Binging with Babish: Four Horsemeals of the Eggporkalypse from Parks & Rec

-Ron. - I present to you this menu from a Pawnee institution, J.J.'s Diner, home of the world's best breakfast dish, the Egg-Porkalypse Four Horse Dishes. - Hey, what's up, guys? And welcome back to this, the final episode of "Binging With Babish" coming out of the old kitchen. I've already moved to the new place and already filmed the subject of next week's episode, "The Flesh Tornado," but for now let's take a look at the

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Egg-Porkalypse horse foods, described in Leslie's Book Knope as "An Amazing Onslaught of Protein," including a 12-egg scramble, bacon, sausage, ham, hash browns, chicken-fried steak, and a giant tower of buttermilk pancakes.

The first thing we can start with is flapjacks. This is a standard factory buttermilk pancakes recipe. If you want to see how to do it, click the link in the top right corner right now. Blend until smooth and crumbly, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for up to 24 hours. Plenty of time to tackle the many other horse foods in this Egg-Porkalypse. If we consult the book "Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America", we can see that there are two different versions of hash browns. A mountain of scattered, shredded hash browns and five deep-fried hash brown patties. So, we'll start the burgers by peeling and cutting five medium russets into one-inch pieces, immediately dipping them into a cold water bath so they don't discolor.

This will also help remove some of the excess starch, giving us crispier potatoes. So go ahead and drain them and then we'll dry them with a few layers of paper towels. And then we follow a method for tater tots from the master of all things crispy, J. Kenji López-Alt, who calls for the potatoes to be fried in vegetable oil at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for three to

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minutes until lightly browned and cooked through. through. Once they are nice and blonde around the edges, we will take them out and drain them on a paper towel placed on a rimmed baking sheet.

Then we will let them cool completely at room temperature for about 20 minutes before processing them until we obtain a chunky paste. This process of frying and re-frying will keep the inside of our hash browns light and flaky instead of rubbery and dense. So, once they're nice and cold, load them into your favorite food processor and pulse with eight one-second pulses until all the potatoes have been broken down into small pieces. Do this in batches to ensure the potatoes are processed evenly and remove any extra large pieces with your hands and human intelligence. Once they are all processed together, we can season them and form them into burgers.

We'll add two teaspoons of sugar, a few twists of freshly ground black pepper, a strong pinch, or about a teaspoon, of kosher salt, and a tablespoon of potato starch, which will help give structure and meaning to our hash browns. . Once mixed evenly, it's time to start shaping them into patties. Potato croquettes are usually a type of elongated oval discs designed to be crushed quickly and easily in the mouth. Now we are going to freeze these bad boys for about an hour until they are frozen. This will make them easier to retrieve and fry, and will also crystallize the molecular structure of the potatoes, making them more tender.

Again in a little oil at 375 degrees Fahrenheit, they hold for about five minutes until deeply golden and crispy. Drain them on a rack and there you have them, beautiful, crispy, airy, flaky hash browns, which we'll keep warm in the low oven while we do the million other things we're doing. What I'm most excited about is the chicken fried steak, which starts with one of the cheapest and toughest cuts out there, the top sirloin, which we're going to get tender using a bunch of sharp little knives. This is a meat tenderizer used to make cube steak, a steak stuffed with hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny incisions, which soften even the most incredibly tough beef butter knife cuts.

After many vigorous stomps, they look very much the same, but look closer and you'll see that they have been peppered with many, many small holes. And just like that, they are ready to be breaded. At my dry breading station I have a cup of all-purpose flour, a teaspoon of kosher salt, and a teaspoon of cayenne pepper, lightly beaten until smooth. Then, on the moister side of things, I have a large egg, a teaspoon of baking powder, and half a teaspoon of baking soda, which I'm going to whisk into a slurry before adding a cup of buttermilk.

This will give our breading a nice, light and airy texture. Once everything on both sides is even, we are ready to start dipping our fillets. And since we're obviously not trying to skimp on cholesterol, of course we're doing it doubly. That means taking a long bath in the dry material, shaking off the excess, swimming in the wet material, making sure every crack and crevice is completely covered, and returning to the dry, creating a voluminous, craggy exterior. , not unlike fried chicken. But the funny thing is that chicken fried steak doesn't get its name from there. Thomas Jefferson, a well-known food enthusiast and long-time Francophile, is credited with...

I'm just kidding, it got its name from being a chicken-fried steak, which is exactly what we're going to do with it. It is placed in a 350-degree Fahrenheit oil, where it is fried for four to five minutes per side until deep golden brown and crispy all over. Be very careful when flipping because if you break the shell you will have a bad time. Drain on a rack, keep warm in the low oven, rinse, and repeat with the remaining fillets. And then, the key to the deliciousness of chicken fried tenders lies at the bottom of this pot.

That's how it is. Remember all the sloppy brown gold from the KFC episode? All this fried crap is the key to making a delicious sauce. So we reserve as much as possible at the bottom of the pan, along with about two or three tablespoons of leftover oil for frying, into which we will add half a finely chopped onion. We're going to sauté the onion and all that sloppy brown for two or three minutes until it starts to soften and turn translucent at the edges. Add two or three cloves of crushed garlic and continue to sauté over medium heat for about 30 seconds until fragrant.

