Chef John’s Spookiest Halloween Recipes

[Music] face pie that's right if you're going to make a meat pie out of someone the least you could do would be decorate the top with their faces attribute and that's exactly what i did here with the free range drifter i harvested a few weeks ago and of course i'm kidding there were no actual humans used in the making of this face pie allegedly but anyway i've probably already said too much so let's just go ahead and get started with this horrific halloween recipe and to get started what you're gonna need is one batch of pastry crust and that is straight from our tortilla recipe which i will provide a link for and what i did first was trace a circle around my pie dish so i would have a little bit of an outline to help me design my face and once that was set i started cutting off pieces of dough so i could start building the underlying structure of the facial features and i started with that bony part above the eyes which i believe is called the eyebrow ridge oh by the way fair warning in many parts during this i have to speed up the video since i took way way too long shaping this but anyway after my eyebrow bones were done i started on the nose bone which i believe is technically cartilage and once i had the general shape of the nose done i went ahead and formed the lips which as you probably know are neither bone nor cartilage just some good old-fashioned muscle tissue and before i knew it my face started to take shape and from there i continued on with what i thought were going to be cheekbones but i kind of put them too high since believe it or not this is my first face pie so live and learn and after what we're supposed to be the cheekbones i went ahead and added some eye lumps and the reason i really wasn't that concerned at this point with these pieces being too precise is because after shaping these underlying features my plan was to place a very thin skin of pie dough over the top and then i'd use that to mold the final face so that was my game plan and after getting it to this point i slid it on a sheet pan so i could pop that in the freezer so that those pieces of dough would be nice and hard when i laid over my skin so i popped the pan in the freezer and the dough back in the fridge to firm it up a little bit and once that dough had re-chilled a little bit i pulled it out and took half of it and formed it into a disk and with the help of some flour and a rolling pin i went ahead and rolled that out to a round shape fairly thin maybe about an eighth of an inch and once that was set i went ahead and pulled out my frozen face parts and i centered my edible epidermis over the top and then very carefully i used my fingertips to kind of push it and pull it into place and because the dough underneath had been in the freezer and was nice and firm and this dough i just rolled was nice and soft and flexible it was actually pretty easy to shape into what you're seeing here and i think it was right about here that i realized my nose and lips were probably a little too big but i was too far in at this point to change that plus i didn't really care that much because this is a halloween thing and no matter how it came out i was just going to say that's how it was supposed to look and as far as smoothing and smearing the dough in certain spots i found that dipping my fingers in some water really helped and as with any time we're working with pastry dough whenever it seems like it's getting too warm and too soft to work with we'll just go ahead and pop it in the fridge for a few minutes so that butter firms back up so that's what i did here and then i went ahead and pulled it back out and then using a chopstick i made some nostrils because my pinky was too big and i didn't think a pencil would be sanitary and then after creating some beautiful nasal passages i moved on to work on the eyes and my plan was to have one of them open and one of them closed so for the open one i cut some dough out of the center and then for the closed one i just cut a slit in the center and then made a second cut right underneath because i think that's what an eyelid looks like i also took the knife and cut a little bit between the lips because i was hoping as this baked some of the juices would bubble up through which they never did but anyway once i was happy with how my face was looking i decided i needed to pop that into the freezer so it would be nice and stiff and firm so i'd be able to pull off that paper and then lay that over my filling so i went ahead and transferred that into the freezer for about 15 minutes which gave me plenty of time to roll out the rest of the dough to form the bottom crust and once that was accomplished i went ahead and started spooning in fill sorry not spooning in phil spooning in the filling which by the way just like the crust is from our famous tortilla video one of the most delicious things you'll ever eat so even if you're not going to make a face you should definitely try that recipe and once i had that all transferred in i went ahead and pulled out my now firm face from the freezer and pulled off the paper and placed that on top and then i had to wait about 10 or 15 minutes for this to thaw a little bit before i could do the final shaping and while i was waiting i went ahead and made an egg wash which we're going to use to paint over the top and also as you see to add some coloring so i went ahead and beat one large egg with a tablespoon of water and we'll set that aside until needed and in about 10 or 15 minutes later that dough is flexible enough to do the final shaping and as you can see i'm kind of tucking it