Binging with Babish: The Perfect Bite from YOU (Netflix)

make sure you have a little bit of skin and carrot and a little bit of crispy potato and then I'll rub it a little bit in the reduction yes you did it yes you can eat it I get it well it's everything I like done exquisitely but the

perfect

thing is you I made it to me is you're speechless

perfect

buy it perfect hey what's up guys welcome back to Binging with Babish where this week we'll take a look at the perfect

bite

designed for the Penn Badgley 'z character. choice for a Valentine's Day special, I know, but what can I say?

I wanted to try that roast chicken, so the first place we start is with the chicken itself. We want to find a high quality chicken, preferably traditional, with a nice bright yellow skin and lots of delicious fat deposits like this, this chicken lived a much happier life than the average supermarket chicken and you are going to taste the difference, plus It was air cooled, which will give us a crispier skin despite not having time to dry the brine. During the nights, the latest creepy love interests of Penn Badgley 'z characters gracefully butterflies their bird, so we'll do the same by severing the spine and placing a strategic cut at the base of the sternum so we can open it, this tells us allows you to rest. flat chicken for faster roasting times crispier skin and more evenly cooked meat, but for even crispier skin we want to engage in the slightly unsettling process of separating the skin from the meat itself, just go ahead and put your fingers in there and Be sure to do this well before your appointment arrives.

The other reason we want to separate the skin from the meats is because we are going to fill it with compound butter. In the show it looks like the chicken has been rubbed both under and over the skin into its butter. so, as is abyssion tradition, that's exactly what i'm going to do. I have some chopped fresh parsley, rosemary, and thyme that I'll add to about 6 ounces of butter along with a generous pinch of kosher salt and a few twists of freshly made salt. Ground black pepper, mash it with a fork until it's smooth and then we'll start rubbing it under the skin of our chicken.

This is much more important than butter rubbed all over the skin because it gives too deep a flavor to the meat, so make sure you have the butter dispersed evenly all over the bird and then in the program there is clearly butter spread all over the skin. the entire exterior of the skin. This is not my preferred method. I feel like that's how you end up with covered chicken and burnt herbs, but we have to be precise. The last stage of preparing the chicken involves a sharp device, take your favorite sharp object and start pricking the chicken all over, especially in the fat deposits, this will help the fat to render better as it roasts and is roasted. in turn, give us a crispier skin.

Next, the chicken is roasted on a bed of halved heads of garlic and lemon wedges, then I rub it with a little more butter and place it in a 450 degree Fahrenheit oven for about 45 minutes. long enough to deal with our sides. I have some adorable yellow fry here that I'm going to start by putting in cold water, bring to a boil and cook for about 15 minutes until a paring knife goes through them easily. remove and place on a rimmed baking sheet, let cool for about 10 minutes, and flatten with another rimmed baking sheet. The smashed aspect of these potatoes will give them more surface area and crevices, which should help us get them nice and crispy. now for the cooking oil I'm going to put about a cup of canola or vegetable oil and in a small pan I'm going to add some crushed garlic cloves and fresh herbs and cook over medium low heat until it's bubbling and the garlic is lightly browned, then I'm going I'm going to strain this oil into my potato cooking pan, I'm going to bring it up to about 375 degrees Fahrenheit and I'm going to put the potatoes in, turning them after about 2 to 3 minutes or until they're lightly browned, let them drain on a rack and keep them over low heat. oven to keep them warm while we finish cooking the rest now I have the fried garlic here from earlier that I'm going to use to make a delicious tasting paste by combining with some freshly grated lemon zest and chopping until it's fine, then everything What we need to do is season our potatoes and then place them in a large bowl along with our flavor paste, a little kosher salt and some freshly ground black pepper, then we will give our potatoes a lively touch and there you have it . super tasty potatoes and super crispy as for the carrots, they seemed prepared quite simply so I will peel them and cut them in half if they are too thick place them on a rimmed baking sheet with a little olive oil, a little kosher.

Salt and freshly ground black pepper, mix to combine and place in a 400 degree Fahrenheit oven for about 30 minutes until nicely browned and tender, while our chicken comes out of the oven looking quite fine, the skin is evenly browned, crispy and is the thickest. part of the breast registers 155 degrees wild and slick with chicken fat, but whatever you do, don't cut this chicken for at least 30 minutes, let it sit at room temperature uncovered, long enough to make what seemed like a balsamic reduction , probably the simplest. that we are going to prepare today in a wide skillet fits about a cup of high quality balsamic vinegar that we are going to cook over medium-high heat until it is reduced by about half and is thick and syrupy and can easily coat the back of a spoon . and with that all our pieces are in place and it's time to serve first, we need to divide our chicken, we're going to start by cutting it in half at the breastbone and I could eat the whole half of the chicken like this, but no one wants to see that, like this that first we will prepare it elegantly as in the program.

First I'll isolate a skin from the boneless breast, cut it into thick slices and place it on a plate along with some crispy potatoes and roasted carrots and there you have it, the supposedly perfect morsel for Joe or Will or whatever he calls himself this season. I almost forgot the balsamic reduction aka what I think is going to finish this dish off on its own and appropriately enough, we're going to try this perfect

bite

with Jess. I guess I love you, you love me, or you seriously love Netflix, so this is pretty good, but the one thing I don't really care for is this balsamic reduction, it's just overpowering the crispy potatoes and carrots.

