Botched by Babish: Chicken Parmesan

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In this episode of Botched by Babish, Josh Scherer of @mythicalkitchen is here to air his grievances with my chicken parmesan recipe. In a Botched first, I disagree that I botched this recipe at all, but we invited Josh over nonetheless to hear him out and put his methods to the test.

Directed & Edited by Brad Cash

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– [Babish] Today’s episode is sponsored by Primal Kitchen. Primal Kitchen is on a mission to empower everyone to make informed choices about food to lead a happier and healthier life. Their condiments, dressings, and sauces are made without gluten, dairy, sugar, soy, or canola oil. They are, however, chock-full of flavor, meaning you don’t have to compromise quality ingredients for delicious flavor. To leave lackluster meals in the past and make every bite of food exciting, you can find Primal Kitchen in your local grocery store or visit Primalkitchen.com. The link is in the video description. (Babish sighs) – Do we- – Here we are. – Sorry. – It’s okay. (Babish and Josh laugh) Today, we have a very special episode of Botched by Babish, in that I think that I didn’t botch this one. (Josh laughs) I think I did it right. I think I did it more than right. I think I made an exquisite chicken parm, but Josh Scherer of Mythical Kitchen is here to tell me otherwise. Josh? – You botched it. You botched it, Babish. You Botched by Babish-ed it, Babish. I think you’re right, in the sense that you did not botch it so hard that it thereby became botched. You made the chicken parm too good. Chicken parm is already a bastardized dish. It is not authentic Italian, but you went in there and you got, you know, the panko to make it super crispy. You tried to reverse architecture it to get less sog, but the essence of chicken parm is that beautiful sog. You have reduced it to some chef-y, pedantic dish. And I think you need to get back to your roots, and make some soggy-ass, gloopy mozzarella cheese, chewy chicken parm! – So, sog is essential? – Sog is essential. – The Progresso fine breadcrumbs, so you get a shell rather than a crust is essential? – Correct. I am the expert on Italian food, being from California. I am channeling Little Tony’s in North Hollywood. When you’re there, you’re Italy. They have an actual sign that says, "When you’re here, you’re Italy." That said, when you show up there at two in the morning, you get the chicken parm, you know exactly what you’re in for. It is the ultimate plate of comforting, soggy, delicious saltiness, and I want to bring you into their world. – At the very least, I want to make that for you right now. So, I’ll just make it for you. And we’ll… This is Botched by Babish. Opening credits sequence. Do we have an opening credit sequence? ♪ Botched by Babish. ♪ ♪ Today there’s a guest to make the chaos the best. ♪ ♪ Botched by Babish ♪ ♪ And Josh Scherer is here to make sure Andrew is clear ♪ ♪ On what he messed up in the first version, ♪ ♪ So now we’re about to do some fast-paced learning ♪ ♪ On Botched by Babish ♪ – So Josh, – Go ahead. – Am I going to make this thing? You’re just going to watch me, or what are we going to do here? – Yeah. Yeah. So I’m going to go ahead. I’m going to set up. I’m a natural born watcher. I watch people all the time. – Is that a director’s chair? – Yeah, yeah. You’re a movie guy, I’m a movie guy. I’m going to sit back here, I’m going to direct you, I’m going to watch what you’re doing. And I’m just going to, you know, sort of judge and critique, while doing nothing to help. Can I get a Fiji water? Where the eff is my Fiji water? Thank you. Daddy didn’t mean to yell. (fast music) – All right. So first step is to butterfly the chicken breast. – Butterfly it, keep a meat hinge. And then you’re going to pound it out, but the key is you can’t use the meat mallet. You’ve got to use the Palm Heel Strike. It’s a very specific technique that was pioneered by Dutch mixed martial artist, Bas Rutten. – I feel like there are better ways, like, you know, using a meat mallet, but all right, if you want me to use the palms of my hands. – This is the method. This is why you botched it. There you go. That’s good. That’s good Then I would start just attacking it. So what it’s going to be is that you want the heel of your palm right here. It’s the strongest strike in martial arts. And you strike down into it. Yeah, down into it, right across the ridge of the chicken, but not so hard that you’re actually going to bruise it. – I’m going to strike it down- (Josh exclaims) – Yeah, sorry. – No, it’s got to be a straight down. So you stack the elbow at the top, straight