in a little bit around the edges because i was afraid if i stretched it too much as it baked it might lose some of the detail plus i wanted to maintain kind of a rounded shape and not have this too flat and then once i was happy with that i went ahead and took a knife and cut off the excess trimming all the way around underneath the edge of the dish and then after parting those lips a little more i moved on to adding an eyeball for which i used a half a grape and then i cut and placed a couple pieces of dough over that to form what i hoped would look like eyelids and by using a grape i thought as it baked some of those sugary juices would leak out and kind of caramelize in a gross disgusting way but unfortunately they never did so i probably should have used a cherry tomato or an actual regular cherry but anyway if you make this that'll be up to you i mean you are after all the bill nye of what to use for your face pie eye and then once that was said i moved back to the lips and went around cutting some very shallow lines to make my probably way too large lips look a little more realistic and then once i finished that i moved on to some fine tuning for like way too many minutes and by the way in hindsight all these final tweaks were totally unnecessary since most of the detail is kind of baked out as this cooked including trying to add some wrinkles to the bridge of the nose and around the eyes and then many minutes later when i was finally satisfied i went ahead and grabbed the egg wash and i applied this three different times okay the first time was just a brush plain egg wash over the whole thing and then i added one very small drop of red food coloring to make sort of a pink mixture that i used to kind of color the flesh around the eyes and the nose and then finally for the third application i added one big drop of red food coloring and use that to color the lips and the tip of the nose and i kind of thought is this baked that would turn into more of a blood red look but it didn't it pretty much kept that color and once baked looked like really cheap lipstick and looked like nothing phil would have worn in real life but anyway i went ahead and colorized that face the best i could at which point i grabbed a fork so i could crimp the edge which by the way is very hard to do if the dough is warmed up and is very soft like this so i probably should have popped this back in the fridge for a few minutes or done it earlier but anyway i pressed on and it worked and that's it my face pie was finally ready for the oven oh by the way if you're doing this for a party make sure everybody gets their pictures right here since it was at this point the most creepy and horrible and disturbing looking so get your pictures before you pop in the oven and when you are finally ready to bake we're going to go ahead and put that on a baking sheet in case it drips and i also decided to very loosely tend some foil over the top okay i didn't want my facial features browning too much although i did pull that off halfway through the baking but anyway i popped that into the center of a 375 degree oven for just over an hour or until it looked like this oh yeah check it out it's a meat pie with a face and even though we did lose a lot of detail during the baking process it still i thought came out looking very disturbing which if everything goes according to plan we'll give our guest nightmares for many months to come so i was very happy and frightened with how good this came out and i went ahead and transferred that onto a rack so it would cool a little faster because i was rapidly losing daylight and i wanted to be able to take some decent shots of me cutting the slice so i let that cool down a little and i went ahead and took a wedge out of the cheek since that's my favorite part of the face and even though this was still a little too hot it came out pretty nicely and no in case you're wondering that weird orange looking thing is not part of the thyroid gland see that's what i thought but it was actually just a little piece of golden brown crust that got soaked with the meat juices and i ended up plucking it out because it did look kind of weird in the pictures and then just to make it an official food wishes video went in for a taste and again if you have not tried our montreal meat pie also known as tortilla do yourself a favor and check it out it is so delicious those french canadians know how to eat but anyway that's it how to make a meat pie with a face whether you make this with an actual free range drifter or simply by using some pork and beef like i did allegedly either way i think this would make a stunning centerpiece to your halloween themed party i mean that my friends is going to be memorable in fact maybe too memorable but having said that i still really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with devil's dentures [Applause] [Music] that's right finally a halloween treat that's actually scary i mean no offense but sticking little pretzels in a mini peanut butter cup and calling it a spooky spider i mean was that really supposed to scare us the only people that's scaring is dennis and dietitians so here we go we're gonna need some apples and i'm gonna use these red delicious this variety has the color that most closely resembles blood gushing from somebody's neck and we're going to take that apple and we're going to cut it in quarters now if you want to get extra fancy i guess you could take like a melon baller and sort of scoop out that center core part but you know what i didn't that doesn't bother me besides you think satan's going to trim out the core hell no and