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>> ANTHONY BOURDAIN: Loosen your belts, because overindulgence is the name of the game in this episode.

Chang and Sean Brock make three versions of the world famous hot brown... >> DAVID CHANG: When Sean's in town, we've got to do the hot brown, and we're going to...

I just said...

I just said a haiku.

>> BOURDAIN: ...go on a whiskey tasting tour... Well, maybe part of a tour.

>> VAN WINKLE: Cheers.

>> CHANG: We can stay all day right here.

>> BOURDAIN: Chang travels to Montreal for an over the top, mindbending foie gras sandwich.

And Chang overindulges with his pal Aziz Ansari at Joe Beef.

>> DAVE McMILLAN: Spam and gold leaf should never be together, but that makes it so much more interesting.

>> BOURDAIN: Enter the mind of a chef.

>> BOURDAIN: I suppose in most circumstances gluttony is, well, a bad thing.

But to some, it's a matter or meticulous pleasure.

And to others, an immoral transgression.

In fact it's one of the seven deadly sins that, according to the church, can mean eating too soon, eating too much, eating too eagerly, eating too daintily, eating wildly, or eating too expensively.

Chang will be covering just a few of these, testing his voracious appetite along the way.

>> JULIAN VAN WINKLE: Cheers.

>> BOURDAIN: Drinking too much may not be gluttonous by definition, but when it's Pappy van Winkle, anything is possible.

>> CHANG: Today we're going to Buffalo Trace in Frankfort, Kentucky.

Met Sean Brock at the airport.

Sean Brock's a good friend of mine, runs one of the best restaurants in the country called McCrady's.

>> VAN WINKLE: Howdy, boys.

>> CHANG: What's up?

>> VAN WINKLE: How y'all doing?

Welcome to Kentucky.

>> CHANG: He's very good friends with Julian Van Winkle.

If I get cirrhosis of the liver I'm going to blame Julian Van Winkle.

It's not because I'm addicted to alcohol.

it's just that his bourbon is so good.

>> VAN WINKLE: Pappy, my grandfather, started making whiskey in 1893, so well over 100 years.

>> CHANG: Historically, Frankfurt, it's just been known as bourbon brewing.

>> VAN WINKLE: Distilling.

>> CHANG: Distilling.

>> VAN WINKLE: Right.

North Central Kentucky's where most of the bourbon is made.

It's basically because the groundwater here is filtered through limestone, so it has no iron in it-- perfect for bourbon, perfect for whiskey.

>> CHANG: He's going to show us basically everything you need to know about making Pappy van Winkle approved bourbon.

Oh.

I feel like this is the real Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

>> VAN WINKLE: I didn't tell him what it does to your bowels.

It goes right through you.

You're in for a long night.

All right, let's go see the big still.

>> VAN WINKLE: Have you ever tried White Dog before?

>> CHANG: I'm in.

>> VAN WINKLE: This is about 140 proof.

You have the alcohol being vaporized, and not the water.

The vapor goes up to the top, it's collected in coils.

>> CHANG: It's a vaporizer.

>> VAN WINKLE: Right, a vaporizer.

>> BROCK: I like that.

>> VAN WINKLE: I don't know how y'all drink that stuff.

It burns my tongue.

>> CHANG: Well, I got a good buzz going on.

>> BROCK: I feel good.

>> CHANG: We can stay all day right here.

>> VAN WINKLE: We've got to get these boys out of here.

All right, boys, hold your ears.

>> BROCK: It's like ceremonial.

>> CHANG: I can do this.

>> VAN WINKLE: There you go.

This is a whiskey thief.

If you'll grab a glass... >> BROCK: Gladly.

>> VAN WINKLE: My grandfather started this recipe, and we've stuck with it for over 100 years.

And that would be the wheat instead of rye recipe.

Also the age-- it's as complicated to make this as any single malt scotch.

>> CHANG: So you've taken corn at the peak of its life cycle to the flavor, dried it, turned it into mash, basically corn water.

Let it rot, ferment.

>> VAN WINKLE: Take all the sugar out of it.

>> CHANG: Right, distill it, and then you're letting it age in the barrel for a very long time.

>> VAN WINKLE: Right.

The flavor of our whiskeys, because they're so old, comes from this barrel.

So that's really the beauty of our product, is this whiskey barrel.

So all the sugars in there are put into the whiskey from the oak.

And the resins and so forth produce all these different flavors.

