Welcome back to Binging with Babish

where this week we're taking, oh, whoa,

we're taking a look at me I guess.

Oh my.

Hello, my name is Andrew Rea aka Binging with Babish

and I'm here to answer your questions via Twitter.

This is Cooking Support.

[calm music]

@ndwelch asks,

"why do they always use kosher salt in cooking videos?"

Well, I'll tell you, Nathan.

There are really three salts that you need to know about.

There is table salt,

the one that you're probably most familiar with,

kosher salt and flaky finishing salt.

I like to call table salt baking salt

'cause that's really all I use it for

because most recipes are developed using table salt

but that being said,

it's not a great way to season your food when you're cooking

because you can't pinch it.

Kosher salt on the other hand,

you have complete control over.

So you can see right now I have a big old pinch full of it

and there's no salt coming out of my fingers

until I start to twist my fingers from left to right.

It's also a more forgiving salt.

It's a bigger grain of salt.

You're less likely to oversalt your food

than you would be with table salt

and then this is the totally optional salt.

These are very light, flaky.

Ugh.

Really all you use it for is finishing.

That's why it's called finishing salt.

These two though, absolute necessities.

Just know when to use them and why and how.

Oh, in all caps.

"People don't keep eggs in the fridge?

Don't they go bad faster?"

As far as I understand

and please take what I'm saying with several grains of salt

because this is your food safety we're talking about here

and you shouldn't trust a guy

who doesn't have food safety certification,

never went to culinary school,

went to film school, got really bad grades

and kinda lucked into his job as a food influencer.

You shouldn't be listening to me.

The eggs that you need to refrigerate

are ones that have been commercially washed.

Here in the States, they wash eggs with great rigor

and that strips away the sort of natural protection

on the outside of the shell so they must be refrigerated.

If you got them from the side of the road

and they were not in the fridge,

chances are, they just came out of a hen's ass

and they're ready to stay at room temperature

in your stylish barn converted backsplash kitchen.

Anyway.

@ol_daveyboy, "cooking twitter, what are some good knives

that won't immediately break the bank?"

Well, I'll tell ya.

Sorry.

I do have a line of cookware out, okay?

It's called Babish Cookware line, all right?

Okay?

These are German steel knives.

They're full tang blades.

They are 4116 German steel.

They come sharp.

They keep an edge and they're $25, 25 to $30 per knife.

That being said, I'm not here just to huck my cookware.

Huck, is that the word?

I'm not just here to sling cookware.

I'm also gonna be fully honest

about other brands that I like.

Victorinox Fibrox makes a great starter knife.

It is stamped, not forged.

Likewise, with Wüsthof's Pro line, it's so cheap.

It's $20 for a knife.

It's a great learning knife.

It's a great starter knife but these knives are great too.

@FollowerOfDole says, "time to ask a chef.

When I make fluffy scrambled eggs and cheese,

fluffy is I tried to make an omelet and screwed it up,

my dish is oily?

I think it's oil from the cheese

because the eggs are cooked fully

but it's kinda buttery flavor.

It's good but how to fix?"

So I'm guessing you're doing is adding the cheese too early

so it's getting too much heat from the pan

so it's going beyond the point of melting and it's breaking.

When it breaks, it basically means

that the oil just seeps out of it.

What I would do is try to add your cheese

as late as humanly possible.

Just don't overheat it

and don't use cheeses that are too old.

Use a Gruyere or a not too sharp, pretty mild cheddar

'cause they're better melters.

They're gonna stand up to the heat better.

Tablespoon and a half of butter in the pan.

Eggs.

Always crack on a flat surface

then throw the pan back on the heat.

Before it gets in the pan, gonna beat these guys up.

I'm gonna use the tiny whisk.

They're more homogenous now

so now we're gonna add them to the pan.

Keep 'em moving.

Keep the pan moving.

Keep the eggs moving.

You put this on toast and it's almost spreadable.

There we go, that's done.

Irish cheddar.

We'll put a fair amount in there.

This is probably two ounces.

Yeah, two ounces-ish.

We're just mixing them in there, keeping 'em moving

and letting the residual heat in the pan melt the cheese

and incorporate them into the egg.

This is how I like my scrambled eggs.

You might not like 'em this way.

I like 'em creamy, I like 'em spreadable

and no matter how you like your scrambled eggs,

if you add your cheese at the end

and don't heat the cheese directly on the stove top,

you will notice that there's not a hint of oil

or grease in this pan.

