- You need a hard part, and
better product obviously.
- That's what I need, those are the words?
Hard part?
- Hard part.
Hard part.
- Hard part.
- Nothing soft about this.
- No.
[jazzy music]
- Might get ugly.
- We don't have time to screw around.
- What do I do?
- I will not be the last
thing on that table.
- [Molly] We're sizzling over here.
- Best one yet?
- For sure.
[Molly screams]
[Brad chuckles]
[chefs yelping]
- Oh Andy!
[jazzy music]
[Chris laughs evilly]
- Hi Zach, how are you Zach?
- I came back from Fire Island for this.
We did really good.
- Whatever we do stuffing-wise
has to be very much like in communication
with what's happening--
- We need to complement
each other, and work.
- My mother made the most
amazing cornbread dressing.
No eggs as binder.
She made sausage, and there was
lots of jalapeno, lots of sage.
She made her own cornbread.
- Ooh!
- You add a lot of stock,
and then it becomes very,
it's very wet and mushy
and you just bake the [bleep] out of it.
- Wow.
- Until it all comes back together.
- Talk to us about the jalapenos.
- She would take whole jalapenos,
and not seeded, just
chop 'em up and saute 'em
with the onions and the celery.
- What kind of sausage?
- Sage, spicy breakfasty type sausage.
- Yeah.
- Ah, so good.
- But she would fortify
it with a lot of garlic,
a lot of sage, and then
you'd get the jalapenos.
I mean it's still sort of breakfasty,
but then it kind of pulls it
into this Mexicany Tex-Mexy situation.
- That sounds delicious, and
I know we're gonna run into
a little bit of a regional issue,
but I don't ever think
of cornbread stuffing
when I think of Thanksgiving.
- My baseline awesome recipe for stuffing
is the Victoria Granof Simple is Best.
- It's so good.
- Where it's big, torn
coarse pieces of bread,
like kind of country bread.
There's a lot of brightness,
there's a lot of vinegar,
and there's a lot of butter as well.
It's hard because there's a
part of me that wants cornbread,
you know breakfast sausage, jalapeno.
- I mean maybe there's a way to fuse--
- We'll call it stuffing,
even if it's not stuffed inside the bird?
- [Chefs] Yes.
- And we are not stuffing
the stuffing inside the bird.
- [Chefs] No.
- We're agreed?
Okay, cool.
Cool, just checking that
I still liked you guys.
- Rick, I feel like there's no question.
Stuffing is all you.
- Yeah, all me.
I think I need that guy.
- Ooh!
- Partners.
- [Rick] To be my stuffing partner.
- Wow, we're picking teams now?
- [Carla] Apparently!
- If there is two guys I would trust
to make stuffing on
Thanksgiving, Rick and Chris.
- That's true.
- Plus it'll be an excuse
to eat a lot of bread.
- Right, you're good at that.
[chefs laugh]
- Thanks, I think?
[percussive music]
So I'm not actually
making stuffing right now.
I'm making breakfast for Morocco,
and I brought a secret
weapon with me, my dad.
- This is my good side.
[Rick laughs]
- I was born in Austin,
he still lives down there,
and I actually flew this guy up yesterday
to come to the kitchen, and
school Chris on Texas dressing.
- This started about two years
ago for my 80th birthday.
I came over here and cooked breakfast,
and they loved my beans
so he wanted some more, so
I had to cook beans at home,
and bring 'em over here.
So now I'm gonna refry 'em.
- And I actually also brought
some duck fat flour tortillas,
because you can't have tacos
without flour tortillas.
This is part of my little
plan to prime Chris
into the world of Mexican-ish
jalapeno, spicy cornbread dressing.
[percussive music]
Secret weapon.
- Hey guys.
- It's breakfast time.
- All right.
Woo!
Oh it's hot.
I'm not gonna be able to taste the coffee,
or frankly anything for
the rest of the day,
but that's fine, it's worth it.
Thank you for breakfast.
