$272 vs $18 Huevos Rancheros: Pro Chef & Home Cook Swap Ingredients

I like eating duck, but I also really like ducks.

You know? This is one of those ones

that walks the line for me. [laughs]

Hi, I'm Saul. I'm a professional chef.

And these are my $272 huevos rancheros ingredients.

Hi, I'm Emily. I'm a home cook.

And these are my $18 huevos rancheros ingredients.

There you go, my dreams.

Goodbye, my friends. I'll always love you.

Sometimes life is not fair.

♪ Oh, what is that ♪

[dramatic music]

Saul is planning on making we huevos rancheros

with crispy duck carnitas and refried mayocoba beans.

Is that a duck?

[Saul] I had a whole Rohan duck to break down

and use all the parts. I think it's a duck.

I was gonna make duck carnitas.

Chef Saul, you saucy minx.

[Saul] With blood orange, a Mexican Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola for breakfast?

Okay. [laughs]

And a ton of herbs and spices.

I was also gonna make my own stock to refry mayocoba beans.

I'm gonna be here all week.

[Saul] We dry avocado leaves and fresh epazote.

I had corn tortilla for duck fat tostadas.

Not making my own tortillas. Another beautiful day.

[Saul] Heirloom tomatoes for a fresh ranchero salsa

Last for York. I knew him well.

And some fresh eggs for poaching.

Emily, if you screw this up, it's okay.

People made mistakes.

With Emily's recipe, I have simpler ingredients,

stuff you might find in your pantry or your local store.

But with a little technique

and a lot of [speaking in foreign language],

we can make them even better.

If I have to guess, this will all cost $21.75.

[cash register dings] So close. Always so close.

I would say that this would all cost

$325. [cash register dings]

Nart. [upbeat jazz music]

I have Chef Soul's recipe book,

and here is what I'll be making today.

This looks like a great breakfast,

which I'll look forward to having in approximately two days.

We taking huevos rancheros to the next level.

This is going to be quack-tacular.

No. Spec-quack-ucular. That's the one.

We're gonna start with breaking down the duck.

I have broken chickens down before.

I have never done a duck.

The bones are longer,

but it's basically the same technique,

You're going to cut between the thigh and the leg.

There's a lot of fat and skin

to, like, wade through here, you know?

Grab the thigh.

You gonna pop up that bone attached to the hip.

And then you're going to cut through it.

Okay, could that have gone better? Sure.

Is it terrible? No.

One leg down.

So you need do that twice.

Let's butcher this dog.

You gonna keep the bones on that

'cause we're going to cook the bones into the carnitas.

I'm now going to remove the duck breast.

Make sure the knife touches the bone all the time.

You kind of just slice little by little. Be gentle.

One down. One more to go.

Oh, look, a little duck tender.

Chef snack.

And then after that, you remove the other breast.

I feel like I did a really good job on this one. Onwards.

Breaking this down into soup bits.

I have my legs and thighs and breasts for my carnitas.

And then I have my wings and carcass for my stock.

Emily, she was gonna make a very simple huevos rancheros.

Take a tostada, put a cheesy fried egg on top.

Maybe some pico de gallo and black beans out of a can.

Call that breakfast.

I'm going to be making cheesy tostadas

and egg crepe huevos rancheros

with egg drop ranchero sauce.

Beans, cheese, and chips, baby.

First of all, I'm going to be making my own crepe.

Basically, just a thin slice of egg tortilla.

Low heat, neutral oil.

I'm going to heat up my non-stick pan.

And when that's happening, we're going to whip some eggs.

I'm not adding salt, I'm not adding pepper,

because the other ingredients

are gonna be very nice seasoning, nice and fluffy.

Next up, I need to make my carnitas.

I'm gonna start heating up my pan,

and I'm going to give my duck fat a little stir.

I'm gonna put some in there.

While I wait for that to get hot,

I'm just going to season my duck.

We'll just do salt for now. The pepper will come.

Don't worry. I love pepper.

You're gonna add the pieces of duck one by one.

Oh, yeah, it's looking pretty good.

[oil sizzles] Whoo! Sorry.

All right, I'm gonna pull these off.

Now I'm going to start my duck breast.

Skin side first.

Render it out a little.

Give her the old flipperony.

Bing, bang, boom.

We're on our way to carnitas town.

And I'm gonna add in my little duck tenderloin now.

So when you have a beautiful golden color

around all your duck pieces, you're going to lower the heat.

[Emily] I'm gonna move this over

and add the rest of my duck back into the pan.

[Saul] And you're gonna add some onion, cinnamon sticks.

Immediately the cinnamon hit and it smelled good.

[Saul] Garlic, bay leaf, cumin, oregano, salt.

Lots of salt.

[Saul] Pepper.

[Emily] Distribute the spices a little.

And you're gonna add some blood oranges.

It's going to add some acidity and sweetness to your dish.

[growls] Ha!

And then you're going to drop

the entire half of blood orange.

Smells good.

We're also gonna add some Coca-Cola.

Mexican Coca-Cola has pure sugarcane.

So it caramelize perfect with any kind of meat.

