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Philly cheese steak. As chalk full of beef, cheese, and grease as the city that bears its name. I love Philly. Okay. I'm a huge Everybody knows I'm a huge Flyers fan. Hockey, right? Is that hockey? They're known for so many great things. They got the Philly cheese steak. They got Rocky. They got the Liberty Bell. I guess it's broken. Ben Franklin. Ah, if you think that I've insulted Philadelphia, you ain't seen nothing yet. I'm sorry ahead of time, but this is 10 levels of Philly cheese steak. A big thank you to Cook Unity for sponsoring this episode. Cook Unity continues to be my go-to meal while editing an episode, taking a break from filming, or just craving something delicious and healthy on a weekn night.
You should have Cook Unity meals ready to grab in your fridge for a fast and delicious meal in the middle of a busy day. You get restaurant quality meals by award-winning chefs delivered fresh to your door. Today I'm eating the bacon, egg, and cheese kiche by Chef Miriam Millard. Before I start filming, head to the link in the description now to try Cook Unity and get 50% off your first order of chefade meals delivered fresh to your door. Use code Babish and try it out. Is Flavortown a place you'd like to visit? I would not travel to Flavor Town right now. According to the US travel advisory website, you should proceed with caution as there is civil unrest. There is a lack of indoor plumbing. The water
itself is diarrhea. And on top of that, the food scene is just not what it used to be. Level one cheese steak. Where exactly is the bottom of the barrel in terms of a cheese steak experience? Well, I can tell you firsthand. It's this right here. Guy Fury's Flavor Town Super Melty Philly Cheese Steak Tots Bowl. I recently tried this as part of a frozen dinner ranking over on the Beyond Babage channel. Uh, and I awarded it a commensurate score with its quality, that being a one. It only got a one, not a zero, because the cheese sauce wasn't that bad. But everything else was, I won't say a crime, but a misdemeanor at least. There are no oven directions. If
you want crispy tater tots, suck my ass. There's only microwave directions. Right away, I can tell you the tater tots might as well be mashed potato. Look at the way that's come apart. If you look at this package, it features pieces of actual beef. And if you look closely at this, you'll see that the steak bits are pressed and formed like stums. The flavor really all you taste is the cheese sauce and it's not bad. It tastes like a Vita Rotel queso. The textures are unforgivable. The tater tots are ridiculous. They I don't know whose idea it was to put tater tots in an enclosed bowl to be microwaved. It is an absolute crime against Philly, against cheese, and against steaks. There you are. Level
one Philly cheese steak. About as low as it goes. Now, I know the whole thing's wrapped up in nostalgia, but if you had to pick a favorite part of the Hot Pocket, what would it be? It's a weird question, but if I had to pick my favorite part, it is the thing that is literally wrapped up in, which is the crisping sleeve. It's a technological marble and I hope they never get rid of it. Level two, Philly cheese steak, specifically hot pockets. We're taking a step out of the completely inedible and into borderline enjoyment. I'm going to get to feel like I'm back in high school.
This doesn't come with a crisping sleeve. This not come with crisping sleeves. Where's the crisping sleeve? There's no crisping sleeve. What am I to do? They sure do look different from when I was a boy. There's this browning and kind of a sheen to them. It says to do it in an air fryer, but come on. It's a hot pocket. It's going in the microwave. Okay, it's out of the microwave and we've experienced a small blowout on the side. That is to be expected. You know what you have to do with hot pockets? You need to let them rest. Otherwise, you will die an untimely death. It will burn you alive from the inside out. So, I'm going to spend this time constructively by examining the not brief website for why they got rid of
the sleeve. More good stuff. 30% more pepperoni because they got rid of the sleeve. We're talking about pepperoni versus cardboard. This is not a one:one swap. Less waste. It's legit. Apparently, 3,300 tons of waste saved every year from all those Hot Pocket sleeves you specifically have been eating. The way our world works is truly terrifying. So, I'm not going to dig too deep into it. I'm going to eat this Hot Pocket. very little in terms of stuff that isn't cheese. Not a complaint really. The beef cannot be any better than what's going on in Guy Fury's tater tots bowl, but it's chopped into little itty bitty pieces. So, if it is a little
chewy or whatever, it's basically pre- chewed for you. As far as level twos go, big step up and a pretty high four and how bad things can get. Would I recommend this as a Philly cheese steak analog? Absolutely not. This is kind of its own thing. It's an appropriate level two. Steak M communicates deliciousness. Steak um communicates what steakums communicate, which is this steak um level three, the hilariously named steakums. It sounds pensive. It sounds unsure of itself. It sounds like it's got a secret. And that secret is that it's also chopped and formed and sliced beef. It is not steak. These aren't pieces of actual steak. That's how it's so darn cheap. This is probably your