- Now you've had this taco,
you ready for some fire in our dressing?
- I guess so.
I feel like this is Thanksgiving,
but with a little extra going on.
What I'm interested in
is seeing your vision,
you know what I mean?
What you guys have been
doing for Thanksgiving.
I don't wanna pull any punches here.
You know what I'm saying?
I'm gonna eat this taco,
then I'm gonna make another taco,
I'm gonna eat that.
Then I'm gonna get my head in the game,
and then let's do it.
- I'm next tomorrow.
[percussive music]
- We're here, man.
We made it.
- Stuffing.
- Stuffing.
You and me get to decide now.
- Breakfast sausage.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Butter, sage, rosemary, parsley.
- Egg is definitely part
of my stuffing paradigm.
- My problem with the egg is when
you use so much egg that you've gone
into a savory bread pudding.
- Jalapeno.
- Heat.
- Heat.
Sourdough versus cornbread.
Chunky, crumbly.
- Chunky.
- I like that, chunky.
Remember that, the fried rice stuffing?
It was new, but it had all
the flavors that I want.
- [Chris] Let's just file that one.
- I think probably the
biggest thing is like--
- [Both] Bread.
- Wheat or corn, right?
Or potentially something else.
- Right, and is it torn, is it cubed?
- I feel like heat and acid
cut the richness of all of this.
- Let's just put wild card down.
- [Rick] Yeah!
Can you draw a joker?
- [Chris] No, not at all.
- I wanted you to experience you know,
what I grew up with 'cause I know
that this is a particular
style of dressing
that you've never had before.
- Well let's start by checking that out,
and then see where we want to go.
- All right, cool.
- Cool.
- So we're actually going to make
my mom's cornbread jalapeno dressing.
This is the sausage.
This is a breakfast sausage.
We get the spicy kind.
- Spicy kind.
[percussive music]
- I really like cornbread dressings,
and I think part of the reason is
when you take the time to
make your own cornbread--
- Right.
- You know, and you
don't make it too sweet,
'cause a lot of the purchased cornbreads,
or cornbread mixes, they're really sweet.
It's just so much better.
- Well, and depending on
what part of the country
you're in too, it's either
going to be more corn-based,
or more wheat-based.
When I first moved up
to New York from Texas,
I was actually shocked
at the cornbread up here
'cause it's nothing like
what you get in the South.
- Chop the seeds?
- Yes.
- Just checking.
I want you to present
me your kind of vision,
and I want to present to
you a little of my vision.
- Yeah yeah.
- It doesn't make sense to
start editing each other yet.
[percussive music]
- So that's schmaltz.
It's basically lard from a chicken.
It just adds a really,
really nice richness.
Oh Jesus Christ.
Oh!
Chicken fat is delicious.
[percussive music]
Well, okay.
- Whatever!
- No seeds, yeah.
[Richard laughs]
You might as well have taken
a bite of a bell pepper.
- I don't know what you guys
were using this morning.
Yeah, all that.
- Here we go.
[Richard laughs]
All right.
All right, good.
- I feel like I'm in good hands.
This isn't like Andy and Brad
sitting there yelling at each other,
just to get laughs.
- This is the BA master stock, right?
- This is, so yeah this is
the Thanksgiving version.
It gets wet, huh?
- It gets wet.
- Mm!
You get a little bit of heat already,
but it's not a lot,
but it's warm.
Just the back of your throat.
Slap test, approved.
- [Rick] The forking on the top
is just to make these little bits
get really brown and crispy.
- We've got your dressing in the oven.
What I wanna show you is
the Simple is Best dressing
that we ran in the magazine I wanna say
six, or seven even maybe years ago?
And what I think is interesting about this
is this is the first
time that I had ever seen
really loose, torn pieces
of bread, but it was simple.
And I'm hoping this will kind of
give us our two kind of reference points.
We went to this super
special bakery in Bushwick
called L'imprimerie, and
got some of their sourdough
and I don't know if we want
to use sourdough ultimately,
but I wanted to try it today
just from the standpoint of figuring out
whether this is a way to kind
of impart acid and character
to a stuffing.
