Greek Pastitsio with a twist by David Cooks

🍴 Greek Pastitsio with a Twist | David Cooks

Think you know Greek Pastitsio? 🇬🇷 Today at David Cooks, we’re giving this classic comfort dish a modern twist. Instead of just minced beef, we’re layering rich flavors with a blend of diced pork, tender beef chunks, and traditional minced beef – slow-cooked to perfection.

🔥 What makes our version special?
• A three-meat ragu that’s hearty, bold, and packed with Mediterranean spices
• Creamy béchamel sauce poured over perfectly cooked pasta
• Golden baked top that’s crispy outside, melt-in-your-mouth inside

This isn’t just dinner – it’s a taste of Greece with a twist that will warm your table and impress your guests.

👨‍🍳 Cook along with Chef David and bring a little Greek sunshine into your kitchen.

📌 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share for more recipes from around the world with a David Cooks twist.

[Music] Hello guys, my name is David. Thank you for watching David Cooks. Today a client asked me to do a Greek pastichio which is Italian version of lasagna. Let’s do it. Today for my pastichio I’m going to use minced beef. I’m going to use diced beef and I’m going to use some pork to add extra flavor and some fat on the food. I’m going to use some green pepper, red onion, carrots, and garlic. I start by cutting the pork. This is going to be the first thing is going to go in the pan to burn this fat to give me extra flavor. Doesn’t really matter the size, like as as small as possible. Pot is ready. Olive oil ideally. Let’s start cooking our pork. Let’s see how it’s getting along. Do not add any salt at the moment. We’re going to add the salt and the pepper in the end. At this moment, we add our beef. Let it get cooked really, really well. Get some color. As you can see, pork releases a lot of juices and fat, which we need it. Now, it’s time for our beef. Try to break it as much as as possible. Let’s go cut our onions. Let’s do the same with the garlic. Let’s do the same with our carrots. And of course with our green pepper. Okay guys, our meat has the color that we needed. It looks perfect. Looks yummy. Now it’s time to add our vegetables. Let’s go. Check this out, guys. I think looks looks beautiful. And now it’s time for our veg. Actually, we can help with a bit of olive oil and add all our vegetables. We have pepper, carrots, red onion, and garlic. [Music] We let it cook for 5 minutes and then you can add wine. I’m not going to add wine today, but you can if you want to. Red red red wine. You can add bay leaves. You can add peppercorn seeds. You can add Oh, I’m going to add basil and parsley in the end. Not now. You can add like lit literally anything you want. That’s my version. So, I will go with that. It’s now time to add the tomato paste to give some color to give it a good mix to go everywhere. Oh my god, guys. Smells so nice. You have no idea. Please try this recipe and crushed tomatoes or tomato tomato sauce thing whatever you want. [Music] Look at this guys. Look how beautiful. [Music] Now it’s time to add one liter of beef of beeftock. [Music] Lovely. This one is going to take apparently like 45 minutes, maybe an hour to get cooked. Lid on. Low the heating [Music] and see you in a bit. Let’s have a look to see what’s going on here. Smells incredible. Look at that. So, I’m going to leave that to the side to get cooked slowly slowly. And we’re going to start our bame and uh boil our pasta. Let’s go. For the bame, we’re going to start with butter. That can be 150 g. Give some time to the butter to melt. Almost there. Okay. Now we add our flour. We’re going to make a white r and we mix. It’s some time for the flour to get cooked as well. Now I like to add the salt to the pepper so I give flavor. If you have white pepper is ideally I don’t have I’m using black. So it’s changing the color and I’m going to start adding my milk. It’s going to be easier if you warm up the milk. I do it in a low heating so I have more time to mix it. See that’s the rule. [Music] Look how beautiful it’s coming. So, apparently for 100 g butter, you need 100 g of flour and about a lit of milk, salt and pepper, obviously. Let’s try to add the milk slowly. Slowly. Don’t add it all together. And the last. Probably a bit more. Look how easy it is. And now it’s going to be my last. One liter of milk. Perfect. Try. See. Perfect. That’s it. We leave the basil aside and let’s start boiling our pasta, guys. Okay. Now, it’s time to add our salt and pepper. Remember, you leave it juicy. You leave it with liquid like that. finish the oven anyway. So, yeah, remember to leave it juicy like that. Let me try it. It’s perfect, guys. And with the salt and the pepper, be careful. Don’t go too hard on salt and pepper cuz you’re going you’re going to combinate pasta, bologn, and the bamel. So, be careful with the salt and the pepper. Okay, this is ready. Let’s go now to our pasta. Perfect. Pastitio normally goes with spaghetti. Number six is the thicker one. And I know some of some of my Greek friends are going to get really upset about it. I couldn’t find spaghetti number six. So, I’m going to do it with whatever I have home. But right now, I have penna and I have linguini. With linguini, I wouldn’t do it. So, I will try it with penna this time. I hope it gets a longer ride. Let’s see about it. Okay, guys. About your pasta, make sure the water is boiling like that. Before you add your pasta in, make sure you salt the water really well. And now at that point, you can go with your pasta. Put them for 10 minutes. All right. At this moment, I’m going to add in my meat some parsley, some thyme. It’s mixed all together. Okay, we leave that aside. We take a tray like that. Our pasta in. Now, we add butter. Two good teaspoons. We have salt, some pepper, some parmesan, and some feta seeds. Just a little like like that. Now we mix it all together like that. If you don’t want to add butter, you can put some olive oil. Try to push it down. So you have your base. It’s time for your meat. Yes. Smells amazing. No idea how good this smell. I try to spread it everywhere. So every bite has meat, pasta, and bamel. told you is is my version of situ. I kind of getting bored eating the same food every time. So yeah, I change everything. Here in England they make it with minced lamp which I don’t like it but I don’t need lamp but is an option. So this uh this food guys cost me about £30 and took me about two hours in total. [Music] But you can feed an army that I can easily like one two three four one two let’s say you can make 14 big pieces. You can fit easily 10 people. Obviously, [Music] when if you try to do it home, you’re going to go like half from what I bought. That means less money. But yeah, again, depend where you shopping at. [Music] like myself, I had to go um I had to go in three different supermarkets to find all the ingredients that I needed [Music] and go like that. Look at that guys. [Music] What do you think? [Music] I think it’s worth it a try. Perfect. [Music] That’s it, my friends. I have preheated my oven in 180 and we’re going to cook for 35 to 40 minutes. A look at that. Look at this beauty. Time to cut. [Music] [Music] Okay, let’s serve now. Take going to take one of the of these pieces cuz the other one has to go to the client. Look at that guys. We [Music] Okay, guys. Time to try what we cooked here. [Music] Smells outstanding. I swear. Let’s see the Let’s see the tasting. Guys, that’s [Music] it’s perfect. You have to try this. See you next school, guys. Thank you.