then we're gonna take one of the quarters and we're gonna put our paring knife in about i don't know half inch from the edge and go down but not all the way stop about a half inch from the bottom and then you're gonna turn it and you're gonna cut straight down the other side exactly the same way [Music] and when those two cuts meet you'll be able to pull that section right out and then after we make those cuts we're going to go ahead and give it a quick dip and a little bit of water that has some lemon juice or vinegar in it just so these don't get brown too fast so i'm gonna give mine a quick dip so the base of our devil's dentures is done and it's on to the teeth and for that we're gonna use slivered almonds which are just the absolute perfect shape for this and we're going to go ahead and implant them into our apples but before we do we're going to make little holes with the tip of our knife just go along the gum line all right the closer you get to the outside the better it looks but if you go too close it might crack so just like that should be fine and after you make your holes just go ahead and start pushing in teeth and the beauty of this it doesn't matter what size what shape if it's pointed if it's flat if it looks broken they all look awesome once they're in it's the variety and lengths and textures that really gives this its spooky look so we're gonna push those in we're gonna flip it over and we're gonna do the same thing on the other side and of course these holes you're making in between the other teeth to give it that sort of offset look and by the way do not worry if your friends call these stupid and make fun of them they're only doing that to cover up their profound terror all right oh and by the way see that little piece of almond skin that stuck to the edge there that's known as the plaque of darkness which reminds me kids you gotta floss make sure you're flossing regularly and once those are done we're just going to place those on a serving platter and if you think one is scary when you get a whole collection oh my god we're talking about the potential for reoccurring nightmares and now if you want you can serve these just like that but i like to do one extra optional step which is to drizzle it with some slightly thinned out honey you know a little devil's drool or as the spanish inquisitors called it el drulo del diablo it's going to give those teeth and or fangs a nice wet glistening look and i'm not sure how much scarier it's gonna make it look but it will make it a little sweeter and once we've drizzled that over our devil's dentures are done look at that i haven't seen teeth that terrifying since my last trip to london yes that's how scary these are oh and one last thing if you use a pretty sharp knife and dip them in that water these really don't get brown for a long time this photo was probably taken 45 minutes after these were made and they still look really good and then of course you're going to want to bite these before they bite you and in addition to being so frightening these actually taste pretty good apples almonds and honey what's not gonna be good about that okay so like i said halloween treats are usually not that scary but in this case i think you'll agree truly truly horrifying so i really do hope you give these a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with deviled ham that's right you're looking for something unique and very delicious to bring to a party except you're really not into cooking not to mention you don't have a lot of money or time well in that case this deviled ham spread might be exactly what you're looking for and perfect for your guests that love ham but aren't crazy about having to chew it and while maybe not the most beautiful party snack in history the taste i think more than makes up for that and it's extremely fast and easy to put together so with that let's go ahead and get started with the star of the show our ham and what i have here is about a pound and a half of what my butcher sells as ham steak although literally any type of ham is going to work here and what we'll do first is go ahead and take a knife and cube this up which might seem like an odd step since we're going to grind this in the food processor but by starting with some smaller pieces to begin with the meat's going to blend faster and easier and more uniformly so we'll go ahead and quickly cube up our ham at which point we can transfer that into the aforementioned food processor and then what we'll do is add two things before we blitz this and that's gonna be a quarter cup of diced onions and again by giving those a chop first they're gonna blend in a lot better and more evenly and then besides the onions we'll do about the same amount of dye celery and if you look carefully you'll notice i did include a little bit of the celery leaf which is considered somewhat of a secret ingredient here so if your celery stock had a little bit of leaf attached don't be afraid to include some and then what we'll do once those three ingredients are together is to take this and process it by pulsing on and off until it's very finely ground as determined by you but i pulsed mine on and off for about a minute or so until it was relatively finely ground and looked a little something like this which you're going to get a much better look at here as i transfer this into a bowl in which we will mix the rest of the ingredients and then what we'll do once we bold our ham is to start adding the ingredients that make this deviled which simply refers to spicy and or sharply flavored ingredients and i'm going to start with one such optional ingredients