cheapest option. Oh, how do you even get them apart? Wow. It's been a long time, I guess. Oh, man. That is a bummer. Just a slice of lunch meat. Look at that. Then for bread, we got some of these kind of grocery store little hogies. Little sub rolls. And for cheese, of course, we're going to use unmelted craft singles. Let's put in our steak. Wow, there's a lot of fat in that. Oh, what a horrible thing. I'm going to drop these in one at a time and then kind of keep them warm. So much fat. O, this might need to be downgraded below hot buckets. I don't know. I'm going to throw this in the microwave for just a sec. So, at least
we have melted cheese. But there you have it. A Stakums Philly cheese steak, quote unquote. Whoa. A serving size of Stacums is one piece. That means that this sandwich is 1,170 calories before the bread and cheese, which comes out to g of fat. That is 126% of your daily value just in that beef. I'm sure a lot of it rendered out and is in the bottom of that pan right now, but I'm just looking at the nutrition facts, brother. That's awful. I'm inclined to make this the level two. I don't know. I've changed ranks rankings in a ranking episode before in post-prouction, but I don't know how we're going to do that. I think I'll just say it. This is the real level two. This is I'd rather have the
hot pocket than this thing. Downgrade level two. We'd rather have this than Guy Fiery's bowl of nightmares, but there's no way it's better than a Hot Pocket. What kind of trauma did the person who invented frozen cheesestake sandwiches have? Well, they're a human being on Earth, so I assume that they've experienced a great deal of trauma. Trauma is not only common place, it's kind of essential to the human experience. And it's yielded some incredible things. Great art, music, film, and frozen cheese steaks. Next up, a complete Philly cheese steak kit in a bag. The hell you say? But that's what this is. This is the JTM
beef Philly cheese steak kit. Four beef steaks, sliced and shaped. Four cheese steak sandwich rolls, diced onions, and mozzarella cheese. I bet I'm going to do a lot of things that will piss off Philadelphiaians in this episode. None of them will be mozzarella cheese. This beef is not chopped, processed. This is sliced steak shaped. So, I think what we're going to end up with here is actual strips of actual beef. It took us four levels to get there, but I think that's where we are. There's the rolls. They are pitiful. There's a big old bag of onions. And this is a bad sign when there's more onions than cheese in the Philly cheese steak. The idea that this is enough cheese for four cheese steaks does bum
me out. Also, I'm not sure. You either don't have an expiration date or your expiration date is wildly confusing or this is massively expected cuz it says 26 and it is 2026. So, that gives me some hope. This looks a lot more like a date to me because it's a month and a year, but that is 3 years ago. There we go. Nice frozen onions. A little bit of fat coming out of this steak. Not nearly as much as that horror show. Okay, there's our little beef pieces. Let's see if those look real. They're so small it's kind of hard to tell, but I see real marbling. And add a quarter of the final logic uh mozzarella cheese. I'm going kill the heat. Just going to throw a lid over the whole thing to just let it kind of steam. Let
that cheese melt. And our bread. Ah, it's hot out of the oven. Maybe this is going to be an appropriate amount of meat and cheese for this tiny little roll. Yeah, actually looks like it is going to be maybe just right. There you have it. Our level four cheese steak. The first one to feature whole pieces of meat supposedly. Definitely better than the steakums, but like the meat has a off quality to it. There's some flavor happening there that really ought to be. And this was thoroughly cooked and nicely brown. Like I got good caramelization on this flavor is just a little weird. I can't put my finger on upon what exactly. Just a
weird flavor and some unpleasant textures. So, not great, but still going to be our level four. Level five, an earnest attempt to make a basic Philly cheese steak at home. We have some nice large sub rolls. This is more akin to the size of an actual Philly cheese steak, which tends to be quite large. We have some thinly shaved beef here. A lot of grocery stores are starting to do this. Green pepper, onion, and cheese whiz. I'm not a big cheese whiz guy. Um, this is one of the two options that you're given when you go to the place, and I'm not super into it. much prefer uh white American deli slices. Now, I should point out that as far as I know, authentic Philly cheese steaks have no
peppers. Sometimes they have onions, but that's about it. I think that green peppers are considered a little more touristy, but this what I'm going to do. It feels like the at home thing to do, and I like peppers on a cheese steak. It like in my mind, it's it's almost become part of the flavor profile. Next up, an extremely important step after these commercial messages. We're back with an extremely important step. This is an essential part of the cheese steak. You need the bread to basically be almost round to hold all that meat in place. There we go. There's some scooped bread. You can see it makes
a cavity, a cavern if you will, that allows us to get more in there, but also prevents any from squishing out the sides of the back. Now, for a cooking surface, the old reliable cast iron griddle. Just a little bit of vegetable oil. Get things started. Crank up that heat. I want to cook the vegetables pretty immediately, get maybe a little bit of color on them, and then move on to the meat. Grab our steak. Plop it down. Now, it's going to be in big chunks. That's one of the unavoidable things about buying shaved steak like this. But the solution is that we're going to chop it. This is one of the many, many reasons why you don't want to make a cheese steak in a non-stick pan.
