Binging with Babish: Tater Tots from Breaking Bad

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Hey, what's up, guys? Welcome back to “Binging with Babish.” For this week we're taking a look at one of the best coldopens in TV history, the tater tot and sauce tastingscene from “Breaking Bad.” I'm just setting up thesefive fancy sauce cups because we have five sauces to make. And I'm going with cupsbecause in my experience, all these sauces tend to be a lot runnier.

Than those depicted in fiction. So going in presentation order, we're starting with honey mustard, which you might think onlycontains honey and mustard. But you'd be wrong. Because we're talkingabout a large corporation catering to Americans, we're going to add a little bit of honey, but mostly, high fructose corn syrup.

So we're doing 1/3rd ofa cup yellow mustard, 1 tablespoon of corn syrup, and a scant 2 teaspoons of actual honey. Next up is French,which starts with Ranch. Into a bowl goes a 1/3rdof a cup sour cream, quarter cup mayonnaise,1 tablespoon buttermilk, 1/2 teaspoon dried chives, 1/2 teaspoon dried dill weed, 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt,.

And 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, plus a tablespoon and a halfof chopped fresh parsley. Tiny whisking with great rigor to combine. Next up, the French dressing, which I was surprised to learn is a mayonnaise-like emulsion. Starting itself with 1/3 cupeach mayonnaise and ketchup, an astounding three tablespoonsof granulated white sugar, tablespoon white vinegar,.

Two tablespoons apple cider vinegar, plus half a small onion roughly chopped go into the jar of a blender where, while they're getting blended, we're gonna slowly drizzle in a half cup of neutral flavored oil,like vegetable or canola, through the hole. And there you have it, French dressing, which isn't quite red enough,.

So I'm gonna add some more ketchup. And there you have it, Frenchdressing with extra ketchup. Which as predicted, is runny. Next comes the one I'm most excited about, Cajun kick-ass, a greenish, mayonnaise-ishlooking emulsion. So to try to capture someof that Cajun flavor, I've got two ribs of celery diced, half a small onion diced,.

And half a small green bell pepper diced, AKA the holy trinity, along with two cloves of garlic, a half teaspoon each blackand white peppercorns, and a couple sprigs eachfresh oregano and thyme. These are headed insome cold vegetable oil, then I'm gonna slowly and gentlycook for about 10 minutes. Allow to cool completely, and then strain the resultant infused oil,.

Which we're gonna useto fashion a mayonnaise. But not just any mayonnaise, a kick-ass Cajun mayonnaise because this stuff tastes good. Back to the blender, we're starting with one whole egg, one large clove of garlic roughly chopped, half teaspoon of Dijon mustard, which I apologize,.

I'm using my fingersto dig out of the cup. Not a great look. Quarter teaspoon of kosher salt and one tablespoon of white vinegar. Then we're gonna go ahead and blend in the blender until blended. And once pretty smooth, start slowly streaming inone cup of our infused oil, creating a mayonnaise that is Cajun,.

But isn't kick-ass. We need green color and weneed a little bit of heat. Where are we gonna find that? How about this jalapeno in my hand? Half of it roughly chopped. Plus, in order to flavor,thicken and greenen things, maybe a quarter cup ofthe cooked vegetables from the infusing process. Blend for about one minuteuntil totally smooth.

As predicted, just a little runny and really very actually kick-ass. It's super flavorful. It's a little spicy. This would genuinely bea very pleasant condiment to eat with the thing. Next up, smoky mesquite BBQ. This begins with 2/3rdsof a cup of ketchup, plus a half teaspoon of garlic powder,.

Two teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce, 1/3rd of a cup dark brown sugar, three quarters of a teaspoon onion powder, half teaspoon paprika, two tablespoons each white vinegar, and of course, corn syrup. These guys are gonnaget corn syrup in there if it kills them or us. About a teaspoon of kosher salt.

And a half teaspoon offreshly ground black pepper, plus a couple tablespoons of water to safeguard against scorching. Now to get the smoke flavor in there, we're gonna use mesquite-specificliquid smoke, which… Oh, I thought that wouldcome out way more slowly. All right, no saving that batch because this stuff is strong. So this time,.

Carefully-ish pre-measurea teaspoon of liquid smoke. Tiny whisk until everybody's dissolved and cook over medium/low heat until it has a barbecuesauce-like consistency. Next up, ketchup, which we're gonna takefrom tomato to bottle to show you the process, or what I think is the process. First, we're gonna makehomemade tomato paste.

Chopping and scooping the seeds out of six to eight large Roma tomatoes, which we're gonna place in amedium/high walled saute pan, along with the strained remainsof the tomato seed pulp, which is apparently where alot of the tomato flavor lives. Once you're done harvesting your last drop of orange/red snot, place over medium/high heat, cover and bring to a simmer,.

Uncovering once starting to bubble. Bring the heat down to medium/low and cook uncovered for 20 to 25 minutes, until things are startingto look a little dry. But not too dry because we still wanna pureethe hell out of these things about three minutes on high speed to ensure that as much tomato as possible has been broken down into a liquid format,.