and that would be a couple ounces of spicy cheese and this right here is a red pepper infused cheddar and while not a classic deviled ham ingredient i do think it's a nice addition but as i said it is optional so you decide you are after all the satan of whether you're gratin but anyway let's go ahead and continue this devilization with a nice big spoon of dijon or of course the mustard of your choice and then we're gonna definitely need a very generous application of hot sauce and just in case you're wondering i'm using sriracha and because i'm using so much of that we really don't need to add any cayenne here but we will anyway i'm going to toss in a nice big spoon of that and then we'll continue on with a nice big spoon of worcestershire sauce and we will finish off with a nice big scoop of mayo and i believe that's it we will take a spatula and give this a thorough mixing and i should say we'll take a spatula and give this an initial mix because once this is stirred together we're going to want to give it a check to make sure it has the exact texture we want so we will go ahead and spatulate that mixture until completely smooth in which way i'm going to grab a knife and give it a try and yes of course we're doing this to check the flavors but just as important we're checking the texture here okay we want something that's nice and soft and moist and spreadable and nothing too dry and crumbly so this was very close but i did decide to add one more dalpa mayo and then i also decided taste wise need a little more heat so i gave it one more shot of hot sauce then we'll go ahead and mix that up and for me that ended up being just right and then what we'll do once that's mixed time permitting is go ahead and wrap it up and pop in the fridge for a few hours before service all right that'll give all those flavors time to meld together plus i do like to serve this well chilled but either way whether you serve it immediately or chill it for a few hours once we're ready we'll go ahead and transfer that into something a little more attractive to serve it in and then what i'm going to do for a presentation is take these little baby pickled peppers and place those around the edge of the dish to sort of distract from that less than gorgeous surface appearance and since these sort of look like little flames i think it totally works and i forget the name of these i think they're called dewdrop peppers i mean i would have called them the tears of lucifer but that's just me so i'm going to go ahead and surround my dip with those before finishing up a little dusting of cayenne as well as some chopped chives for that full-on late 70s food magazine cover finish all right my goal with garnishing any kind of dip or spread for a party is that i want people not to be sure whether i'm being ironic or not which i think i've really pulled off here but anyway that's it my take on deviled ham is done and ready to enjoy which i'm going to go ahead and do on a couple different types of rye crisps and i have to say despite the somewhat questionable appearance this stuff is just absolutely delicious all right very hammy very spicy with those savory and aromatic elements in the background sort of amplifying all the flavors this really is a great party snack and not just because it tastes good but also because it's a little bit out of the ordinary all right don't get me wrong i do love all the classic dips and spreads but as far as a little bit of an interesting change of pace this really does go down a treat and i was gonna stop right there but then i remembered i hadn't tried one with a pepper on it so i felt like i should take one more bite before i signed off but anyway that's it my version of deviled ham i'm sure a lot of our younger viewers have never even heard of this stuff and that's because it enjoyed its peak popularity before the internet but with your help and this video to work from i'm feeling like we could bring this back and restore it to its former glory and by the way above and beyond being a great dip and spread this also makes a world-class sandwich so for all those reasons and more i really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with meringue bones and ghosts that's right not only are these little sweet treats easy to make they're also incredibly scary mostly because of the sugar content but even still these simple confections would be perfect for your halloween theme party and speaking of scary a lot of people are very intimidated working with meringues which is kind of silly because as i'm about to show you it's actually very very simple so let's go ahead and get started and for that we're going to need a couple egg whites and of course you're going to need one of these balloon style whisks and of course we're going to use that to beat these egg whites up but before we do we're supposed to add a little pinch of cream of tartar but i'm not going to because who the heck has crema tartar instead i'm going to just put a couple drips of lemon juice because i say a little bit of acid will help stabilize the egg whites and i would love to fully explain what that means but i'm not really sure for more info you could google or you could check out some old alt brown reruns but anyway we're going to take our whisk and we're going to start beating and this is going to be a very simple easy process we're simply going to whisk these up adding sugar as we go until we have some beautiful shiny pipeable peaks and we don't want to start mixing in the sugar too early here okay so we want to keep whisking and whisking until we have something that looks like this and i'm not sure what