All right, let's mix the peppers and onions in there at the Hot Stone Crearyy. You can't tell. I've never worked at Cold Stone Crearyy. I think that they just put this on after they've assembled the sandwich, but I can't tell. So, I'm just going to do just to maximize our goo factor and make sure that it's not like a freaking disaster. I'm going to hit the bread with a little bit of whiz. And of course, more whiz over top. Don't worry, my soul's not dead yet. One of the more important elements of sandwich craft is wrapping. Uh, something that I didn't do for way too long, and I see way too many
people not wrapping their sandwiches before serving. This compresses the sandwich, puts everything together, makes sure that we don't have any big stupid awkward gaps or anything like that. Don't slice the aluminum. You sometimes you end up with little shreds of aluminum in there. I'm just doing it for looks. Yeah. Lots of little shreds of aluminum. Okay. Don't do that. Don't do what I just did. Yeah. Only do that with sandwich wraps, not with freaking aluminum foil. That was stupid. Let's take a look at that cross-section. Oh yeah, I tried a little bit of the beef here. It's very dry. We'll see what happens while I whiz. The crazy badass places in Philly, they're shaving whole ribeye and they're frying that up. So, there's a
ton of fat, ton of flavor. This is very lean. So, it's pretty dry. It's tasty, but it's dry. Yeah. That's the thing you're unfortunately going to run into whenever you buy things like shaved beef or stir fry beef, any of those really pre-prepared pieces of beef. You're generally going to end up with lower quality beef, less fat, and it's going to be tough. It's saving you prep, but it's going to be tough. So, it is most assuredly a cheese steak. Like, this is the first one that actually resembles and tastes like a real cheese steak. But by getting the pre-prepared stuff, you're getting the right texture, which is very hard to achieve at home. And, you know, drown it in cheese whiz because
kind of makes the illusion that the beef is perfectly juicy. At the end of the day, it's a decent cheese steak. Level six, the level that begs the question, is this a cheese steak? I'm speaking, of course, of the chicken cheese steak, which I think should be called the cheese chicken or the cheesecake, but I'm not in charge of Philadelphia. So, chicken cheese steak isn't just plain chicken usually. Usually, it's seasoned with like a very simple slight marinade. Sometimes they can be very saucy. I don't really like that. So, I'm just going to do like a tablespoon each soy sauce, wishes, sure, and maybe like a/ teaspoon each
garlic and onion powder. Tiny whisk that together. I'm notorious for forgetting to salt my food and luckily this soy sauce is salty as all get out so it's probably going to do the job. Always a generally good idea to dry brine your chicken. Just hit it with a little bit of salt and let it sit at room temp for you know 20 30 minutes before we sear. Great sear on our chicken thighs. They might not even be completely cooked all the way through. Doesn't matter. We're going to let these cool for 5 10 minutes just so we don't experience too much moisture loss when we slice them up. I don't want huge slices here. So, I might cut these guys in half and then slice them this way. There we go. It's not
quite shredded, but it's not quite chunks either. That's looks just about right. Let's dump in our peppers and onions. Drop in our chicken. And we're just trying to heat this up, get a little color on it, and of course, drop in our flavor concoction, which is just going to give the chicken a little bit of color and a lot of bit of flavor. Going with white American cheese here. It seems to be what they use in Philly, and it is also my preferred topping. And cover it up. Heat's off. This is just to melt the cheese and make sure everybody's super nice and hot and warm and wonderful. Let's take a look. Beautiful. cheese is nicely melted. There we go. Got a decent amount of it there. Once again, I'm
calling upon Americans to do the pro thing and wrap this sandwich up. It is a big and it needs to be glued together. I am going to let it sit for 5 minutes or so to make sure that we get the ultimate sandwich experience. I'm not going to cut the foil again because I'm okay with microlastics, but micro metals, I don't think so. So, let's just take this off unceremoniously. It's juicy. I can see. I like how moist it is inside. Let's see if we can get a cool cheese stretch here. H. Not really. But ooh, that looks good, though. That looks like a chicken cheese steak, I'll tell you. Looks like the cheese did not protect the bread
whatsoever. So, you know, do that at your own peril. There's a reason this is level six. Does not taste of soy sauce or worashisher. Just like a really nice savory chicken flavor. Righteous level six. Worthy level six. Not quite a cheese steak, but damn close. Like if you didn't eat beef, this is satisfying in a way that chicken isn't normally. That's all there is to it. It's fantastic. Worthy level six. If this cheese steak is upgraded, does that mean you were sandbagging on the first two?
