- [Babish] Today's episode is
sponsored by Cheez-It Snap'd. Cheez-It Snap'd are thin,
crispy cheesy delicacies to take your lunch to the next level that will make you question all your previous chip purchases. Jess and I have found that Cheez-It Snap'd
Cheddar Sour Cream and Onion are the perfect pairing
with our favorite sandwich. If you wanna see how we
level up our lunch on set, find out on the Cheez-It YouTube channel. The link is in the video description. (upbeat music) All right, so here in New York City, the love for chopped cheese runs deep. So naturally, the first move is to go out and get one for science of course, not because I wanna
absolutely demolish it later off camera with no pants on. As you can see, it's served on
a classic New York City hero. It contains lettuce, tomato,
ketchup, mayo, fried onions and two whole burger
patties chopped up and fried with a whole lot of
melted American cheese. This one's got green peppers in it, not strictly traditional
but a nice addition and altogether, it's a perfect food item. It's not something we could
dare try to improve upon or put our own foodie hipster spin on. It is only something we can
desperately try to imitate just as soon as I've
recovered from eating this one in its entirety. Now, the first thing we have
to take a look at is the bread. New York City style heroes are pretty much your standard
grocery store sub roll. They're light, dry, a little
chewy, a little shiny. The bottoms are dusted
with semolina flour. The whole thing kinda reminds me of a long skinny Kaiser roll. It clocks in just shy
of about 10 inches long. Not that that matters. I'm just being over-thorough and it has a light, fluffy,
airy, slightly dry semi-regular but still pretty tight crumb. Perfect for soaking up all
those delicious beefy juices. So like I said, your
standard supermarket sub roll is gonna do you just fine but if you wanna try
and nail the real thing as closely as possible, we
gotta try to make ourselves a New York City style hero. To try to get the right
color, consistency and flavor, I started by making three
different batches of bread, one enriched with just milk, one with milk and oil
and one with milk and egg and the results were all sort of lacking in their own special ways. Just milk was too dry, milk
and oil had the right texture but not the right flavor or color and the egg had the wrong texture. So the answer was obvious. First, I had to leave the cameras rolling so I could catch Jess
dancing without her knowledge and then make a loaf
using milk, oil and egg which would hopefully give
me the best of all worlds and as you can see from
the crumb and crust, we got pretty damn close. Is it necessary to make your
own bread for this sandwich? No, absolutely not. Go to the store and buy
some for a dollar a dozen but if you find yourself
at the same intersection of bored and crazy that I so often do, here's how you can make your very own New York City style hero. In the bowl of a stand mixer, we are combining 540 grams of bread flour, 12 grams of kosher salt, seven
grams of instant dry yeast and this is totally optional but if you happen to have
diastatic malt powder kicking around the house, you can add eight grams for
improved texture and flavor. Tiny whisk until homogenous and then we're adding
120 grams of whole milk and 145 grams of water both heated to about
110 degrees Fahrenheit plus whole beaten egg, about 60 grams and 50 grams of vegetable or canola oil. A fixed dough hook, drop it
down and let it knead on, plug it in first then let
it knead on medium low speed for anywhere from eight to 12 minutes. We want really robust gluten development so that our bread has a nice chew to it. We don't want it to be too soft or caky. Make sure that it passes
the windowpane test with flying colors and you
should end up with a soft, bouncy, not very sticky dough which we're gonna stretch
into a smooth taut ball and drop into a lightly greased bowl. I genuinely forgot the word
bowl for a second there. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let rest at room temperature
for at least one hour, up to two. We want it to double in size. Go ahead and give the bottom
of your bowl a nice tickle, punch it down until
you've knocked out the air and then so we end up with
four consistent heroes, we're gonna weigh the whole batch of dough and divide it into four using math. Most phones or home PCs come with a built-in calculator nowadays so this becomes super easy. Cut it into four vaguely
rectangular pieces that we're going to press and stretch into less vaguely rectangular pieces. Nine or 10 inches wide
and about six inches long then like most enriched breads, we're going to roll and pinch
it into a nice tight log which we're gonna thoroughly pinch shut to make sure that there is no seam that can split open in the oven or during the rising process. Normally, you'd wanna taper
