hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with butterscotch budino that's
right i'm gonna show you my take on this amazing italian custard pudding and by
the way if you were thinking budino was like an adorable italian word for some
adorable thing it's not apparently it comes from a medieval word for sausage
so we might just have to make up our own story for what that word means which
when it comes to recipes is totally fine but anyway let's go ahead and get
started with this very simple recipe and what we'll do first is add one very
firmly packed 1/2 cup of brown sugar to the saucepan and if it comes out too
quickly did not pack it firm enough we will also go ahead and add some salts
which because I'm using one that has a large flakey grain looks like a lot more
than it really is and then last but not least we will add
a splash of water and we'll set our heat to medium high and for some reason I
gave this a stir with the whisk which really isn't necessary and all I really
accomplished here was getting that sugar on the sides of the pan which is why as
this came up to temperature i swirled it around a few times to wash that stuff
down but anyway what we're gonna do is bring this up to a boil on medium high
heat and what we'll do is cook this for about seven to ten minutes or until the
mixture darkens and smells like caramelized sugar and one will start
really paying attention is when our bubbles start to increase in size which
means our water is boiling out of the mixture and the temperature of that
sugar is rising and what we're looking for here besides bigger and bigger
bubbles is it the color of the mixture will darken so those are our visual
clues but as that happens this will also start to smell like caramelized sugar
which is exactly the point I was at right here which I believe took me about
eight or nine minutes and once that happens we will immediately turn off the
heat and we'll go ahead and carefully toss in a chunk of butter and start
stirring with a whisk while we grab and carefully pour in our heavy cream and
the reason we're going a little bit slow here is because when you pour liquid
into a caramelized sugar it can really bubble in foam up pretty quickly so you
got to be careful and because my cream is right out of the fridge the sugar is
almost immediately gonna seize up which basically means harden up and it's gonna
stick to the pan and mostly to the whisk but that's a
okay don't worry because we're gonna turn our heat back on in the medium low
and as our cream heats back up that sugar will dissolve and our whisk will
become clean yes and of course you can heat the cream up first and
significantly less than that effect but why add an extra step when we don't have
to so you'll see just keep stirring and
everything will work out just fine and by the way let me apologize for the pans
which I splattered with some butter and flour making an unrelated recipe and I
didn't realize they were in the frame but in fairness while I did get them
dirty I also made them more delicious but
anyway we're gonna stir that on medium-low until our sugar dissolves at
which point we're gonna go ahead and add a little bit of milk which I guess we
could add it with the cream but for whatever reason I like to add it here
and that's it we'll stir that in and simply let this sit on medium-low while
we mix up our egg and cornstarch thickener so into a mixing bowl we will
add one whole egg plus two egg yolks followed by our cornstarch and then what
we'll do is take a whisk and mix this until it's very very smooth which is
gonna take you a minute or two all right cornstarch does not like to get mixed
into things quickly I mean it's kind of a jerk about it but if you keep whisking
and whisking and whisking eventually all those lumps will break up and dissolve
and eventually it will look like this and then once that happens we're gonna
do something that we call the business tempering the mixture which simply means
whisking in about a cup of our hot cream mixture from the stove and when you do
yours try not to drip and what this does is not only dilute the amount of eggs
but it also raises the temperature which allows this after tempering to transfer
the contents of the bowl back into the saucepan without us having to worry
about those eggs curdling and then once we have everything together we will
raise our heat to medium-high and we will cook whisking constantly for about
two minutes or so or until our mixture thickens up and if everything goes
according to plan after a couple minutes your mixture should look a little
something like this very beautifully thick and luxurious
with no big chunks of scrambled egg and at this point we can pull it off the
stove and then pass that through a fine mesh strainer just in case although if I
being honest this is probably totally unnecessary since the next time
find any major chunks in that strainer will be the first but anyway better safe
than sorry and by passing it through we do guarantee our mixture will be
perfectly smooth and then once that's been accomplished we go ahead and add
our last ingredient which is the liquor and of course since we're making a
butterscotch budino we'll go ahead and add one tablespoon of rum and I should
mention dark rum would be more traditional but I'm usually white since
that's all I have and the sad thing is I could have bought a bottle and expensed
it but anyway both works so use what you want
I mean you are after all the Chris Constantino of your butterscotch budino
now that's a chef that knows about medieval sausage but anyway we will
whisk in our rum and then carefully neatly transfer this into whatever
serving glasses were gonna use and because this is such a rich dessert I'm
gonna use these rocks glasses but just fill them up halfway which i think is a
perfect portion it will also hopefully give them a more dramatic presentation
and then because I'm gonna top these with a little bit of optional caramel
sauce later I decided to take a spoon and give em a little stir to smooth out
the top which sort of worked but it also ended up smearing it up on the sides of
the glass so maybe don't stir so hard if you want to cleaner line and that's it
once we have those portioned we will give them the whole tap a tappa
followed by the old wrapper rapa and we'll go ahead and pop those in the
fridge for a few hours or until very thoroughly chilled before we try to
serve these and then once these are ice-cold and if firmed up we could if we
want to serve them as is or with some whipped cream but what I'm gonna
recommend is topping these with a spoon or caramel sauce
and you know what because you made these from scratch we're going to let use the
caramel sauce and the squeeze bottle from the store if you want but homemade
caramel sauce is very easy and we have a video for that so if you want to make a
little bit of homemade like I did you really should and I will add a link for
how to do that and then what I did after topping with that is I kind of tipped
the glass around so that caramel would maybe cover up my imperfect edges which
sort of worked but then I remember this is an Italian dessert and it's not
supposed to look perfect all right that's much more their French friends to
the north thing but anyway we'll garnish those with a little bit of caramel sauce
and then we'll place those back into the fridge until we're ready to serve which
I'm going to do right now and because salted caramel is one of my favourite
things i garnished the top of the pinch of
extra-large flaky sea salt and that's it our butterscotch budino is ready to
enjoy so let me go ahead and grab a spoon and dig in to what is truly one of
the world's great desserts and above and beyond that rich decadent butterscotch
flavor the texture here is unbelievable I mean to say it's smooth and luxurious
does not even come close to doing it justice which reminds me if you want to
adjust to make it a little firmer that just means adding a little more
corn starch or if you wanted it a little softer and creamier you could just add a
little less corn starch but for me this was absolutely perfect just pure luxury
on a spoon and while this is very rich and satisfying it really is not overly
heavy and since it's nice and cold borderline refreshing which because
these are made ahead of time makes them an absolutely perfect summertime dessert
oh and by the way you remember earlier when I said we should probably come up
with another story for what the word budino means well as I was eating this I
came up with mine all right according to me budino is the Italian word for one of
those beautiful puffy clouds at sunset that takes on the golden hue of the
falling Sun that's what the name budino comes from so feel free to use that one
if he wants or come up with something different on your own but either way I
really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the
ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and
as always enjoy
you