- [Host] This episode is
sponsored by ButcherBox. If, for some weird reason, you don't want to eat dog food for humans, ButcherBox delivers
high-quality beef, chicken, pork, and seafood directly to your home in an eco-friendly, 100% recyclable box. New members will get the Game Day Bundle for free in their first box. The bundle includes St. Louis
ribs, bacon, and pulled pork. Go to the link in the video
description for more info. - We begin with point one... (dog food clattering) (water sloshing) Concerning our pest problem, somebody's been leaving food around, and it's attracting owls. And I, for one, am getting tired of cleaning those owl drops. - [Host] Hey, what's up guys? Welcome back to Binging with Babish, where this week I'm standing
in front of a dog bowl, so that must mean that I'm taking a look at the Bachelor Chow from Futurama. As you may know, we here
at Binging with Babish tend to start by trying to
make an accurate version of the fictional food in question. And since there are no
human dog food equivalents, I see no other alternative
to grabbing a spoon and tucking into this bowl of dog chow. Here we go, Andy, you can do this. One, two, three, go. Three, two, one, go. C'mon dude, just be a man. Here we go. Chew once, chew twice, and not for me. It had a sort of rancid cheese flavor that I didn't expect or appreciate. And now more than ever before I think we can do a whole lot better. As you can see, I'm starting by preparing some roughly chopped mirepoix, and I'm trimming the excess
fat and connective tissue off a four-pound beef chuck roast. Because we are making boeuf bourguignon, dog food for humans. Once the excess fat has been trimmed off, I'm gonna cut the meat
into two-inch cubes. But wait, don't throw away
those trimmings just yet, because we're going to utilize a brilliant method from
America's Test Kitchen, which starts by placing those scraps in a large wide roasting pan, along with one pound of salt pork and two tablespoons of butter. Then this guy's headed into a 500-degree Fahrenheit
oven for 20 minutes. While that's happening
we're gonna toss our beef with half a teaspoon each kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, letting it rest at room temperature until we're ready to use it. Meanwhile, our scraps are
headed out of the oven. As you can see, they're nicely browned and the fat has rendered out. Pull them out and set them
aside, but don't get rid of them, we're not done with them just yet. This pan, with all of its
delicious fat and fond, is headed over to the stovetop where we're gonna place
it over medium-high heat and use it to sauté our mirepoix. Two large onions, four carrots, and four stalks of
celery, roughly chopped. Let these guys go for about five minutes until they've got some nice color. Then we're gonna add one
tablespoon of tomato paste and one teaspoon of anchovy paste, mixing around and sautéing
for about a minute, just so they can caramelize. And then we're adding a third
of a cup of all-purpose flour, sautéing for an additional minute or two until the raw flour smell dissipates. This is going to create
a rudimentary roux, or roux-dimentary. What? No. Which is going to thicken our four cups of homemade beef stock that we're gonna add
slowly, mixing constantly so that the flour does not clump. Let that come back up to a simmer, and then the beef scraps are
headed back into the hot tub, along with two bay leaves,
several sprigs of fresh thyme, two sprigs of fresh rosemary, and about one gaggle of fresh parsley. We're also gonna add a half teaspoon of whole black peppercorns, and optionally about a half ounce of dried porcini mushrooms. Oh, almost forgot, one whole head of garlic,
peeled and crushed. And it quite literally
wouldn't be boeuf bourguignon without Burgundy, one whole
bottle of the cheap stuff. Now we're gonna use all the
stuff in this roasting pan as a sort of platform for our beef, because we want each piece to be roughly three quarters
submerged underneath the liquid. This is going to help it brown beautifully as it spends three hours in
a 325-degree Fahrenheit oven. After one and a half hours,
we're gonna pull it out and flip all the pieces of beef so they get evenly browned top and bottom. Pop it back in for another
90 minutes, and presto, the best boeuf bourguignon
ever to be made into dog food. That's the Babish guarantee. Now we're gonna tong out
all of our beef cubes and refrigerate them, then
maybe take a few minutes to snack on all the delicious caramelized garlic and onions in the pan, before straining out all the solids and likewise refrigerating the liquid. Normally we'd refrigerate them together so their flavors can
get to know each other, but for this application, we wanna keep them separate,
and I'll show you why. As you can see, the fat in the liquid has solidified into an
easy-to-peel-off layer, which, whether you're turning
this into Bachelor Chow or eating it like a normal
person, you're gonna wanna do. Next step, to make the beef
better resemble dog food, I'm going to cube it into little cubes. And to transform this
beautiful French classic into a shelf-stable kibble
that makes its own gravy, we have to freeze dry it. This involves placing
it in a vacuum chamber, freezing it to -50 degrees
Fahrenheit under vacuum, and then gently heating it, driving off 99.5% of its moisture and giving it a theoretical
shelf life of 25 years. So, after a 24-hour stint
in the freeze dryer, it comes out looking pretty similar, but completely robbed
of all of its moisture. If you grab one of the beef cubes, it looks almost exactly the same, but you can crush it between
your fingers into a fine dust. And the gravy has to be
broken up into shards like the meth from Breaking Bad. The other reason I'm breaking it up is 'cause I want it to
form a sort of powder that coats the beef chunks, which should seamlessly turn into gravy when we add hot water. I'm gonna place everything in a futuristic-looking Mylar bag. I know this isn't Futurama-accurate, but I can't bear to look at
the dog food bag anymore. And there you have it, boeuf
bourguignon Bachelor Chow. All we gotta do is pour
it into a dog food bowl and cover it with hot water
so that it can rehydrate. I'm just gonna cover this up with a lid and let it sit for 10 minutes so that it can fully reconstitute while I contemplate how this
is hopefully the last time I ever have to eat out of a dog food bowl. Give it a little stir and
allow the gravy to thicken, and it's time to dig in. Now, one of the most fascinating things about freeze-dried food is that, when it's done right,
it comes back to life the same way it was before
it was freeze-dried, and this is no exception. The gravy is thick and rich,
and the meat is tender, if not, understandably, a
little drier than it was before. But I think you'll agree with me that something about the
presentation and form factor just rubs me the wrong way. I think this is gonna be
a problem that we'd have with most Futurama foods,
particularly Popplers. Luckily, I think we're many years away from me making sentient popcorn shrimp. Thanks again to ButcherBox
for sponsoring this episode and sending me something
actually good to eat after having to eat dog food. ButcherBox sources from
farmers and fishermen who meet the highest
standards for quality. You choose your box type
and delivery frequency, and can skip or cancel
a month at any time. Your order will come
frozen at peak freshness in an eco-friendly, 100% recyclable box. New members will get St. Louis
ribs, bacon, and pulled pork in their first box for free. Go to the link in the video
description for more info. (bright music)
