Best Greek Moussaka - my Dad's 5 Secret Recipe | Christine Cushing

hi I'm Christine fishing and welcome to my favorite foods today one of my family's legendary I mean most legendary recipes a coveted Greek classic moussaka the best moussaka I have ever tasted is my dad's so these are all the secrets all these little tricks you're going to have three components it might seem overwhelming but you are going to love this recipe so let's hit started on component one the meat sauce so what I like to do is drown the meat first before adding the onions a little bit of olive oil and ground meat goes in this is lean beef you want to break it up with a little spoon just so you don't get big clumps I like to brown the meat first because I can really caramelize the knees and when you caramelize the meat you get that extra sort of meaty flavor if I've added the onions first they might burn by the time I get that meat the way I want it this is going to take about ten minutes now I'm going to season this with just a little bit of salt a little pepper now here's tip number one you would look at this maybe and I've seen a lot of people do this and say okay I browned the meat have a look at this it is the gray gray and since you're going to go to all the trouble of making this amazing dish you don't want to rush these little steps because they're going to add just really like 50% right away just this just browning the meat like I'm going to show you is going to add about a 50% improvement I'm telling you you're going to learn more make sure it is at a high temperature it's all about high heat so after 10 minutes look at this you see this little crispy gold well almost brown see that that is ground meat now I'm going to add onions garlic a couple of Bailey's Greek oregano and it seems a bit dry so I'm going to hit it just a bit and I'm going to add some more spices to this and herbs some fresh thyme you can pull these twigs out after you closed yes they're whole that's how we like adding them and a whole cinnamon stick just a splash of water just to deglaze flash that splash of water just picks up those blue brown crusty bits that are all stuck in the bottom of the pan and because I added the meat first really the onions are just going to steam here or sweat that's going to take about three to five minutes then what I do is I add a little bit of tomato paste so it's about a tablespoon or so that's going to help to bind the sauce because the key here is you want a sauce that's rich but it shouldn't be too loose because if it's loose it's just going to not hold together in the moussaka I'm using a shortcut here with my already prepared sauce but if you want you can just use plum tomatoes good quality though because the tomato is really going to bring this home the home work of a classic Greek tomato sauce with me is the cinnamon and the cloves I like using the whole stick of cinnamon but then I could remove it and it's a little bit more subtle same with the cloves putting it to low simmer for 30 minutes while I eat sauce simmers I'm going to get going on my veggies now when it comes to the veggies my dad's number two secret was a classic looks like that you would fry all the veggies I mean you would probably use a cup of olive oil and it would be swimming in that so what he always did was bacon sometimes he barbecued them or grilled them everything gets sort of drizzled with a little bit of olive oil you can season a little salt pepper and then spreading it out on those trays so that they get nice and crispy work you know the feeling that they've been fried or really they're baked and they really absorb a lot less oil that way and the eggplant typically would be a a little baby Italian a cracker recently I have found that Asian or Japanese eggplant are incredible because they actually have fewer seeds I don't have to salt them to draw that bitter flavor but it had so this is my little addition I slice them about I would say 1/8 or 1/4 of an inch thick 375 if you've got convection or a fan in your oven please use it it would be amazing and you just want to spin the pans around until they're nice and golden we'll probably take 25 minutes or so assembly time ok so now it's when you put this sucker all together the aroma is amazing I can close my eyes and I know that I have a Greek meat sauce my dad's freak meat sauce in front of me so assembly so I'm just going to lay the potatoes down first I put a little bit of olive oil there just a bit I can't control myself you can overlap them now actually because you want it to cover the whole bottom of this next thing is and this is totally secret number three or trick number three he divided the meat sauce so it doesn't all go in one layer now I'm going to put in a little bit of the meat sauce to cover the potatoes because those potatoes are going to absorb it see smart guy he was and you can see that it's pretty thick look at that they want to make sure it's even so you have the even amount of meat throughout looking pretty sweet okay now veggies I'm going to go in first with the eggplant just lay them on top just to cover I don't need to worry about how they look now the Zuke's or zucchini clochette and actually my dad could never remember how to call these that we call those zucchini anymore so he always called inclusion alright next layer meet again coming your way oh this is beyond ridiculous at this point it smells so darn good but okay now the the final layer is the bechamel so remember for the bachelor sauce you're going to want to go to a whole recipe for bechamel so find that on my youtube channel and you're going to make the perfect bechamel sauce look at that I've cooled it down slightly so this is Tony's secret number for make it a little bit thick now I'm going to add some potted meat John know a good Gianna doesn't sound very Greek but Tony loved how to be gentle to Gianna he spent a fair bit of time in Italy so I wanted to enjoy a few Greeks secret number five definitely primogenitor channel I mean that's sabotage you can't go to an Italian cheese come on and only add egg yolks these are not full eggs the egg yolk gives it a creamier Richard texture alright that's a perfect bechamel I'm going to lay that on top so secret number six what I was saying is you have to trash the kitchen my kitchen is actually not bad but whenever my dad made Maseca everybody loved it but the kitchen from the absolute disaster so I've had friends tell me that they made this they absolutely loved it and the crazy mess is worth it so secret number six be prepared oh look at oh it's suckers hey all right smoothing it out now this is for Tony here this last bit he was really proud last step in the epic move sucked out it's going to go into the oven 375 for about 40 minutes I want to do it convection just because it's going to get nice and golden brown go wrong if you're gonna be sweet yeah that's it I can breathe right now it looks so good it smells so good and as much as I would like right now to cut into that I must resist because it needs to sit for at least 30 minutes preferably 40 but at least 30 minutes we got to see what it looks like inside totally amazing that creaminess of the bechamel smell it right away I gotta take a slice of this I think this is good for eight pieces oh look at the theme oh it is perfect are you ready oh wow on my dad would be so proud this needs to eat right now hot thank you for joining me and thank you for requesting this because I think it's the perfect recipe see you next time

Channel: MyFavouriteFoods ChristineCushing

Views: 299,793

Rating: 4.8541217 out of 5

Keywords: Best Greek Moussaka - my Dad's 5 Secret Recipe | Christine Cushing, Best Greek recipes, moussaka, how to make moussaka, My favourite foods, Christine Cushing, Food Network moussaka, Greek moussaka, greek moussaka, Christine Cushing moussaka, bechamel, white sauce, chef Christine Cushing, moussaka recipe, potatoes, aubergine, zucchini, eggplant, mousaka, Greece, cinnamon, oregano, Greek moussaka recipe, mousakas, GreekFood, Hellas, Ellas, Ellada, Greekrecipe

Id: OWUGrhCJLPU

Length: 11min 54sec (714 seconds)

Published: Tue May 16 2017