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- Pretty Patties! Available in six designer colors.
(Mr. Krabs laughs)
- Mr. Squidward, come look!
Don't that look appetizing?
- [Squidward] Mm, mm, good, sir!
(Mr. Krabs and Squidward laughing)
- Wait, give me an orange patty with extra purple.
(Squidward laughs)
- [Babish] Hey, what's up, guys?
Welcome back to "Binging With Babish."
For this week,
we're finally taking a look at Pretty Patties.
Now, the late great Stephen Hillenburg,
creator of SpongeBob,
specified that Krabby Patties are meatless.
So, as you can see,
I have the entire vegetable kingdom strewn before me,
but before we can make any pastel patties,
we have to make some brilliant buns.
Now, my first instinct was to recreate
the brightly colored, barely browning bread
from the Broodwich episode.
Now, not only did the egg wash
used to adhere the sesame seeds to the bun
cause the bun to brown, but, late that night,
I awoke in a cold sweat,
remembering that eggs are not vegan,
and on the off chance that's what he meant,
I decided to start over with a lean burger bun dough.
We're starting with
510 grams of bread flour in a large bowl,
to which we're going to add 10 grams of instant yeast,
30 grams of sugar,
and two teaspoons of kosher salt
that we're going to regular-size whisk together
to make sure that everything is evenly distributed
throughout the flour before adding 275 mil of water
and 60 mil of neutral-flavored oil like vegetable or canola,
mixing together at first by spatula and then by hand
until combined into a shaggy yet homogenous dough.
Normally, we would now want to knead this
within an inch of its life
until it passes the window pane test,
but since we have to make six different colors
and I don't wanna make six different batches of dough,
I am weighing and dividing this dough into six equal pieces,
working with one at a time and keeping the rest covered.
First, I'm gonna break it in half,
place it in the jar of the food processor,
ready the food coloring of my choice,
and then, with the food processor running,
slowly drizzling a small amount of color
down through the feed tube.
Then letting the dough process for about 45 seconds total,
both evenly distributing the color throughout the dough
and helping to develop gluten.
Use the dough as a sort of sponge to pick up all the scraps,
give it a sort of gestural needing,
and place it in a covered oiled bowl
until nearly doubled in size.
Then we're gonna rinse and repeat with the remaining doughs.
Orange, red, indigo, violet,
and good old-fashioned green.
Once everybody's well-kneaded and tinted,
it's time to let 'em rise.
Cover everybody with plastic wrap
and allow to bulk ferment at room temperature
for one to two hours until visibly embiggened
by anywhere from 50 to 100%.
Next up, shaping.
Go ahead and dig out the first color of your choice.
I'm going with orange.
Weigh it and divide that number precisely in half,
because each of these mini batches
is going to yield two extra-large slider buns,
which I realize is an oxymoron.
Go ahead and roll each portion
into a nice, smooth, taut ball,
lightly pressing down each
to make sure that they don't end up too vertical,
and arranging with plenty of space
on a parchment-lined baking sheet
before covering with oiled plastic wrap.
Once again, leaving it to its own devices
for one to two hours until nearly doubled in size.
Then comes the sticky issue of sesame seed adhesion.
I'm going with a water wash to keep things vegan
and to prevent browning, but that's gonna have
all the sticking power of, well, water,
so they're probably gonna have
all the staying power of my hairline.
Either way, these guys are headed into
a preheated 350 degree Fahrenheit oven
for 15 to 18 minutes until nicely puffed and set,
and registering between 195 to 205 degrees Fahrenheit
at their thickest point.
Allow to cool completely on the trays
if they're on the lower end of that spectrum.
Now, onto the issue of vegan cheese-style product.
Once again, I'm only making one of each of these burgers,
so I don't wanna make a huge amount of
each different color of cheese,
so I'm lining these muffin tins with oiled plastic wrap
and using them as a mold for each color.
For the cheese itself,
in the bowl of a blender goes 200 grams of rinsed cashew,
200 grams of refined coconut oil,
two tablespoons plus one teaspoon of kappa carrageenan,
25 grams of arrow root powder, two teaspoons of kosher salt,
one and a half teaspoons of onion powder,
one teaspoon of garlic powder,
25 grams of nutritional yeast, 15 mil of lemon juice,
100 mil of sauerkraut or pickle brine,
and 375 mil of cold water.
This stuff's all getting blended together
into rather a thick pasty paste,
for which you're probably gonna need to enlist
the help of your favorite blender stuffer,
pureeing for at least 60 seconds on high speed,
with varying levels of difficulty until completely smooth.
Next up, you're gonna gently heat this on the stove top
until it reaches 180 degrees Fahrenheit.
I can't seem to find footage of this.
Maybe I didn't hit record,
but here's the stuff after it's been cooked,
which I'm now distributing into each muffin cavity,
where I'm gonna proceed to tint it
using a little bit of food coloring and a tiny whisk.
This should hopefully yield six pucks
of sliceable, meltable, colorful vegan cheese.
All it needs is to be covered and refrigerated
at least four hours or up to overnight
to set up the kappa carrageenan
and hopefully giving it a bouncy cheese-like texture.
Now, upon extraction,
I discovered that the tiny whisk betrayed me
and the cheese color was not as consistent as I had hoped,
but it was delightfully sliceable, kept its shape,
and was actually very cheesy.
It definitely tasted funkier and cheesier
than American cheese does,
even though that's obviously not saying much.
If you're gonna make this yourself
with food coloring for some reason,
maybe just add the food coloring
before putting it in the mold.
Now, onto the patty part of the Pretty Patty.
Obviously, there's a wealth of colors in nature
that we can put to good use,
but how do we turn them into veggie patties?
