Babish Answers Cooking Questions From Twitter

Hey, what's up, guys?

Welcome back to Binging with Babish

where this week we're taking, oh, whoa,

we're taking a look at me I guess.

Oh my.

Hello, my name is Andrew Rea aka Binging with Babish

and I'm here to answer your questions via Twitter.

This is Cooking Support.

[calm music]

@ndwelch asks,

why do they always use kosher salt in cooking videos?

Well, I'll tell you, Nathan.

There are really three salts that you need to know about.

There is table salt,

the one that you're probably most familiar with,

kosher salt and flaky finishing salt.

I like to call table salt baking salt

'cause that's really all I use it for

because most recipes are developed using table salt

but that being said,

it's not a great way to season your food when you're cooking

because you can't pinch it.

Kosher salt on the other hand,

you have complete control over.

So you can see right now I have a big old pinch full of it

and there's no salt coming out of my fingers

until I start to twist my fingers from left to right.

It's also a more forgiving salt.

It's a bigger grain of salt.

You're less likely to oversalt your food

than you would be with table salt

and then this is the totally optional salt.

These are very light, flaky.

Ugh.

Really all you use it for is finishing.

That's why it's called finishing salt.

These two though, absolute necessities.

Just know when to use them and why and how.

Oh, in all caps.

People don't keep eggs in the fridge?

Don't they go bad faster?

As far as I understand

and please take what I'm saying with several grains of salt

because this is your food safety we're talking about here

and you shouldn't trust a guy

who doesn't have food safety certification,

never went to culinary school,

went to film school, got really bad grades

and kinda lucked into his job as a food influencer.

You shouldn't be listening to me.

The eggs that you need to refrigerate

are ones that have been commercially washed.

Here in the States, they wash eggs with great rigor

and that strips away the sort of natural protection

on the outside of the shell so they must be refrigerated.

If you got them from the side of the road

and they were not in the fridge,

chances are, they just came out of a hen's ass

and they're ready to stay at room temperature

in your stylish barn converted backsplash kitchen.

Anyway.

@ol_daveyboy, cooking twitter, what are some good knives

that won't immediately break the bank?

Well, I'll tell ya.

Sorry.

I do have a line of cookware out, okay?

It's called Babish Cookware line, all right?

Okay?

These are German steel knives.

They're full tang blades.

They are 4116 German steel.

They come sharp.

They keep an edge and they're $25, 25 to $30 per knife.

That being said, I'm not here just to huck my cookware.

Huck, is that the word?

I'm not just here to sling cookware.

I'm also gonna be fully honest

about other brands that I like.

Victorinox Fibrox makes a great starter knife.

It is stamped, not forged.

Likewise, with Wüsthof's Pro line, it's so cheap.

It's $20 for a knife.

It's a great learning knife.

It's a great starter knife but these knives are great too.

@FollowerOfDole says, time to ask a chef.

When I make fluffy scrambled eggs and cheese,

fluffy is I tried to make an omelet and screwed it up,

my dish is oily?

I think it's oil from the cheese

because the eggs are cooked fully

but it's kinda buttery flavor.

It's good but how to fix?

So I'm guessing you're doing is adding the cheese too early

so it's getting too much heat from the pan

so it's going beyond the point of melting and it's breaking.

When it breaks, it basically means

that the oil just seeps out of it.

What I would do is try to add your cheese

as late as humanly possible.

Just don't overheat it

and don't use cheeses that are too old.

Use a Gruyere or a not too sharp, pretty mild cheddar

'cause they're better melters.

They're gonna stand up to the heat better.

Tablespoon and a half of butter in the pan.

Eggs.

Always crack on a flat surface

then throw the pan back on the heat.

Before it gets in the pan, gonna beat these guys up.

I'm gonna use the tiny whisk.

They're more homogenous now

so now we're gonna add them to the pan.

Keep 'em moving.

Keep the pan moving.

Keep the eggs moving.

You put this on toast and it's almost spreadable.

There we go, that's done.

Irish cheddar.

We'll put a fair amount in there.

This is probably two ounces.

Yeah, two ounces-ish.

We're just mixing them in there, keeping 'em moving

and letting the residual heat in the pan melt the cheese

and incorporate them into the egg.

