Hey, what's up guys and welcome back to Basics with Babish
where this week, we are sponsored by Blue Apron.
An awesome meal kit delivery service that is an easy and healthy way to get cooking at home.
And the first 100 people to use the link in the description of this video to sign up
will receive $50 off their first two weeks of Blue Apron deliveries.
We're gonna learn how to use this kit to make Shakshuka later,
but for now let's put all our new toys back into the fridge and get down to basics.
(music plays)
Alright guys, so let's start with scotch eggs.
Which is a great opportunity to exercise and hone our ability to make soft-boiled eggs.
Now I like to steam my eggs.
That is put them in a steam basket.
Drop them into a little bit of boiling water and cover; steaming for no more than 6 minutes, maybe even 5, since we are going to be frying these down the line.
Straight out of the steam basket, we're plunging these into an ice bath, cause we want to stop them from cooking immediately.
Once they've had the chance to cool off completely, about fifteen minutes,
we're going to take them back out of the water and crack them all over
putting them back in the water so they're going to be a little bit easier to peel
because the water is going to seep its way
in between the shell and the egg.
Then, we're taking a rare look at my sink to peel the eggs under running water.
Then, one last time back into the ice bath and refrigerate until ready to cook.
While those guys chill out, we're making some herb loaded ground pork
with which we are going to envelop our eggs.
I've got about a tablespoon or so each worth of sage, thyme, and rosemary
that I'm going to finely mince before adding to, maybe, a pound and a half of ground pork.
The most important one here being sage. We want this to have sort of a breakfast sausage vibe.
We're also going to hit this with a heavy-handed few pinches of kosher salt and freshly ground pepper.
Go ahead and mash that up, make sure that it's well incorporated.
You can almost smear the pork against the side of the bowl to create a kind of emulsion.
This is going to result in a more uniform sausage patty ensconcing our egg.
Next up, we've got a pretty standard breading setup here: eggs, flour, and panko bread crumbs.
We're starting by taking about a quarter of the sausage mixture and flattening it out into a big ol' sausage patty
into which we can deposit our egg and sort of slowly stretch and wrap it around the circumference of the egg.
Once you've got the whole thing safely wrapped and patched where necessary,
you can sort of squeeze and roll the entire affair back and forth between your hands
to make sure that the sausage is evenly distributed around the egg.
And then, it's time to get breading.
We're gonna start by coating the sausage with a layer of flour.
Just like you might do with fried chicken.
And then we're moving into a few beaten eggs.
Then once we've got our egg wrapped in sausage thoroughly coated in more egg,
it's time to hit it with them panko bread crumbs.
Once everybody has been evenly coated, it's time to heat our frying oil to 375° Fahrenheit.
(in a bad impression) And then as it comes time to fry our dragon eggs,
it's time for me to put on my Jodah impression from Game of Thrones.
They're dragon eggs, Khaleesi, they were never meant to be fried.
That is unless you were to fry them for seven to ten minutes until they registered 80° centigrade
or (back to normal) 175° Farenheit
That is only in the sausage layer, we want the centre of the egg layer to remain soft and yolky.
So we're letting these guys drip dry for a few minutes
before making sure that they meet FDA regulations and then building a whole grain mustard aioli.
That is a fake aioli, a "fakioli"; equal parts mayonnaise and grain mustard.
Simple as that. A very easy and accommodating sauce for our Scotch eggs.
Simply spread a pool of the sauce on the bottom of the plate, or you can serve it on the side if you're doing this picnic style.
Either way, we're all here for the same reason,
to split this guy open and see what's inside.
Little bit of suspense built up while the camera tracks from left to right,
and I slowly saw my knife through the centre of our prize.
Cracking open to reveal, what, a chalky, overcooked yolk?
No.
A runny, delicious yolk, pouring with reckless abandon over our mustard aioli like it's not even a big deal.
But, oh my God, it is a big deal.
Not unlike our next dish, an unapologetic brunch going crowd pleaser: Eggs Benedict.
A dish consisting of two different preparations of eggs, both of which are traditionally thought as very difficult.
But with a few simple twists of technique, we can make it very easily for all your hungover friends.
Let's start by cracking three whole egg yolks into the jar of a blender,
adding a little sprinkle of paprika,
adding a playful little dollop of mustard,
a generous and emotionally available squeeze of lemon juice,
or the juice of one whole lemon,
and blitz together.
Once these guys are thoroughly blended after thirty or so seconds
we're going to remove the "pour stuff into me" hole in the top of the blender.
Grab a stick worth of simmering unsalted butter, and slowly start to pour it through the top.
You want to pour slowly enough that the residual heat from the butter does not scramble the eggs
but
creates a smooth and thick hollandaise sauce.
The cascading stream of which is irresistable not to plunge one's finger into and shove into one's,
let's call it
taste testing mouth.
And now comes the age-old task of poaching eggs.
Today's method comes courtesy of J. Kenji López-Alt
who advises cracking eggs into a fine mesh sieve
and swirling them around as such.
Not only so you've got the perfect vessel to transfer the egg into some barely simmering water,
but also so the sieve can help remove some of the thinner, wispier yolk.
AKA the very bane of home egg poachers everywhere.
After about three minutes in 190° Fahrenheit water
these guys are ready to come out.
Drop them gingerly atop some freshly fried Canadian bacon or ham,
a toasted English muffin,
and topped with, you guessed it, egg yolk butter sauce.
And then top that with a dollop of pure cholestrol.
I'm kidding, of course, this is one of America's brunch staples, along with fried chicken and waffles
and burgers with unlimited mimosas.
These guys admittedly look a little plain unless you garnish them with paprika,
so make sure you go ahead and do that.
And prepare to amaze all of your hungover friends when you prepare this seemingly out of nowhere
because you poached the eggs the night before.
That's right.
You can poach these eggs as described and put them in ice water
let them sit in the fridge for up to three days.
Simply reheat them in a bowl of hot water, whip up some blender hollandaise,
and toast up some English muffins and suddenly
you're an unfathomable genius.
Alright, guys, so let's take a look at yet another easy egg preparation, brought to you by Blue Apron.
With one of their super easy and intuitive recipe kits,
we're gonna try something that I've had a great deal of trouble with: Shakshuka.
So the procedure for making shakshuka follows a pretty basic formula.
Make a tomato-based sauce with vegetables and/or meat, in this case we've got red onions, carrots, potatoes, and sweet peppers.
And then, once those have cooked,
we're going to make a couple wells, crack a couple eggs into them and drop the whole affair into a 400° Fahrenheit oven.
For about five minutes or until the whites are set and the yolks are runny.
We're gonna top it with a little bit of feta cheese,
and make sure that the eggs are cooked properly.
They are.
And then we've got some pita bread that we've toasted with za'atar.
All coming together for a really nice, well rounded meal that took about thirty minutes to make.
Blue Apron is a great way to start cooking at home, more often,
and pick up some new cooking skills.
They have both two-person and family meal plans,
they use farm fresh ingredients,
and each meal is between five to eight hundred calories per serving.
And like I mentioned earlier, the first one hundred people to sign up using the link in the description
will get $50 off their first two weeks.
I hope you guys give it a try yourselves,
but for me,
it's time to eat some steak.