- Ron. - I am submitting this menu from a Pawnee institution, J.J.'s Diner, home of the
world's best breakfast dish, the Four Horse-meals
of the Egg-Porkalypse. - Hey, what's up, guys? And welcome back to this, the final episode of "Binging With Babish" to come out of the old kitchen. I'm all moved in to the new spot and have already filmed the
subject of next week's episode, "The Meat Tornado," but
for now we're taking a look at the Four Horse-meals
of the Egg-Porkalypse, described in Leslie Knope's book as "An astonishing onslaught of protein," that includes a 12-egg scramble, bacon, sausage, ham, hash browns,
chicken fried steak, and a giant tower of buttermilk pancakes. First thing we can start
with is the flapjacks. This is a factory standard
buttermilk pancake recipe. If you wanna see how to make it, click the link in the upper
right hand corner right now. Whisk it to a lumpy smooth consistency, cover with plastic wrap, and
fridge for up to 24 hours. Plenty of time to address the many other Horse-meals
of this Egg-Porkalypse. If we consult the book, "Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America", you can see that there are two different iterations of hash browns. A mountain of scattered
and shredded hash browns and five deep fried hash brown patties. So, we're gonna start with the patties by peeling and chopping
five medium russets into one-inch chunks, immediately dunking them
into a cool water bath so as they do not discolor. This is also gonna help wash
off some of the excess starch, which is gonna give us crispier potatoes. So, go ahead and drain these and then we're gonna pat 'em dry on a few layers of paper towels. And then we're following
a method for tater tots from master of all things crispy, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, who calls for the potatoes to be par fried in 350 degree Fahrenheit vegetable oil for three to four minutes until lightly browned and cooked through. Once nicely blonde around the edges, we're gonna fish them out and drain them on a paper towel set in
a rimmed baking sheet. Then we're gonna let them cool completely at room temperature about 20 minutes before processing them
into a chunky paste. This fry, fry again process is going to keep the
interiors of our hash browns light and flaky rather
than gummy and dense. So, once they're nice and cool, go ahead and load them into
your favorite food processor and hit it with eight one-second pulses until all of the potatoes
have been broken down into little tiny chunks. Do this in batches to ensure that the potatoes are processed evenly, and fish out any extra
large chunks with your hands and your human intelligence. Once everybody's all processed together we can season and form into patties. We're gonna add two teaspoons of sugar, a few twists of freshly
ground black pepper, a hefty pinch, or about one
teaspoon, of kosher salt, and a tablespoon of potato starch, which is gonna help give our hash browns structure and meaning. Once evenly mixed together, it's time to start
forming them into patties. Hash browns typically are
sort of oblong oval pucks designed to be quickly and easily mashed into your mouth hole. Now we're gonna freeze these
bad boys for about an hour until they are frozen solid. This is both going to make it easier to retrieve and deep fry them, and it's also going to crystallize the potatoes' molecular structure, making them more tender. Back into some 375 degree
Fahrenheit oil they go for about five minutes until
deeply golden brown and crisp. Drain them on a wire rack,
and there you have it, beautiful, crispy,
airy, flaky hash browns, which we're gonna keep warm in a low oven while we make the million
other things that we're making. The most excited for which
I am is chicken fried steak, which starts with one of the cheapest and toughest cuts around, top sirloin, which we're going to gently
coax into being tender using a whole bunch of
little tiny sharp knives. This is a meat tenderizer
used for making cubed steak, a steak filled with
hundreds, if not thousands, of little tiny incisions, rendering even the most impossibly tough cuts of beef butter knife soft. After many spirited stomps they look very much the same, but look more closely and you will see, they have been bespeckled with lots and lots of little holes. And so, now they're ready for breading. In my dry breading station I have one cup of all purpose flour, a teaspoon each kosher
salt and cayenne pepper, tiny whisked until homogenous. Then on the wetter side of things, I have one large egg, one teaspoon of baking powder and a half teaspoon of baking soda, which I'm going to tiny
whisk into a slurry before tiny whisking in
one cup of buttermilk. This is gonna give our breading
a nice light, airy texture. Once everybody on both sides is homogenous we're ready to start dippin' our steaks. And since we're obviously not trying to skimp on the cholesterol, we are of course double battering. That means taking a prolonged
dip in the dry stuff, shaking off any excess, heading over for a swim in the wet stuff, making sure that every crack and cranny is comprehensively coated and heading back over into the dry, creating a bulky, craggly exterior, not unlike that of fried chicken. But fun fact, that is actually not where chicken fried steak gets its name. A known foodie and longtime Francophile, Thomas Jefferson is
actually credited with... I'm just kidding, it totally got its name from being a steak fried like chicken, which is exactly what
we're gonna do with it. Into some 350 degree
Fahrenheit oil it goes, where it shall fry about
four to five minutes per side until deeply golden
brown and crisp all over. Use extreme caution when flipping because if you crack the shell you're gonna have a bad time. Drain it on a wire rack, keep it warm in a low oven, and rinse and repeat with
any remaining steaks. And then the very key to the deliciousness of chicken fried steaks lies
in the bottom of this pot. That's right. Remember all the brown sloppy gold from the KFC episode? All this deep fried gunk is the key to making delicious gravy. So, we're reserving as much as possible in the bottom of the pan, along with about two to three tablespoons worth of leftover fry oil, into which we're gonna dump
half an onion, finely minced. We're gonna saute that onion and all that brown sloppy goodness for two to three minutes
until it's starting to soften and turn translucent around the edges. Add two or three crushed cloves of garlic and continue to saute over a medium heat for about 30 seconds until fragrant. And then we're adding