What I like about their
breads there is like,
is there a pronounced crust, yes.
Is there a lot of kind of caramelization
on the outside, yes.
But it's not over the top.
To me, it's not crazy sour.
- No, it's really pleasant.
- It's very nice.
There's a little bit of tang in there.
I want to dry this out,
but I want to dry it out purposefully.
I don't wanna just let it go stale,
because then your bread kind
of ends up being rock hard.
So we're just doing torn, big pieces here.
So this is just gonna go in the oven,
dry out a little bit,
get maybe just the tiniest bit of color
because we've already got
a pretty decent crust on this bread.
What we're gonna be
using is pretty similar
to what we used in your recipe.
Just kind of what you want.
I'm gonna leave the heat out,
just so we have something to compare.
[percussive music]
We just wanna cook this
down in the butter,
let it get jammy, soft,
before we put our garlic in
and then cook out a little bit
of white wine on top of it.
The bread picked up a
tiny bit of color here,
a little more here.
Andy's oven running a little hot.
Read into that everything
you want to, okay?
You know, I'm gonna dump
in our harder herbs.
- Okay.
- The rosemary, sage,
and the thyme in there
and just knock it around for a minute.
[percussive music]
- Wait, so is there meat in this?
- There's no meat in this.
Simple is Best, not like
lard, and then every animal
you might hope to find on the farm.
The proteins in the egg are
gonna set and coagulate slowly,
so that way you can get
a pretty clean slice
and or scoop of the stuffing.
[percussive music]
Right, so bread is hydrated
and the danger now is that
if I keep mixing and
screwing around with this,
it's all gonna kind of turn to mush.
It's a lot of herb.
- Yeah.
- Parsley as an herb, it's
got a lot of firepower.
You know, vegetal kind of like
that cutting kind of action.
I might butter the top of the foil
just so I don't get any stickage.
Why, what, what?
- I thought you were gonna
butter the top of this.
- Is that what you want?
- I mean that's what I want, but.
- So we're gonna come back
and we're gonna taste these side by side
in just a little bit, as
soon as they're both ready.
So we've got very different approaches,
but to get to something that
kind of does the same thing.
- [Brad] Smells good!
Smells real good!
- Yeah?
- [Brad] I love stuffing.
- Do you?
I feel like you'd be somebody
who'd be like, oh no.
- I hate stuffing.
- I hate stuffing.
But if I eat it, it's gotta
be like cold, you know?
That is so you.
- Everything about that--
- That is so you.
- Is just wrong.
- So let's start with
the cornbread jalapeno.
It's holding together.
It's not like--
- Yeah!
I mean it's definitely holding together.
- This is a very Thanksgiving smell to me,
that corn, the pork, the jalapeno.
- There's definite, definite heat.
The flavor is excellent.
This one, it's set.
You wouldn't necessarily know
that there's egg in there,
unless you knew that
there was egg in there.
- The thing that I like about this
that I miss from this is the crunch.
I think that's something that
I want in our final version.
- The herb, it's there but
it's not super forward.
Richard, would there ever be a scenario
where you would ever,
under any circumstances,
serve this stuffing
instead of this one at your Thanksgiving?
- I don't think so.
[all laughing]
This one, you can eat as a meal.
That one--
[Chris laughs]
- All the food groups in one dish.
- It's just amazing seeing
where you get it from.
It's like--
[all laughing]
I thought we would kind of taste both,
and be like okay, well clearly
the answer is out here.
I don't really have that sense
of clarity right now, at all.
Thank you so much for coming Richard,
all the way from Texas.
Not only for this, but most importantly
to make us breakfast.
- I've enjoyed it.
Two years ago when I came
and cooked breakfast,
and I said well, I'll do it again.
- We remembered.
- Oh yeah.
[all laughing]
[percussive music]
- I know what I want right now.
- What?
