(tense music)
(Gi-hun breathing heavily)
(announcer speaking in Korean)
(tense music)
(Gi-hun speaking in Korean)
- [Andrew] Hey, what's up guys?
Welcome back to "Binging with Babish,"
where this week we're taking a look at the honeycomb candy
from "Squid Game," otherwise known as dalgona.
This is not dalgona, or rather it is.
This is a coffee drink that went viral on TikTok last year,
also called dalgona,
due to its very similar flavor of bitter and sweet.
More on that later,
because for now we're making actual dalgona,
for which we're gonna need some tools.
I bought a dalgona-making kit that includes what appears
to be a low quality cocaine mirror.
I'm gonna spray down both this
and the included stamping press with nonstick spray.
Then we're headed over to the stove top,
where we've got a little copper thingamajig,
into which we're gonna deposit two tablespoons
of granulated sugar,
stirring constantly while holding over medium heat
until it's completely melted.
Occasionally removing from the heat as necessary
to prevent from burning the sugar.
Once no visible chunks of sugar remain
and the caramel is a nice same exact color
as the thingamajig,
we're gonna add an extremely small amount of baking soda,
about an 1/8 of a teaspoon,
once again mixing constantly, mostly off the heat,
until it foams up and increases the volume of the caramel
by about 50%.
Then comes the easy part.
We just gotta turn it out onto our well greased coke mirror,
trying to pour it into as round a blob as possible.
Give our stamper another spritz.
We want everybody really well lubed up,
so nobody sticks.
And stamp it down until it's nice and thin
and the edges of the candy just peek outside the edges
of the stamper.
Ope, looks like we got ourselves a little stickage.
I don't know how that's possible,
but we can salvage this thing.
Once we get it reasonably flat,
we just gotta stamp a pattern into the center.
This playful little shape will determine later on
whether we live or die.
Go ahead and firmly press that into the candy.
And there you have it.
Once it's completely cooled with a little help
from our scooper slash fanner,
we can very, very gently remove the...
Ope, well, I broke it.
That's all right, first dalgona's always weird,
just like a first pancake.
Let's give it a taste.
And it's just a lovely, light, crispy, caramelized sugar.
All we gotta do now is try again.
This time, I'm gonna cook the sugar a little bit more gently
and add a little bit more baking soda.
This resulted in a lighter, fluffier candy,
which unfortunately, I stamped while it was too hot.
Let's try again, this time with a lighter caramel.
(beep) Damn it.
All right, this time,
let's try measuring the surface temperature.
All right, that didn't work.
So let's just keep trying until we get it.
(dramatic music)
(scraper clatters)
(hand slaps)
(Andrew thuds)
(beep) Damn it!
All right, turns out it takes some serious practice
to make these things.
That, or I'm just really, really bad at making them.
All told, it took me 16 tries
before I cranked out a single halfway decent dalgona,
which I'm realizing, I really hope I'm pronouncing correctly
because I'm saying it a lot.
But there it is, my fragile, sweet, golden medal.
Now all I have to do is extract the umbrella from within
so as to not get shot.
I'm employing the lick the back of the candy method
displayed in the show.
So far, so good.
I got the top of the umbrella,
but that's when things start to get tricky.
Just gotta very carefully...
Ope, okay.
I'm done.
Well, chances were, if I was this bad at making them,
I was gonna be this bad at staying alive.
I got one more decent umbrella here,
so I'm gonna see if I can't lick this thing. (laughs)
Uh, sorry.
Shouldn't be so lighthearted when my life is on the...
Ope, I'm dead.
Guess I'll just resign myself to the fact
that I would never survive "Squid Game,"
and make some dalgona coffee instead.
Into a metal bowl goes two tablespoons each instant coffee,
granulated sugar, and boiling water.
This gets beaten together on high speed,
and through a form of sorcery,
becomes a light, gooey, sticky
sort of no cream whipped cream that is spooned over milk,
served with ice.
From what I understand, this is called dalgona
because it tastes very similar,
sort of a marriage between bitter and sweet.
But I wanted to see,
can we make dalgona coffee with actual dalgona candy?
I certainly had enough screwups to play with,
so I threw a few into the bowl of a food processor,
and ground it up into a fine powder,
basically a dalgona sugar.
Make sure you keep this in the fridge
because it absorbs moisture like a sponge.
But I wanted to get even more dalgona flavor in there.
And I couldn't stop thinking about when I was making them.
To make the sugar easy to remove,
I would plunge the thingamajig into a pot of boiling water.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
Rewind that.
There, there. Play it back.
Decrease speed to 50%.
Computer, enhance image, lower right quadrant.
There, right there.
Babish, you son of a bitch.
Turns out,
I had been making effectively a dalgona simple syrup,
which I'm gonna use instead of boiling water
in addition to our dalgona sugar.
This, apart from being one of my best ever ideas,
is probably the...
(mixer whirring)
Okay, something appears to have happened, here.
Let's take a look.
Ope, yep.
Yeah, that'll do it.
How 'bout that?
The first thing to go wrong this episode.
Instead, I'm gonna use the stand mixer,
quadrupling all the ingredients so that there's enough stuff
in the bottom of the bowl that the whisk can reach it.
Beat on high speed,
and cross our fingers that after all this abject failure,
maybe, just maybe, we'll have a small success on our hands.
Looks like it's whipped up into the proper consistency.
Still amazed that just water, sugar,
and instant coffee can do this.
Spoon it over top our milk with ice in it.
And there you have it, folks,
dalgona coffee made with actual dalgona.
What wonders await us on our first sip?
Well, turns out, tastes exactly the same.
Oh well, we'll see you next week
on "Babish Works Really Hard and Accomplishes Nothing."
You guys aren't gonna shoot me, right?
Guys? Guys.
(dramatic music)