Binging with Babish: Ben Wyatt's Calzones from Parks & Rec

godless Owens uh it was a calzone calzones crust on the bottom filling crust on top what am i describing a pie no but you're in the right zone the low-cal calzone zone you know what I like calzones that's wrong with this guy hey what's up guys welcome back to binging with babish where this week we're taking a look at the many shapes that calzones take in the world of Ben Wyatt I know I promised you guys a Joe Joe episode in a recent Twitter poll but I couldn't get ahold of some necessary ingredients so keep an eye out for that next week first up in our trio of calzone stylings is calzone apple pie we've made a number of apple pies on the show so I'm just gonna kind of breeze through the instructions food processor 300 grams of all-purpose flour 2 tbsp sugar 1 teaspoon kosher salt 225 grams unsalted cold cubed butter process until the butter is the size of peas and gently combined with 6 to 8 tablespoons of ice water gently mixed into a ball of dough wrapped in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least 1 hour 2 pounds of Honey Crisp apples cored peeled and thinly sliced place in a large bowl and toss with the juice of one lemon to prevent oxidation aka browning in another bowl combined 3/4 of a cup of sugar one-and-a-half tablespoons of cornstarch 1/4 cup of brown sugar 2 teaspoons cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice quarter teaspoon ground cloves his estephe 1 lemon and a teaspoon of kosher salt tiny whisk to combine perfect added the sliced apples and toss until evenly coated take a moment to ponder how lucky you are that it's your job to make apple pies taste the apples for seasoning and then it's time to roll out the pie dough not a well floured surface we're gonna pound and then roll out our pie dough to a rough oval shape using half that oval to line a glass pie plate filling the pie shell with our apples and their accumulated juices rushing down the opposing edge of the pie dough with egg white to seal covering with the opposite side of the oval trimming crimping venting brushing with egg white and sprinkled with Demerara sugar placing in an oven preheated to 500 degrees Fahrenheit reducing the temperature to 375 and baking for 45 to 55 minutes and there you have it the calzone apple pie which despite my overclock - voiceover I thought would be nice with some coffee perhaps served up out of the plate - calzone style first let's take a look at a rare apple pie cross-section fascinating slice into somewhat more managed we'll get still unwieldy long skinny slices and dig into one of the best and strangest apple pies I've ever made the filling is warm and syrupy and spicy the crust flaky and crisped even on the bottom but it's our first and last sweet calzone our next two destinations are savory and for them both we're going to need a simple tomato sauce something else we've made countless times on the show so once again we're gonna breeze through it into a high-walled saute pan goes 2 tablespoons of olive oil but we're gonna heat over medium high until shimmering in which we're gonna sweat have a small finely minced onion for 2 minutes so it's saying 2 crushed cloves of garlic and 2 tablespoons of tomato paste for one minute before adding it sometimes squirty 28-ounce can of san marzano tomatoes crushing up adding a sprig of fresh basil partially covering lowering the heat and simmering for about an hour and a half until thickened and deepened in flavor optionally puree to a finer consistency using an immersion blender seasoning to taste with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper and finishing with a clog of extra olive oil ok back to normal kits because we're venturing into as yet unexplored the fishing territory namely the locale calzone zone which despite being about the same in calories but higher in fiber I think is gonna call for a whole wheat crust so we're gonna follow this recipe from America's Test Kitchen that calls for eight and a quarter ounces whole wheat flour combined with five and a half ounces of bread flour 3/4 of a teaspoon of instant yeast and two teaspoons of honey in the bowl of a food processor we're just gonna lightly process those together until they are thoroughly combined and then we're gonna perform the very clever trick of thoroughly meeting our dough using the food processor first we're gonna measure out one and a quarter cups ice water which we're gonna pour into the processors feed tube while the Machine runs this is gonna bring our ingredients together into a ball of dough as soon as it does stop the Machine and let everything rest for 10 minutes which is gonna help with water absorption that we're adding 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 1 and a half teaspoons of kosher salt and letting our Spinney cutting machine 1 for 1 minutes straight during which time it's going to need our dough better than any human being could with the exception of maybe Ron Swanson he's got some dough kneading myths I'm sure he would hate that I said that now the snow is very sticky so to make it more handleable we're gonna olive oil both our myths and worksurface turn out our precal some goo out onto the counter and give it a few cursory needs to make sure that there are no dry spots then we're gonna use the dough's stickiness to pull it into a taut ball which were then going to plop into a lightly oiled Bowl cover with plastic wrap and allow to ferment in the fridge for at least 18 hours and up to three days not only is this going to drastically improve flavor this is a very high hydration dough around 80% so it's going to make it much easier to play with after a couple days in the fridge we're taking it out of the bowl and dividing it into Twain both pieces of which we're going to stretch into taut balls I feel like I'm saying that a lot recently placed on a lightly oiled rimmed baking sheet lightly oiled themselves and loosely covering in plastic wrap and that's where the testicular similarities end because if your balls do this after an hour and a half at room temperature see a doctor extract the first dough Bowl keeping the other under cover of plastic wrap and coat it thoroughly on both sides with all-purpose flour from this point on we're treating it pretty much like pizza dough aka your grandfather's calzone which again sounds like a testicular fit anyway we are padding stretching and passing knuckle over knuckle this dough until it reaches about a 12 inch round at which point we can commence not to topping but filling with what you asked well healthy stuff I'm gonna saute some broccoli and some olive oil add some red peppers maybe some baby spinach baby bok choy and mustard greens just ask yourself what would Chris Traeger put in the calzone part-skim mozzarella which is kind of like the worst mozzarella part-skim ricotta which is kind of like wallpaper paste our sautéed veggies and what the hell another layer of part-skim mozzarella if you're gonna have a healthy thing you might as well have too much of it right that's how being healthy works anyway I'm brushing down the outer rim of the dough with plain old water and gently folding this pizza into a much more complicated calzone crimping the edges shut with a fork and then as an additional preventative measure against blowouts I'm going to decoratively fold the crust close or at least decoratively to the best of my limited ability and there you have it the pawneean pariah the calzone onto a lightly floured dusted pizza peel it goes and onto a pizza stone in a preheated 550 degree fahrenheit oven it will be plopped until it emerges burnished and browned and the done were to let this guy sit undisturbed for about five minutes to let those fillings calm down a little bit before slicing in half and taking a gander at that cross-section now one good thing about low-fat ingredients they're much less watery than full fat mutts and we got so we end up with a pretty good looking calzone which despite being a low-cal calzone I'm gonna divide into four pieces for easy sharing because this whole thing clocks in at just over a thousand calories but half will run you a much more reasonable 528 calories so not exactly what I would call locale but about as locale as calzones can go and I gotta say really quite good the crust is nutty and weedy and tender the fillings are plenty flavorful and cheese stretchy I'm gonna go ahead and call it a perfectly healthy lunch for two on the decidedly less healthy end of the spectrum are the mini calzones which been described as a savory pastry so I'm gonna make another batch of pie dough this time with no sugar rested in the fridge for an hour while shred up some full fat mozzarella which is much easier to shred if you let it chill in the freezer for about 20 minutes which I did not do and then in Ben's own words the calzones betrayed him by giving him food poisoning so I've got some Italian sausage here well past its prime let's just give it a sniff test to make sure - oh yeah that is ripe I'm just kidding of course this is some precooked chicken sausage that I thought looks kind of wrong anyway we are retrieving our savory pastry dough from the fridge turning it out onto a well floured surface and pounding and rolling it out to a large round about four ish centimetres thick then we need about a four and a half inch biscuit cutter this lid from my protein powder will do nicely and we're gonna use that to cut this dough into miniature rounds then from there it's just a matter of filling and deep-frying that's right deep fried pie dough so into each of these little rounds and replace a tiny dab of sauce a little pressed together mound of our mozzarella cheese a little dollop of full fat workout and a couple pieces of our pretend expired sausage then comes the delicate act of folding once again I'm gonna wet down the outside edge to act as a sort of sealant tucking our fillings gently into the little pocket and pressing the edge down to seal you have to work quickly at this stage because the butter is gonna begin to melt and we want to maintain as many of those layers of butter as possible before deep-frying once again I'm going to attempt to place a decorative crimp on the outside with mixed results and this guy is ready for the deep fry in a cast-iron skillet I'm gonna heat about a quart of oil to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and drop these guys in for about one and a half to two minutes per side it's at this time that I'm gonna pray to whatever God will hear me that my fillings don't explode at the side of my calzones because this is the lab of my frying oil but the water and crimping sealant held true in my empanadas I mean calzones emerged looking perfect almost exactly like the ones that we saw in the show once you're done frying up the rest of your delicate dough pockets it's time to let them cool off before trying them otherwise this might happen a boiling hot cheese blowout that you're not even gonna notice is burning your skin because these things taste acid darn good mmm ouch after letting these guys cool off for about five minutes we can examine them a little more closely as you can see pie dough has responded extraordinarily well to deep-frying it is light and flaky and crispy and it's filled with melted cheese piping hot sauce and seasoned meat exactly the way I imagined them when been described them after trying these delectable little appetizers it's hard to imagine why pawneeans are so opposed to calzones then again these people live and die for a place called paunch burger which actually sounds pretty good maybe I should try that next episode [Music]