- I want an old fashioned doughnut.
- Why did you just say that, Morocco?
Goddamn it.
- You know?
With no icing, no glaze.
I just want an old fashioned doughnut.
- All right, well there
you just lost me with that.
- Little bit of nutmeg, you know?
- Or a lot of nutmeg--
- Dip yours in Starburst
or whatever you wanna do with it, okay?
- Whatever.
- [Chris] I feel like what
we need to add to the board
is this question of corn flavor.
- [Rick] I don't think it's a question.
- Whoa.
- Yeah.
- Easy with that.
- I want the best of both.
I want that corn flavor,
and then the crispy soft.
- All right, for bread let's
put sourdough as option one,
and then option two below it,
your cornbread that you made.
Let's cube it and dry it.
Let's use that as one route.
Meat, breakfast sausage, yes.
I think a modest amount of egg we agreed.
Herbs?
- To me the sage and the
thyme were the best bits.
- Sage and thyme.
Heat and acid, I think
white wine was working
and heat, let's maybe just
try a straight up hot chili.
And then there's this
issue of the corn flavor.
Let's try to work it in
in a few different ways.
So option one is toasted meal.
- And then the other is--
- Butter bits.
What do you think about a fourth?
- What about if we got some corn nuts
and just grind the shit out of them?
'Cause I think you'll get a
lot more of that corn flavor.
So it's one stuffing
with four corn options.
- Right, right,
and one of them just doesn't
have the wheat bread.
One of them is all cornbread.
- Oh.
- That's what I'm saying.
[percussive music]
Let's get toasting our bread.
We're gonna make sausage,
and then it's all gonna come together
and we're gonna be out of here by six
and it's gonna be cool.
- '80s music, coffee, and doughnuts.
- Yes.
['80s rock music]
[Chris whistling]
- Smells like toasted corn.
So these are corn nuts.
These are just pretty standard.
This is the same corn
that's used in pozole.
[blender whirs]
- It tastes like Frito powder,
but without so much salt.
- Yeah, or grease.
- [Chris] This is gonna
be the aromatic base
for all four options
that we're about to do.
- [Rick] We're ready
for sausage now, right?
- [Chris] Yep
- So this is basically a
flavored ground pork situation.
Adding brown sugar, salt--
- Garlic.
- Sage, thyme.
We're gonna double grind this, oh!
So, we're gonna attempt to
double grind this with my,
this is so f...
- Does it fit?
- Yeah, I mean it's bigger than that.
[percussive music]
- We're gonna paddle together the sausage.
It's just ground meat at this point, salt.
[timer beeps]
That's--
- You're beeping.
- Bread.
- All right we're going in, tablespoon.
'Cause I've already touched it,
might as well make a little patty.
- Oh, black pepper.
- Yep.
- It's coloring nicely.
This does not have the black pepper.
The world's smallest sausage party.
[both laugh]
I think it could use more salt,
and frankly another tablespoon of sugar.
- It's weirdly dry.
- I know.
- In the next version,
it should be 25% fat.
Crank that pepper.
World's smallest sausage party, take two.
This is gonna be delicious, Morocco.
- My next move?
Garlic powder.
- I think powder.
- The tiniest bit of a hot paprika.
- What about allspice?
- Yeah.
- Great.
Good talk.
I came back from Fire Island for this.
- Already better.
- It's fine.
- We're just gonna put in
a little rogue's gallery of items here.
- I mean, it can't get worse.
We're gonna cook off the sausage.
I just wanna brown it.
I don't want it to cook
all the way through,
'cause it's gonna cook in the oven.
More salt?
- Still lacking
just a tiny bit of fat.
We upped the salt.
Tastes like really nice breakfast sausage.
- Mhmm.
- We're ready.
- Yeah.
- Assembling four separate tests.
One of them has cornbread base.
Three of them will have sourdough base.
They will all have sausage,
and they will all have our
aromatic base over there.
- [Rick] One part.
Three parts, boom.