All right guys, what do you say we go taste some different ages of bourbon in the lab, and we'll discuss the nuances of the different flavors that a barrel can produce?

All right?

>> CHANG: If we have to.

Wow.

>> VAN WINKLE: Bourbon has to be at least 51 percent corn.

These are 19 years old, soon to be 20 next year.

Those are all really hard to pick out the difference on those.

>> BROCK: I was about to say, you're the master.

I'm not picking up on much difference.

I was going to ask you what you thought.

>> VAN WINKLE: Which is really what you want, is consistency.

And a lot of times it's not so much the flavor we're looking for, but it's the heat that you get on some barrels and not the others.

>> BROCK: If all of these three barrels followed all those rules, then let's say one of them tasted completely different, what would you attribute that to?

>> VAN WINKLE: Its main thing is going to be the oak that the barrels are made out of, what part of the tree it comes from, where the tree is grown, what part of the countryside, what's in the soil.

>> BROCK: That's pretty crazy.

>> VAN WINKLE: They've even done experiments here...

I mean, we've GPS'd where trees are grown, the best trees for the best barrels, so now when the barrel manufacturers make a barrel, they'll plant trees in that area.

>> BROCK: Here's to the most delicious stuff in the universe, man.

>> CHANG: Best friends forever.

>> VAN WINKLE: Cheers.

>> BROCK: That rye is so damn delicious.

>> VAN WINKLE: It's spicy.

>> CHANG: It is spicy.

>> VAN WINKLE: It hits you right back here.

>> CHANG: Stop talking.

>> BROCK: You're going to need some, too.

>> VAN WINKLE: Just a splash.

>> CHANG: I was going to say something.

>> VAN WINKLE: And it's just a really perfect vessel.

>> CHANG: Sean Brock.

Welcome back.

>> BROCK: Thank you.

>> CHANG: While we were in Louisville, after drinking a lot of White Dog... >> BROCK: Way too much, now that I look back.

>> CHANG: Way too much White Dog.

We got back to the hotel, you guys continued drinking.

>> BROCK: Right, heavily.

>> CHANG: We order the hot brown.

>> BOURDAIN: Created in 1926 at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, the hot brown in its original form was an open faced meat and cheese fest smothered in sauce.

Arteries, beware.

>> CHANG: I think we were in agreement that whoever invented it was drunk.

>> BROCK: Was hammered drunk.

>> CHANG: Or cooking it for drunk people.

>> BROCK: Exactly.

I think the best part is we expected it to really suck.

>> CHANG: Not only did it taste good, it took us down.

>> BROCK: It was so perfect for that day.

>> CHANG: We were supposed to go out to dinner later that night, he misses this entire thing.

>> BROCK: The hot brown took me down.

The hot brown's very cool.

You take roasted turkey, slice it put it on the plate, and just drench it in classic, tasty, super wonderful Mornay.

Sliced fresh tomatoes, and you put that in the salamander, nice and bubbly, a little bit more cheese, and then you put bacon on top.

>> CHANG: It's basically a heart attack.

>> BROCK: Well, it's exactly what you would make at 3:00 AM.

>> CHANG: It's only in the South.

Nobody else would make this.

I'm just cooking up some slices of bacon, very simple.

Sean is going to make a Mornay, and it's equal parts butter to flour.

Right now we're making a roux.

And roux is a base to a mother sauce.

Bechamel is a mother sauce.

We're going to add a little cream, and it's going to start to thicken, so he's going to add the milk right now.

>> BROCK: Making this reminds me of being in cooking school, in culinary school.

>> CHANG: I know.

I was going to say the same thing.

>> BROCK: My first class in cooking school was stocks and sauces.

And they started talking about the mother sauces and béchamel.

I'm like, "That ain't béchamel, that's gravy, man."

I've been making that since I was knee high to a grasshopper.

>> CHANG: Got bacon?

I'm going to feed you.

He's added some pecorino cheese.

That's just also going to help thicken the sauce, but that turned it into a Mornay.

I'm going to reheat some turkey breasts.

While he likes turkey, I think turkey's gross unless it's covered under Mornay or some type of gravy.

>> BROCK: Real turkey, man, is amazing.

I don't think we eat enough turkey these days.

Because there's so much bad turkey out there, and it's prepared so poorly.

>> CHANG: Because it's a dumb bird, man.

>> BROCK: They are so stupid.

You know they drown themselves sometimes when it rains?

>> CHANG: Yeah.

>> BROCK: I almost did that last night.

The turkeys that we're cooking and eating are so genetically engineered that they're not even real.