Channel: Babish Culinary Universe

Views: 5,195,222

Rating: 4.9572568 out of 5

Keywords: binging with babish, babbish, calzone, cooking with babish, babish calzone, babish calzone parks and rec, babish calzone recipe, pear qwerty horse, parks and rec calzone, parks and rec calzone babish, ben wyatt calzone, easy calzone recipe, at home calzone recipe, how to make a calzone from scratch, how to make a calzone dough, mini calzone recipe, mini calzone parks and rec, apple pie calzone, apple pie calzone recipe, low cal calzone zone, low cal calzone zone babish

Id: PvgCEifW7Jo

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/YouCantHackTheGibson]

The first half of the video reminded me of a micromachine commercial. Lol

[u/LouBrown]

You call them mini calzones. I call them oversized pizza rolls.

[u/InquisitorVawn]

/u/OliverBabish I just noticed watching the mini calzone part that you said the dough should be rolled out to about 4cm thick, was that a mistake? Coz... that's about an inch and a half thick.

[u/Zelotic]

His videos makes me want to spend a ton of money on cooking supplies

[u/marlborofag]

Babish, you could’ve gone WAY more crazy with the Low Cal Calzone Zone. Where’s the cauliflower? The weird alternative flours? The egg whites? The nutritional yeast?

[u/HittingSmoke]

/u/OliverBabish does this mean you're going to calculate how big of a cup you would need to contain a liquefied two-year-old child?

[u/palindromebaby]

I love eating at the LoCalCalzoneZone!

[u/NewAgeDoom]

Neato, more calzones.

Also, what is this Jojo episode going to be?

[u/MistakenAnemone]

Calzones are pointless. They're just pizza thats harder to eat. No one likes them. Good day sir.