- So this is our mixture of onion--
- Celery.
- Celery, garlic,
Thai chili, and then finished,
ooh you know what I didn't do?
- What?
- White wine.
[percussive music]
- Stuffing number one is pure cornbread
that we toasted hard.
- Toasted hard and put away wet.
[Rick chuckles]
So mixture number two.
This is our toasted cornmeal.
[percussive music]
Buttery nugs, number three.
This is our cornbread
and sourdough hybrid.
- [Rick] I like that one.
- I like this one too.
Going for flavor.
- Flavor.
- Flavor.
Splash more.
Yeah.
- Last one, corn nuts.
- Corn nuts!
[percussive music]
That's gotta sit for a minute.
All right, let's transfer the others.
[percussive music]
Fine, fine.
- Fine, it's fine.
It's fine.
This is science.
- We're bumping it.
- Bumping.
Yeah, color.
- Oh yeah.
- Look.
And they're like a little souffled.
Look, look at that, it set.
- [Both] Switch.
- [Rick] Ooh.
[Rick chuckles]
- It's tender, it's flavorsome.
It's not that dissimilar from your version
that you did with your
dad this morning, but--
- Honestly it's also a bit boring.
- [Chris] Here we have our
toasted cornmeal version.
- [Rick] Just looks weird.
- I don't hate it, like flavor-wise,
but what it did visually
is just super upsetting.
- Yeah.
So this is buttery nugs.
I think I'm gonna like this one.
It doesn't know what it wants to be.
The sourdough absorbed
some of the butter as well.
- But I don't know that texturally
it has a clear identity.
- [Rick] This is the ground up corn nuts.
They smell so intensely nutty and corny.
- I feel like I smell it, a lot.
I don't know that I
taste it as much as I--
- [Rick] Really?
- Expected to.
I don't know that
sourdough's the right play
if we wanna go with this.
- I think if we go with the corn nuts,
we almost have to
construct the entire
dish around that flavor.
- This is kind of bringing it
on so many different levels.
- It's a little aggressive.
I think we'd have to rethink the bread.
The sausage, the onions, the celery,
they work nicely.
Also frankly that could pair
well with rice, that flavor.
- One of our favorite dishes ever,
fried rice and then a
little bit of soy sauce
and the big chunks of
stuffing, cornbread stuffing
kind of all in there,
and it was so, so, so good.
And internally we've just
been sort of saying wow,
how amazing to kind of do a riff on that?
We're feeling really
good about our direction
of our cornbread, and adding,
toasting the corn nut powder to that
and then also using a rough torn
country loaf with corn nut powder,
and pick it up Monday.
[percussive music]
It was a great day, are you kidding me?
Why, are you not feeling that?
That was good, good contact.
- Yeah.
- I can live with that.
Mike got it.
- Yeah.
- Sound guy's clapping.
[both clapping]
[upbeat music]
- You think that I'd be more peppy
with all that sugar I just ate.
- I know.
- Yeah, I'm like--
- They got us doughnuts.
- I know, finally!
- What I want to talk about is the moment
where I have to look
Adam Rapoport in the eye,
and tell him that we're putting
pulverized corn nuts in the stuffing.
I don't feel the same
ironclad sense of clarity
that that's absolutely the
right direction to go in.
Let's make a really flavorful stuffing.
Let's treat it the way
we want it to be treated.
Let's give it a bigger afterlife
of things you can do with it.
- And maybe we taste it
today and go, oh my god.
We were right the first time.
- We're so clever.
- Yeah.
- First step today we've
got cornbread plus corn nut
side by side with white bread,
non-sourdough plus corn nut.
From there, I think we
have some rice cooking,
we're gonna see about making a chili oil
and whatever happens,
we've only got today.
Rick's getting cornbread set up,
dried out in the oven just
like we did yesterday.
- Little bit of a toast.
- And then I'm doing
non-sourdough country loaf.
On top of both of these,
we're gonna be doing corn nut powder.
- [Rick] Doughnuts!