Real turkey has so much more character.

I'll send you some real turkey.

>> CHANG: You're mixing that up with Wild Turkey.

>> BROCK: Toasting up the bread, lots of butter on there.

>> CHANG: All right, man, let's assemble.

So we made our Mornay sauce, we have some cheese for garnish, curly parsley, some cayenne pepper, just a little bit, our turkey breast, our bacon, and our toasted white toast.

I'm going to go hungry man style.

>> BROCK: No, the bread goes in like this.

>> CHANG: Oh, you rotten son of a... >> BROCK: They're all about presentation at the Brown Hotel.

>> CHANG: This is awesome.

No wonder it puts you to sleep, man.

>> BROCK: And the cheese that's in the Mornay sauce, going to get nice and bubbly and wonderful.

>> CHANG: Can you tell people just why Southern food is so heavy?

>> BROCK: All that food was created when people got up at 5:00 AM and worked until 7:00 PM in the sun, in the fields.

You need those carbs, they get you through the day.

>> CHANG: I would be a terrible farmer.

Oh, yeah.

Look at that.

>> BROCK: That is key.

>> CHANG: Got to have your parsley, man.

>> BROCK: I think it needs more Mornay.

>> CHANG: Are you serious?

Yours is looking really nice.

>> BROCK: I just copied the Brown.

>> CHANG: This is the hot brown.

>> BOURDAIN: Montreal, Canada.

I can think of few other chefs who gleefully indulge in gluttonous sin more than Frederic Morin and Dave McMillan from Joe Beef.

And a prime example is their version of an infamous fast food monster known as the double down.

>> CHANG: This is my favorite restaurant in the whole world.

And I'm envious of your lives, because it's everything that I wish I could still do.

>> FREDERIC MORIN: I love it.

>> CHANG: So you're going to cook us what?

>> MORIN: Okay, I'm not a big proponent of foie gras.

I just think this has a...

I don't dislike foie gras, but I just, like, want more, you know?

>> CHANG: Let's just say, like, in Quebec, in Montreal, there's a lot of foie gras.

>> MORIN: I love French food, reds, burgundy wines, sweetbreads, man, with just asparagus, you know?

Very simple.

We do coat the duck with red wine sauce, little bit of marrow, mushroom.

You know, I'm really, really proud of that.

but then I put it on the board, and there's a few people that get it.

When you see them they're like, "Yeah, that was really, really good."

But most people, like, most young people, bloggers, you know, people with cool shoes, they come in and they eat it and they're like, "Uh huh, not bad."

What the (bleep) is worse than not bad, you know?

"You like your wife?"

"Not bad."

So I was thinking about that.

And I was like... of course these people grew up with Big Macs and Gatorade X Factors.

So they need that much taste, you know?

So this thing is, like, engineered just, like, to be the perfect thing for those people.

So make this two pieces there.

>> CHANG: SO we took some loaves of the auto-gavage foie gras, and we're soaking it in milk.

FRED: Yeah, buttermilk.

>> CHANG: So we're taking the buttermilk soaked foie.

>> MORIN: Yeah, this is the flour we make.

>> CHANG: Rolling it in your flour.

>> MORIN: Again, it's the Big Mac theory.

It's just, like, good aim to, like, make (bleep) taste, like, that intense.

And again, I can't spend the rest of my life making... you know, I want a little bit of happy people out there, you know?

This is smoked cheddar.

We've got beautiful cheese in Quebec, right?

We buy this cheddar, we put it in vacuum bag with maple syrup and a bit of bourbon, and we put a little bit of petrel.

And we smoke it in the smoker until it starts melting, then we put it in the freezer again, and it's really good.

>> CHANG: What kind of wood?

>> MORIN: Maple, strictly maple.

Anyway, so we smoke the cheddar, then I put the bacon in there.

Usually I don't do that.

It's just because my griddle is not on.

>> CHANG: And you're being lazy.

>> MORIN: Of course, man.

>> CHANG: Once you enter the world of Joe Beef, different logic, different set of rules.

>> MORIN: All right.

>> CHANG: So you know that's nice in the center?

>> MORIN: Yeah, three minutes.

You ever see that?

Hot gas, it's the best, man.

Look.

I'm sure you can carry that on the plane along with your other gifts.

I put bacon, because bacon makes everything good, man.

You know what?

This is the one item that get's people a little like, "Whoo!"

Did I get the sound right?

Whoo.

I have the double down mayo.

