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Breakfast. A word that means the same thing in every language once properly translated. But, what does it mean in those languages? What is brea- But, we're doing breakfast around the world. That's what I was getting at. You saw where I was going with that. I don't have to Let's we're doing breakfast around the world. This episode is sponsored by Helix Sleep. When it comes to human necessities, I am a world-class eater and breather, but I've never been particularly good at sleep. So, I was excited when Helix asked me to take their sleep quiz, which matches your sleep preferences and body type to one of their 20-plus mattresses.
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Visit helixsleep.com/babbish for 27% off sitewide as part of their Memorial Day Sale. Good sleep is the foundation of your entire day, you might as well get it right. Thanks again to Helix Sleep for sponsoring this episode. Now, when you translate the word breakfast into English, American English specifically, it translates to the phrase grand slam, which is a combination of pancakes, sausage, bacon, and two eggs your way. We're starting with 140 g of all-purpose flour. We have 30 g of granulated sugar, 1/4 tsp of kosher salt, 3/4 of a tsp of baking powder, and a 1/4 tsp of baking soda. Now, to this mixture we're going to add the wet ingredients. 3 tbsp of melted unsalted butter, 1 cup of buttermilk.
This should be room temperature, otherwise you're going to resolidify the butter and you're going to have little butter droplets all throughout your pancakes, which is not good eats. Wrong show. And one egg, and 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract. Whisk to combine. Pancake mix can be uh lumpy. Should be, in fact. As soon as this combined, stop. So, this batter is feeling a little thick in the pants to me. So, What does that mean? So, I'm going to thin it out with a bit of good old-fashioned milk. Couple tablespoons to start. Gently mix in. Don't want to lose those lumps.
Perfect. Now, to make the pancakes, we can't find our griddle. So, I'm going to have to use a nonstick pan, which to make pancakes of any appreciable size, I need to do them one at a time. So, me. So, you'll notice there's no fat in the pan. There's an old adage called the weird first pancake. First pancake's always weird, son. Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry your stupid little head about it. But, that's because of the fat. The fat in the bottom of the pan is what creates that swirly, off-looking first pancake. And if you're using a nonstick pan like this one, guess what it's going to do? Not stick. So, you don't need fat.
Is there fat in the pants though? No, no, no. Thick in the pants, very different. Let's grab a heaping third of a cup of our batter, drop it right in the center there. We're just going to let that rest until we got some bubbles coming up, and then around the edges, the bubbles are going to pop and leave little holes that don't go away. So, we're going to give it a flip, and look at that. Come on. Picture perfect doesn't seem to describe it because we're shooting videos. So, it's video perfect. First cake is cooked. This guy's going in the oven, 200° oven, just to stay warm while we get the rest of them cooked off.
All right. Hot cakes are in the hot box, which means that our pan has been freed up to make the bacon and sausage. Same pan. All right, these guys are pretty much done. So, in the last couple minutes of cooking here, I got a little bit of bacon fat left up here for my sunny side up eggs. That's the sacrificial bacon levy that keeps the eggs at bay. Ho, ho, ho. Okay. We're going to flank those with our sweet stackers. And of course, way more bacon and sausage than any one person should be consuming in a sitting. So, what this means now is a big old pat of butter, a generous drizzling of real
maple syrup, even though I think a real Grand Slam would have some sort of corn syrup abomination attached to it. Let's eat it. Is that what this show is about? I eat the breakfast. I'll tell you what, folks. That's a TKO. No, it's knockout. I'm just saying Grand Slam. Mhm. There's just something about pork sausage drowned in sweet tree sap. It's good. And I love getting sunny side up or over easy eggs because you have so much dippable stuff here. Primarily the pancakes, but the whole thing, you just swirl it around in eggs, it turns into a big pile of slop, and you
stop eating it at that point. But, it was great for a little while. Next breakfast, please. For our next breakfast, we head to the thick, warm, tropical air of Vietnam. Place I've never been, and I'm now going to make food from, reportedly, which is why I'm following somebody else's recipe. This recipe comes courtesy of Andrea Nguyen over at The New York Times because, uh, you know, look at me. What am I going to What am I share my culture with you? It's pancakes. To make a quick pho broth, we're going to turn to the pressure cooker. A cooker that's gets really high pressure while it cooks. We're going to start by toasting some aromatics. I have
here one cinnamon clove, three star anise pods, and four whole cloves. Those guys are going to toast for a few minutes. We don't want any smoke, but we want it to be very, very fragrant. While we're waiting for that, we're just going to chop up an onion. Just a rough chop. We just want to get a little color on it. We don't need it to break down or anything. Oh, just halve it. So, that way I have a nice big piece of surface area to brown. We've got this apple in half. I'm going to slice up that apple. Also, I got a big old chunk of several inches of ginger, which I'm going to slice for a cleaner extraction. Let's plop down these onions.
Get a little color on them. And throw in the apple, too. And the ginger. Then we have 3 lb of rinsed marrow bones. This is going to be our primary source of marrow bones. So, we're going to throw those in there. Is there another source of marrow bones? Uh, your mom. She has some. She won't get She won't let me have them. I'm going to hit this with a little bit of kosher salt to taste, as one might say without actually tasting it. I'm also going to add this nice 1-lb piece of brisket. Now, we're going to basically cover this with water up to the max fill point right here of the pressure cooker. Ah! Why do they put a spout on things?