Can I help you?
- Here, you do those.
- [Rick] Might be able to take it.
- This is like a very dense bread,
and it's gonna take a lot more liquid
to kind of hydrate this fully.
We're gonna do one aromatic base,
and then divide it between the two here.
[percussive music]
- Know when you're--
- Wanted to see if it's hot.
[percussive music]
- We're putting corn
nuts in with the butter
to help it bloom, infuse in there
so now we've got the corn butter.
- Full activation.
- I'm excited now!
- I'm excited again.
- This is the sausage
that we made last time.
The aromatics and the sausage
component are the control.
What will be different are
the two breads that we use.
Sausage is done, aromatics are done,
we bloomed the corn nuts.
- And we're going up slightly
on liquid, adding an egg.
[percussive music]
- How's it taste?
- Pretty bright.
- That's really good.
Taste that.
- Mm.
Oh wow, heat just popped right out.
- You know what I kinda wanna do?
Get a third little pan
and mix a little of
that and that together.
- Whoa.
It could even be like a ramekin.
- Stuffing for one.
[percussive music]
[timer beeping]
Oh my god.
Literally.
- Almost there!
While those two stuffings
are in the oven--
- Three.
- Three.
We're gonna make a little chili crisp.
- It's aromatics, it's chilies.
We're also putting warming spices in there
to kind of play up the
Thanksgivingness of this dish.
- How many chilies?
I feel like I need to cap you at three.
- I think probably just two.
I know.
- Whoa!
- I know!
- Whoa!
- Restraint.
- It's a Thanksgiving miracle.
- I'm editing myself.
[percussive music]
[Rick laughs]
We wanted a neutral oil.
We don't want any additional flavors.
We want all the flavor to
come from the aromatics.
It's gonna be really, really
a delicious base for our chili crisp.
- Yep, so speaking of chilies.
- [Rick] I'm gonna smell all
of the chilies that you have.
- [Chris] Okay.
- Because, these actually
smell really good.
These are guajillo.
They can be a little bit spicy.
These are commonly used in chilies
where you really want the
red color, so chili Colorado.
They have almost like a
sweet paprika-like flavor.
Pretty much anytime you use dried chilies,
you can stem and seed them beforehand
'cause otherwise it's
just really difficult.
Seeds in these larger chilies
are very woody and tannic,
and so if you blend them in
they're gonna start to
develop some tannic flavors
and it's gonna get acrid.
- [Chris] And in terms of chili oil,
we're getting close-ish.
- [Rick] Getting a little color, yeah.
- As soon as that stuff is
crispy and golden brown,
gonna scoop all the solids out
and then we're gonna toast
our chilies in that oil.
You're gonna be left with a bowl of train
headed straight to flavor town.
- This isn't just for our
stuffing, or stuffing fried rice.
You could stir this into
your cranberry sauce,
put it over your turkey.
We're getting America heat.
Look how beautiful and red the arbol is.
And also you can see the oil
is starting to pull out
some of those flavors,
so we're changing the color of the oil.
Anytime you toast chilies,
they go really fast
so you just need to be
really vigilant, yeah.
- Don't walk away.
- They also have different toast rates,
so the ancho has more sugar in it
so that's gonna go first.
The arbol doesn't have
a lot of sugar in it
so it can take a little bit more toast.
Smells so good.
- Oh yeah.
Just to put in crushed red pepper flakes--
- [Rick] No.
- You can do it.
You are leaving so much flavor behind.
- Each of them have such
different characteristics,
different heat levels,
different levels of earthiness,
but also different levels of sugar.
I feel like we need sesame seed.
[clock ticking]
Hello?
- I'm thinking.
Okay.
- A tablespoon, a tablespoon.
- A tablespoon.
- Same thing, it's gonna
pull out some of the oils
and the flavor of the sesame.
- All right, are we
gonna taste these guys?
- [Rick] Oh yeah.
Ah.
Even love child is all crispy.
- Oh, this looks better to me.