[Emily] Got this simmering, I've got my lid on.

Turn off your heat, you're gonna cover,

and you're gonna put it in the oven at 350

for, like, two and a half to three hours.

And you are going to have the most beautiful,

tender, rich duck carnita you ever see in your whole life.

Ho-ho-ho-ho, she looks good.

How do you know your carnitas are done?

By making sure the meat falls out of the bone.

When you have that,

you're going to remove all the meat out of the oil,

and make sure it gets a little cold.

And then you going to shred it.

This is pork tender.

Make sure you leave some of that skin.

It keeps the meat little moist without being too dry.

And also duck skin, just like chicken skin,

tastes delicious.

This is shredded.

I just have to sear it and make it crispy.

I'm gonna skim the fat off

of this beautiful duck braising liquid,

and make that the fat that I use too crisp up my duck.

Call me Captain Crispy 'cause this is some crispy duck.

So this crepe is going to be one layer

of so many other layers.

So you can see the oil moving. That's hot.

And then you gonna do the same thing that you do to a crepe.

Just move it around.

Once I see no runny eggs,

that means it's ready to be flipped.

That's it.

Second crepe, one more egg.

Pwah. And the last one.

And here's my egg crepe for my huevos rancheros.

Next I have to roast my bones for the duck stock.

Bake it at 350 for 30 to 40 minutes.

By roasting your duck bones,

basically you're gonna make your stock richer.

It's gonna have better color, better taste.

I have my roasted duck bones,

which I just took out of the oven.

And now I'm going to add-

[Saul] White onion, carrots, celery, and some peppercorns,

some apple cider vinegar, garlic,

fresh thyme, some bay leaves.

Salt, pepper, and lots of water.

Bring it up to a boil.

Down to a simmer. Wait forever, goodbye.

All right, this has been simmering for a whopping six hours.

The color will change to more golden brown.

And once you remove all the impurities,

it's gonna be nice and clear.

And I'm ready to strain my stock.

But are you ready?

We wanna remove all the bones, all the aromatics.

[Emily] This stock looks good.

So I got some Canadian bacon.

I'm going to bake it so it will become crispy.

I'm gonna do a little bit of neutral oil.

Put this paper right here.

I'm gonna put this tray on top.

Put some pressure so it will speed the cooking [indistinct].

And also it will make it nice and flat.

So I'm gonna bake this at 350 for 20 minutes.

Looks good. Looks crispy enough without being too dry.

This will be great on my huevos rancheros.

On to the beans.

So I have some black beans in a can.

I'm gonna be using these beans to make refried beans.

So I'm gonna put some love into these beans.

Don't worry, I'll take care of you.

My beans have been soaking.

[Saul] Turn this thing on.

Classic first step.

[Saul] Strain all the beans.

I'm going to rinse this

to get rid of all the gaminess from the liquid.

[beans whooshing]

You wanna add some water.

[Emily] Put some duck fat in here.

We're gonna add some aromatics, onion, cilantro stems.

And then I'm gonna add a little bit of salt.

Garlic, I love a recipe

where I just put things in whole.

Epazote. Can I taste it?

It's not poisonous raw, right?

Ooh, mint meets lemon.

Avocado leaves, I'm not gonna eat 'cause they're dried.

Anyway, I'm gonna give that a stir.

And we're going to cook with our duck stock.

It's gonna add the beautiful richness of duck

into the beans.

So now I'm gonna let this sit for 10, 15 minutes.

Our beans looking great.

The onion looks like I got rid of all the flavors

and pass it into the black beans.

Same thing with the cilantro.

And I'm gonna get ready to refry my beans.

I'm going to bring these up to a boil.

Then let them simmer until they are tender and beautiful.

♪ And then I'm gonna cook them again ♪

I'm gonna refry them.

It's not over, baby! [chuckles]

Okay, let's start refrying my beans.

Got my beans. They've been cooking away.

It's time to refry them. It's easy enough.

I'm just gonna pull out all the things

that will become crunchy or chewy

if they were inside of our beans.

I'm gonna start with a little bit of neutral oil.

I wish I had some duck lard, right?

Duck fat, baby. It's all about the duck fat.

We're gonna throw some diced onions.

Some smoke, it's okay.

I'm throw some salt. It's gonna make them sweat.

[Emily] I'm adding some garlic.

We lower the heat, we keep eye on this.

And we wait.

We gonna cook that until you have caramelized onions.

I'm going to remove the sad onion, the sad cilantro.

They're actually really happy because they did their job.

I'm taking out these beautiful roasted garlics.

And then you are gonna throw some of the beans

with plenty of liquid without being too liquidy.

Now I'm going to smash them.

You might be wondering

if I'm gonna show these beans who's boss?

And the answer is yes.

[spoon tapping]

[Producer] There's a masher on the counter.

I have a masher. [laughs]

If I'd seen this earlier,

it might've been a little faster. [chuckles]

It has to be really rich bean paste, full of flavor.

And just keep cooking this, 8 minutes, 10 minutes.

And there you have it! Refried beans.

I'm going to begin my salsa.