I guess that depends. What does sandbagging mean again? Like you were intentionally making them worse, like being worse so that you could then come back and be better later. Yes. Level seven, an upgraded homemade Philly cheese steak that at least starts to resemble the ones from the shop. The biggest barrier to entry for Philly cheese steaks at home is shaving the steak really thin. And when you get it from the grocery store, it can be tough. It can be dry. So, how do we get steak really thin without, you know, going out and buying a deli slicer? The answer, I think, lies in the mandolin. You can get these for not very much. That leads us to the other question. What kind of beef to
use? We need something not only widely available and inexpensive, but something that'll fit on a very narrow mandolin. I think there's only one answer. I have here some beautiful skirt steak, but it is very, very, very tough if it isn't eaten or sliced correctly. You've got a extremely strong grain structure here. And if you try to slice it with the grain, it's going to be the equivalent of eating a meaty rope. But if you slice across the grain, you're basically pre- chewing the meat for yourself. And isn't that delicious? Isn't that what we want to do? So, I'm going to wrap this up in plastic wrap and wrap it really, really tight. I want to compress these together as much as possible. And I'm going to
put this in the freezer, not until it's completely frozen, cuz then it'll be very hard to slice, but until it's quite firm, uh, probably at least an hour. Oh yeah, that's doing it. Moral of the story being, lightly freeze your meat. Don't get it completely solid. If you do, let it thaw for a couple hours in the fridge so it's really firm but not totally frozen. And uh run it through a mandolin. Beautifully shaved steak. Perfect for our cheese steak. If you've never been to Philly, this is why you haven't tried Philly cheese steak cuz it's so hard to get the beef. Right.
Now for the bread. And if you want to go super authentic, you got to go to the source. What we have here is Amaros's bread and rolls. These guys are a Philly based bakery that makes the quintessential Philly cheese steak roll. I got these from a restaurant supply store. I'm going to let this guy defrost completely. Slice them open, scoop them, toast them, fill them, eat them. So, I'm going to use green and red bell peppers. I know it's not super authentic of me, but there's two very important reasons why I'm using them. I like them, and you can't stop me. But, I'm also busting out the new hotness. This is a prototype I had the boys upstairs dream up. This is
a cast iron griddle. As you can see, there's a very, very thin rim. This is perfect for searing burgers, uh, cheese steaks, and the like. But also, if you flip it over, it is completely flat and it becomes a pizza steel. It is so big that you need to use it over a very large burner or you need to preheat it in the oven. So, I'm going to throw this in a 500° Fahrenheit oven for 10, 20 minutes. Got our peppers and onions. Flip it over. Make sure everybody's getting a good sear on it. I'm doing white American on the meats because I think it's the best choice for a cheese steak topping in terms of texture and minimal flavor. But I also do want to
acknowledge the value of proolone on the inside of the bread. Hopefully insulate it from some of the juices. Oh, nice. This is a restaurant style sandwich wrapper. You can get these online. Basically, you've got a uh layer of parchment paper and a layer of aluminum foil to keep things toasty. All right, it's been 5 minutes. Let's see how our Philly style Philly cheese steak has fared. That's a juicy cheese steak. It's almost like a Chicago beef. It's so juicy. It's dripping because it's such fatty, rich meat. There's no way this is going to come out dry. Even if you overcook it, it's still going to be pretty juicy. I don't even think we can get much higher, but we have to try. So, on to level eight.
Bradley Cooper has Oscar nominations. Why does he also get to have a legendary cheese steak spot? Well, I think because life is foundationally unfair. Uh, it's something you discover as you get older and it grows more and more true with each passing year. And you look at a guy like Bradley Cooper and you're like, that's unfair that he hasn't actually won any Oscars. Level eight, how do you improve an already upgraded really, really good homemade cheese steak? You go to the shop and you get one. Specifically in New York City, the best cheese steak you're going to get is from Danny and Coops. This, of course, is the famous collaboration between Bradley Cooper and D'Angelos. Largely considered
to be the best Philly cheese steak in Philly, even though I like Dalisandre's a little better. Here's the thing. I just went out and got this. I drove an hour and a half to get it from Alphabet City in Manhattan. Brought it back here. It was a little cooled off from the drive. So, I threw it in a low oven and I forgot about it for a while. So, it's going to be a little over toasted. The bread's probably going to be crustier than it's meant to be. I haven't even looked at this thing yet. Didn't even blink when I almost ruined it in the oven. It's like, nope, I'm made by Bradley Cooper. It is properly gooed out. The roll feels great. It's like nice and crusty and firm, but you can tell that it's going to give.
