Binging with Babish: Pizza Ball from The Eric Andre Show

it's time to deliver a

pizza

ball

someone ordered this beats a

ball

friend I'm not paying for this this is normal the farm didn't grow hey what's up guys welcome back to

babish

binges where this week by very popular demand we are trying recreate Eric Andre's

pizza

ball is a ball that I can only assume is made of pizza so that's what we're going to start with how I assume they made the prop for the sketch so start with two Pyrex heat resistant and generously oiled. bowls with which we are going to shape our balls, which one is greased?

We're going to start doing exactly what you thought we were going to do, which is layer the pizza cheese side down until both bowls are at pizza capacity and then we toss. We put them in an oven at 400 degrees for I don't know 15 minutes until all the cheese melts and all the slices have coagulated together, then we will fuse one half of the ball with the other carefully, there we will see the fat. Carefully drip and release into the top container, then in order for this to retain its shape and for us to pick it up and take it to our local dojo, we will need to let it cool quite completely.

I started at room temperature, but ended up scrubbing it for an hour. Then, if you look closely at the pizza ball in the sketch, you can see that it is tied with some strands of butcher's twine, so I will do the same if your cheese is Once cooled, it should rise from the surface of the pizza ball bowl. pizza and then we'll go ahead and tie it up with four strands of butcher's twine and there you have it, my best approximation of how they made pizza fall in love with Eric. Andre

show

s, well, I can't say this is totally easy for him.

I can promise you it's completely free from Scientology, now you have to admit you'd kill me if I didn't do a cross section of this. Well, I'm not a monster, so here's the cross section of a bunch of pizza slices crushed into a ball, aka my answer to anyone who says food can't be art and now, obviously, there's only one stuff. It was a big bite left to make and as you can imagine it tastes like a bunch of crushed pizza so it's not necessarily bad but it's not exactly what I had in mind when I imagined the pizza ball, however it went into the clean plates club, but when I first watched that episode of Eric Andre in my legacy state.

I envisioned it more as a pizza peel around a core of melted cheese and pepperoni, so to try to achieve this, I'll start by baking some pepperoni, this will help me achieve this. As you can see, there's a lot of grease coming out because I imagine this is going to be pretty gross without a puddle of orange grease, so I'm also going to clean everyone up with paper towels that I'm going to shred whole. ton of low-moisture part-skim mozzarella, there's probably one of the few cases where pre-shredded mozzarella would have worked fine, but no way, buddy, not in my house, so now let's roll out two rounds of dough on a generous and floured tray. countertop until both are large enough to make a 12-inch personal pizza or about 12 inches wide;

Next, as I learned the hard way on my first attempt, we need to generously grease and flour two smaller heatproof bowls, this ensures although it won't stick so your ball doesn't burst prematurely. Now we are placing our two rounds of dough into our bowls well. greased and floured, treating them like pie dough, lifting and releasing the dough without pushing it into the bowl shape and then we will begin to fill one of the bowls with our grated cheese, a little pepperoni and a few drops of sauce, rinse and repeat until we obtain a gigantic mountain of cheese that resembles a ball.

Make sure the mountain of cheese is fairly well organized. remove any excess cheese that could compromise the seal. Keep in mind that the entire second bowl probably didn't need to be made because we're just placing the dough on top, shake it out, trim the edges and crimp it very, very securely, the last thing we want in the world is for this cheese to escape through if anything, though we'll place it on a rimmed baking sheet in a 325 degree Fahrenheit oven for about 35 to 40 minutes until the dough is nice and evenly browned and hopefully the cheese is all melted.

We're going to invert this guy in the other bowl and many of us will invert him on our counter to cut and serve, although I think that part might be wishful thinking, but let's find out if this will be included in the annals of crossover history now that I do it. I don't think so, although to be fair, it turned out exactly as I imagined, so now you can try eating it with a spoon if you're feeling adventurous or tear off the piece and use it as a great pizza topping, but come on. Let's face facts, this is a mess, so how do we make a good quote-unquote version of the pizza ball?

Well, I think the only problem with this is its form factor. It's too big, if we make it smaller, we have a chance. to present the pizza in the shape of a ball without making a big mess, so this time we will roll out our dough to a slightly more robust thickness and then we will cut it evenly into one and a half inch pieces and then into each of these pieces Let's go Place two pepperonis and a small cube of mozzarella, lifting each corner and wrapping them around the mozzarella one corner at a time in a clockwise direction and we are going to bring everything together very tightly at the bottom making sure there are no spaces.

Even the smallest hole will leave you with an embarrassing, cheesy mess. Now, at this point, you can brush them with oil and bake them, but things have been too healthy around here. I say we fry them in a cast iron skillet containing 1 inch of vegetable oil at 350 degrees Fahrenheit they go where we are going to turn them over from time to time and fry them for about 5 minutes or until they are completely golden brown and then it was in this point that a great idea occurred to me: what if I tried to turn them into some kind of pizza donuts instead of rolling them and sugaring them in some of that shitty parmesan that you get out of the bottle mixed with a healthy smoothie, a very healthy smoothie of oregano and a thoughtful pinch of red pepper flakes, creating an amalgamation of those classic pizzeria flavors and then roll our balls until they are well coated and resemble donut holes, melted pepperoni with salty cheese and donut holes served with a little of warm marinara sauce for dipping, these are a delicious reminder that you haven't been following your New Year's resolutions.

One more stretch of cheese. Well, if you'll excuse me, I'll go to the gym and see if my friends would like a side of pizza with their pizza.