down, straight down, straight down, – All right. – There you go. There you go. There you go. Softer, softer, but firmer. Finish him! No mercy! See, it’s not as efficient as a meat mallet, but isn’t it more fun? – No. (fast music) – Sometimes I think that he didn’t botch this. And maybe today we’re learning that I botched it. We’re making the sauce. Butter, get some butter heating in a pan. Garlic, you can mince the garlic or you can fish it out. You can Palm Heel Strike it. I don’t add onions to my sauce. – I was about to ask. There’s no onions in this recipe. What’s the deal? – Okay, so, I remember talking to someone and they were like, "I tried spicing up my tomato sauce by adding onions, and it didn’t taste any better." I’m like, "Well, no, it didn’t taste better or spicy, it tastes like onions." If you want to taste onions in your sauce, that’s really cool. To me, tomatoes are absolutely perfect. You get the garlic accenting it, a little bit of basil, a little bit of chili flake. Other than that I don’t need the onion flavor, man It might be an unpopular opinion. All of this might be incredibly unpopular. People might hate me, but God dang it, you will also not respect me. (fast music) – [Babish] So you do an egg white. – [Josh] Correct. – [Babish] So, why egg white? – So I leave an egg white. Egg yolks have a lot of fat in them, right? That’s where all the fat lives. And when you are deep frying something to get the more crispiness, and the more crispness that you get in the deep-fry, the more sog you can add to it later, – I was about to say, what is this talk of crispiness? – Because you need this sog-to-crisp interplay. – And how whisked? Like frothy, or, – Quite. Quite, yeah. A little bit frothy, a little bit frothy. Just because you don’t want any part of the chicken to not be cooked. Do you ever think that using a bigger whisk would be, I don’t know, easier? (Josh laughs) – All right, we’re dredging. It’s dredge time. Thoroughly covered in flour. – [Josh] That’s looking pretty good. Why do we pat it down? No excess moisture? – Yeah. Salt is going to bring moisture to the surface of the chicken, and then that, right, the whole point of flouring it is to, one, give the dredge something to stick to, two is to reduce moisture, because when there’s moisture there, it’s going to steam, and it’s going to create air pockets in the breading. Then you’re going to get the batter actually shingling off. You don’t want that. – You’re really all about sog. – Yeah, I love sog. Soggy food is one of my favorite things. When I pour a bowl of cereal, I let it sit for about three to five minutes. I walk away, go to the bathroom. (fast music) – Ready to drop? – Yeah. And always do it right back towards me. It takes me cooking with somebody else to realize that a lot of things I do are probably pretty messed up. What I was going to say is what I like to do, is I like to shake the pan. – That’s insane. – I know, but what I like to do is, I like to shake the pan, because that way you get more rapid oil movement across more of it. You see, you have parts that aren’t perfectly browned? – Yeah. So if you shake the pan, it’s almost like it’s a sous vide machine, right? You’re moving the oil throughout. – [Babish] Just spread a little oil. – [Josh] Yeah, but I really want to shake the pan. – [Babish] Don’t shake the pan. – [Josh] I don’t know. – Should we preheat the broiler at this point? – [Josh] Just shake the pan! – I’m not shaking the pan. Not shaking the pan. – [Josh] Yeah, preheat the broiler, makes sense. – Okay, cool. Here, you want to flip this one? – [Josh] Yeah, yeah, yeah. – [Babish] Use your fingers? – [Josh] What I would do, I would kind of just- – [Babish] See, yeah, you’ve got the chef fingers. I don’t have those chef fingers. That’s looking pretty nice. That looks like a classic chicken parm crust. (fast music) – Ah, come on, man, give me the cheese. Give me the cheese, man. – No, no, no, no. – Come on, give me the cheese – No, no, no, no, no. – [Josh] Key is, you’ve got to hit the old downstrokes and you’ve got to mash at it with your hands. – [Babish] See, now, you’re doing it wrong. – [Josh] What? – It does just sort of squish into a ball when you grate mozzarella. Then that starts to happen. – [Josh] Yeah, and then you take this and you kind of just rub it together in your hands. – [Babish] Did you wash your hands after handling that chicken? – Um, full disclosure? – What’s this? – Mozzarella. (Babish laughs) – Oh, that’s nice. – [Babish] I’m going to try your method here. – [Josh] Yeah, yeah, maybe just kind of… That didn’t work. We got so much cheese on the ground. What is your, where’s should I put this? No, that’s not good. I’ll put it in the