Oh boy. Perfectly seasoned. The bread is just right. Like it's nice and soft and yielding, but has a great crusty exterior. Probably even greater because of its stent in the oven. A symphony of meat and a very worthy level eight. Because the fact is, unless you put a lot of time and effort into it and money, you're not going to be able to make a Philly cheese steak as good as this at home. Does making a Korean style cheese steak make the people of Philly more or less angry? I'm guessing more, but also it's not my problem because I have a very special guest to help me with this next cheese steak. All right, so for this level, not only do I want some inventiveness on the Philly cheese steak format, I want some
professional help. Something I think we can all agree I desperately need. So, here to help me is the chef and owner of the one and only Mission Sandwich Social, Chef Brian Sa. What an intro. My goodness. Thank you. One try. You're not giving you're not seeing cut scape. None of those little stupid bumps like pushins that are clearly covering up for YouTubers problems. I was not standing there for half an hour. Not at all. So your restaurant is Mission Sandwich Social. Yes. Tell me a little bit about it.
Restaurant, Sandwich Shop, Potato. Mission Sandwich Social has now been open for proudly say 4 years now. It is a place where I can really spread my wings as a chef because I can do pretty much any type of cuisine I want. Put it in between two slices of bread. And guess what? I'm home for dinner every night. So, what are you going to do today to a Philly cheese steak? We're going to make some Philly people real mad. How many people you're going to film? Let's go. You know what? The more the better.
We're making a Koreanstyle Philly cheese steak. And we're going to use a very special bulgogi recipe because not only is this the bulgogi recipe that you can taste at my place, Mission Sandwich Social, but it's also the one I used to beat Bobby Fle. All right, that's right. Well, if there's one group of people that you want mad at you, it is Philadelphiaians. I'm going to be here as your Sue if you need anything. Otherwise, I'm going to be behind the camera talking to you the whole time and u distracting you from the very important work that you're doing. Thank you so much for coming. All right, I'm going to show you guys the amazing art of cutting gou. And if you guys didn't know, gochu is the word
in Korean for chili, but it's also the word in Korean for business. And when I say business, I mean [__] I guess in Korea that's what they look like. I'm only half Korean, so mine only looks half like this. Uh this is Korean brown rice vinegar. This is unremarkable brown sugar along with unremarkable kosher salt. Uh we do not want to bring this to a boil. We want to heat it up until the sugar and salt is uh dissolved. It's a quick pickle. You put in the pickling liquid hot, it's going to pickle much faster. Marinade time. my famous vulgi marinade that I learned from my mom. Same recipe I used to beat Bobby Fle. Same recipe that you can try at Mission Sandwich
Social. And it starts with unremarkable brown sugar. Uh soy sauce. Oh no, red wine. I confused this red wine for soy sauce, but guess what? There is soy sauce in this recipe. And we're going to put that in there. I know in my reaction videos I say all the time water is the enemy of flavor, but in this case there's so much flavor. You need to add the water in there. So we're going to put some water into this marinade. Sesame oil, I think, is one of the signature flavor profiles of Korean cuisine. Garlic, very important. Some onion. My mom's secret ingredient is pineapple juice. And I think my mom
didn't really know what she was doing other than she knew pineapples are fruity and tropical and sweet, but pineapples contain something called bromelain, which is an amazing tenderizer. So, uh, that actually contributes to your beef turning out a lot more tender. We're just going to whisk this. And guess what? We're done. And, uh, now we move on to slice in some beef. Don't break eye contact. Then get your hands in there. This will go into the fridge. We're going to make comfy. So, we're going to fancy up this scallion. We only want to use the white segment because if you try to comy this green segment here, it will singe and burn and be very bitter. We don't want that. We also don't want to cut it too
small. I'm kind of like quartering it. This is going to shrink down a lot. We are going to use dryaged beef tallow. We're going to melt this down. Turned off the heat. Letting the residual heat take it the Oh, man. White segments of scallion. It's going to go in the oven. Oh, your oven cuff. Uh oven. Uh pot. Oh, you can see it's already wilting down. So, it's pretty warm. And just kind of let it sit. Wow. Those really did shrink. Yep. Wow. Let's prep the uh pear salad. Don't waste this. This is good stuff. Now, we submerge this in ice water. It's going to remove some of the intense alkalinity that is the signature uh bite that some
people don't like from onions. Got some cold water. We're going to squeeze some lemon into there. So, the reason I came over here on camera is to ask you what role Asian pear plays in marinades and bulgogi cuz when I've eaten them on their own, they're extremely plain taste. Mhm. Well, then uh you've had really Asian pair. That answer my question. Thank you. But now I'm worried about this Asian pair. Scallions nice and curly. Now, this is how you get on to Top Chef. So, uh sorry, what is that? Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. Kosugaro. Uh, dried Korean chili flake. Touch of salt. Go is quite mild. Yes, it is mild. A little more lemon juice. Okay. Just a touch of sesame oil.