And then we added a quarter cup of flour as our eventual thickener. Mix it with the vegetables and let it cook for about two or three minutes until the smell of raw flour dissipates. Then we slowly added about half a cup of beef broth and the star of the show, a cup of light cream. Add it slowly at first, whisking constantly to avoid lumps. Add the rest and whisk frequently on medium-high heat until bubbling and thickening. Once it starts to bubble, be sure to lower the heat to avoid burning the sauce. When it's almost ready, we'll season it with kosher salt, freshly ground pepper, and an optional pinch of cayenne pepper.

We want to reduce and thicken to the point that it can easily coat the back of a spoon. We're also using a spoon to give it a little flavor. Let's see what this is like. Oh my gosh, that's good. Don't worry if it seems a little thin, it will thicken as it cools, but we want to keep it warm until we are ready to serve. The last part of the preparation we need to do is mash our potatoes for our hash brown spreads. To make them, we peel and mash three large russets directly in a bowl of cold water.

This, again, will remove excess starch and prevent them from discoloring too quickly. Set them aside and just like in the first episode of this kitchen, we'll end up on the flat surface. There is no other way to build a breakfast of this magnitude. Once it's nice and hot, we'll treat the entire surface with a little bit of canola oil, just to make sure no one gets too sticky, and then it'll be time to start the protein attack. I'm starting with what I thought was a pound of extra crispy fried bacon the way I imagine Ron likes it.

I imagine him saying something about how soft bacon is for frequent criers and bedwetters. We also have three large pieces of ham that we're just going to heat up and get a nice crust. Once they are all well browned and fried, it is time to transfer them to a plate, which we will keep warm in the low oven while we move on to phase two, that of sausages and pancakes. Here I have a regular breakfast sausage, next to which I'm going to start serving large buttermilk pancakes. Fry for about three minutes on the first side until they start to turn pale and blister around the edges.

And let's all take a moment to remember that these are all fried in bacon fat. Once the pancakes are flipped, they stay another two or three minutes on the opposite side before stacking them on a plate and repeating until there is no pancake batter left. The pancakes are ready, it's time to take this off the spatula. Come on, friend, let's go. Join your pancake brothers. And last but not least, we have our hash browns spread and 12 egg scramble. We will place the potatoes on a clean kitchen towel and squeeze all the juice from them. Make sure they are super dry to facilitate effective browning.

But before we put them on the stove, we're going to season them lightly with a little kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, just the touches. Mix gently to distribute and place on a flat, greased surface. Then, after flattening them with a large metal spatula until they form a potato burger, we will cover them with a bowl while we fry them on the first side. This will help the potatoes cook more evenly. Then, once the sausage has been placed on the keeping warm plate, we'll dedicate the new flat space to the 12-egg scramble, which is exactly what it sounds like, 12 scrambled eggs, but we.

We're making ours with bacon and sausage fat. Just stir them around, and once you have some nice big, soft, fluffy, eggy curds, remove them and place them on a plate just in time to realize that you haven't used up the cooking time on the hash brown very well. But pretend you're at J.J.'s house. and you have heat lamps or something. Flip once well browned and cook for four to five minutes per side. Once ready, place on top of the hash brown discs and prepare to serve. Everyone else is waiting, so why don't we join the party?

And what a party it is. Thousands of calories and hundreds of grams of cholesterol parade alongside a single glass of orange juice and a single cup of coffee. I'm about to delve into this sucker, but first I just want to say a few words. (sighs) Well, friends, this is it. Oh, I'm not focused, am I? Wait a second. (groans) Well, friends, that's all. That's the last meal coming out of the SoHo kitchen. I have lived here for over two years. I fell in love here, I wrote a cookbook here, I lived a lot of life here and it's crazy to say goodbye.

Oh, I forgot about the sausage gravy. hold on. We must not forget about the sausage sauce. Okay, that's better. So yes, as I said, (sighs) I feel like a lot of things are saying goodbye. I'm scared (laughs), but as Ron Swanson says, "When I eat, it's the food that's scared," so I'll try to take that perspective. I feel excited because I have many new and important plans for the new space, new shows, new people, new everything. And I also feel quite sad. This place has been my home for longer than most places. And as Ron Swanson says, again, "There's no sadness that breakfast food can't cure," so I'm going to live by those words and dig into this breakfast food right now.

Oh, this needs butter. Booop. (laughs) Oh wait, I have something to do. My last splash of Lagavulin 16. Last little bit. Oh, I poured it on the eggs. Alright. Okay, that's not a little, that's a lot, but whatever, we'll celebrate tonight. Thank you all very much for sticking with me. I owe you everything I have. I owe you everything, more than I ever dreamed, I owe it all to you. And like I said in my book, I will spend the rest of my life working to earn everything you have given me. So, this is for you. Thank you very much for sticking with me.

I'm going to devour this breakfast food right now. Particularly this chicken fried steak because I've been thinking about this all day (bleep). Hmm. Hell yeah, buddy. This guy is going to the Clean Plate Club tonight.