the actual pastry chef term for this is but i refer to it as the beer head stage that's the point at which we can start adding our sugar little by little so basically this is just add some sugar whisk for half a minute add a little more whisk it in add a little more until all your sugar has been introduced and by the way i mentioned this is a very easy simple technique which is true if you use an electric mixer if you do this by hand like i did it actually takes a long time but you know what i had someone watching me and i wanted to impress them by how fast i could do this by hand but of course instead of commenting on how strong i was all they could talk about was how much i was sweating but anyway the point is if you have a mixer use it and that's mostly because when you add sugar to egg whites it just takes a lot more time and effort to get the peaks you're looking for but anyway we're going to keep whisking and whisking until we have something that looks like this a beautiful shiny meringue that will hold a shape all right so you can see how this stuff is kind of piling up when it falls off the whisk and holds those nice sharp lines that's exactly what we're looking for and at that point we're going to transfer this into a piping bag and make whatever shape you want today we're doing bones and mini ghosts so i'm going to go ahead and start with the bones and they've been quite a few years since i did this so i was experimenting with different techniques for this first one i did the bone first and then i added the joints on either end so that worked okay but for the second one i decided to go with the joints first and then make the bone and then finish the joints on the other end and the beauty of a project like this is don't worry too much about what it looks like now when these are done and all piled up on a plate they're gonna look awesome no one's gonna say hey which exact bone is that if you got a few bumps here and there a few points here and there it's fine you could just tell people those are demonic bone spurs or the first signs of osteoporosis or in this case gasteoporosis oh yeah even the puns are terrifying but anyway i'm going to pipe out a pan of bones and we'll set those aside while we use the rest of the meringue to make little ghosts which are even easier than the bones because all you're going to do is pipe up a little swirl of meringue like this when those are cooked they're going to look exactly exactly like small ghosts or at least what cartoonists in the early part of last century thought ghosts looked like as you can see i'm using some extremely frightening backlighting and speaking of shadows if you're my age do you remember that show dark shadows man that was a creepy show that show caused a lot of nightmares growing up almost as many as captain kangaroo but anyway we're gonna do a panagos and at that point we're gonna transfer our meringue treats into a preheated 225 degree oven for about an hour until the meringue is cooked firm and pretty much dry to the touch but you're not done don't take them out of the oven yet turn off the oven close the door and let them sit for another hour in the oven cooling okay this way the meringue is going to get nice and dried out it's going to stay nice and crispy so i let mine cool down in the turned off oven for an hour at which point we're ready to enjoy so first things first let me show you how to not take these off the pan because you might be thinking hey i can just pull these right off the pan there's not going to be a problem let me just grab it pull it up i'm sure we'll come up in one piece and no broke did not see that coming so don't do it that way what you want to do is put your hand under the liner under the sill pad or the parchment paper and these things will pop right off now of course having said that if you do break a couple don't worry it'll just make your finished presentation look that much more frightening at that point they're ready to transfer onto some kind of plate or platter to be placed in front of your friends at your halloween party so they can simulate eating the bones of a small mammal i mean come on who's not going to enjoy that so let me go in for a little taste and unlike some of the things we make there's no complexity here this is just sweet and crunchy i mean really these are mostly air so they're very light but very delicious and you know who would love these ghost dogs but anyway that's how you do the bones and then for the ghosts we could just serve these as is but what i really like to do is take some melted chocolate and just use the end of a bamboo skewer to make a couple eyes on these things that's going to make them look much more ghost-like i mean without the eyes these do kind of look like something the ghost dog would leave behind so i do recommend a couple dots of chocolate but anyway that's it as you saw a very simple very easy recipe and i think a lot of fun to make in fact this would be perfect to get the kids involved especially if you don't have an electric mixer and you don't want to get stuck whisking those egg whites have the kids do it it's good form it'll build character but anyway i really do hope you give these a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with mini meatloaf ghosts that's right who you going to call ghost meatloaf oh yeah i'm going to show you how to take your favorite meatloaf recipe and turn it into these absolutely adorable yet still incredibly terrifying edible apparitions and not only are these easy and fun to make they are also a delicious crowd pleaser that will have your family cheering for more sorry i mean booing