This is how I like my scrambled eggs.

You might not like 'em this way.

I like 'em creamy, I like 'em spreadable

and no matter how you like your scrambled eggs,

if you add your cheese at the end

and don't heat the cheese directly on the stove top,

you will notice that there's not a hint of oil

or grease in this pan.

It is just egg and cheese.

Nothing has separated

and that's how you prevent cheese from breaking.

Mm.

@DutchessWoodall said,

kay, what y'all season your ribeyes with?

Salt and pepper, man.

Salt and pepper.

For the most part,

you're just hitting it with salt and pepper.

Maybe a sauce or something on the back end.

Steak seasonings, the shakers and all that stuff,

not so much.

bforboss9 says, people give me all of your advice

on how to cook large slabs of meat so it won't dry out.

The dog is now getting my three pound pork roast

'cause I dried it out.

A lot of things could be happening here.

First off, you might be cooking it

at too high a temperature.

You might be just cooking it for too long.

Pork, you can cook to a rosy 135

if you know where the pork is from and if you trust it.

Otherwise, cook it to 145.

It's still gonna be nice and rosy and pink in the middle

and it's gonna be super juicy.

Something like a pork loin

which doesn't have much extra muscular fat,

you need to be very careful to make sure

that you're not overcooking it

'cause that's how it dries out very fast.

If you overcook it by 10 degrees,

it's gonna be dry as a bone.

You need to cook slowly, gently

with big, big joints of meat.

The best way to make prime rib for example

is to cook it at like 250 degrees Fahrenheit

for like six hours.

Also, yeah, pull the meat 10 degrees shy

of where you want it to end up.

It will come up 10 more degrees

at least when it comes out of the oven.

@hawaiianseawich, if you're cooking shrimp...

why do you leave the tails on?

Why?

It's so [beep] inconvenient when you're eating

and you have to use your hands to pick off the tails

to make sure you get all the shrimp out.

Yes, I just recently had shrimp pasta and I'm mad about it.

It is absolutely inconvenient.

You're right to be mad about it.

Having shrimp tails on in pasta is ridiculous

because if you don't wanna eat with your hands,

you're out of luck.

You have to use your hands in some capacity

if you've got shrimp tails on.

That or you're spitting 'em out like an olive pit

which I don't think you wanna do in a fancy restaurant.

So shrimp tails in pasta makes zero sense to me.

I completely agree.

That can really go [beep] itself.

From @JimKuras1, are #bayleaves a hoax?

I've been cooking with them for 30 plus years

and I'm not sure why.

The only thing I know about them

is that they're not actually supposed to be eaten.

#cookingquestion.

I personally don't fully know what they're for either,

these mysterious bastards.

From what I understand,

they're supposed to lighten up otherwise very heavy dishes

like stews and braises.

They also play really well with seafood.

You're not supposed to eat them obviously

but if you wanna see what they taste like,

you just gotta, just gotta, mm, yeah.

It is a minty, almost basily.

Yeah, you're not supposed to eat them

but they do play really well in stews and braises

and if they are a hoax,

they're the weirdest hoax I've ever heard of

'cause these things cost like 99 cents a ton.

Jill Bean aka @Jili_Bean, hardest fruit to cut?

Mango.

Anyone beg to differ?

Come prove me wrong.

#struggling.

Is there a harder fruit to cut?

Nope, I just ran through the entire list

of fruits in my head.

Mango is a very difficult fruit to cut.

You could peel it first

but I like to just kinda go at it kinda like an avocado.

You wanna try to get really as close to the pit as possible.

It's thinner than you think.

Same thing on the other side.

Really straddle the pit.

You're gonna wanna very carefully score this guy.

Do you see that sort of spread apart mango action?

And now that you've spread it open like this,

you can just kinda chop it out.

Try not to take any skin with you

but you can just sorta slice it off there.

If I had to sum up the technique,

it's like a modified avocado.

With the avocado, of course you remove the pit.

For this, you have to be just a little bit more

ready to lose some fruit

and ready to just have some weird oblong pieces

like this guy.

Meghan Spencer, @TheRealMeghanS.