>> CHANG: What's in that?

>> MORIN: Mayonnaise, sriracha and reduced glace de poulet.

>> CHANG: Which is?

>> MORIN: Like bouillon, but we make everything in house.

But that's really good.

Look at that.

Okay, you know what I wrote for the forward in the book for that?

"Dear world, I'm sorry that food has come to that."

Like Richard Pryor more or less said, the double down is god's way to tell you you have too much money.

>> BOURDAIN: Chang and his pal Aziz Ansari sit down for a meal with Joe Beef's other enabler, Dave McMillan.

>> CHANG: But why?

Why wouldn't we take over Canada?

It's not like you'd stop us.

All we need is a small militia to go from Nova Scotia to Vancouver to Quebec.

>> McMILLAN: A small militia.

>> CHANG: Small militia, 50 people tops.

>> McMILLAN: You know, we're, like, not really protesting very loudly against the idea.

We're like, "Yeah, super cool, 7-11."

These are Carr's Oysters, Prince Edward Island, New London Bay.

>> CHANG: We've been talking about having an oyster shucking competition.

>> McMILLAN: What about invasion of Canada could be based on an oyster shucking competition?

>> CHANG: Really, what do we have to gain if we lose?

>> McMILLAN: A spam truffled egg with gold leaf.

>> CHANG: Spam and truffle.

>> McMILLAN: And gold leaf.

Spam and gold leaf.

The lowest end denominator and the highest end denominator should never be together, but that makes it so much more interesting.

>> MORIN: The skin pig noodles.

>> CHANG: Woah.

>> MORIN: With Lobster.

>> AZIZ ANSARI: What?

>> CHANG: Skin pig.

>> McMILLAN: Pig skin in place of pasta.

You like pig skin?

>> ANSARI: I never had it before.

It's good.

>> MORIN: A horse and butter tartare.

>> McMILLAN: Eating horse in the UK is illegal.

>> CHANG: What?

>> ANSARI: I never had horse, I don't think.

Here we go.

>> McMILLAN: Do you serve horse in any of your restaurants?

>> CHANG: People would freak out.

>> McMILLAN: You can't get it.

I don't think it's available.

>> CHANG: It would be easier serving human carcass.

>> MORIN: Are you crazy?

>> McMILLAN: You have to be very careful with horse, as there's no, in Canada at least, federally mandated horse abattoir.

So horse is a little bit sketchy.

So a lot of the horses could definitely be racetrack horses, potentially with testosterone or horse testosterone and clenbuterol.

>> ANSARI: This was a horse that was a little bit too slow.

And they killed him.

He came in third place.

>> McMILLAN: And this, of course, is the French creation, the two big slabs of foie gras.

>> ANSARI: Oh, my god.

>> CHANG: I feel like I'm going to die.

>> McMILLAN: I've been wanting to have double down for a long time.

I've been protesting its existence.

>> CHANG: It's good.

Look at you, dude!

>> ANSARI: I had one bite.

>> McMILLAN: Please, kill that double down.

>> ANSARI: I had one bite.

It's really good.

>> CHANG: It's weird.

>> ANSARI: Just tastes like a bunch of honey and fried stuff.

>> CHANG: Thank you so much for cooking that.

That was great.

>> BOURDAIN: And now Chang builds something a little less mammoth.

>> CHANG: We really wanted to keep all of the components of the hot brown, but make it lighter.

It's a great example of where we want to take some of the beautiful ideas in the hot brown... >> BROCK: Yeah, be inspired.

>> CHANG: Maybe be inspired by something that's a truly Southern dish.

We took a turkey breast, pounded it out, we're going to take some Activa RM, which is meat glue, and instead of bacon we're going to take Benton's ham.

>> BROCK: I've never had that before.

Is it good?

>> CHANG: If anyone's consumed more Benton's ham in this world... >> BROCK: Than you.

>> CHANG: No.

It's you.

I don't even come close second.

>> BROCK: Daily.

Daily.

>> CHANG: We have acetate mold.

And in here we have the Mornay sauce, the same type of Mornay that we made earlier, but we set it with some low acyl gellan, like .06 percent.

And then we're going to freeze it.

So we'll freeze the guy, and then we'll defrost it a little bit, so we can pop out the Mornay.

Let me just roll this guy up.

>> BROCK: You put the gellan in there just to thicken it?

>> CHANG: Thicken it and to... >> BROCK: For heat stability?

>> CHANG: For heat stability.

We're going to torque this guy.