Which we're gonna pressthrough a fine mesh sieve to catch any errant particulateneedlessly into a bowl, since we're just gonna putthis into a pie plate anyway with the rimmed wide non-reactivebake ware of your choice, which generally means no metal. Then this guy's heading intoa 250 degree Fahrenheit oven for two to three hours, removing every half houror so to give it a stir. Tap it flat and put it back.

Basically, you want the tomato puree to be all surface area so it'sconstantly getting exposed to and caramelized by the heat of the oven. As you can see, I let it get alittle too thin at one point, and some of it burned. But I was determined to give it at least three hours in the oven so that I would end upwith the thickest, richest, most delicious pip squeakof puree on the planet,.

Which as you can see, can only generously becalled a third of a cup. To that we're adding onetablespoon of brown sugar, a tablespoon of white vinegar, quarter teaspoon eachgarlic and onion powder, an 1/8th teaspoon each mustardpowder and celery salt, 1/16th teaspoon eachground clove and allspice, and of course, a teaspoon of the requisitehigh-fructose corn syrup.

Once again, I'm gonna press this mixture through a fine mesh sieve to try to get it as smoothas humanly possible. And this might have theconsistency of Sir Kensington's, but it's got the flavor of Heinz, which is right where I wanna live. Now, with all sauces negotiated, we can begin to tot our taters. Three large russettaters peeled and plunged.

Directly into boiling water, which might seem counterintuitive, but we actually want thepotatoes to cook unevenly over the course of about 12 to 18 minutes, at which point the outside ofyour potato should be cooked and the inside shouldstill be pleasantly raw, which is gonna give ourresultant tots a varied texture. That's two back-to-backconsonants back to back. Very rare.

Once these guys are cool enough to handle, we're going to commence to grating on the large holes of a box grater. And like I mentioned, this should give you a mixedbag of potato shreds and mush. And we definitely want shreds, but we don't want them to be too long. So I'm gonna chop these guysup using a bench scraper until no shred exceeds15 millimeters in length.

For a little German precision. Place these in a big old bowl. And then in a small old bowl, we're gonna combine one and ahalf teaspoons of kosher salt, a tablespoon of all-purpose flour, two teaspoons cornstarch, and a teaspoon of freshlyground black pepper. Tiny whisk until homogenous. Add to the potatoes.

Mix until evenly combined, and then it's time to fashionthis mixture into pucks, for which I have this vintage falafel mold that Kendall found for me on eBay. They were clearly dealingwith some type F 230 fold 50 hertz tater tots, so I'm gonna whip up one batch, show accurate in these little puck forms, which I might be poking fun at,.

But I think they're actuallygonna turn out better if they're 90% surface area, which means a higher tot to tater ratio. But I also gotta makethe cylindrical ones, so surprise, “Napoleon Dynamite” episode. – Napoleon, give me some of your tots. – No, go find your own. – Come on, give me some of your tots. – No, freaking stop.

I didn't get to eat anything today. (foot stomps) (Napoleon groans) – Gross. Freaking idiot. – Hey, what's up, guys? Welcome back to “Binging with Babish.” For this week we're takinga look at the tater tots from “Napoleon Dynamite.”.

First we gotta make the potato batter, and then shape it into tots. Just be sure to repeatedlydip your hands in water because this stuff is sticky. No matter how you tot your taters, they're heading into thefreezer for at least an hour, and up to a few months. This is both to crystallize the potato's cell walls or something,.

Resulting in fluffier interiors, and to lend it some structural integrity as it plunges into some350 degree Fahrenheit preheated fry oil for anywherefrom three to six minutes, depending on the size andthe form factor of your tots. The same goes for the big boys. They might take a littlebit longer to fry, so maybe drop yourtemperature down 10 degrees. Fish them out, allow themto drain on paper towels,.

Salt them while still hot, and there you have it,homemade tater tots, something that, like theentirety of this episode, you should probably just buy. But let's pretend I didn't just say that and begin to plate up our sauce samples, making sure not to forget to integrate a little bitof Ranch into the French, big dollop of my favorite, Cajun kick-ass,.

Some smoky BBQ, and the only condimentthat mimics the viscosity of its store-boughtcontemporaries, ketchup. Plate up the tots in a fancyglass bowl of some sort and commence to sampling with the 1,000-yard stareof somebody who knows that they're well and truly (censored). Now, each of these saucestasted pretty good. Cajun kick-ass and French weredefinitely the stand-outs.

But the real winnerhere was the tater tots. They taste just like the onesthat you got in high school, which was often the bestpart of high school, but they added more potatoey, less processed flavor. One thing I'll say is that in the context of this glass bowl, I am definitely pro-cylinder. The puck format, while novel and exotic,.

Is very difficult to fetchout of a narrow mouth bowl with one's fingertips. (groans) Got it. Now folks, real quick, you might notice at the timeof this episode's publishing that we're at 9.99 million subscribers. So just this once, I'm gonna say something I've never said in the seven years of making this show.

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