I thought the sourdough
looked a lot better
than this country round looks.
I think plain and simple is the fact
that we cubed it, and we didn't tear it.
I think with cornbread you
can get away with that.
You're not tearing cornbread.
- Right.
I like the flavor, but the
texture of the bread is--
- Just feels wrong.
- Mhmm.
This is the cornbread version.
Ah.
It's so completely different.
- It's so different.
- That's so weird.
- The heat is way more integrated.
Cornbread is already offering
a lot of flavor of its own.
It's working with the other flavors.
- If I didn't know better, I would say
this is a completely
different recipe than that.
- Right.
I still feel like that crumbly texture,
it's not my favorite.
- [Rick] Well we have one more to try.
- [Chris] Right.
- This is the combination
of this cornbread stuffing
and the non-sourdough stuffing.
If the cornbread had a better crunch?
- I think where we're
going with the chili oil
and all of that, it's like
this is where that belongs.
- Yeah.
- I'm kind of not feeling that.
When the whole recipe hinges
on the exact specific texture
of the bread, the level
of sour in the sourdough,
that's setting people
up to have a hard time.
I feel like we're both in agreement.
It's cornbread.
- If you didn't want
to make this cornbread,
it would be fine with
storebought cornbread,
or even the Jiffy, yeah.
All right, so we feel
really good about this one?
- Yeah.
- Make a couple of tweaks,
finish with chili oil.
- Let's get that in the oven.
We'll finish the chili oil, okay?
And then we'll work on
our fried rice situation,
see where that gets us.
- Cool.
I'm excited, this is
gonna be the best one yet.
- For sure.
[percussive music]
♪ Do do do do do ♪
♪ Do do do do do do ♪
♪ When you're in doubt ♪
♪ Take a look all around ♪
♪ You know I'll be there ♪
♪ Sometimes I might shout ♪
- We don't know this one that well.
- No we don't.
['80s synth music]
- Now we're ready for magic corn powder.
I just wanna see how far we
can push the corn flavor.
Look at that.
Toasted hard.
Ooh that one's really toasted.
- Let's let that cool a little bit.
- Okay.
- Butter?
- Yes please.
- Okay.
- 'Cause two sticks wasn't enough.
- No!
The sooner we get this thing in the oven,
the sooner we can finish our chili oil
and then really light this place on fire.
[percussive music]
- You can taste the corn nut.
- Pow pow pow.
- Mhmm.
[percussive music]
- We're gonna bake this,
we're gonna pull it out,
and we're gonna taste it
and it's gonna be freakin' awesome.
- And if this is all you wanted to do,
it's a perfectly delicious--
- Done.
- [Rick] Yeah, there's
Thanksgiving right there.
- We're gonna take a
couple handfuls of this,
put it into a really hot
skillet, crisp it up.
We're gonna make fried rice out of it,
and then we are gonna top
that with the chili oil.
[percussive music]
[timer beeps]
- So in this pot we have our infused oil.
It's just super flavorful.
It's kind of incredible.
- The sweetness from the
shallot makes a huge difference.
- The ginger.
- The intensity of the,
yeah a little pungency from the ginger.
This is not about just being hot.
This is about being super flavorful.
- I'm just gonna add maybe 1/3 of that.
- I'm just so happy about this idea.
- I mean if nothing else,
just this on its own.
- This on its own, this is gonna
be the recipe for stuffing.
- [Rick] Yeah.
- This can just go in.
- Yeah.
- And this is the kind of crisp aspect
of the chili crisp now.
It's really deep.
It's like, tobacco-y in its depth.
But there's a ton of
fruit flavor in there.
- Yeah.
- Okay, yeah we got color.
The one regret I'm having
is just that visually it's a little dark.
- [Rick] We also pushed
this far in the toasting.
So I think we can pull back,
because we're also gonna toast it again.
But the interior texture--
- [Chris] But the interior is like, great.
- [Rick] It's really beautiful.
- The corn flavor is
absolutely turbo charged.