Why do they even bother with a spout if it's just going to spat all over the place? So, this guy's going to go for a half hour, and then we're going to let it depressurize naturally. It's probably going to take another 20, 30 minutes. So, now we have to prepare the accoutrement for our pho. First up, jalapeño. Nice thin slices of jalapeño. Likewise, with some onion. You want to get really, really thin because, you know, these are going to mix in with the noodles, they're going to slightly cook in the hot broth. So, to take the sort of harsh bite off the onion and also to make it nice and crisp, I'm going to put
it in some nice cold water for at least 10 minutes. I want pretty thin slices. I have this other chunk of brisket here that has been in the freezer, so it's nice and firm. You don't want it completely rock solid. Or if you feel like it's not working, grab a nice sharp knife and just do it the old-fashioned way, you know? Really just trying to shave it cuz it needs to be thin enough to pretty much cook completely in just hot broth. That's good. All right, the pressure switch is down. And we have some Mhm, gorgeous flavor. That smells so freaking good. Just going to take out that piece of brisket and now drain the rest. There is a lot of fat on this and we don't want
to leave too much, so I'm going to skim off a bunch of this fat. I want this broth ripping hot. It needs to be able to cook all the meat and everything, so pour it into a saucepan. Bring it up to a bare simmer. Also, [snorts] while this comes up to temperature, I'm going to add 2 Tbsp of fish sauce. Now, to assemble, we have our noodles. These are Vietnamese rice noodles and they have been soaked in hot tap water until soft and pliable. First, I have our pressure cooked brisket here. God, look at that. That's beautiful. And of course, we also have our raw brisket, bean sprouts, few of our jalapeno slices, some basil and mint.
Normally, this would be Thai basil, but this is what we were able to find. Normally, you'd add cilantro, but I have that thing where cilantro tastes bad, so I'm just going to add a little parsley. And before and after ladling the broth over top, we're going to want to add a good squeeze of lime, few twists of black pepper. Now, this is a very American thing to do, but I do like it's um a bit of sriracha and a bit of hoisin. Now for our hot, rich, spicy, fatty broth. That broth is going to finish cooking the noodles. It's going to cook the meat. There you have it, pho. Something that I've had a lot of, but never for breakfast. So, this is going to be interesting.
Let's try some of those raw beef. I love the raw beef in pho because it has that same sort of note as roast beef, that kind of metallic flavor, and in a good way. Like I love you know, it being sort of medium rare. See, like it cooks, but not completely. Like that's right where I want to live. And it just plays so nicely with that set of flavors. Let's see what the pressure cooked one's like. It's tender. It's juicy. It's fatty. It's not like dried out and papery the way sometimes pressure cooked beef can get cuz it's so thoroughly marbled.
It's perfect. I love a good sweat first thing in the morning. Don't you? Don't you love just bathing in it and then washing it off and being like, "I'm ready for the day." Not bad. So, now we're doing French breakfast, which is the birthplace of the continental breakfast that you love so much from the Hampton Inn. But, it's much better than the Hampton Inn continental breakfast. I'll tell you that much. It's a selection of freshly baked French specialties like croissant, pain au chocolat, baguette, and others. It is, of course, served with plenty of butter, fresh butter, orange juice, question mark.
We got some jams, blackcurrant, and um apricot. And of course, we need some coffee. And I obviously I go with a French press because do you hear what I'm doing right now? You know, the word for breakfast in French is le petit déjeuner, which means the little breakfast. Well, anyway, so we're going to have that right now. And what we refer to here in States as a continental breakfast. This being some light pastry, some juice, some jam, some butter. I mean, normally with us it means stale corn pops and anemic waffles and fossilized eggs, but this is way better. We should be doing this. You might be asking yourself, why are you not making this, Babish?
The answer is I really don't want to. This one is a gimme. Some blackcurrant jam, which would be traditional of the era, which is now. There's nothing quite like a real French baguette. Like, it took me 17 chews just for my teeth to meet in the middle cuz it's so darn crusty and chewy. As you can see, the very confusing pain au chocolat has three bars of chocolate just kind of buried in the middle of this giant flaky pastry. Not complaining, just observing. I don't know how the French stay so skinny. Probably all the cigarettes.
Uh, it is 3:30 in the afternoon and I still want this cup of coffee. Le petit déjeuner, more like uh le grand déjeuner. Yeah, I That means big, right? Mhm. Means big. No, it's wonderful. It's a wonderful way to start the day. A whole bunch of flaky butter and jam and it's it just It feels luxuriant. It feels old world. It feels like a way better version of what you get at the Ramada Inn. And for that I'm thankful. Thanks, friends. Next step, we're headed to China. Not really. We're just going to have some congee, which is a very popular breakfast in China. I'm going to combine four cups each chicken stock and water. I'm also going to throw a
couple slices of peeled fresh ginger in there and half cup of rinsed medium grain rice. Traditionally, this is made with long grain rice, but recently it's become more popular to use medium or short grain rice for its starch content. Now, we're just going to bring this guy up to a simmer, partially covered, just leave about a half-inch space between lid and the pot, and we're going to cook it for 30 to 45 minutes till the rice is broken and we have a nice thick porridge on our hands. Not literally. That would be very hot. Don't Don't put porridge on your hands. A very popular element in congee is chicken, specifically chicken thigh, which I have diced. Got two chicken thighs here.
I'm going to add 2 tsp of Shaoxing cooking wine, 1 tsp of cornstarch, and 1/2 tsp of kosher salt. Go ahead and mix that up. We're going to let this marinate while the rice cooks, so about [snorts] half an hour. So, the congee is almost done. The rice is broken, but it's still a little bit soupy. So, this is a good time to add the chicken. Not only uh does it need to cook while the congee finishes cooking, but also the starch in the chicken is going to help continue to thicken things up. We're also going to add one thinly sliced scallion, and 1/2 tsp of chicken bouillon. Give that a little mix. Make sure the chicken isn't sticking together, and I'm probably going to let that go for another 10 15
minutes. Two sunny-side up eggs in the sky. Might not be the most traditional thing in the world, but it makes me think of Mulan. And what are we all doing here if not just trying to think of Mulan, you know? Congee's done. Just before serving, I'm going to add 1 tsp of toasted sesame oil. We're going to top that up with our sunny-side up eggs, little pile of scallions, and a whole lot of chili crisp. There you have it, folks. Congee, a simple, hearty, delicious breakfast. It is the perfect balance of like four distinct flavors. You got scallion, you've got chicken, you've got sesame, you've got ginger. And the chili crisp, obviously, is bringing a lot.