bowl. Don’t touch that. That’s ground-cheese. I didn’t wash my hands after touching the ground-cheese. Sorry. All right, so yeah, you want to get some nice sauce. It’s like a jam. Again, that’s the ground-cheese hand. – Who cares, at this point? I like sucking the sauce off the basil. – [Babish] God knows I’m not going to eat this garbage. (Josh laughs) All right, so I remember in your recipe you said 73% covered in sauce. – Yeah, yeah, yeah. You want it to be- – [Jess] 78. – [Josh] 78% – [Babish] 78% – It’s roughly the amount of surface area of the earth that is covered by water. – [Jess] Josh? – Hi. – [Jess] You have something on your face. – What is it? – [Jess] I don’t know. – [Babish] No, don’t tell him. – It’s fine. It’s fine. – Shh, shh, shh shh. No more tears. (Josh fake-crying) – Okay, there we go. – [Josh] Now you’re going to grate fresh pecorino on there. – [Babish] So, pecorino before mozzarella? – [Josh] Yes. – [Babish] Interesting. – Because the mozzarella has a higher fat content, right? Pecorino isn’t going to melt, and if you put that in the broiler, all it’s going to do is brown. So you want some insulation. The pecorino is going to add all that saltiness, all that punch, all that acid, that flavor. And now you’re going to go hit it with the ground-mozz. Most of this cheese has been on the floor. – [Babish] Yes, this is floor-cheese. – [Josh] Do you think that, maybe, I think you didn’t botch this in the first place, and I just wanted to come and make chicken parm with my friend and have a nice time? – Next time, just call. (Josh and Babish laugh) – I feel like I need to instigate. You know, its- – [Babish] It’s okay. – I didn’t grow up with a lot of healthy relationship-modeling – Yeah. (Babish laughs) – All right, so, I got one shredded, I got one chopped. – [Josh] What the hell happened to this one? – I did the shredded on this and the chopped on that! – It’s a good idea, it’s a good idea. – I just want to see how they function. – You want to throw in the oven? – [Babish] Let’s throw it in the oven. Sleep sweet, chicken parm! – That’s all there is to it. And thank you so much for stopping by Binging with Babish. We’ve got new episodes for you every Tuesday, every Thursday. We got new episodes of our TikTok, are you on TiKTok yet? – Uh-uh. – Subscribe to our TikTok. That’s- – Did you say that this was ground-cheese? – The bowl is ground-cheese. – Oh. (fast music) – [Josh] There it is. There it is. Now we’re working. Now we’re jazzercising. – Now we got it. Now we got it. – I like that. – [Babish] What do you think? – [Josh] Yeah, let’s do that. Oh my God, this looks so good! – [Babish] Should we eat this? – [Josh] I think we should eat it. – Oh, this looks great. – It does look great. – It does look great. – [Josh] I want to eat it with my hands. (Josh and Babish slurping) – It’s really good. – That’s really good. It’s a perfect food. Like, I’m not saying that mine is better. It’s not. This is classic chicken parmesan. It’s as classic as it gets. – [Josh] Where do you think this stacks up, compared to yours? – Dude, I wouldn’t, I don’t think I would compare the two. They’re they’re so similar. But, God, if I had to choose one. Last meal, if I had to choose, because my last meal would be chicken parmesan. – Oh. – (beep) Man, I might choose this. This is more familiar. – Thank you. – You are now fully admitting that you did botch it? – I did botch it. – I mean, I would love your chicken parm. I think it’s absolutely beautiful. But for me, my final meal would legitimately be Taco Bell. – Josh, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for showing me how to make chicken parm the right way, the correct way. Which, again, as you said, is a bastardization. It’s a little bit too hot. This is hot. – Oh my God, Andrew, thank you so much for having me in your home. I really had a lovely time, honestly. I mean, I think, you know, our two worlds bridging together- (Babish burps) – [Babish] Thanks again to Primal Kitchen for sponsoring today’s episode. Primal Kitchen is on a mission to change the way the world eats with real food and equally big flavors. Their pantry staples focus on clean and healthy ingredients like avocado oil and apple cider vinegar that contain no dairy, gluten grain, refined sugar, or soy. I especially liked the Chipotle Lime Mayo. It’s made with avocado oil, organic eggs, and organic herbs and spices. And it’s perfect on your favorite salad or can be used as a marinade for your chicken. And their Ketchup and Buffalo Sauce make for a perfect dipping sauce for your favorite snacks. Never settle. Make every bite of food exciting. You can find Primal Kitchen in your local grocery store or at Primalkitchen.com. (mellow music)