The thing with torqueing it this way is since the center's so solid right now, every time I bring that string around, it tightens it up.

Like a press.

And now I'm just going to work on the other side to even it out.

>> CHANG: Continue to torque it around, and we're going to get something like this.

This we're going to put in the water bath, and we're cooking it at 65 Celsius, 70 Celsius, for like, 20 minutes.

And this is what you get.

We have our turkey breast with a Mornay sauce with all the elements so far of a hot brown in this... in this guy right here.

We could deep fry this, but we're going to roll it in butter and just get color on it.

Remember how Morin does his tomatoes?

Just cuts it out so you has the segments?

>> BROCK: For the seeds?

>> CHANG: Yeah.

>> BROCK: I can get you seed pods.

>> CHANG: Get me the seed pods.

When we boned out the turkey breast, we took the skin off, and we just put it between trays and made turkey chips.

Poultry skin is remarkable, particularly turkey and chicken skin.

You can boil it and still get it crisp after the fact.

We make a lot of our stocks.

We steep them like teas.

>> BROCK: Yeah, yeah.

>> CHANG: We don't want to agitate them.

We don't do that.

So in here we toasted breadcrumbs, we just pulverized them.

And literally steep turkey broth like a tea.

So we're going to let that sit for about five minutes.

Our turkey breast, we rolled it in butter, heated it through.

It's cooked.

All we're trying to do is heat the center through and melt that gellan.

It squirts out just a little bit.

>> BROCK: That is cool.

>> CHANG: So we have toasted breadcrumbs in there.

>> BROCK: Looks like beer.

>> CHANG: We're going to pour a turkey broth that we made from the legs, skin, parsley oil, and some bacon fat.

And that is our version of a hot brown.

>> BROCK: Gorgeous.

>> BOURDAIN: And now, a final rethinking of the classic hot brown by Chef Sean Brock.

>> CHANG: Sean, you ready to show us your version of the hot brown?

>> BROCK: I just wanted to lighten it up a little bit.

This is really a good example of taking something that's classic and heavy and wonderful and just making it different, a little more refined.

Components of the hot brown.

We have tomato, Mornay, turkey, bacon.

I love the idea of cooking the turkey bone-in, because it always has more flavor when it's on the bone.

>> CHANG: You poached it in... >> BROCK: A tiny bit of duck fat.

I get so excited for Thanksgiving, because I love turkey.

>> CHANG: I cannot share your excitement on turkey.

>> BROCK: So you see lots and lots of fresh thyme, aromatics.

I wanted to get some of the bacon flavor in the croutons.

We're just going to shallow fry these in bacon fat.

Let's carve this thing up.

That looks awesome.

Feels like Thanksgiving.

Mmm, that's good.

>> CHANG: That's good.

>> BROCK: See the moisture in that?

That's what gets me excited.

So Sun Gold tomatoes.

These are the first ones from the garden right here.

So we've got a beautiful little slice of turkey.

>> BROCK: We took the Mornay and treated it the same way that they make American cheese.

>> CHANG: That'd be just a good grilled cheese.

>> BROCK: So again, I think this is a lighter, cleaner version.

Place this around bacon braised croutons.

Pickled ramps.

Crazy about pickled ramps, man.

This is turkey skin that we poached and then fried and parmesan crisped.

That'll give it that crispy skin taste.

Sicily.

Stuff is awesome.

Fennel flowers.

I'll put some yarrow in there.

Bacon, parmesan consommé.

>> CHANG: That's beautiful, buddy.

So we've taken that heavy hot brown that was delicious, that literally put you to sleep for 12 hours, and we've lightened into something that has all the flavor profiles of the original hot brown, but with herbs that accentuate.

Awesome.

>> BROCK: Very cool, my man.

>> BOURDAIN: Gluttony is not good.

>> CHANG: That is so much better than I thought it was going to be.

>> BOURDAIN: And there is no doubt a price to be paid.

>> McMILLAN: I went to the doctor the other day, she says, "You know if you don't watch out, you're going to get the gout."

I was like, "Gout?"

>> BOURDAIN: But if it's Dave Chang and friends leading you into gluttony and overindulgence... >> VAN WINKLE: Where'd yours go?

You spill it?

>> BROCK: I spilled it in here.

>> BOURDAIN: ...that's a very, very dangerous and delicious thing.

>> ANSARI: That's really good.

>> CHANG: So light.

>> ANSARI: I would eat the rest, but I feel like that would be a bad move pacing-wise.