And the eggs are bringing you a lot of great texture, but it's really those four main elements that you gravitate towards and it's just so satisfying. Like when I first heard about congee, I was like, "Ew, overcooked rice? Not my bag." But it's actually really fantastic. It's like one of the more enjoyable porridge consistencies as far as porridges go. I wish I ate congee for breakfast more. Perhaps I will start today. Well, tomorrow actually cuz I'm I'm, you know, eating this right now. Today, I started today. And that's Binging with Babish guarantee. From Brazil, we're doing pão de queijo.
It's very common breakfast in Brazil eaten with coffee. It's one of my very favorite things to get at the Brazilian restaurant. It's a great bread. It's a great bread and I had no idea that it is 100% starch based, but not just any starch, sour tapioca starch. We got 320 g of sour tapioca starch, 4 g of baking powder, 8 g of salt. Just going to give that a little cursory whisk just to get everybody evenly distributed. We've got two large eggs. That was stupid. That was dumb. Let's just do that from a lower height. There we go. Then we've got 30 g of melted butter and 160 g of cold milk. Should really be using a spat. Let's do that. And seems like this is going to turn into one of those non-Newtonian fluids.
Well, that'll be upsetting to touch. Oh. Yeah. Okay. How long am I kneading this for? 2 minutes to a minute? 2 to 1 minutes we're going to knead this for. The cheese that they use in pão de queijo, like most great cheeses, is illegal to bring into the United States. So they found that when I say they, I mean the world has found that the closest approximation is 100 g of a sharp cheddar to 160 g of Grana Padano. We're just going to add that in. Make sure the cheese is evenly incorporated. This guy needs to sit and hydrate overnight and think about what it's done.
Cut some plastic wrap, press it down directly onto the surface of the stuff because this stuff will dry out if exposed to literally any air. We're just going to cover the bowl itself, doubly protect against the thing that really kills us all slowly with time. Which is, that's right, oxygen. It's killing you every time you breathe it. Anyway, this guy's going to sit overnight. We have our dough here that has fully hydrated. So, I'm going to use an ice cream scoop here just for uniformity's sake. Rolling these into a ball, pressing an indentation into them, and placing them on our parchment-lined baking sheet. It's going to help them bake up more evenly.
I'm going to hit them with plastic wrap. Sure, you could bake these right now. Or, you could put them in the freezer and bake them straight out of the freezer so you got fresh hot pao de queijo anytime your little ass wants it. So, I'm going to put it in the freezer. Uh here comes the pao de queijo. Oop. Now, these guys are headed into a 375° F oven for 25 to 30 minutes, probably more on the 30-minute side of things when they're frozen. All right. Here is our pao de queijo, which do not look much like pao de queijo at all. Uh they've collapsed a little bit. I think it's because we used cold milk to get big chunks of cheese and because we wanted big chunks of cheese in there. But,
they're going to do something really cool. So, I'm going to go ahead and forgive these unequivocally as we should do as often as possible in life. This kind of breakfast is served with some fresh fruit and coffee. A Babish style coffee that is hot, strong, and sweet. We'll be right back. No, we're not going anywhere. We're Pão de queijo is so intensely snackable. Um it's really nice and salty, cheesy, slight tang from the fermented starch. And then you got the sweetness of some beautiful fresh fruit. One hell of a way to start the day. Like you're getting all the satisfaction and savoriness that you want in a breakfast sandwich right here. Now, if you don't like fresh fruit, you're an You're not an But you got a lot to learn, young man.
I assume that you're a man because that's very proto-masculine behavior. "Oh, I don't like fruit." You. Next up from India, we have masala dosa. This is a hearty, spicy potato curry that's wrapped up in a thin, crispy pancake called a dosa that's made from lentils, fermented lentils specifically, which is why we're not going to make it from scratch. We're going to buy a mix. I have here [snorts] some cubed and cooked Yukon Gold potatoes. Uh these are cooked to a state not of mushiness, but of so you know, soft yieldingness, but there's a firmness so I can crumble them. That's where we want. One of the trickier parts of making this in the states is
the wide variety of spices needed to make it. Most notably among which are fresh curry leaves. I don't even know how we found these, I'm being honest. Thank you, Rachel. We also have some grated fresh ginger, some ground cumin, some black mustard seeds, turmeric, a whole bunch of thinly sliced onion, about a cup's worth, and a thinly sliced bird's eye chili, and of course this stuff, which is called as- asafetida. Asafetida. All right, I'm heating up a nonstick pan here, into which I'm going to deposit my spices. I've got the black mustard seed, turmeric, ground cumin.
Just going to give those a little bit of dry heat. I'm going to add our teaspoon of grated fresh ginger. Once again, just showing it a little bit of love. Next step, we're adding a bunch of oil and our thinly sliced onions. I'm going to now scoop my onions to side. Now they've picked up some color. So now I'm going to add the curry leaves. I'm making a space in the center of the pan, drizzling a little bit extra oil cuz we want the curry leaves to pop with dry heat. I'm going to add our thinly sliced bird's eye chili only for a second cuz the capsaicin's going to aerosolize and it's going to burn all of our facilities. Hing is sort of the Indian equivalent to MSG. Uh it is very, very
savory, mommy forward spice that smells wild. Ooh, like sour and sweet and spicy. It's really interesting. Just a pinch. Let's crumble in our cooked potatoes. Just want to break them up a little bit. I also want it to be not saucy, but you know, a little thinner. So I'm going to probably add a solid quarter cup of water here. Going to strip these leaves off this branch cuz you can absolutely and should eat the curry leaves. It's aerosolizing. Okay.