the ends of a sub roll but a hero has characteristically
flat front and back then as I mentioned, you can
see finely ground cornmeal or semolina flour on
the bottom of the rolls. So we're gonna dust some parchment paper set in a rim baking sheet
with semolina flour, plop our loaves on top, cover them loosely with
greased plastic wrap to make sure that they have room to rise and give 'em about 45 minutes to an hour until they are doubled in size. Preheat your oven to
425 degrees Fahrenheit with the rack in the
lower third of the oven but before these guys head into the sauna, we're brushing them down with a mixture of equal parts beaten
egg white and whole milk. This is gonna give 'em
that nice glossy bubbly top without too much yellow color. Last but not least, hero rolls
are usually either unscored or have a single slice along the top. I do recommend scoring them because this helps with oven spring. Bake for 10 to 14 minutes
rotating halfway through until they are puffed, browned and their thickest point
registers 190 degrees Fahrenheit. Give them a little spin because
it's fun for them probably and allow them to cool
completely at least two hours before we turn them into
vessels for our chopped cheese, the toppings for which are
simple and non-negotiable. Finely shredded iceberg lettuce, relatively short shreds too. You don't want anything too
long or stringy in there. A few slices of beefsteak
tomato and half a small onion that we're gonna chop
and saute with the beef. Speaking of which, it's finally time to head
over to the stove top. Chopped cheeses are
usually made on a flat top next to bacon and eggs and everything else
that's cooking in bodega. So our closest approximation is a wide flat cast iron skillet. I got a little bit of vegetable oil here that I'm heating over medium high until just starting to smoke. As soon as it does, down go
to preformed hamburger patties and use third pounders. Don't be shy. Then, right around these patties, we're gonna scatter our chopped onions then we're gonna let everything
sit for about three minutes. The only secret ingredient
that I could find that bodegas use is a generous
pinch of adobo seasoning, an all-purpose seasoning made of salt, garlic, oregano and turmeric. So like I said, don't touch anything for
like two to three minutes. Let that beef form a nice crust, let those onions get some nice color then it's time for this sandwich to start living up to its name. Chop up the beef with a heavy spatula, mix it in with the onions
and continue sautéing until everything is nicely browned and the beef is cooked through. Shouldn't take more than
like two more minutes then we're gonna organize
the beef and onions into a long pile in the
center of the skillet because now it's time for this sandwich to live up to the other part
of its name, the cheese. Three slices of yellow American
Singles, no exceptions. Don't let me catch you putting Gruyere in your chopped cheese or prepare never to show
your face in Harlem again. Let that melt completely. Let the beef get a little
crusty on the bottom and with that, we're ready to serve. Highly recommend lightly
toasting your hero first. This is not a forgiving sandwich and you're gonna need the
extra structural integrity then grab your very longest spatula because ideally you wanna try
to get all the beef and cheese in one fell swoop. Didn't nail it on my
first try but that's okay. There should be just
enough beef and cheese that the sandwich can't
really contain all of it. Once you have as much as you can on there, top it up with the tomato, the lettuce and then standard condiments are a healthy squirt of ketchup and mayo and folks, that's about it. The hardest part about this
sandwich is topping it up and trying to keep it all in one piece and fitting it in your mouth but the rewards for
doing so are staggering. There's a good reason that this sandwich has gained notoriety
outside of New York City in the past few years. It is a masterpiece. Like I said, it's gonna be pretty hard to fit it all in there but do your best, get a close up for the camera and then shove it into your face and get ready to experience the love child of a cheeseburger, a cheesesteak
and like a sloppy joe. This one barely lasted five minutes. I made another one for
Jess when she got home and I've made two more
since filming this episode. So it was nice knowing you guys. Thank you again to Cheez-It Snap'd for sponsoring today's episode. With multiple Cheez-It
Snap'd flavors like Barbecue, Cheddar Sour Cream and Onion, Jalapeno Jack and Double Cheese, the pairing possibilities are endless. If you wanna see how these
thin, crispy, cheesy crisps take Jess and my lunch to the next level, head over to the Cheez-It YouTube channel and watch our episode of What's For Lunch. The link is in the video description. (calm music)