for more and all we're going to need to get started with is one batch of whatever your favorite meatloaf mix is and if you don't have one you can just use this extremely quick easy cheater version i'm about to show you now which includes one pound of lean ground beef some salt of course as well as some freshly ground black pepper and do not forget a few shakes of cayenne otherwise i will haunt your dreams i also like to toss in a little bit of minced green onion and then i tossed in a little chopped parsley because i had it in the fridge but you don't really need that but what you do need is some bread crumbs as well as one beaten egg and then last but not least a splash of wash your sister sauce and that's it we'll go ahead and take a fork and give this a mix so as not to overwork the meat with our hot sweaty hands which as you may know could result in a tough meatloaf and by the way it's probably worth mentioning that you don't have to use meatloaf for this okay your favorite meatball recipe would also work or you could if you want just simply season some ground beef okay if you're making these for kids they probably won't care too much unless they're those children of the corn okay they're kind of particular but anyway we'll go ahead and mix it up with a fork until it's just combined at which point we'll stop wrap this up and refrigerate it for at least an hour before we work with it okay you could use this right away if you had to but if you let it sit in the fridge for like an hour it's going to be easier to work with and probably taste better so that's what i did and then an hour later i pulled it out and then what we'll do is take one eighth of this mixture and roll it into a nice smooth ball which of course is a lot easier if we dip our fingers in some water since as everybody knows damp hands make smooth ghosts and then what we'll do once we have a ball formed is we'll attempt to mold this into some kind of pear shape ideally mimicking the physique of your average ghost which shouldn't be too too hard but as i was doing this i couldn't help but think this would be a lot easier to do on a pottery wheel especially if you had a couple extra hands helping you with maybe some righteous brothers playing in the background but anyway like i said we'll go ahead and form that into a pear shape at which point we'll place that down on a line sheet pan and as we say in the business the first one is always the worst one and that was certainly the case here and each one i did after that got a little bit better but having said that don't obsess on getting these perfect since they are going to get covered with a slice of cheese sorry i mean sheet of cheese and that's it once we have those shaped with ideally the head centered over the bodies they are ready to transfer into the center of a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes or so or until cooked through which i say is about 150 internal temp and then what we'll do as soon as those come out is place one slice of provolone cheese or the white cheese of your choice directly over the top centering it as best we can and what's going to happen is that residual heat from the meat is going to start to melt that cheese and it's going to start to droop down which is exactly what we want to happen but since these are so hot and these are somewhat pointy shaped it's probably going to start melting through the top like you see it doing here which is why after that first slice is applied i'm going to take another quarter slice which i just punched out with a round cutter but you could just tear it or cut it into quarters and we'll place that on top as well so we have a little more sheet for the head and that's it as soon as these have been fine nunnified we will pop those back in our still hot oven for about 30 seconds or until that cheese just starts to melt at which point we'll pull them out and we will finish up a little bit of phantom fashion fine tuning and for that we will take some of that cheese that's melting down around the bottoms and we'll go ahead and wrap that and or drape it over the top okay the more irregular the better and just like when we shape the bodies don't worry about trying to get these perfect since as these sit that cheese is gonna continue to melt and you're gonna lose most of the detail but that's okay because as you'll see once you sit for a minute or two the appearance is gonna become very ghost-like and not just with the shape but also the color okay most halloween themed ghost shaped foods are too white but here our sheets are way more realistically dingy i mean you think ghosts have access to washing machines well they don't so after a few centuries their sheets get pretty nasty but anyway once we're happy with how that part looks we will take the tip of the knife and form the eyes and the mouth whoops i just hit the tripod or at least i hope that was me and i think the secret to a truly terrifying ghost face is to make the mouth more vertically shaped than horizontal okay i want my ghost to look more like it's screaming and not like it's smirking but anyway do it any way you want since when it comes to the facial expression you are after all the patrick swayze of how crazy but personally i don't want a pleasant smile and prefer something much closer to a tortured scream oh and do not try to form a nose right everybody knows your nose falls off when you decompose oh you didn't know well now you have that to look forward to and that's it once we're done forming those facial features we can finish up by going around maybe tucking in the sheet a little bit at which point these are ready to