[cough] All right, guys, we get it, okay? I'm going to set those aside while we make our dosa. Uh so here we have our pre-made dosa mix because it is a fermented paste of lentils and time and effort and those are my biggest weaknesses. Nonstick pan's preheated. I'm going to ladle some of our batter right into the center and then start swirling it outward with a ladle. This is going to cook on one side until it's deeply golden brown, and then you can flip it and cook the other side a little bit, but you don't have to. You can just stuff it, guff it, buff it. That made sense though, right? I mean, I obviously the words not didn't, but Okay.
Put them on our plates, add a generous amount of our curry potatoes, fold this guy over, shut him down. Now we're going to serve this with some sambar. This is a sour tamarind vegetable stew that we did not make from scratch, and a nice little dollop of coconut chutney. There you have it, dosa, one of the most popular breakfasts in this known world. Okay, so the way to eat this, as the children say, is rip and dip. Mhm. Oh my god, I love coconut chutney. I discovered something about myself today. I love the dosa, too. Fermentation gives it the slight tang, but it's not like a sour dosa tang. It's it's a different tang entirely.
The potatoes are lovely and filling, really well spiced, and they're wonderfully balanced by the coconut chutney. Like it's fresh and tropical and bright, and it works perfectly with savory. Like it just works so well. I want to have a bite of this with an actual curry leaf on it, cuz you are supposed to eat the curry leaves. I think we have the worst breakfasts. This is so good and so interesting, spicy. It's like a cup of coffee. It wakes you up, cuz it's so spicy. And it's really hot in here, and I'm starting to sweat.
[clears throat] And that's the intention. Makes you sweat, cools you off. This is one of my favorite breakfast. My first time trying it is now one of my favorites, because it's so simple. There's just mostly lentils, vegetables, and potatoes, spices here. And like most great Indian cooking, they come together to make something way better than you could have imagined would be the sum total of their parts. It's special. It's exciting. And here with Babish. We'll be right back after your ad. Now. And we're back. During times of strife, we turn, as we so often do, to the Portuguese.
I don't think that's ever been said before. Portugal is more than just the home of the Portuguese. It's also the birthplace of many other Portuguese people that are long dead, and pastel de nata. This is one of the most impressive pastéis de nata uh ever I've ever had. And it's here in Brooklyn. It's called Lisbonata. What is pastel de nata? It is an egg custard tart. Very sweet, very ideally sort of creamy and almost not runny, but it like the texture of conditioner. On the outside, you'll see this deeply laminated pastry. And this is achieved by rolling it and then slicing the rolls and then pressing those rolls into a muffin tin, and then filling that with the custard. And what you end up with is uh a pastry shell that has been
layered sort of fanning out from the center, which is really cool. Like it's a very unique way to do things. And of course, on the bottom, you should have the telltale swirl of that process. So, why am I not making this myself? Cuz I don't want to. It's hard. But if you want to see me make it, if you want to learn how, click the link in the upper right-hand corner right now. This is typically served, as I'm understanding, with coffee that's half milk. Very popular drink, apparently, is half milk, half coffee. In other words, not coffee. Yep, that's some coffee-flavored milk. Luckily, we don't have to drink that, and we can have the pastel de nata.
See? Conditioner. It's not overwhelmingly sweet. Like it's sweet, don't get me wrong. This is You can have this for dessert, but it's not cloyingly sweet. It's not like straight-up patisserie. It's patisserie. And when you nail it just right and it's almost flowing out like that, you know you've done something special. And sure, I did not do this. But by proxy, I feel as though I've done something special, too. And that is the Portuguese way. Right then, well, boys, it's time for a spot of elevenses. We're going to do full English breakfast again, and this time it's not going to be sponsored by Harry Potter. I thought it was fun I was getting sponsored by a video game. I didn't realize
that I was funding trans hate. So, I'm sorry is what I'm trying to say. Full English breakfast, what is it? It's a big old breakfast full of English stuff. In this case, rashers or back bacon, some English sausage, and some blood sausage, which is surprisingly good, especially when fried up crisp. A couple eggs your way, uh some beans in tomato sauce, some Hewlett-Packard sauce, some roasted mushrooms, some roasted or pan-seared tomatoes, and uh spot of a spot of tea. Don't just eat the beans cold there, chap. And I slice these guys on the bias into nice bloody medallions. These guys curl up like little curly girlies. So, we're going to weigh them down with a chef's press, throw in our sausages.
Let's add our blood sausage to the mix. I'm going [snorts] to cook up our mushrooms first cuz they're going to let go of a lot of moisture as they cook. Quarters are pretty hard to sauté because there's so much moisture that needs to come out of them, and they need to be heated so thoroughly. Throw these in the oven, and you know, once they've given up their moisture, I'll give them a nice sauté, and then we'll add the tomatoes. Are you trying to tell me that batter pan is oven safe? Not only is it oven safe, Brett, it's oven safe to 550° Fahrenheit. That's higher than most nonstick pans. Where could I buy one of those if I were interested.
Anywhere great nonstick pans at Amazon. Specifically Amazon. Look at the crust on that blood. Beautiful color on our sausages as well. Those mushrooms are seared off, so I'm going to grab some of my flavor bombs. These aren't going to sizzle right away. Leave those alone until we have some nice char on the bottom. So, I'm going to fry up my eggs in here. Keep going sunny side up with everything, but guess what? It looks great. Looks most like breakfast. Here's our lovely charred tomatoes. Throw our mushrooms right on next to that.