So, as you can see, for that,
I am preparing a litany of legumes,
cooking these three different colors of lentils
to their various states of done-ness,
draining a whole bunch of different colored beans,
and peeling some purple potatoes.
Normally, I would just cover these with cold water
and cook them like it was any other day,
but we wanna make these things as purple as possible,
so we're gonna cover them with cold water
and cook them like it's any other day,
but during their last three minutes of cooking,
I'm gonna add some thinly-sliced purple cabbage,
making sure that it's fully submerged
before adding a teaspoon of baking powder,
which uses science or magic or both
to turn the cabbage and the cooking water
a brilliant shade of blue.
Definitely not totally necessary,
but I wanted to try it out,
and this seemed as applicable an application
as I could apply it to.
Go ahead and spread this out in a rimmed baking sheet
so that it can cool entirely
before being fashioned into a burger.
Also, corn. Just corn.
Now, it's finally time to start prettying patties.
The patty equation we decided to work with was
one part cooked vegetable, in this case, spinach,
one part legumes,
I'm using half green lentils, half edamame,
half a part the grain of your choice,
I'm using brown rice,
one quarter part breadcrumbs or ground oats for a binder,
one tablespoon vital wheat gluten,
and salt and pepper to taste.
Pulse until a ground beef-like consistency is achieved,
thickening with more rice, ground oats,
or vital wheat gluten as needed,
and there you have it, our green patty.
I don't have super high hopes for this one.
Let's try yellow, starting with yellow lentils
the aforementioned corn, ground oats, and brown rice.
I'm more excited about this one
because basically it's just a fried corn cake.
Then, for orange, I'm going grated carrot for the vegetable,
brown rice for the grain,
and vital wheat gluten for the binder.
Medium hopes for this one.
I love carrots,
but I've never described them as burger-like.
Next up, for red, I'm going kidney beans for the legume,
what I know are gonna be divisive,
sun-dried tomatoes for the vegetable,
brown rice for the grain,
and ground oats for the binder.
Pulse until pebbly, and, let's be honest, not red enough,
so this is gonna be the one patty where I cheat
with a little bit of food color.
So let's all just collectively pretend
that we didn't see that.
And then, for purple, as you might have guessed,
I'm going with peeled and grated beets.
This, along with some neutrally-colored pinto beans,
produced a picture perfect purple patty.
Next up, our blue potatoes and cabbage
are gonna be accompanied by
blue corn tortilla chips, brown rice,
and vital wheat gluten
for a patty that I'm pretty sure is gonna taste awesome.
I mean, it's mostly potatoes and chips.
So, there you have it.
Six different veggie burger bases,
each of which I'm gonna press into two-ounce patties
the same width as our buns.
The last bit of prep that now remains
is the slicing of the vegan cheese,
and given that the stuff has the consistency of Play-Doh,
it might be more about shaping than slicing.
Once you get your cheese arts and crafts ready to go,
we can start slicing our buns.
I wanted to make consistent even cuts, and as it turned out,
a coaster from today's sponsor
was the perfect pedestal upon which to prop our pain.
"Pain," of course, being French for bread.
First things first, once our buns are sliced,
we gotta toast them.
I don't care what your burger's made of.
I don't care what you're made of.
You deserve a toasted bun.
Once everybody's varying degrees of visibly golden brown,
we're gonna make sure that
our pan is nice and hot and well-oiled,
considering that our patties
have little to no fat of their own.
As you can see, each patty browns at a different rate,
so be sure to keep a close eye on crusts,
especially if you're making
six different kinds of veggie burgers at a time.
Also, use caution when flipping
with all that excess oil in the pan.
Once everybody's fried up, it's time to color coordinate
and serve each patty, bun, and cheese,
getting carefully color matched
before being placed on a large balsa wood artist palette
in the same color order and orientation
as presented by SpongeBob on the show,
and there you have it, folks.
Pretty Patties.
Lots of stuff to unpack here,
so let's go one at a time.
I'm scared of losing even more sesame seeds,
but we must take a look at these cross sections.
First up, the green Pretty Patty.
While this particular veggie burger
was decidedly veggie-oriented in its flavors,
it had a nice little crisp to it
and played really well with the vegan cheese.
Next up, the orange patty.
Look at that cheese sorta kind of melt,
and this one was good.
It didn't really taste like carrots,
but not much like anything else either.
Next up, the purple, violet, or mauve patty,
which mostly just tasted like beets,
which means I'm not gonna eat it unless there's goat cheese.
Next up, the yellow corn patty,
which, to my disappointment, only barely tasted like corn.
Next up, the indigo or midnight blue patty.
This is the one I'm most excited about,
and it's pretty good,
but it really does just taste like a tortilla chip burger.
Last up, the red patty
made from sun-dried tomatoes and beans.
Now, this one at least kind of looks like cartoon meat,
but it doesn't taste as much like sun-dried tomatoes
as I had hoped.
So let's rank 'em.
First up, purple beets, not so great.
Next up, yellow corn,
about as bland a burger as ever there was.
Almost the same story for the orange carrot burger.
Then the red sun-dried tomato burger.
A little bit more flavor, but still kind of disappointing.
Then the blue burger, which was good,
but maybe a little morally questionable.
Then, believe it or not, I think the green was my favorite.
It's a veggie burger that's not pretending to be
anything other than just that, a veggie burger,
but I think we can agree
there's one thing that all these patties have in common.
They are indeed pretty.
Thanks again to Cash App.
That's money. That's Cash App.
Download Cash App from the App Store
or Google Play Store today
to add your cash tag to the 80 million and counting.
(lively music)