All right. Salad done. That looks fantabulous. Tell me a little bit about what went into developing this Dutch crunch. Well, I started planning Mission Sandwich Social during the pandemic after I was let go from my job. And while everybody was trying to make sourdough for the first time, I decided to make Dutch crunch. Now, I can't tell you what the secret is or I'll go to your house and end you, but uh there is a paste that it's rice flour. Rice flour paste. You brush it on top. It is a soft sweet roll. Despite the name, it's actually on the softer side. But when it toasts, it toasts magnificently. Scallion comfi. Going to get brushed onto this Dutch crunch.
Sharp provolone for flavor. Regular proolone for texture. Melty gooiness. Wow. There we go. Deserves trousers. Look at that. This isn't very pretty. This is their comfy back to differ. But we're going to stuff that in there at least. Put that in there. Some of our Asian pear salad. Pickled dick. Pickled penis. Okay. Put that. Tuck it in a little bit. Bring that in. That's going to compact the sandwich.
Look at that. Cheers. Thank you. This is not a cheese steak. It's my version of a cheese steak, but it's a great sandwich, dude. I was going to say that it's immediately recognizable as a cheese steak. Obviously, there's new flavors. Yeah, but you're hitting all the notes to make it a cheese steak. I don't care what Philadelphia says. such a huge punch in flavor. I think it's also from your pickled uh chilies. It has an element that I think cheese steaks are missing, which is acid. Like having that little hit of acid in there. It just it rounds it out, wakes it up. It makes it not so ungodly savory. Yes. I 100% agree. You know why I said it's not a cheese stick?
What? There's no cheese whiz on it. I love cheese whiz. That was an absolutely extraordinary sandwich. I feel bad calling it level nine and mine level 10. So, let's just call it a draw. I haven't made mine yet, so I don't know. But let's let's call it a draw for 10 cuz I there's no way I can out sandwich that. I can just go in a different direction. Uh guys, go check out Chef Brian S on YouTube. Go check out Mission Sandwich Social in Williamsburg in Brooklyn. And thank you so much for coming through, man. Oh, pleasure. Now, I'm going to see if I can not outdo that, but just do that. Chicken cheese steak, Korean Philly, and now Chicago Philly. Do words not mean anything to you?
Words mean plenty to me. Those words mean exactly what they are. Korean Philly, Chicago style Philly. But as I'm saying them, I'm realizing I'm wrong. Anyway, sorry. Here's the Chicago Philly. One of the ways in which I'm going to do what I'm calling a bit of white fusion with this cheese steak is by incorporating some elements of Chicago style beef. Recently I did Chicago style beef from bear. It's a really fantastic sandwich. I think the only thing missing from it is cheese. The thing that a Philly cheese steak is missing is pickled peppers, some acid, some heat. So what I'm going to do is make a gardinireish because it's not quite a jardinire.
There's going to be no cauliflower, no carrots. I'm going to instead do some finely diced red and green pepper and some big old chunks of sranos. I'm also going to add half a scallion and a couple cloves of minced garlic for additional flavor. Coriander seed, crushed red pepper. There's going to be plenty of heat in here, but there's going to be a different profile of heat. Dried dill weed, celery seed, fennel seed, and 1/4 teaspoons worth of ground allspice. Also going to add 3 tablespoons of kosher salt. Just enough vinegar to almost cover them. enough vegetable oil to cover them the rest of the way. Give that a little mixie poo.
Let it hang out in the fridge for at least three days and up to I'd say two weeks unless you uh jar or can them. All right. Now for the beef. It's an all caps beef with an exclamation point because this is a prime bonein ribeye. Bone in. You say I don't remember there being any bones in a Philly cheese steak. You're absolutely right. which is why we're going to remove the bone, but still put it to wonderfully good use. If you start here, you can run into trouble with these bones. They get wider as you go. So, you'll start slicing bones. So, I like to start with these guys. Get around them. Voila. We're hanging on to these cuz we're going to be using this to make some broth. Now, for the ribeye,
we are just doing a dry brine. Pretty generous sprinkling of salt on every facet. Not every day that you get prime beef and a cheese steak outside of Las Vegas. That is God, I hate Vegas. This guy's headed into the fridge uncovered for up to three, four days. I'm going to do two. All right, here's our roast. It has spent 2 days in the fridge uncovered. You can see it's dried out on the outside. It's going to give us a better crust. This guy's headed into a 275 300°ree Fahrenheit oven until it reaches an internal temp of 105 110. Probably going to come up at least 15 degrees uh in post. So, it's still going to be nice and medium rare. Even if it were undercooked, that's fine because
we're going to give it a secondary cook. So, I'm going to let this cool uh at room temperature for an hour or two. And then I'm going to fridge it until it's completely cooled before slicing it. Nicely rare, very tender. Pulls right apart. That's going to be perfect. There you have it. An absolute mountain of unbelievably high quality, beautifully cooked, and ultra tender beef. So tender in fact that I can just All right. So we are of course going to make our own cheese. Obviously I am going to use sodium citrate to stabilize a cheese product. In other words, make a fancy homemade American cheese. So I have here 3/4 of an ounce of sodium citrate. This
is going to be enough to treat 6 ounces of milk against 18 ounces of cheese. For cheese, I'm going to use mostly Monterey Jack cuz it's an excellent melter. has a nice neutral flavor. As a nod to the provolone so often used in the Philly cheese steak diaspora, I'm going to add a little bit of extra sharp provolone. Just enough to give it a nice punch. And then to make up the rest of the weight up to 18 ounces, I have some mild proolone here. It is deli sliced, which is absolutely fine. I'm going to mix it up and give it a taste because that sharp provolone is so strong. No, it's perfect. I feel like this is going to be a white American cheese that h pays tribute to proolone in the same way that
normal American cheese pays tribute to cheddar. All right, let's add our sodium citrate to the milk. And then while it's just bare simmering, I'm going to add all the cheese. It start looking pretty chunky, but that's cuz the cheese just isn't melted yet. We just got to keep heating it. Yeah, the stuff on the bottom, you can see it's super smooth and creamy. And we're just going to pour it right onto the sheet. And we don't want it too thick, uh, because it's going to have a harder time melting. Multiple thin slices, uh, are going to do much better.