Here's our eggs. Rashers, which I definitely mangled a little bit, but whatever, it's going to taste the same. We have our blood sausage. We have our bangers. And least but certainly not last, we have a nice loose pile of tomato beans. This is served of course with some weird British toast. Add our spot of English tea. Then you got yourself a full English breakfast. That's not clever. That's just the facts. And that's a Badusque guarantee. This is one of my favorite parts. Bangers in the mouth. Proper English bangers are really interestingly seasoned. Like I'm not entirely sure what seasonings are going in there. Maybe a little nutmeg or something. But the seasonings are really
cool and interesting. The farce, the actual texture of the sausage is very, very fine. Almost like a hot dog. But then it's also very, very moist. So, it's just like a great sausage experience. Is it greater than fried crispy discuses of blood sausage? Mhm. I love blood sausage. I If it's fried up crispy like this, I love it. Mostly because of the nutmeg. That is a heavily nutmeg spiced sausage. It almost reminds me of um Norcinian sausage, which is rosemary and nutmeg. And it's the only thing that makes blood taste good. I'm getting the tininess. I'm eating pennies a little bit, but it somehow works.
Rashers, which if I'm not mistook, are just plain pork. Like there's no Is there seasoning to this? It has less fat than American bacon, and it's very simply cured. It just tastes like salt to me. And without the smoke, it like is it's a it's not bacon. It just tastes like salty pork. And I really don't want to eat these beans, so I'm just stalling. Ah. All right, then I'll uh Why? Grab some of my gorgeously cooked sunny side up egg. Uh maybe just some beans just to give them a fair crack, and some of these beautifully blistered roast tomatoes.
[snorts] So many different flavors and textures here. And so many different combinations. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, I guess, elements. What about the What the butter? It's condiment. I don't want to count that, just like I don't want to count the HP sauce. Nor do I even want to try it on here, cuz I really hated what the way it tasted in my palm. What if it's so much better on the food? God damn it, he's right. Don't you No, you don't have to. Just cover everything. I'm not. All right, I'll try it with a mushroom and a banger.
The old mushroom stamp. Hate that. Makes it taste like I don't want to say medicine, but just like you have to eat this for your chlamydia Yeah, I know. That's a pretty stupendous breakfast. Even the blood sa- Like you at this and as an American you think this looks good but ew, blood sausage. And guess what? That's probably the tastiest thing on this plate. And there are some tasty things on this plate. Wait, how many combinations were there? Oh, How many potential combinations can you make of one, two, 247 different potential mouthfuls lying in wait here for you? And all you have to do is buy all this specialty, make it all at once at the same time. So hard about that. Japanese breakfast is not just the name of an indie pop
visionary. It's also breakfast that is eaten in Japan. So the first thing we got to do is lightly cure some salmon. I have a beautiful piece of Norwegian salmon here into two elongated pieces. I'm going to hit it with a little bit of sake. Just a little splasharoo on these guys. And hit them with a little bit of kosher salt. These guys are simply getting covered with plastic wrap. And these guys are headed into the fridge overnight. One of the most, if not the most important element, is the rice. So we have some sushi rice here that has been rinsed thoroughly, which we're going to place in our rice cooker.
Something I was just taught about how to determine how much rice you need and uh this feels flawed to me but I'm going to do it. All right, so what you do is you touch your finger to the top of the rice and then you add water until that water reaches the level of your first knuck if you buck. I have long elegant knuckles. All right, that's pretty much at it. No, it's not. Just past my nail. Touch rice. So I don't normally do it to the base of the thing. know how much was in here. I do. It was two cups. That's right though.
Isn't it two to one? What's the ratio? I'm starting to question this too. Everybody's knuckles are different. That's something I learned in the army. Everybody's knuckles are different. Something I learned in prison. Army prison. All right, so um we're just going to measure. Little bit more water than rice. Select cooking and that's how you know you're cooking. I got a couple tablespoons of sesame seeds here that I'm going to put in a nonstick pan and gently toast. We have to blanch and then shock a couple different vegetables here. I'm going to blanch
this broccoli for 3 to 5 minutes and then shock it in an ice bath both preserve its flavor and its color. We're doing no such thing with spinach. We're draining the spinach. Broccoli shocked. Spinach is diniched. Which means only one thing. We got to do the next thing. Making the dressing for the spinach. 3 tablespoons worth of freshly toasted sesame seeds their oils expressed. All right, we're saving about teaspoons worth for garnish. We're going to smash these up to about 60%. I said 16%.
It's very precise. You have to be dead on. So we're about 60% to paste level. At this point I'm going to add 1 tsp of sugar and 1 tsp of soy sauce. Now we're going to finish mashing it the rest of the way into a lovely dressing that even the in-laws will enjoy. We'll be right back. Bavish cookware swear to me you'll only use it for good. All right, there is our dressing. I'm going to squeeze the excess water out of this spinach.
I'm going to add our dressing. Thank you. Just [snorts] kidding. Would never do that. I'm going to start with half and see how I feel. Okay, there's our little spinach salad thing. You want to put it in the fridge cuz we think it's served cold. So, now we're going to drizzle a tablespoon of sesame oil and the remainder of our toasted sesame seeds. To make the miso soup, we're going to make the miso soup. We're going to bring some water up to boil and add the miso soup packets as per the package instructions. Why you're watching this, I have no idea. Should have been excluded from the edit. We're going to add the um just a garnish packet. We're going to
let this simmer for 5 to 17 hours and then by that time I'll be asleep. To make the tamagoyaki or Japanese rolled omelet, we're going to crack three Damn it. Ah, To make the uh tamagoyaki or Japanese rolled omelet, we're going to break three eggs and Japanese tamagoyaki, we're going to break three eggs into Okay, come on. You're going to make it look cool, right? You're going to make it look like I just nailed those, right? 100% Cool. To these eggs, we're going to add a little tiny bits of granulated sugar. It's like a quarter teaspoon and just the tiniest, tiniest little hint of soy sauce. Now, we want to try to beat these into a uniform mixture
while incorporating as little air as possible. So, it's going to be a very gentle beating. I like filming Nah, nah. Now, I'm going to strain the eggs just to filter out any Damien Chazelles that are hanging out in there. What's the actual name of the egg thing, Chazelle? Ch- Ch- Ch- Ch- Ch- Ch- Ch- Ch- Ch- Ch- That is chil-easy. Now, we have to do something very challenging for the very first time. Make tamagoyaki uh perfectly in a round pan rather than a tamagoyaki pan, which is perfectly shaped. So, I'm probably going to knock this out of the park.