It is just egg and cheese.

Nothing has separated

and that's how you prevent cheese from breaking.

Mm.

@DutchessWoodall said,

"kay, what y'all season your ribeyes with?"

Salt and pepper, man.

Salt and pepper.

For the most part,

you're just hitting it with salt and pepper.

Maybe a sauce or something on the back end.

Steak seasonings, the shakers and all that stuff,

not so much.

bforboss9 says, "people give me all of your advice

on how to cook large slabs of meat so it won't dry out.

The dog is now getting my three pound pork roast

'cause I dried it out."

A lot of things could be happening here.

First off, you might be cooking it

at too high a temperature.

You might be just cooking it for too long.

Pork, you can cook to a rosy 135

if you know where the pork is from and if you trust it.

Otherwise, cook it to 145.

It's still gonna be nice and rosy and pink in the middle

and it's gonna be super juicy.

Something like a pork loin

which doesn't have much extra muscular fat,

you need to be very careful to make sure

that you're not overcooking it

'cause that's how it dries out very fast.

If you overcook it by 10 degrees,

it's gonna be dry as a bone.

You need to cook slowly, gently

with big, big joints of meat.

The best way to make prime rib for example

is to cook it at like 250 degrees Fahrenheit

for like six hours.

Also, yeah, pull the meat 10 degrees shy

of where you want it to end up.

It will come up 10 more degrees

at least when it comes out of the oven.

@hawaiianseawich, "if you're cooking shrimp...

why do you leave the tails on?

Why?

It's so [beep] inconvenient when you're eating

and you have to use your hands to pick off the tails

to make sure you get all the shrimp out.

Yes, I just recently had shrimp pasta and I'm mad about it."

It is absolutely inconvenient.

You're right to be mad about it.

Having shrimp tails on in pasta is ridiculous

because if you don't wanna eat with your hands,

you're out of luck.

You have to use your hands in some capacity

if you've got shrimp tails on.

That or you're spitting 'em out like an olive pit

which I don't think you wanna do in a fancy restaurant.

So shrimp tails in pasta makes zero sense to me.

I completely agree.

That can really go [beep] itself.

From @JimKuras1, "are #bayleaves a hoax?

I've been cooking with them for 30 plus years

and I'm not sure why.

The only thing I know about them

is that they're not actually supposed to be eaten.

#cookingquestion."

I personally don't fully know what they're for either,

these mysterious bastards.

From what I understand,

they're supposed to lighten up otherwise very heavy dishes

like stews and braises.

They also play really well with seafood.

You're not supposed to eat them obviously

but if you wanna see what they taste like,

you just gotta, just gotta, mm, yeah.

It is a minty, almost basily.

Yeah, you're not supposed to eat them

but they do play really well in stews and braises

and if they are a hoax,

they're the weirdest hoax I've ever heard of

'cause these things cost like 99 cents a ton.

Jill Bean aka @Jili_Bean, "hardest fruit to cut?

Mango.

Anyone beg to differ?

Come prove me wrong.

#struggling."

Is there a harder fruit to cut?

Nope, I just ran through the entire list

of fruits in my head.

Mango is a very difficult fruit to cut.

You could peel it first

but I like to just kinda go at it kinda like an avocado.

You wanna try to get really as close to the pit as possible.

It's thinner than you think.

Same thing on the other side.

Really straddle the pit.

You're gonna wanna very carefully score this guy.

Do you see that sort of spread apart mango action?

And now that you've spread it open like this,

you can just kinda chop it out.

Try not to take any skin with you

but you can just sorta slice it off there.

If I had to sum up the technique,

it's like a modified avocado.

With the avocado, of course you remove the pit.

For this, you have to be just a little bit more

ready to lose some fruit

and ready to just have some weird oblong pieces

like this guy.

Meghan Spencer, @TheRealMeghanS.

@BingingWBabish.

This one's actually for me.

"@BingingWBabish, I've tried your bagel recipe

from Steven Universe twice now

and they don't brown up as much as yours

and are only bubbly and brown

on parts that touch the baking sheet.

I have a traditional oven, not a convection.

Do I need to be baking at higher than 425 Fahrenheit?"

I would say that's a good place to start.

Another really important thing would be to make sure

that the rack in your oven is in the right spot.