- Yeah.
- By the corn nut.
And then you get a little bit of heat,
seasoning's great, herb,
sweetness from the veg.
- [Rick]] The moisture
level is really good.
- Mhmm.
I feel like we made a cornbread stuffing
the way we made the
Simple is Best dressing.
But we added heat.
- This is not overtly Texan or Mexican.
And frankly, the only thing
that's really Southern about it
is the fact that we used cornbread.
- I feel like we brought together
the best elements of both of them.
You know?
- Right, yeah.
There is something I do wanna try.
- [Both] Agave!
- We found the dark agave.
- The last of the dark agave.
- I know, thank God.
[percussive music]
So I just wanna put a little bit
of our chili crisp on the dressing,
and see how that all plays together.
Wow.
Goddamn.
It weirdly balances it all out.
The heat is obviously intensified,
but the ginger and the sweetness
plays so nicely with the corn.
- The texture is pretty cool,
'cause that was always the
thing that we were lacking
a little bit with the cornbread.
You stop here, you're good.
- Delicious.
- If you wanna make that, great.
We're here for that too.
I'm really excited to see what happens
when we take it one, or two clicks further
and see what happens
when we kind of make stuffing
fried rice using this.
- Mhmm.
- Cup and a half in, mash.
This is stuffing extra credit, okay?
Inspired by--
- This is how you win
Thanksgiving, extra credit.
You don't wanna do this
with just straight up
butter, because it'll burn.
- Clarified butter, or just
frankly I use olive oil.
So we're gonna pull that to the side.
Then we'll go with a little bit more oil.
Sorry.
- Ghee.
- Ghee.
So we're just doing a little aromatic base
of garlic, ginger, and scallion.
Egg goes in.
Quick little workaround in the pan,
and then we can put our rice in.
A little toss toss,
and then I'll put a little more fat
around the edges of the pan
so it can find its way down
between the pan and the rice.
This is ideal with leftover rice.
I'm gonna season this with
a little bit of white soy
to get some seasoning on there.
- [Rick] Yeah.
- Then this can come right to
the side with our stuffing.
Little more ghee, and then we're gonna do
some fast, crispy Brussels sprouts leaves.
This is not about doing
Brussels sprouts for 20 people.
This is like, you want
fewer leaves crispier.
- So if you're doing another
Brussels sprout dish,
just save all your leaves as
you clean them and chop them.
Good?
Did you bring me a spoon?
Yay Ch--
[spoon clatters]
[Chris laughs]
[spoon clatters]
Give me another one.
- I think we're good.
- Yeah.
I love that you can see the
actual little bits of sausage--
- Sausage, stuffing.
It's all happening in there.
If you don't get it for the
Gram, did it even happen?
Who better to gild this
lily than Rick Martinez
with a pinch more of the corn nut powder?
We're looking at Thanksgiving
stuffing fried rice.
- And I think what we
really loved about this
is that it still tastes like Thanksgiving.
It's all the flavors that you're used to,
or that you would expect,
but it's just presented in a
completely new and fun way.
It is very you and me,
and I think when you're
cooking with someone
whether it's Thanksgiving or
even just Tuesday night dinner
you're both bringing
something to the party.
- It's like falling out of a flavor tree,
and hitting every branch on the way down.
I'm so excited to present
this to everybody else.
- You're not gonna be upset by this.
The people you're serving
are gonna be really into it.
Make the chili oil, it's so [bleep] good.
- As a condiment just to bring
a lot of things to Thanksgiving dinner.
- Yeah.
[percussive music]
We did really good.
Aww!
We won Thanksgiving.
- We won Thanksgiving.
- Totally.
[percussive music]
- Pick the squash, and then pick
the cooking method for that squash.
- Look, there's us as
represented by squash.
- Just why, Christina?
Why pretend?
- This is really good.
This is really delicious.
I want this one.
- They're laughing,
and I have no idea why.
What is going on?
[Claire laughs]
[upbeat music]