Tamagoyaki is a rolled omelet, a very, very long one. You couldn't really make it in a standalone pan, so we have to lay down a very thin layer of eggs, let them just set, roll it up, and then rinse and repeat, so that we end up with a thick rolled omelet. Okay. All right. Don't get too excited, because every time you do that, it starts to I don't want to jinx you, so I'm not going to say anything. Yeah, so don't say it. Why would you say that? Why would you I'm not saying anything. I know, I'm just Yeah, we'll we Whatever you're about to say I mean, I was going to just say that, you know, you're kind of nailing
your first tamagoyaki, which is pretty impressive. Awesome. Got you. We're going to send this shuffling out onto a piece of plastic wrap set inside of a sushi rolling mat. I'm just going to roll it up. I don't know why we're doing this, but that We're doing it. We're here. Helps it to keep its shape, the voice in my head just told me. Lastly, but certainly not leastly, our lightly cured salmon. Now, we're going to throw it under the broiler until done, about 3 minutes. Okay. There is our beautifully broiled salmon. A beautifully cooked piece of salmon cooked right to 135 at its thickest point. We've got our tamagoyaki, sesame broccoli, spinach salad, pickled radish, very, very hot miso soup. This
is definitely not the way you serve white rice with a fork. Japanese breakfast. Against our own best efforts, we did it. Well, I'll start with this broccoli then. That's darling. Um it's very sesame forward, but it's also broccoli. Tamagoyaki. Going to give it a little bit of a soy sauce dip. I think mine came out a little too laminated. Like some tamagoyaki that I've had in the past or seen is like almost uniform. You see the swirl in there, but like the texture of it is almost uniform. And what I have here is almost like an overcooked French omelette. There are distinct layers, and in between them is a wonderful barely set kind of egg
custard, if you will. I don't know if this is right or wrong, but it's it's damn good. And that's what I said That's all the best things in life are like that. This nori is called ajitsuke. It's a special breakfast nori, which I've never tried before. Mhm. Definitely more seasoning than normal seaweed. There's a sweetness and a mild acidity to it. It's really nice. And of course, we have our miso soup, which one of my favorite things on this godforsaken planet. I love miso soup. Having miso soup for breakfast is like better than coffee. That's not true. For me, at least. It's almost as good as coffee.
No, it's just really It's really great to have something so salty and savory and warming, especially if it's a chilly morning with like rain. It just makes sense. It tastes right. It tastes like not like breakfast, but it tastes like it makes sense at breakfast. Let's try our spinach salad. Some nice acidity and salt coming from the soy sauce, but also a lovely sweetness from I have to assume the sugar. And then, we have what when I tempt it was perfectly cooked salmon. It's a beautifully cooked piece of delicious salmon. Something that I still in my stupid American mind have a hard time comprehending as breakfast. It's good clean protein.
I'm sure if I just had it a few times in a row I'd be like, "Hey, you know what? This is breakfast." Now for these little pickled radish guys. Those are violently crunchy in this very like wet way. You've ever had something that's the crunchiest thing you've ever eaten but it's also wet? I just did. You've got so many different flavors, textures, some really intense sesame oil flavor over here on the broccoli and then this sweet kind of sour note coming from the from the spinach and then a deeply sour note coming from these radishes with
that insane crunch. Savory, simple, rich egg over here. Savory, simple, rich miso over here but also complex cuz god damn it, it's miso. And some salmon for some reason. The more I'm eating it, the more I'm like, "When's lunch?" Adj bends list of countries know how to do it. Cuz we're here, we're doing it. And I know how and so do they. Clearly they know what they're doing. Should we move on? What is more? Chilaquiles. Like so many delicious indigenous recipes born of necessity, it has become the hangover choice for finance bros who know a really great place. So to make chilaquiles, we have to start by making
a tomato chili sauce. To do so, I have some dried guajillo chilies. I'm going to pull off the stems and remove the seeds to the best of my ability and then also tear them up into like 1-in pieces. A small onion that is peeled and quartered, some cumin that we definitely ground ourselves fresh this morning. Chose not to show it to you because I don't want to waste your time. I have some Better Than Bouillon. You could add chicken stock but honestly, this is going to be a better bet. And two cloves of garlic. And of course, to-moo-ters or as they're correctly called, tomatoes. You could use Campari or Roma tomatoes. That's what's more traditionally used is Roma but these have incredible flavor. In a medium-sized high-walled saute pan, I'm
going to crank on some medium heat. I'm going to add my torn seeded chilies. I'm going to give those a little toast for just uh you know, a couple minutes. We don't want any smoke. I want them to be nice and fragrant. I'm going to throw down these onion quarters and garlic cloves. See if we can just get a little char going. As we're getting toward the end of it, I'm just going to sprinkle the cumin in to give it a little toast. Ideally, you're fresh grinding it or you're adding whole cumin right now cuz it will get ground up. You can see it's smoking, so we're going to immediately add our tomatoes and our water. I got 4 cups worth here.
Just enough to cover everybody up. We're not going to use all of it probably. And I have my that in bouillon. Now, we're going to bring this up to a simmer and hold it there for like 7 to 10 minutes. We want the tomatoes to split. We want things to start getting soft before we put it in the blender. Along with probably a cup of the cooking liquid to start. We want just enough to make like a thick but pourable sauce. Smooth and silky. And we're going to send this back over to the stovetop for a variable amount of time. Um right now, it's going to taste very raw and fresh and some people like that. Some people like more, you know, cooked down, more developed flavors.