a quarter cup of flour as our eventual thickener. Mix that in with the vegetables and let it cook for about
two to three minutes until the raw flour smell dissipates. Then we are slowly whisking in about a half a cup of beef stock and the star of the show,
one cup of light cream. Add it slowly at first, whisking constantly to prevent lumps. Add the rest and whisk
frequently over medium-high heat until bubbling and thickened. Once it starts to bubble, make sure you lower the heat so as to not scorch the sauce. When it's just about done we're gonna season with kosher salt, freshly ground pepper, and an optional sprinkle
of cayenne pepper. We wanna reduce and thicken to the point that it can easily coat
the back of a spoon. We're also using a spoon so
we can give it a little taste. Let's see how this is. Oh my god, that's good. Don't worry if it seems a little thin, it's going to thicken as it cools, but we wanna keep it warm
until we're ready to serve. Last bit of prep we've gotta do is shred our potatoes for our
scattered fried hash browns. To make these, we are
peeling and shredding three large russets directly
into a bowl of cool water. This, again, is both going
to remove excess starch, and prevent them from
discoloring too quickly. Set those aside, and just like the very first
episode out of this kitchen, we're gonna finish on the flattop. There is no other way that a
breakfast of this magnitude could be constructed. Once sizzling hot, we're
gonna treat the whole surface with a little drizzle of canola oil, just to make sure that
nobody gets too sticky, and then it's time to commence with the onslaught of protein. I'm starting with what looked to me like a pound of fried bacon fried up extra crisp the way
that I imagine Ron likes it. I can just imagine him saying something about how floppy bacon is for frequent criers and bed-wetters. We've also got three large slabs of ham that we're just gonna heat
up and get a nice crust on. Once everybody's nicely
browned and fried up, it's time to evacuate them onto a plate, which we're gonna keep warm in a low oven as we move on to phase two, the sausage and pancake phase. I've got some regular plain
Jane breakfast sausage here, next to which I'm going to begin to dollop large buttermilk pancakes. These are gonna fry about three
minutes on their first side until they begin to turn pale
and blistery around the edges. And let us all take a moment to remember that these are all being
fried in bacon fat. Once the pancakes are flipped they get another two to three
minutes on the opposing side before being stacked on
a plate and repeating until we got no pancake batter left. Pancakes finished, it's time to get this off of the spatula here. Come on, dude, let's go. Join your pancakey brethren. And last but not least, we have our scattered hash
browns and 12-egg scramble. The potatoes, we're gonna
place in a clean kitchen towel and just squeeze the
absolute dickens out of. Make sure that they are super dry to facilitate effective browning. But before they are
headed over the cooktop we're gonna lightly season
them with some kosher salt and freshly ground black
pepper, just the hits. Mix gently to distribute throughout and load them up onto an oiled flattop. Then after flattening out
with a large metal spatula into a potato patty, we're gonna cover them with a bowl while frying on the first side. This is gonna help the potatoes
cook more evenly throughout. Then, once the sausage has been removed onto the keep-it-warm plate, we're gonna dedicate the
new flattop real estate to the 12-egg scramble, which is exactly what it sounds like, 12 eggs, scrambled, but we're doing ours in
bacon and sausage fat. Just sorta scramble them around them, and once you have some nice
big, soft, pillowy, eggy curds, remove them onto a plate
just in time to realize that you didn't time out
your hash brown very well. But just pretend that you're at J.J.'s and you have heat lamps or something. Flip once nicely browned, cooking for four to five minutes per side. Once it's ready to go, flop
it atop your hash brown pucks and get ready to serve. Everybody else is waiting, so why don't we go join the party? And what a party it is. Thousands of calories and
hundreds of grams of cholesterol on parade alongside a
single glass of orange juice and a single cup of coffee. I'm about to dig right into this sucker, but first I just wanna say a few words. (sighs) Well, folks, this is it. Oh, I'm not in focus, am I? Hang on a second. (groans) Well, folks, that's it. That is the last meal to
come out of the SoHo kitchen. I've lived here for two
plus some-odd years. I fell in love here, I
wrote a cookbook here, I lived a whole lot of life here, and it's pretty crazy to say goodbye. Oh, I forgot the sausage gravy. Hang on. We mustn't forget the sausage gravy. Okay, that's better. So yeah, like I was saying, (sighs) I'm feeling a lot
of things saying goodbye. I'm feeling scared (laughs), but like Ron Swanson says, "When I eat, it is the
food that is scared," so I'm gonna try to adopt that outlook. I'm feeling excited because I've got a lot of big new plans for the new space, new shows, new people, new everything. And I'm also feeling pretty sad. This place has been my home for longer than most places
have ever been my home. And like Ron Swanson says, again, "There is no sadness that
breakfast food cannot cure," so I'm gonna live by those words and I'm gonna dig in to this
breakfast food right now. Oh, this needs butter. Boop. (laughs) Oh, hold on, I got something to. My last splash of Lagavulin 16. Last little bit. Oh, I spilled it on the eggs. That's okay. Okay, that's not a little
bit, that's a lot of bit, but whatever, we're celebrating tonight. Thank you guys so much
for sticking with me. I owe everything I have to you. I owe everything, more than
I ever dreamed I would have, I owe it all to you. And like I said in my book, I'm gonna spend the rest of my life working to earn everything
that you've given me. So, here's to you guys. Thank you so much for sticking with me. I'm gonna devour this
breakfast food right now. Particularly this chicken fried steak 'cause I've been thinking
about this all (beep) day. Mm. Hell yeah, dude. This guy's going in the
Clean Plate Club tonight.
That food? With that voice? I’m in heaven.
Indeed! I’m coming over.
Awesome
Please watch this on YouTube after to support the creator. He does amazing things.
https://youtu.be/NWGVFi-213w
I know what I’m about son
I’m dying in the best way.
Whisk it
I've really enjoyed watching him evolve from the beginning!