serve with whatever sauce we're going to pair them with which in my case is going to be a pool of blood oh yeah i got a couple really nice pints from a free-range grass-fed drifter although not really so much grass-fed as grass sedated but anyway if you can't find blood to serve these on you can substitute with a mixture of ketchup barbecue sauce and hot sauce which is also very nice and that's it my mini meatloaf ghosts were ready to enjoy and yes i know that is a very haunting image but who cares how cool these look or how cool these look if they don't also taste good which these did okay not surprisingly a hunk of meatloaf covered in melted provolone cheese is very tasty and for your adult guests what makes these truly terrifying is the added horror they're gonna feel is they realize their meatloaf dinner is getting cold while you carve the face now that is scary so don't take too long and if you're like me the best part of meatloaf is when it gets cold and you make sandwiches out of it so yes with the leftovers we did enjoy a little ghost on toast which was michelle's idea but anyway i went ahead and plated one up so i could take some pictures and then i sliced off the head so i could take another bite but also so i could end the video with a visual of a bloody neck stump and when it comes to food if there's something more halloweenish than a ghost meat loves bloody neck stump i don't know what it is which is why i really do hope you give these a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with zombie meatloaf that's right do not let the gruesome appearance fool you beneath that horrifying complexion we have what turned out to be a really really nice meatloaf so even if you're not trying to scare and or gross out your guests at your halloween party you'll still hopefully find this video worthwhile although i should mention quickly that if you make this without the zombie face i will haunt your dreams so with that let's go ahead and get started with our meatloaf mix and to begin that we will melt a scary amount of butter over medium-high heat in a skillet to which we will add a whole bunch of diced celery and onions as well as some very finely chopped mushrooms along with a traditional giant pinch of salt and then what we'll do is stir all that together and we're going to want to cook this until our onions soften and the mixture starts to turn a little bit golden which is not going to happen right away because that's how it's going to draw out a lot of water from the mushrooms and at first your mixture is going to be very wet but just give it a few minutes and you'll see that water will evaporate and eventually the mixture will dry out and saute up nicely and we'll cook that until it looks a little something like this and once it reaches this stage what we'll do is turn off the heat and add the following ingredients we will toss in some finely minced garlic as well as a healthy dose of freshly ground black pepper i'm also going to toss in a nice pinch of dry thyme and then we'll finish up a little bit of ground satan sorry i mean ground cayenne and what we'll do with our heat off is go ahead and stir that in since there is going to be enough residual heat to take the raw edge off that garlic and that's it once all that's incorporated we'll simply let that cool down to room temperature before adding it to our meat speaking of which cue the meat in this bowl i have three pounds of ground beef in case you're keeping score at home that is the 85 lean variety and what we'll need to do is season that up with some kosher salt which always looks like too much but it's not it's the perfect amount we will also add a splash of milk or buttermilk i'm using buttermilk because of the pie let's also toss in one beaten egg as well as a nice splash of worcestershire sauce which by the way i'm getting pretty good at pronouncing but anyway let's go ahead and finish this up with some ketchup as well as a generous sprinkling of dry bread crumb and that is going to be it for our monstrous meatloaf mix all we need to do now is add our now cooled vegetable mixture and once we have everything together we're going to want to combine this thoroughly using probably our hands which really does the best job for something like this and yes for a zombie meatloaf it does help if your hands and arms look like a werewolf but even smooth hairless ones will work and we'll go ahead and mix that until it's thoroughly combined but no further okay once we think it's mixed we'll stop at which point we will cover that in plastic and pop it in the fridge until we're ready to use it all right not only is this stuff going to be easier to shape if it's cold but we also need a little bit of time to form our eyes and teeth which we're going to do using an onion and what we'll do once that's peeled is simply make two slices on the side like this which should give us a couple of somewhat eye shaped pieces and then since it's not really an eye unless it has a pupil i'm going to go ahead and push in a couple cloves into the center and that's it so nothing too tricky and then what we'll do for the teeth is slice off another section about an inch wide and cut those into a few tooth-like sections as shown and then once those are done we can move on to shape our zombie head which i'm going to do in a sheet pan on which i've placed down a piece of parchment paper and if you'll notice i sprinkled a little bit of water under that sheet so it doesn't slide around and what we'll do using some damp hands is transfer our meat onto that sheet pan and then to the best of our abilities form some kind of skull-like shape and