Uh the world's your oyster. Generally speaking, minutes-ish. I'm also going to add half teaspoon of oregano at this point. This has been cooking for about 15 minutes. Give it a little taste for seasoning. Kosher salt here. Needs some salt. Chilaquiles are usually served with refried beans. Little butter in a nonstick pan. And I guess I'm going with sunny side up everything just cuz it looks so damn good. Now, this is a recipe that normally utilizes stale tortillas or tortilla chips uh as a way to use up stuff that would normally go to waste.
You can use store-bought chips for sure. You can fry up some old tortillas if you have any kicking around. Uh my ultimate option to go with is going to be a nice big greasy bag from the best Mexican place in your area because they're going to be they're going to dance circles around anything else. It's going to warm the sauce back up. In goes our big greasy bag of chips. The very best kind. The reason that I recommend restaurant-style chips they're really usually really thick and impossibly crispy and they're going to stay crispy longer in this very wet tomato sauce. A generous base of chips. I'm going to top that dead center with our egg. I'm going to sprinkle some cotija all over the place.
I'll flank the egg with some this beautifully sliced and scooped avocado. I'm going to scoop a pile of our refried beans over here on this side. Garnish with some cilantro or in my case parsley because I'm a baby. And some lime just for squeezing's sake. And there you have it, chilaquiles. Something surprisingly easy to make despite being so rustic and homemade and rich and savory in so many different ways. So much flavor going on here. Every new country's cuisine that we explore I'm like, "Wow. These guys have figured out breakfast." It's functioning on so many levels. You have so much richness from the egg yolk and the refried beans. You got perfect amount of spice and deep
rich savory tomatoey flavors. It's spicy. It's rich. It's fatty. It's light and fresh tasting in some ways and crazy dark and rough in others. Again, I just wonder what my life would be like if I started my day this way. Highly recommend giving a try if you haven't already. You can get most of the stuff you need for it at any grocery store. And it comes together in like 30 minutes. So, win. I don't know if there're four things, but that's how I feel about it. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, um we're we're going to all going to have a good time. We're making ful medames.
This is an Egyptian breakfast of fava beans with a vegetable salad on top. First up, we're going to make the sort of vegetable salad. They're going to be tomatoes, cucumbers, and red onion. I got a third of cup each. Now, I'm going to add parsley. This is a pretty simple sort of Mediterranean style tomato salad. Juice of one lemon, about an equal part olive oil, big pinch of salt, few twists of pepper. Mix it up, and that's all there is to it. Now, for the beans, we need to go to the stove top. I've got a large saute here in which I'm going to deposit a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Let's add our half cup of very finely minced onion.
All right, our onions are sweated. They're turning translucent around the edges like little ice cubes. We're adding 1 tsp of Aleppo pepper, 1 tbsp of ground cumin, and our garlic. Just let these guys get a little bit of dry heat. Now, I'm going to add our about a half cup of finely chopped tomatoes. Two cans of fava beans here that I'm going to drain and rinse before adding to the tomatoes. Now, I'm going to add about half cup of water. We're looking for like a refried bean kind of texture here. So, to wit, we need to mash things up. All right, now we're just going to let this cook for 15-20 minutes, let the flavors meld, let the beans soften up a little bit more. We're also going to add some lime
juice to taste, which is a tricky thing when you've never tasted the food that you're making. So, follow your nose, your mouth, tongue. I'm going to start with the juice of half a lime. That is going to burn that tiny little cut on my finger so good. To plate up, we just make a big old pile of our ful, and top up with our marinated tomato salad. Got our toasted up flatbread here, and that's all there is to it, food metamates. I'm not going to lie to you, Babish nation. I don't know about this one. Not a big bean guy. And this has like six ingredients. So, we'll see if this comes together to make something greater than the sum of its
parts. It's not bad. I'm not even saying that it's objectively bad. This just personally isn't for me because it's just beans and vegetables. And I can't point to a beans and vegetables dish on this planet that I'm like, "Damn. I want some of that." If this is almost like refried beans, the thing it's really missing is fat. Particularly pork fat in the case of refried beans, but that's not going to fly in Egypt, I don't think. Not my cup of tea personally, but if I had to choose a bean dish to eat, this would rank highly. Right below refried beans. Not bad.
Not bad at all. Shakshuka, a dish of North African origin. Today, we're making one specifically from Morocco. That's like the sort of gold standard. And what really sets that apart is the heavy use of cumin and ras el hanout. This is one of the more essential North African spices. Now, to add a visual flare and some wonderful flavors to our shakshuka, I'm going to make one of my favorite things in the entire world, tomato confit. Now, I'm going to use some red and yellow cherry tomatoes on the vine. One bay leaf, two garlic cloves, couple whole peppercorns. I want to use enough oil that it's pretty much submerging the tomatoes. You can definitely just roast them off in a bunch of oil, but they're
not going to turn super sweet and jammy. It might seem like a waste of oil, but trust me, this oil is going to taste unbelievable. It's imbued with garlic and tomato flavor. Now, this guy's headed into a 225° F oven for 2 and 1/2 hours or so until the tomatoes have just started to burst. I have a large sauté pan here. I'm going to heat up with couple tablespoons of olive oil, about a half cup of very finely minced white onion. We're going to add 1 tsp each ground cumin and ras el hanout. Toast the spices just for a second. Add four cloves of finely chopped garlic. Likewise, just a nice little quick toast. I have your 128 oz can of crushed tomatoes. Now, I'm also adding
1 cup of drained and finally chopped roasted red peppers. Now, you want your sauce thick enough so that you can put divots in it to cook your eggs. And mine is already that thick, and since we're simmering it for about 20 minutes, means I'm going to add about probably half cup of water. I'm going to add a tablespoon of chopped parsley. Once we get up to a simmer, I'm going to partially cover it to make sure not too much moisture evaporates. We're going to let it simmer for at least 20 minutes. Our confit tomatoes are done. You can see that they have burst, turned wrinkly and jammy because they've both been cooked in and imbued with a great deal of oil. Now, for the hardest part of our morning, cooking the eggs in the shakshuka. This
is something uh historically that I have done correctly 3% of the time. Most every time I'm overcooking the eggs. So, if that happens, you should know it's not my fault. I mean, it is. I have this turned all the way down to low. We want it just barely simmering. I'm going to make some divots here and put I have my eggs pre-cracked in a measuring cup for easy pouring. There we go. Four eggs. I did it. Now, I'm going to cover this up, keep the heat at an absolute minimum, and cook them for 5 to 25 minutes until the whites are set but the yolks are runny. Confit tomatoes right in the center. I'm also going to generously
drizzle some of our tomato oil over top. That's going to be more than welcome. Some roughly chopped parsley, nice big old leaves. You want to serve shakshuka with a nice crusty piece of bread. I got uh some of our leftover baguette here. Nothing finer. Rip and dip. Let's see. Overcooked yolk. Jammy yolk, I'll take it. I think you need a very lightly cooked sauce with a good hit of acid in it because the richness of the eggs boom. Not traditional to do that with the confit tomatoes, but it adds a whole other tomato dimension. This is probably my favorite thing in the world is oily tomatoes on bread.