@BingingWBabish.

This one's actually for me.

@BingingWBabish, I've tried your bagel recipe

from Steven Universe twice now

and they don't brown up as much as yours

and are only bubbly and brown

on parts that touch the baking sheet.

I have a traditional oven, not a convection.

Do I need to be baking at higher than 425 Fahrenheit?

I would say that's a good place to start.

Another really important thing would be to make sure

that the rack in your oven is in the right spot.

If they're only browning on the bottom,

I'm guessing your rack is towards the bottom of the oven

especially if you have an electric oven

that has the heating element on the bottom.

They're getting blasted with heat on the bottom

but not so much on the top.

So if you put that rack in the top third of your oven,

that's going to get a lot more radiant heat

off the top of your oven bouncing down onto the bagels.

It's gonna help brown them more efficiently.

They definitely do brown better with a convection oven

but you can still make amazing bagels without convection.

Another great thing to try is the home steam oven method

which is to place a heatproof dish

or a skillet underneath in the rack

below the one that you're gonna be baking on.

Let it preheat with your oven, let it get nice and hot

and then when you put the bagels in the oven,

pour some boiling water into that vessel, whatever it is

and that's gonna generate a whole lot of steam in your oven

which is going to allow your bagels to rise more

before they start to form a crust,

before they start to brown.

That's gonna give you not only a better oven spring,

it's gonna give you a better crust.

So try moving your oven rack up

to get more heat coming down from the top

and try the oven steam method.

Let me know how it goes.

Tag me.

Goddess Betty Jane, @BiBetty2.

What do you think is the worst food

you could eat in the tub?

Biscotti wasn't a great idea

but I'm contemplating leftover Pad Thai.

Both terrible ideas.

I totally agree.

Bad ideas.

Anything crumby or saucy.

Pad Thai would be not great

but I think a worst one would be any kinda red sauce.

A croissant would be terrible to eat in a bath

especially when you have a beard.

It's just a croissant catcher.

I think the moral of the story is here

keep only corn dogs in the bath.

It's portable, one hand.

I really think that corn dogs are the best bathtub food

and apples if you're trying to be healthy.

@MatySCarpenter says, is there something

about zesting a lemon that I don't understand

or are we all just ending up

with the lemon stuck in the grater?

You're not imagining anything.

That's absolutely what happens.

I like a rasp-style grater like this one.

This allows the lemon to fall out a little bit more freely.

First off, you don't wanna grate too close to the pith.

You just want the outermost layer of the lemon.

You don't want the white stuff underneath.

The stuff directly on the outside, just the zest.

That's where the lemon flavor is.

It's sweet.

It's mild.

It's not bitter.

You're still gonna end up with a whole bunch stuck in there

but all you gotta do.

That's it.

No big deal.

Sarah, @SOteachme.

Question, when cooking risotto, a glug or a gluggle of wine

is a correct and appropriate measure, right?

Absolutely.

Risotto is a very imprecise process.

It's something that you really need to sort of feel out.

If you put a half a bottle of wine in there

or half a cup of wine in there, it's still gonna taste good

and a glug is a great way to do it.

Generally, with like a a standard batch of risotto,

I'm putting like a cup of white wine in there.

So I would say more of a gluggle than a glug

'cause that's like a glug, glug, glug, glug,

maybe four glugs and I would call that a gluggle.

That sounds like a gaggle of glugs.

@SecuritySphynx asks, what is the best cocktail garnish

and why is it a Luxardo cherry?

I completely agree with you.

It is a Luxardo cherry.

Why is it a Luxardo cherry?

Because Luxardo cherries are worth every penny

of the freaking $20 that a jar costs.

They are rich.

They don't taste cloyingly sweet.

They have the perfect texture to them.

They're not mushy but they have a little bit of a snap.

The syrup is dark and rich and sweet and luxuriant

and I always like to use it in my old fashions

as my simple syrup 'cause it's very, very sweet

and it adds that wonderful Luxardo flavor to my cocktail.

So absolutely the best cocktail garnish 100%

unless we're talking about Bloody Marys

in which case everything's the best cocktail garnish.

bvossen888 asks,

lately I've been cooking a lot with onions and wowee.