I totally agree. I thought the balsamic reduction was a bad idea. I'm glad I'm not the only one, so I can safely say that this is not your perfect bite. It's good, but not my perfect bite. So what would be in your perfect bite? I love duck, I love carbonara, is it there? something like duck carbonara you're my little duck carbonara that didn't work out let's figure out how to make duck carbonara after this commercial break okay and back to my metric to figure out what Jessa's perfect bite is. simpler, she loves duck, she loves carbonara, so first I'll make a duck carbonara.

I'll take a page from Brad Leone's book and cure some duck egg yolks by creating a mixture of equal parts kosher salt and sugar and pouring it in. a cake pan making small indentations where I'm going to place the egg yolks, separating the yolks from the whites, placing them in their respective indentations and then covering them with more of this sugar and salt mixture to coat them in a sort of moisture sucker. cocoon, yes, once we make sure they are carefully packed in sugar and salt, it's time to cover everything with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least three and up to six days, so if you want to prepare this in time for the Valentine's Day. this friday start now after curing them with salt you will find that they have hardened considerably but I want them firm enough to grate like cheese so we are going to place them in a low oven or dehydrator at 150 degrees Fahrenheit for about two. hours until it's firm and completely dry and then the first day we start bringing the eggs, we're also going to cure some duck breasts, we'll start by combining four teaspoons of kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, five teaspoons of granulated sugar per tablespoon . of maple syrup or molasses and about 3/4 teaspoon pink curing salt or number one progressive powder.

To this we will add approximately two cups of distilled water at room temperature, beating lightly until most of the particles are almost dissolved. and there you have it, a cure for our duck breasts that we have every intention of turning into duck bacon. Yes, there is such a thing and yes, it should be in your mouth right now when you pour the cure over the breasts until they are submerged. everything in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least a day and up to three flips every 12 hours or so to make sure they all get some TLC a few days later and if you find that your duck breasts have toughened significantly.

The same way you would do pork belly if you were curing that for bacon, we're going to rinse the breasts well and pat them dry and then it's time to smoke these suckers. You can do it through any smoking method you prefer. I am using this stove. smoker with some cherry and apple wood chips and ideally you want to smoke at about 225 degrees for about two hours. Unfortunately, this is a pretty imprecise process using a stovetop smoker, but duck breasts are pretty forgiving because they're very fatty, so I'm going to smoke this and wrap it tightly in aluminum foil and try to smoke it as slow and low as possible. until the thickest part of the breast registers 150 degrees Fahrenheit.

At this point we should find that our duck breasts have turned into a pair of smoked Dazzlers which we will cover and chill in the refrigerator completely before using. At the end we have the duck egg pasta. I go with an equal mix of 150 grams each of all-purpose semolina flour and hard flour, about 3 grams kosher. Salt, beat with a small whisk, do it well in the center, break in the duck eggs, it should weigh about 120 grams, but we want it to have a liquid weight of 135 grams, so we are going to make up the rest with olive oil and make a beet porridge using a fork. small pieces of flour with each turn until it is very thick and ready to be mixed with a paddle.

Go ahead and mix this for a minute or two until the flours have absorbed all the liquid, but it is still quite dry and crumbly like semolina flour. It is very patient when it comes to sucking up liquids, so we will wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest for 20 minutes before kneading it by hand until it forms a soft, tight ball. This very dry pasta dough is ideal for a pasta extruder like In this case, I find that the extruded pasta has that restaurant style chew that is very, very difficult to achieve by hand, so once you have extruded all the pasta in your preferred way, we cover these little pasta nests with plastic wrap and refrigerate them until they are ready to use or you can freeze them and eat fresh pasta whenever you want, but for me pasta time is now so it's time to start cutting our duck bacon into adult pieces or whatever the Italian equivalent is.

Don't go ahead. and cut the duck bacon into thick, hot pieces which we will start in a cold pan and brown them slowly over medium heat to extract as much fat as possible meanwhile, just before cooking the pasta, we are making our kind of custard carbonara made from two duck eggs plus an additional duck egg yolk for a little more richness. We'll blend this until smooth and then add about 1/2 cup of freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese along with any necessary twists. of freshly ground black pepper whisk to combine and then we'll go back to the stove where our bacon is crispy so we'll add two crushed cloves of garlic and cook for about a minute over medium-low heat until it's very fragrant.

We'll add our pasta to some boiling water that we've kept ready, cook no more than 90 seconds, turn off the heat under our pan, add the pasta directly to the pan and add the duck bacon and duck bacon. fat and immediately we take this mixture to a preheated metal bowl and in the bowl goes our pasta and on top goes our egg and cheese mixture, also a generous but cautious pinch of kosher salt and about 1/4 cup of water to cook the pasta . More, as needed, toss this guy rigorously, which will give us a nice creamy sauce while the residual heat of the pasta gently cooks the eggs into the perfect custard shape in a nice nest under a carving fork. and a ladleful of soup and then for an additional 2 quarts of egg richness, we'll generously grate our duck egg yolkscured on top and since this dish doesn't really pair with champagne red wine vinegar, there you have it the ultimate expression of duck and carbonara now all that's left to do is see if it's your perfect bite this is really hard I can't getting it kid okay you're not italian let me help you it takes years and years of practice so what do you think duck is? carbonara is everything I wanted this is my perfect bite now you're just saying that because that's what we wrote in the script wait I lost my spot no it's not okay but seriously you like it but I seriously love it Also dude, you made duck bacon definitely a member of the clean Jess Club what