while i'm no anatomy expert i do know we need some kind of nasal cavity as well as some freakishly large eye sockets and of course some kind of mouth and again you'll want to keep your hands damp so the meat doesn't stick to your fingers so we'll go ahead and orifice the meat and let me spin mine around so you can see how i did so that's looking pretty good and by good i mean bad and we are now ready to proceed to the most fun step the baconing and what we're attempting to do here is cover the surface with bacon so they sort of look like the mussels on a face if the skin's been peeled off and the only real tip i can give you here is try to get the ends of the bacon to end up either in an orifice or underneath the skull and if you're wondering did i google a picture of the muscular structure of a face to help me with this yes yes i did and did that help no not really but it didn't hurt but anyway we'll go ahead and cover our skull in bacon as shown in some sort of semi-symmetrical way and then what we'll do once our surface has been covered and looking something like this is go ahead and press in our eyeballs and we'll want to make sure we're pressing those in nice and deep okay the last thing you're going to want with a zombie meatloaf is bulging eyeballs so we will make sure those are well pushed in and then of course we'll also go ahead and place in our teeth and then once we decide we're happy with our dental work we will move to the final phase of this face and that'll be to place down a few more strategically placed strips of bacon that sort of overlap the edges of the eyes and i really think it's these last few pieces that gives our zombie me loaf that truly realistic look or i'm overthinking this but anyway i draped over a few more strips here and there and obviously when you make yours the exact placement will be up to you i mean you are after all the undead of all that stuff i just said so you go ahead and place those wherever you think they look good and don't be afraid to use some torn or strangely shaped pieces since i think that's going to add to the whole effect and then at some point no matter how fun this is we're gonna have to stop and do one last step before we can put this in the oven and that's to take some kind of spatula and go around making sure all the bacon is well tucked underneath and then once that's been accomplished we are finally ready to bake this which we'll do in the center of a 325 degree oven for about an hour or until we reach an internal temp of 155. in about 10 or 15 minutes in i got scared my onion eyes were going to brown so i went ahead and covered those in foil and continued baking at 325 for like i said about an hour or so until it looked like this and yes of course we could have done this in a very hot oven and tried to get crispy bacon but i was afraid it was all going to contract and not look as good plus i think a meatloaf is much better and much moister cooked at a lower heat and i'm going to talk more about that on the blog but i did want to acknowledge i sacrificed crispy bacon for a more realistic look so i went ahead and uncovered the eyes and then spooned out some of the juices from our nasal cavity and mouth although it may have been scarier to leave that in and then as far as serving goes what i did is transfer this to a cutting board and decide to go around the edge squirting some blood sauce which i will give you the recipe to on the blog it was just barbecue ketchup and hot sauce so i went ahead and applied some of that to the outside edge as well as into the mouth and that's it what i'm calling a zombie meatloaf is done and ready to terrify my guests although i have to admit this is really not that scary in the middle of the day but imagine this at night with candlelight i imagine that's going to be pretty scary but anyway that concludes the gimmick stage of the video and we can move on to was it a good meatloaf which it really was so i sliced off a few pieces of chin and served that with a little bit of blood sauce over the top next to some monster mashed potatoes which are just like regular mashed potatoes only with a different name and even my buttered asparagus was scary because it was grown by pagans i'm sorry not pagans vegans but still pretty scary so i grabbed a fork and went in for a taste and this really did turn out to be a moist and flavorful meatloaf okay all those veggies especially the mushrooms really helped add a lot of moisture and it's always been my experience the things roasted with like a pound of bacon wrapped around them usually come out tasting pretty good and this certainly did so even though you might not want to make this into a horrifying zombie face i still think you're really going to enjoy this recipe but having said that i really do hope you take the extra few minutes to make this look frightening and grotesque but either way i really do hope you give it a try soon so head over to foodrich.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music]

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 179,905

Keywords: food wishes, chef john, Halloween, Halloween recipes, fun recipes, halloween party ideas, meatloaf, recipe, meat, scary, easy, chef, john, cooking, party, halloween party, zombie meatloaf, devil's dentures, apple teeth, funny recipes, spooky halloween ideas, meatloaf ghosts, face pie, meat pie, bacon meat loaf, meringues, meringue recipe, meat loaf recipe, deviled ham, trick or treat, how to make, compilation, food videos, ghosts, zombies, the walking dead

Id: nq-1HtiaZNQ

Length: 41min 48sec (2508 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 02 2021