All right, that's the best I'm going to do because it's starting to seize up. It's a little thick, but that's cool. We're going to be subjecting it to plenty of heat, so it's going to have ample opportunity to melt. It's super mild, but it's got that proolone tang to it. It's got the proolone funk, but very background. Perfect. Cuz I'm not super crazy about just straight up proolone on my on my cheese steak. Sometimes I'll do a mix of American and provolone. That's pretty much what this is. So, it is my perfect fantasy. All right. To make our hogi bread, we need to first start with a pre- ferment. We need 250 g bread flour, a teaspoon and a half of yeast, 1 and 1/2 cups or about 350 ml of water.
Wrap this guy tightly with plastic wrap. And ideally, you want to let this go at room temperature overnight. I'm going to do 4 hours just because, well, it's Friday. I have tomorrow to finish this. And then I'm going to Atlanta to shoot with Alton Brown. More blood, please. Following you. Here we go. Hang up. Not to name drop, but I'm running low on time. I have here 644 g of semolina flour married to 188 g of bread flour. One tablespoon of salt. Half teaspoon of instant yeast. Whisk them together. Getting make sure that they're nice and homogeneous. One lightly beaten egg, room temperature. 1/4 cup of extra-virgin olive oil and one and 1/2 cups of room temperature water. And of
course, our big bubbly beautiful pre- ferment. Look at that. It's definitely going to have some nice flavor development even after 4 hours. And we're going to knead this guy until it passes the window pane test. All right, about 10 minutes later, the dough is looking very smooth and elastic and bouncy cuz it's quite sticky. You just keep it moving and stretch it into a nice taut ball. Well, that's another way of knowing whether or not it's ready. I'm able to stretch it like this without it tearing. This is going to take about an hour. We want to give it a solid proof and we want it to pretty much double in size. All right, dough has doubled in size at least. Let's turn it
out. Punch it down a little bit. We got to get these air bubbles out of here. So, this will be into four pieces. 225. What I want to do today is shape it by stretching it. I have some sheet trays prepped with semolina flour. Gently draping this over top this oiled plastic wrap. All right, those will be a little experimental because I'm not sure how well that's going to work. All right, this one I'm going to try the roll out method. And now I'll roll it up very, very tight. All right, so we get a smoother exterior from that and a pretty well closed seam. Place that seamside down. I guess I kind of liked that actually. It ends up giving a much smoother exterior. Once again, under oily plastic wrap, not tucking anything
underneath. Now, these suckers are going to rise at room temperature for probably an hour. Um 45 minutes to an hour. Wow. They didn't pop up as much as I anticipated. Um but they spring back, but uh not all the way when poked. So, that means they're ready to go. You really want it as smooth as possible so you don't end up with streaks of egg whites on your loaf while they're still wet. You don't want these to dry before absolutely attacking them with sesame seeds. I really liked sesame seeds on the bread from Danny and Cooks. Those are headed into a 450° Fahrenheit oven for 15 to 20 minutes or until they're gorgeous. Well, for all their apparent flaws, these came out looking pretty
good. Oh man, those look great. namely this guy and this guy. I've got two really strong possibilities. So, one of the things I'm doing with this sandwich is par cooking my beef and then finishing cooking it in a brazing liquid just like a Chicago style beef. This is going to make for a really juicy, really flavorful beefy cheese steak. And for that, I need a really flavorful brazing liquid. So, I'm going to make a quick pressure cooker stock out of those ribs that we saved from the roast. And I've got a couple onions. Plus, I have a little bit of our leftover shaved skirt steak. That's just going to bolster things up a little bit more. Not going to need much. So, I'm only going to fill
this so that all the stuff is covered. 2 hours even. Let's get All right, moment of truth. Time to put together our level 10 Philly cheese steak. Earlier, I simmeed the stock with a bunch of aromatics and root vegetables. It came out really, really bony, like bone brothy, which can be a little off-putting, but it was a beautiful beef flavor. So, adding all these vegetables is going to add some sweetness and some balance to the whole situation. I simmered it for hour and a half or so until it was reduced by about a third. That's going to make for a much more flavorful liquid. And of course, I sliced up my Americanstyle proolone cheese. It's a little thick and the slices are a little undized, but that's