It's a classic for a reason, it's popular for a reason. It's really good, it's really easy. It's gorgeous. And if you just exercise a little bit more situational awareness, it can be full of runny eggs instead of kind of set yolks. Next up, we turn our gaze to the Philippines where we're going to try this sort of full Filipino breakfast silog. This is a combination of a couple different meats, fried egg, garlic fried rice, and a special vinegar sauce. About the most difficult part of making this breakfast if you're in the Americas is procuring the ingredients. It's kind of hard to find this stuff. We have longanisa. This is a Filipino sausage that's sweet, garlicky, bold, spicy. It smells incredible. I cannot wait to eat it. Then we
have the beef tapa. This is a cured sirloin with garlic and soy sauce and calamansi, which is apparently halfway between a lemon, lime, and a grapefruit. I've never tried it, so it's only fitting that I try it on beef the first time. I have some jasmine rice that has been cooked and cooled because we're going to make fried rice. Quarter cup of oil in the bottom of this pan. Into this oil I'm going to deposit six thinly sliced cloves of garlic. I'm doing this in cold oil both so we don't burn the garlic and so we get a more robust infusion. We're going to heat it gently, just let it bubble. Almost as if the garlic is in some fresh sodiepop. As you can see, cooking low and slow has rewarded us with lightly
golden brown chips of garlic. I'm going to dump these into a sieve. I'm going to pour about 2 Tbsp back into the pan. Spread it out a little bit and we're going to drop in our rice. Cup and a half of fully cooked and chilled jasmine rice. And I'm just going to let that sit for a second till we get some nice crispy bits and then I'm going to toss it together. Because brother, it's going to be a toss-up. It's a little bit of golden brownness. And this is seasoned with a bit of salt and a whole lot of finely ground black pepper. Just going to let that pepper get a little bit of dry heat. Don't want it to burn.
Now I'm going to add most of the garlic chips back to the fried rice, saving a few for garnish. Evacuate that into a bowl where we're just going to keep it warm. Let's crank up the heat once more. I'm going to add the rest of this garlic oil plus some more cuz we're going to shallow fry this meat. And the book. Oh yeah, we got some nice sear happening here. Oh, there's Okay, we got some nice color on the beef. Long as I'm frying, I might as well crack my egg in there. Now to serve, I'm going to scoop the fried rice into a little bowl, invert, and plate.
There we go. Is it going to be too garlicky? Has anyone ever said that? God, they smell good. I have a feeling I'm going to get addicted to these sausages that are pretty hard to find. This is often served with tomatoes, so I've got some halved cherry tomatoes here. Also, almost forgot the vinegar. Filipino spiced vinegar. There you have it for your or really my consideration, silog. I'm going to start with the sausage cuz I've been eyeing it since it came into my house. Oh, really beautifully spiced. Like sweet, not spicy as in hot, but sweet and spiced pork sausage with a ton of fat in it. Great texture.
Forget breakfast sausage. I love I'm somebody who loves breakfast sausage. You know that if I say for forget breakfast sausage, you should just forget about it. We've just discovered that the second ingredient in longganisa is sugar. Cuz pork, then sugar. So, yeah, it's quite sweet, but really, really good. Let me try some of this tapa. That's really tasty. It's not super tender. I mean, it's been cured and marinated, so it's not tough. But, you know, it's sirloin. It's not going to be super tender. Nice and juicy, good crust on it. Now for the thing I've been waiting to try since I learned that it was a thing. It was garlicky, peppery fried rice.
It only tastes like garlic. It's so garlicky. Bowl of that with a fried egg on it, that's all you need. Add some of this longganisa, that's more than you need. That is one of the best mouthfuls I've ever had at breakfast. The balance of flavors there and the strength of those flavors. What's going on here in these United States? Do we hate flavor? Just out of curiosity, I'm going to try this vinegar on its own. Ooh, that's nice. Okay, take a bow. One of the most incredible breakfasts. It's got some of the most balanced flavors that are big and kicking. This is an exciting way to start the day.
Not something that makes you want to take a nap halfway through like fried cakes tree syrup. So, what did we learn here today? I learned a whole bunch of really banging new breakfasts to make on repeat. Some of those were fantastic, particularly silog. But, more than that, I hope that we learned that everybody eats breakfast. And no matter where you end up in this crazy old world, you should try what they got. On that note, thank you so much for watching. Keep eating breakfast, but make sure you do it with Babish. Unless I'm not there. You got to eat breakfast. Most important meal of day. How have I not mentioned that once?
It's the most important meal of day. It's like the first thing you say about breakfast, and I'm saying it now at the end. And you're just going to cut me off mid
