[various clips begin] - Atkin's, right? - We caught a parasite over there. Doctors don't know what it is.
- What d'they eat, tabbouleh? - Actually, that's why I'm here. I've been dyin' for a Satriale's veal parm hero.
[Captain] ♪ Oooooh ♪
♪ Who lives in a chicken parmesan hero under the sea?♪
[Chorus] ♪ Spongebob Squarepants! ♪
[Stuffed Spongebob] Whee-hee!
- How good is that...? - (mumbling) Ohh, oh oh, yeah.
- (audience laughs) See? - (muffled) Mm-hmm. [clips end]
Hey, what's up guys? Welcome back to Binging with Babish
where this week, I am craving a parmesan hero, and as you just saw, I will use any excuse to make one.
The only clip that I couldn't find was for eggplant parmesan.
Eggplant parm deserves more attention -- and why is everybody laughing at me?
Before we get into manhandling our eggplant, we need to focus on the building blocks of the parmesan hero:
first and foremost - a good sauce. We've made Italian red sauce a few times on this show, and this is a relatively simple amalgam of all of them.
But this time we're going to oven-roast the sauce with a cocked lid for four to five hours at 325 degrees Fahrenheit,
during which time, we can get to making our meatballs. I'm starting by pouring a little bit of buttermilk over
three slices of torn white bread, adding a couple cloves of crushed garlic,
a small minced onion, a generous grating of parmesan,
and something we haven't seen on this show in a while: a generous grating of nutmeg.
I'm also going to add some freshly chopped parsley and basil.
We're getting all of our additional flavors living in one place so that they can be more easily dispersed throughout the meat.
Add a few pinches of dried oregano, give it a little mix, make sure that everybody's gotten to know each other,
and for extra juicy unctuous-ness, we're going to add half a cup of either homemade chicken stock
or store-bought chicken stock into which you have dissolved one packet of gelatin.
Next up, it may surprise you to learn that meatballs contain a great deal of meat.
I'm going with equal parts, about one pound each, of the classic meatball mix: beef, veal, and pork.
I'm seasoning generously with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
before gettin' my hands dirty and wishing that I'd used a bigger bowl.
Once everything is evenly incorporated, we're going to shape these guys into - you guessed it, eggrolls.
Um, sorry, uh - meatballs.
Go ahead and disperse those evenly on a well-oiled rack over a rimmed baking sheet
and bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 to 30 minutes or until browned.
During which time we can slice up and get our eggplant sweatin'.
That is, salt the slices of eggplant on both sides, encouraging it to give up some of its moisture.
This seasons, softens, and can reduce some bitterness that often plagues eggplant.
You can see after two hours these things are sweatin' like a Gatorade commercial,
so we're just going to dab that off with a paper towel, and these guys are ready to fry.
While we fry, we're going to finish up our meatballs by adding them to the sauce and letting them finish cooking for
about 45 minutes at a gentle simmer. This is going to firm them up a little bit
and help soften any hold-out bits of onion that might be ready to crunch.
So for the eggplant, chicken, and veal, we are doing a pretty standard flour, followed by egg, followed by panko breadcrumb breading
and make sure you're using the wet-hand dry-hand process. Not that hand, stupid - that hand.
This way you don't end up with your fingers entombed in their own delicious-looking fry-coating, and you won't be tempted to eat them.
We're repeating this exact same process with the chicken, but for the veal, we're talking about a parmesan hero from Satriale's
and they're probably gonna go a little bit more old-school,
as you might imagine they would in an old-school Italian pork store in Jersey, so we're using Italian-seasoned breadcrumbs.
This is going to produce a less crispy, more shell-like coating when it comes time to deep-fry
Speaking of which: vegetable oil at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, about an inch.
Drop 'em in, laying them away from you - no crowding, one even layer.
Fry 'em up, give 'em a little flip, take them out. Once they're nice and brown,
let 'em drip-dry on a nonstick cooling rack -- whoa. Sorry, don't know what got into me there.
Salt them while they're still hot, this way the seasoning is gonna adhere a lot better.
And don't do what I'm doing. That is, don't fry the veal coated in traditional breadcrumbs
because it fills your oil with detritus, making it all the more difficult to fry the chicken.
We've got one more building block to prepare and that is some garlic-and-herb compound butter,
because we're going to essentially turn our hero into garlic bread before making a sandwich out of it.
And for those of you in all other parts of the world, a hero is a submarine sandwich.
I'm starting with Satriale's veal parmesan, so I've got an Italian hoagie that I've spread with the compound butter,
broiled, and am now stacking high with our fried veal, some fresh mozarella, and some freshly shredded Parmesan cheese
Now you might be asking yourself: where is the tomato sauce?
And this is the most important thing I want you to take away from this episode:
Tomato sauce goes on top of the cheese.
I know this isn't very traditional and I know it's not the way that parmesan looks in the pictures,
but it keeps the breading way more crispy and doesn't let it turn into one of those mush-fests
that you often get when you order a fill-in-the-blank parmesan hero.
Speaking of which, let's try out our slightly more modern fillings. I'm gonna use a little bit of pan cubano.
It's got a light fluffy interior and a slightly crisp exterior and I think it's a perfect candidate for parmesan-ing.
So, same drill here, spread with our compound butter and broil, top with our toppings - this time I'm going with the eggplant,
top that with cheese, throw the whole thing under the broiler for a few minutes -
hopefully you've got a more powerful broiler than I do, so you get some more brown spots - and then top with the sauce.
If you're very lucky you might get a cheese stretch, but it don't matter, because this is a delicious sandwich.
The meatball version, just as good. Is it worth taking a bullet for like Joey almost did?
Maybe not, but maybe I'd be willing to take a paintball.
And now, the reason that I have been eating all these sandwiches - don't worry, nothing went to waste.
I've fed them to friends and loved ones because I wanted my personal favorite of the bunch: chicken parmesan.
And while, after this experience, I'm pretty much ready to go a long while without seeing a parmesan hero,
this guy did join the clean-plate club
even though I had just spent the day before eating lasagna with Brad Leone over at It's Alive with Brad.
Keep an eye out for that next week. Until then, be a hero to your friends and family, and make them
a parmesan submarine sandwich.