going to be just fine. All right, it is time also to see how our bread came out. I left it out uncovered overnight, which so long as you don't slice into the bread is a pretty good way to store it, at least for one night. Yeah, nice fluffy open crumb. Uh-oh, it's splitting. Oh, there's a hole in this one. Okay, well, this is our practice loaf. Can almost get it open, but it's it's torn in the back. So, okay. I think by leaving it out and letting it kind of stale like that, I think that's what screwed me. I feel a little less legit making a sandwich that you don't close like a book, but it sure is going to make my life easier. So, I'm also going to toast with a bit of Chef Brian's
dry-aged scallion infused beef tallow. Is it immoral for me to use another chef's creation in my level 10 sandwich? Yes. Is it borderline cowardly? Yes. Is it shameful? Yes. I'm going to throw these guys in a 375° Fahrenheit oven until they're lightly brown. Just lightly brown. We don't want this to get too toasty, too rigid. Meanwhile, I have some oil preheating. I want to get it smoking. Right next to it, I have the brazing liquid that is just sub boiling. 180° is a gentle simmer or a poaching temperature. Uh, and that's where right where we want to live so we don't overcook anything. Now,
this is pretty rare, so I'm just going to give it a quick sear. I'm not going to cook it all the way through. Not by a long shot, and then put it straight in the liquid, drench it a little bit, and it's going to cook so gently, it's not going to dry out or get tough or anything. I'm going to start by front loading it with cheese. This is going to be a lot of cheese. You know what? I'm going to frontload the jardiner, too. I think it'll be a little difficult to keep on top once I have a pile gone. There we go. Let's see if I can pile this stuff on here. All right, that's a lot of beef, but I do want a little bit in there to help melt the cheese, all that good stuff. Oh, it's holding up really
nicely. You know, actually, I kind of want to cut it in half now. All right, that's going to be hard to wrap now that it's in half. But come on, work with me. This is what we've been training for. Okay, boyo. Stop saying boyo. You're not Irish. Okay, that looks pretty awesome. Let's see if I can't get a decent cross-section of this sucker. Here we go. Come on. Give me a good one. Oh, no cheese stretch. How's that possible? Look at that. The bread is not soggy at all. You can see it has held up remarkably well considering what a wet sandwich this is.
Oh god, that was good. The cheese is just right. It's got just that little hints of proolone flavor without being too overbearing. God, that jardinire is so good. It brings so much heat and flavor, but more importantly brings acid. The beef is so tender, so juicy, so flavorful. It is, after all, prime slow roasted, seared, and beeftock braced. It's not going to not taste good. Man, I've had a lot of cheese steaks over the past 4 days, and this is exemplary. It's singularly delicious. Like this is such a fantastic mashup of a Philly cheese steak and a Chicago beef. But at the end of the day, it's not really a Philly cheese steak. It's more of a Chicago beef with cheese on
it, which is a Philly cheese steak with jardinara. It's a little it's it's not true enough to its roots. There's almost too much flavor. It's It's not beefy flavored enough. It's balanced. It's beautiful. It's wonderful as a sandwich. So, is this a cheese steak? I leave that up to you. But it is a fantastic sandwich. I don't know if I can call it a level 10 cheese steak just cuz it's straight a little bit far from Philly, but it's my level 10 cheese steak and that's really what matters at the end of the day. So, what did we learn today? It can be fun and even healthy to stretch concepts, but if you push them too far, you'll end up snapping something in your groin and being on bed rest for 9
months. because that's what happened with level 10, a perfectly serviceable sandwich that had no rights being called a Philly cheese steak. But I hope you picked up some new tips and tricks, especially that one with the mandolin and the frozen beef, cuz that made the closest at home equivalent to a cheese steak, a real Philly cheese steak that I've ever had. So, I hope you try that out. More than anything, I hope you make yourself a Philly cheese steak. Unless you live in Philly, in which case, just go to Dallas, tell them Babish sent you it. They'll have no idea what you're talking about.
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