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– You’re all eating spaghetti and meatballs wrong! For years, we have taken ground beef strings and mashed them into a sad ball. And spaghetti? Spaghetti starts as a ball. Well, today, we stop the insanity. I present to you Meat-Ghetti and Spag-Balls! – [Babish] Hey, what’s up, guys? Welcome back to "Binging with Babish." For this week, we’re taking a look at the Meat-Ghetti and Spag-Balls from "American Dad." Also this beautiful new Babish walnut cutting board and teak rolling pin, available today on Amazon. Link is in the video description, and I’m doing a giveaway at the end of this episode. Now, for starters for our Meat-Ghetti, I’m gonna make a very basic meatball recipe: 1/2 cup each bread crumbs and buttermilk, one large egg, one teaspoon oregano, 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, 1/2 teaspoon dried basil, and 1/2 teaspoon onion powder. Tiny-whisk together to make a panade, which, along with some kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, is both going to season and keep our Meat-Ghetti moist. Add one pound ground round. Mash that together by hand until it’s homogenous, cover with plastic wrap, and fridge for at least one hour, after which time we’re gonna pass it through a medium coarse plate in a thoroughly-chilled meat grinder. This is gonna bring us closer to a smooth, hot dog-like texture. Cover this, chill it for another hour, and then pass it through again. But this time, we’re gonna allow it to drape into a beautiful nest of Meat-Ghetti. On some parchment paper, set in a rimmed baking sheet. Go ahead and plop that in a 400-degree Fahrenheit oven for about 15 minutes, until the thickest point registers 165 Fahrenheit. In the meantime, we’re gonna make our Spag-Balls by virtue of some of these tea infusers. Give their interiors a spritz with nonstick spray before stuffing them full of fresh spaghetti. Stuff as much as you possibly can in there before trying to close it up and stuffing in any errant spaghetti strands, maybe with a piece of dried spaghetti. Is that irony? Leave a comment if you think that’s irony. Once all your tea balls are stuffed with fresh spaghoots, we’re bringin’ ’em on over to some boiling water, where they’re gonna marinate for four minutes. This will vary depending on what kind of fresh pasta you use and whether or not you’re actually doing this, because why would you do this? Let these drain and cool off for about five minutes. And fresh out the oven, let’s take a look at our Meat-Ghetti. Ugh. In the immortal words of Jeff Goldblum, that is one big pile of (beep). Let these cool off for a few minutes, I guess, before scooping them onto a plate, retrieving our Spag-Balls from their spherical molds, placing them to the left and right of our cow pie – I mean, meat pile – I mean, Meat-Ghetti – and hittin’ em with a little bit of your favorite tomato sauce before diggin’ in. Let’s start with a couple strands of our Meat-Ghetti, which surprisingly didn’t merge into one Cronenbergian mass, which I’m happy to report tastes an awful lot like a meatball in spaghetti form. The Spag-Balls are frankly ridiculous, because as soon as you try to cut them open, they explode. And with slightly overcooked exteriors and slightly undercooked interiors, they make about as much sense as an (beep)hole on your elbow. But it is kinda cool to grab one and eat it like an apple. That being said, as you can imagine, I think we can do a whole lot better. I’m gonna start by attempting to spiralize a summer sausage, which, uh, failed miserably. So I turned, as I so often do in these situations, to ChefSteps.com, where they have a method for making noodles out of chicken thighs using a little gastronomy. I’m not sure how well that’s gonna translate to meatball mix, but that’s what you guys pay me the big bucks to find out. We’re starting with the same meatball mix, into which we’re going to emulsify one cup of beef stock, pouring it slowly into a food processor while it runs with our meatball mix inside. Then we’re going to add eight grams of Activa RM, a kind of transglutaminase or meat glue, and 0.15 grams of sodium tripolyphosphate, a water softener, which we’re gonna mix together with a teaspoon of kosher salt to act as a dispersant. Add it to the food processor while it’s running to disperse into the meat, and hopefully this is still safe for humans. But even in finely-ground beef like this, there are still loads of fiber-like connective tissue, so we’re gonna painstakingly press it through our finest mesh sieve, after which time we should be left with nothing but a wet mass of meaty threads. Go ahead and throw that away so we can harvest the delicious, threadless paste, which we’re gonna throw into a vacuum-sealed bag. Seal it under low pressure. And then we need to press it out to a uniform thickness, preferably with something super heavy and balanced and well-built and handsome, maybe like the 24" x 16" Solid Walnut Babish Cutting Board, available now on Amazon. Once you’ve pressed that out to a perfectly uniform thickness, we’re gonna sous vide it, a surprisingly difficult and annoying process where we’re gonna dunk it into a 149-degree Fahrenheit water bath, weigh it down, try to keep it flat, and cook it for 10 minutes. I’m gonna weigh it down with these fermentation weights, which, as you can see, is working horribly, and let it cook for 10 minutes, after which point it’s going to turn a lovely shade of pallid, sickly brownish gray. Let these chill in the fridge for at least two hours before slicing it and serving, during which time we’re gonna make our improved Spag-Balls, cooking eight ounces of dried spaghetti until just shy of done, tossing with a little splash of oil, and letting cool completely on a rimmed baking sheet. Once cool, we’re gonna place it in a large bowl, along with some stuff. First, we gotta add 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour. This is gonna act as a binder. One cup of Parmesan cheese, which is gonna act as Parmesan cheese, two large, lightly-beaten eggs, 1/3 cup each sour cream and ricotta, a big ol’ pinch of salt, and a few twists of freshly-ground black pepper, in this recipe inspired by a restaurant that will remain unnamed, probably from "Diners, Drive Ins and Drives." If you have to sneeze, go ahead and do it like this for food safety. Grab your scooper and your snipper and get to scoopin’ and snippin’. That is, use your medium ice cream scoop to grab yourself a scoop of pasta cheese goo, snip off or press in any stragglers, and dump it into a vat of 350-degree Fahrenheit oil. Fry for two to three minutes until deeply golden brown and resembling a ball of deep-fried spaghetti, drain on paper towels, and grab your Meat-Ghetti out of the fridge. Snip and peel open the bag to retrieve and slice your noodles. Then, I’m gonna go ahead and spoil this for you: it did not work. Let me be absolutely clear and say that this is not a negative reflection on ChefSteps. I’m sure that their chicken noodles are delicious and very noodle-like, but when you use meatball mix instead of chicken, it turns out unforgivably gross. But we’re gonna soldier on and plate some up next to our fried Spag-Balls. So there you have it. The, uh, improved? Question mark? Meat-Ghetti and Spag-Balls. Let’s start with some of our Meat-Ghetti. Just little tastes of… (retches) Oh, no. Hard pass. Hard pass on that. It’s like pre-chewed cat food. I have slightly higher hopes for our Spag-Balls, but they turned out disappointing as well. They’re just deep-fried and kinda gummy and definitely not bad, but definitely not good. So, for the first time since my last attempt at a Seth MacFarlane dish, I concede defeat and put it to you, my audience, to try and do better. Make your version of Meat-Ghetti and Spag-Balls, take a picture, post it on Instagram, tag me, and use #BabishBalls, and whoever I think did the best job will win a Babish cutting board, rolling pin, and pair o’ tiny whisks. Good luck, be careful, Godspeed, and have fun. The cutting board, rolling pin, and tiny whisks are available now on Amazon. The link is in the video description, and we have a lot more amazing kitchenware coming this year. (upbeat music)
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