Binging with Babish: The Swanson from Parks and Recreation

well done Tommy is that bacon on your turkey leg they called it a Swanson Wow Freddy spaghetti I got rules hey what's up guys welcome back to binging with babish where this week after visiting Disney World on my new show being with babish I'm hungry for a turkey leg and leave it to Ron Swanson to wrap one in bacon but first we have to negotiate this whole turkey because it's March and grocery stores aren't selling turkeys so I had to special-order the sky and I'm going to show you how to extract its legs and wings first on the wings we're cutting through the skin down to the joint separating the bones and running our knife in between easy peasy and it's an excellent warm-up for removing the drumsticks because it's the exact same concept only harder try to find the joint and start making radial cuts around towards it until you reach the two bones in question then try to twist the leg until they separate when your knife in between and sweet sweet freedom one helpful thing to look for is this little strip of white fat that runs along the joints in most poultry to try to make some long even cuts along that fat and you should have no problem finding the joints we'll deal with the rest of this turkey later because for now we have to prepare a cure not that kind of cure this turkey is totally dead Noah meets cure out of one and 1/2 cups of distilled water 1 2 3 4 and 1/2 teaspoons of kosher salt 1 1 F teaspoons of crowd powder number 1 which is kind of pink curing salt and 1 2 3 4 and 1/2 tablespoons of dark brown sugar go ahead and tiny whisk those together until they are completely dissolved get your face right down in there make sure that there is no particulate left but not too close because frog powder is toxic to humans but not in this application because only a little tiny tiny bit ends up in the meat now I've got the turkey divided in half into two ziplock bags so I'm going to measure out exactly half of our cure and put it into each bag because we are talking with science right now then you might notice I have the tops of my bags folded down that is to prevent cross-contamination and now I'm going to press all the air out seal it up making sure that as much of the meat comes in contact with as much of the liquid as possible then we're placing these in a bowl and refrigerating for 24 hours turning every 12 hours or so before we hop in the car and make our way out to the suburbs where my buddy Steve has a smoker that I don't totally how to use so Steve why don't you come on in here and show us how to use it I'm gonna do my best Steve impression because he's not here to do the voiceover hi my name's Steve what I'm gonna do is place these apple and cherry wood chips that have had soaking for half an hour onto these hot charcoals which I've also had preheating for about half an hour and then I'm gonna replace the grate have my friend Andy drop in the ambient temperature probe close it up and let the heat stabilize to 325 degrees Fahrenheit adjusting the vents as necessary there you go Andy all ready for your turkey thanks Steve I'm gonna start by probing the thickest drumstick at its thickest point and if you have a very thick cut butcher bacon like this you want to wrap it now if you have thinner grocery-store style bacon you want to wrap it in about half an hour or once the joints register about a hundred and forty degrees Fahrenheit close it up crack open a beer and watch half an hour fly by use this time to work on your other impressions like your Ted Danson hey Ted Danson here taking a break from being a damn sex machine to show you how you would wrap turkey legs and thinner bacon after 30 minutes of cooking I kind of recommend doing this anyway because the skin underneath the thick-cut bacon doesn't really get that same mahogany color anyway back over to you Andrew thanks Ted Wow this is a star-studded episode anyway now that my neighbors probably think I'm insane let's grab our turkey drumsticks played him up and let him rest for about 10 minutes before digging in mostly because you're gonna want to spend that 10 minutes marveling at the color of these things they're like meaty bottles of Cabernet wrapped in Burgundy strips of hardwood smoked happiness curing the meat adds a distinct flavor smoking it accentuates and amplifies it and then we wrapped it in bacon and the wings aren't bad either sorry I didn't mention it before pull these off after they've reached 185 degrees Fahrenheit now if you will excuse me and Steve we have to introduce these into the clean bone Club and then I collapsed my tripod and drove back home so I could mess with the rest of this turkey which I'm going to peel the skin off and then remove the breasts from by making long clean cuts down the side of the breastbone I'm gonna do the same thing with the thigh meat by cutting and scraping down the side of the thigh bone until I've gotten all of the remaining dark meat extracted now is a great opportunity to pay your future self a huge favor and throw this carcass into a stockpot make some amazing turkey stock and freeze it your November self will thank you and your current self will thank you if you cut all of the breast and thigh meats into 1-inch cubes place them on a parchment lined baking and she'd freeze for 15 minutes or until they're firm around the edges and grind up in a food processor this is way better than any store-bought ground turkey and we'll make some serious Traeger turkey burgers oh my god oh my god I'm pretty comfortable how about you very comfortable I've never done anything like this before this episode one and this is a big moment hey man how you doing hey come on my name's Andrew all right

Channel: Babish Culinary Universe

Views: 6,777,727

Rating: 4.9497609 out of 5

Keywords: parks and recreation, parks and rec, parks & rec, ron swanson, I'm ron fucking swanson, grill, grilled, smoked, smoker, smoke, turkey, leg, drumstick, bacon, wrapped, summer, bbq, impressions, the swanson, parks and rec swanson, parks and rec the swanson, the swanson recipe, how to make the swanson, turkey leg recipe, how to make turkey legs, bacon wrapped turkey leg, binging with babish, cooking with babish, babbish, pear qwerty horse

Id: aLpPZlVsny0

Length: 4min 52sec (292 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/The_Samsquanchh]

His Ted Danson crack had me in stitches

[u/readonlypdf]

Now for the meat tornado!

[u/inverse_tiresias]

Welcome to the pantheon of the BCU, Steve and Ted Danson.

There's something oddly satisfying and wholesome about the series of BWB episodes that encourage using the entire animal that provides the material for not one, but two P&R specialties (Traeger's burgers) and poultry stock for future noodle soups from Basics.

[u/TheGreenSleaves]

And it ends with the god damn turkey burgers!! That’s it guys, this is the true series finale of Binging with Babish

[u/forsakenplayer5]

What about Turf n Turf from Parks and Rec?

[u/Troggie42]

Wow, Babby is an insanely good impressionist!

[u/Doggo_Of_Wisdom]

Bless you /u/oliverbabish for this delicious inclusion.

[u/buddascrayon]

Prague powder number 1. For those who, like me, were straining to understand what that was.

[u/McIgglyTuffMuffin]

Considering I am currently in the middle of yet another Parks and Rec binge this is perfect.