The thing about them making you cry is not a joke.

Does anyone have any solutions to this problem?

I've tried running them under water a bit.

Doesn't work.

I'm thinking more like the onion goggles

Phil wears in Modern Family.

That is really like the only solution is onion goggles.

That's a thing.

Wear your swimming goggles and those will work fine.

There's really not any other way.

Matty Matheson attests that it's you need a sharp knife

which there's something to that

because the sharper your knife is,

the fewer cell walls in the onion you're rupturing.

So it should in theory not make you cry as much

but it also just totally depends on the onion.

I think fridging them might help

like I've always fridged my onions

and I feel like they've made me cry less

than most other people's onions.

Wear some goggles if you wanna be a dork about it.

Otherwise, suck it up

and get it over with as fast as possible

without chopping off a finger.

@GoodluckGrunge, what is the best sandwich?

I'm thinking it's gotta be the homemade BLT sandwich

with mayo.

Truly food of the gods.

I love a BLT.

It is one of the simplest sandwiches you can get.

However, I can't say it's the best sandwich.

My favorite sandwich is very close to the Liz Lemon

which is you got some pastrami, you got some turkey,

you got some coleslaw, Russian dressing, potato chips.

You get a lot of crunch in there.

I think that even a BLT can be improved though.

You could throw a runny egg on there.

You could throw a slice of cheese on there,

a little bit of Gruyere or something like that.

Nice fresh crisp lettuce.

Toast the inside of your bread.

This is what you should take away

from my long-winded meandering answer.

Toast the inside of your bread, not the outside.

It will spare the roof of your mouth

but you'll get all the crunch and all the flavor

and it will prevent your bread from getting soggy

and to me, that's a better BLT.

It's BLT plus good.

@Cadenbop asks, how often do we really need

to sharpen knives when cooking?

How often do you, Binging with Babish?

That's me.

Is it like after each use like some people

or should it be more like once a week or even a month?

Definitely the latter.

You don't need to sharpen it after each use.

It depends on how often you're cooking.

If you're cooking for yourself every night, every meal.

Yeah, once a week,

you're probably gonna want to give it a sharpen.

If cooking's more of a hobby,

if you're cooking on the weekends,

I mean, I sharpen them probably once a month.

It also depends on the knife you have.

If your knife doesn't hold an edge very long,

you need to sharpen it more often.

Likewise, with a honing rod.

Lots of folks think that this is a knife sharpener.

Not so.

This is a honing rod.

Your blade not only needs to be kept sharp,

it needs to be kept straight.

So use the honing rod to straighten out your edge.

Not gonna make your knife sharp

but it's going to help your knife perform.

Maybe get one of those little hand sharpeners

to tide you over and then once every few months,

get it professionally sharpened or use a whetstone

if you are a crazy person like me

and have several whetstones.

@WomenEnjoyBeer asks, cooking substitution question.

Can I sub evaporated milk for coconut milk?

I'm not entirely sure.

It really depends on what you're making.

In baking especially, I can't recommend that you do that.

I can't imagine that they interact the same way

in baked goods.

I can definitely imagine situations

where you could swap them out

but it's gonna totally depend on what you're making

and I'm sorry I don't have more information there.

You guys should have asked an actual expert.

@mandalorgana, let's start this discourse

because Sisley and I,

whoever Sisley is, need answers.

Who in Star Wars would be a good cook?

That's a great question.

Let's run down the list, okay?

Leia, I don't think so because she is a [beep] boss general.

She doesn't have time to cook.

Luke.

I could see him cooking

but it would be like gross Yoda stuff.

It'd be rootleaf stew out in the woods

in the weird island planet where he lives.

I don't think he cares that much about food.

I think food is more of like a survival

like sustenance thing for him.

Han, no way.

Darth Vader, no.

He's getting his nutrients through a tube or some weird.

He's eating electricity or something.

Chewie, maybe.

I mean, he's one of the few people

that has cooked in the movies

like from the Star Wars Christmas Special,

there is like a whole cooking segment.

I think it was stewed bantha or something like that.

Hey, guys, thank you so much for all the amazing questions.

Thank you WIRED for having me.

This has been Cooking Support.