious gravy.
So, we're reserving as much as possible
in the bottom of the pan,
along with about two to three tablespoons
worth of leftover fry oil,
into which we're gonna dump half an onion, finely minced.
We're gonna saute that onion
and all that brown sloppy goodness
for two to three minutes until it's starting to soften
and turn translucent around the edges.
Add two or three crushed cloves of garlic
and continue to saute over a medium heat
for about 30 seconds until fragrant.
And then we're adding a quarter cup of flour
as our eventual thickener.
Mix that in with the vegetables
and let it cook for about two to three minutes
until the raw flour smell dissipates.
Then we are slowly whisking in
about a half a cup of beef stock
and the star of the show, one cup of light cream.
Add it slowly at first,
whisking constantly to prevent lumps.
Add the rest and whisk frequently over medium-high heat
until bubbling and thickened.
Once it starts to bubble,
make sure you lower the heat
so as to not scorch the sauce.
When it's just about done
we're gonna season with kosher salt,
freshly ground pepper,
and an optional sprinkle of cayenne pepper.
We wanna reduce and thicken to the point
that it can easily coat the back of a spoon.
We're also using a spoon so we can give it a little taste.
Let's see how this is.
Oh my god, that's good.
Don't worry if it seems a little thin,
it's going to thicken as it cools,
but we wanna keep it warm until we're ready to serve.
Last bit of prep we've gotta do
is shred our potatoes for our scattered fried hash browns.
To make these, we are peeling and shredding
three large russets directly into a bowl of cool water.
This, again, is both going to remove excess starch,
and prevent them from discoloring too quickly.
Set those aside,
and just like the very first episode out of this kitchen,
we're gonna finish on the flattop.
There is no other way that a breakfast of this magnitude
could be constructed.
Once sizzling hot, we're gonna treat the whole surface
with a little drizzle of canola oil,
just to make sure that nobody gets too sticky,
and then it's time to commence
with the onslaught of protein.
I'm starting with what looked to me
like a pound of fried bacon
fried up extra crisp the way that I imagine Ron likes it.
I can just imagine him saying something
about how floppy bacon
is for frequent criers and bed-wetters.
We've also got three large slabs of ham
that we're just gonna heat up and get a nice crust on.
Once everybody's nicely browned and fried up,
it's time to evacuate them onto a plate,
which we're gonna keep warm in a low oven
as we move on to phase two,
the sausage and pancake phase.
I've got some regular plain Jane breakfast sausage here,
next to which I'm going to begin to dollop
large buttermilk pancakes.
These are gonna fry about three minutes on their first side
until they begin to turn pale and blistery around the edges.
And let us all take a moment to remember
that these are all being fried in bacon fat.
Once the pancakes are flipped
they get another two to three minutes on the opposing side
before being stacked on a plate and repeating
until we got no pancake batter left.
Pancakes finished, it's time to get
this off of the spatula here.
Come on, dude, let's go.
Join your pancakey brethren.
And last but not least,
we have our scattered hash browns and 12-egg scramble.
The potatoes, we're gonna place in a clean kitchen towel
and just squeeze the absolute dickens out of.
Make sure that they are super dry
to facilitate effective browning.
But before they are headed over the cooktop
we're gonna lightly season them with some kosher salt
and freshly ground black pepper, just the hits.
Mix gently to distribute throughout
and load them up onto an oiled flattop.
Then after flattening out with a large metal spatula
into a potato patty,
we're gonna cover them with a bowl
while frying on the first side.
This is gonna help the potatoes cook more evenly throughout.
Then, once the sausage has been removed
onto the keep-it-warm plate,
we're gonna dedicate the new flattop real estate
to the 12-egg scramble,
which is exactly what it sounds like,
12 eggs, scrambled,
but we're doing ours in bacon and sausage fat.
Just sorta scramble them around them,
and once you have some nice big, soft, pillowy, eggy curds,
remove them onto a plate just in time to realize
that you didn't time out your hash brown very well.
But just pretend that you're at J.J.'s
and you have heat lamps or something.
Flip once nicely browned,
cooking for four to five minutes per side.
Once it's ready to go, flop it atop your hash brown pucks
and get ready to serve.
Everybody else is waiting,
so why don't we go join the party?
And what a party it is.
Thousands of calories and hundreds of grams of cholesterol
on parade alongside a single glass of orange juice
and a single cup of coffee.
I'm about to dig right into this sucker,
but first I just wanna say a few words.
(sighs) Well, folks,
this is it.
Oh, I'm not in focus, am I?
Hang on a second.
(groans) Well, folks, that's it.
That is the last meal to come out of the SoHo kitchen.
I've lived here for two plus some-odd years.
I fell in love here, I wrote a cookbook here,
I lived a whole lot of life here,
and it's pretty crazy to say goodbye.
Oh, I forgot the sausage gravy.
Hang on.
We mustn't forget the sausage gravy.
Okay, that's better.
So yeah, like I was saying,
(sighs) I'm feeling a lot of things saying goodbye.
I'm feeling scared (laughs),
but like Ron Swanson says,
"When I eat, it is the food that is scared,"
so I'm gonna try to adopt that outlook.
I'm feeling excited because I've got a lot
of big new plans for the new space,
new shows, new people, new everything.
And I'm also feeling pretty sad.
This place has been my home
for longer than most places have ever been my home.
And like Ron Swanson says, again,
"There is no sadness that breakfast food cannot cure,"
so I'm gonna live by those words
and I'm gonna dig in to this breakfast food right now.
Oh, this needs butter.
Boop. (laughs)
Oh, hold on, I got something to.
My last splash of Lagavulin 16.
Last little bit.
Oh, I spilled it on the eggs.
That's okay.
Okay, that's not a little bit, that's a lot of bit,
but whatever, we're celebrating tonight.
Thank you guys so much for sticking with me.
I owe everything I have to you.
I owe everything, more than I ever dreamed I would have,
I owe it all to you.
And like I said in my book,
I'm gonna spend the rest of my life
working to earn everything that you've given me.
So, here's to you guys.
Thank you so much for sticking with me.
I'm gonna devour this breakfast food right now.
Particularly this chicken fried steak
'cause I've been thinking about this all (beep) day.
Mm.
Hell yeah, dude.
This guy's going in the Clean Plate Club tonight.