Munchies - The Best of

Question: Is deep dish pizza even pizza? Answer: Who cares? Farideh celebrates Chicago’s cherished pie with a twist: a deep dish pizza baked in a cast iron pan. She starts by creating the pizza dough, made with active dry yeast, sugar, butter, cornmeal, all-purpose flour, and oil. After a quick deep dish pizza history lesson, Farideh moves on to creating a pizza sauce with garlic, onion, chili flakes, and crushed tomatoes. Next, she preps Italian sausage for the pizza topping, rolls out the pizza dough, and fits it into the cast iron pan. Finally, Farideh assembles the pizza by layering sliced mozzarella cheese, sauce, more cheese, sausage, more cheese, and more sauce, and bakes it in the oven. The result is a golden, crusty, melty pizza pie fit for a fork and knife.

Chef Kyo Pang of the NYC restaurant Kopitiam makes the beloved national dish of Malaysia: nasi lemak. A product of multiple ethnic cuisines within Malaysia, nasi lemak starts with a paste of shallots, garlic, dried anchovies. Next, Chef Kyo blends dried and fresh chilis, shrimp paste, tamarind paste, mixes everything together, and fries it all in oil. Then, Chef Kyo makes coconut rice with jasmine rice, pandan leaves, and coconut milk. Finally, she completes the dish with fried peanuts, fried anchovies, 7-minute eggs, homemade sambal paste, and cucumber slices.

Frank Pinello’s returns for another episode A Frank Experience, and this time he’s in Dallas at the historic State Fair of Texas. This 24-day festival of Texan culture sees over 2 million guests, and Frank learns what it takes to feed them.

Frank meets and works alongside some of the legendary and award-winning food creators at the Texas State Fair and tries preparing some of its beloved dishes, like Fletcher’s Corny Dogs, a funnel cake queso bacon burger, and Stiffler’s Mom’s cookies. Frank gets a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the enormous operations behind these small food stands and enjoys all the fun the State Fair offers.

Enjoy the fun of anticipating your favorite holiday meal with an old-fashioned oven-roasting turkey, set to jazzy tunes. Happy Thanksgiving from MUNCHIES!

Chef Aaron Crowder gives an easy, step-by-step tutorial on how to carve everyone’s favorite juicy holiday bird. Chef Aaron shares his tips for a painless carving process, including what kind of knives to use, why you should let your turkey rest first, and how to get the most out of every part of the bird: the dark meat, white meat, the trimmings, and the carcass.

This monster cookie bowl sundae is the craziest thing to come out of the Munchies Test Kitchen so far. Farideh uses a classic chocolate chip cookie recipe for this giant sundae bowl, with chocolate chips, sugar, vanilla extract, and plenty of butter. After completing the cookie dough, Farideh demonstrates how to grease a metal bowl for the cookie bowl mold, how to ensure the cookie bowl doesn’t expand while it bakes, and why cookie dough should chill before it goes in the oven. Lastly, Farideh assembles this colossal sundae with cookie dough ice cream, hot fudge, whipped cream, and a cherry on top.

Chef Sheldon Simeon shares a comfort food from his home state of Hawaii: saimin noodle soup. Somewhat similar to ramen, Sheldon explains how this dish, found only in Hawaii, is the product of multiple ethnic cuisines.

Sheldon starts with a pressure-cooked broth made from chicken and pork and adds a variety of Japanese ingredients, like kombu (dried kelp), dried shiitake mushrooms, dried shrimp, plus garlic, ginger, carrots, and leeks, for flavor. Next, Sheldon marinates and preps some beef for barbecue skewers that traditionally accompany saimin. Finally, Sheldon boils instant ramen noodles and assembles the saimin with green onions and kamaboko (cured fish cake) for garnish and Chinese hot mustard on the side.

Ah, Philadelphia: the city is beautiful, the people are honest, and the food scene is unreal. One of the people responsible for this is Brad Spence, who helms Philadelphia's finest trattoria, Amis. Brad's food is influenced by dishes you would find in casual restaurants in Rome. And like any good American chef, Brad takes those old standbys and expands on them, drawing inspiration from the wonderful food he finds in the City of Brotherly Love. For this episode of Munchies, he brought us on a culinary adventure with his sous chef, Craig Parahus, and his brother-in-law, Kevin Griffin and introduced us to Peter McAndrews and Han Chiang of Han Dynasty.

YouTube cooking sensation Maangchi shares the perfect recipe for a lunchbox: beef bulgogi lettuce wraps. Her recipe, which is featured in her new cookbook “Maangchi's Big Book of Korean Cooking,” is a classic Korean dish made with toasted sesame seeds, white rice, homemade ssamjang (spicy fermented soybean paste), filet mignon, and Bibb lettuce. Maangchi marinates the thinly sliced meat with sesame oil, garlic, green onion, soy sauce, black pepper, and sugar and then cooks it quickly in a pan, while the rice cooker handles the white rice. Finally, Maangchi assembles the wraps with lettuce and cherry tomatoes, showing how easy and fun her recipe is to make and eat.

This salmon burger is filled with so many healthful ingredients, it might be a cure-all meal. Farideh makes these salmon burgers with Alaskan king salmon and a flavorful paste made with lemongrass, ginger, turmeric, shallots, garlic, Makrut lime leaves, and more. After adding in chopped cashews and quickly cooking the salmon burger patties in a pan, Farideh toasts some burger buns and makes a simple salad of carrot, cucumber, red onion, red chiles, and cilantro. Finally, she dresses the salad with fish sauce and serves it as a crunchy and fresh burger topping.