I am going to boil

some tomatoes, jalapenos, onion, and garlic.

We're using those heirloom tomatoes.

They're beautiful tomatoes. They're full of tomato flavor.

You have some jalapenos, some onion, some garlic.

And then I'm gonna let this boil for, like, eight minutes

until they're pretty soft.

So I got some pico de gallo.

This is store-bought,

which I don't encourage people to do it.

And you should chop your own vegetables

and make your own pico de gallo.

You save money and you have delicious food.

I'm gonna be making two sauces out of that pico de gallo.

The first one is going to be

a roasted tomato salsa ranchera.

Let's remove all the liquid out of the pico de gallo

because we're gonna roast our tomatoes.

I'm gonna do a little bit of neutral oil.

This pico de gallo is actually pretty good.

It has onions, it looks like it has cilantro,

but we're gonna make it even better.

I'm gonna throw some jalapenos in here

because everything tastes better with spicy.

So I'm just gonna do half onion.

I want this kind of cook

almost at the same time as the tomatoes.

So I have to have the same kind of thickness of the tomato.

You know what I'm saying?

I'm going to take this,

and I'm going to broil it for like 10, 15 minutes

until I have a beautiful caramelized char color.

This is going to be the first step for my next sauce.

This is looking what I can only describe as boiled.

Once you see the skin of the tomato

kind of start breaking apart,

that's when we do know your tomatoes are ready.

[Emily] I'm gonna cut the heat and pull these out.

My tomatoes, onions, and jalapenos are ready.

It's time to make some roasted salsa ranchera.

I know this might look dry, but guess what?

That was the whole point.

It's gonna make this salsa richer with more flavor.

And normally tell you not to put all the jalapenos

because you don't know how hot it is.

But I know it's not gonna be hot, so.

Let's begin the salsa-fication of our boiled mix.

Once you put it on a blender,

we are going to add some chicken bouillon.

[Emily] Taking one cube.

Come to life

with a little of the juice from the pico de gallo.

Throw some cilantro to add a little bit of freshness,

some salt, and a little bit of neutral oil.

All right, I am ready to rock and also to roll.

Salsa martajada is basically smashed roasted tomato salsa,

processed on the molcajete,

not on a blender or on your food processor.

Before we move on, I'm going to try it.

[spoon clangs]

And the level of heat, it's there.

It's kicking, and it's telling you,

Wake up, you eating the best huevos rancheros

of your life.

[machine buzzing]

Salsa.

[slurps] That was good.

You might be thinking to yourself,

Emily, it looks like salsa.

You say it tastes good. This is done, right.

Ha, ha! No, it isn't.

You're gonna get a pot.

You're gonna throw some duck fat from your carnitas.

We're going to caramelize some julienne onions.

You're gonna dump the sauce in it.

So we add in more duck flavor to our salsa.

And then you're gonna simmer it

for, like, probably 10 minutes.

No more than that.

We're gonna a semi-fresh salsa without being too cook.

All right, this salsa's been cooking for a bit.

I think the consistency looks right.

We're done. Time to fry my tortillas.

We're gonna take some of that duck fat.

There's a lot of duck fat in this recipe.

[Saul] Gonna heat it up,

and we are going to just fry those tostadas

until they're nice, gold, and crispy.

You know how it goes. We're gonna fry 'em on one side.

We're gonna flip. We're gonna fry him on the other side.

Maybe we'll flip him back. I don't know, we'll see.

I think this guy's crunchy and ready, and give him a salt.

Pull this guy out. Welcome to the world.

You're now crunchy and everybody loves you.

Let's do that again.

I have four tostadas fried here and I think that's enough.

I, typically, you know, we use a soft tortilla.

In this case, I got some tostadas.

But I'm gonna add something special.

I'm gonna do the cheese trick on the tostada.

And for those who are not familiar with my cheese trick,

it's basically a fried cheese.

All right, so I'm grabbing some Mexican-style cheese.

Not one of my favorite cheese, but I have no option.

I do not know why they call it Mexican

because the only Mexican thing right here, it's me.

We wanna sprinkle some queso. Spread evenly.

And let it melt, low and slow.

Patience and faith.

And we're gonna grab ourselves a tostada.

So I see a lot of bubbles.

That means this cheese is telling me,

Chef, I'm ready for the tostada.

You press, press, press.

Gonna grab it from the bottom,

and then you're gonna flip it, voila.

Once again.

[grunts] There we go. Perfecto.

Corn tostada with fried cheese for my huevos rancheros.

If you want huevos rancheros, you gotta have huevos, baby.

We typically use sunny-side-up eggs,

but in this case we elevating this dish, right?

So we gonna do poached eggs.

When you have boiling water,

you're going to lower your heat.

Make sure it's not boiling anymore but it's really hot.

You gonna throw a little bit of white vinegar.

It cures the outside just a little bit

to hold it together better.

And then you're gonna make a little tornado.

If I mess it up, there's four more eggs.

Once you make that little tornado,

you're gonna drop an egg one by one,

cook it for three minutes.

And here we have it, two poached eggs.

They said I couldn't do it.

Sauce, [speaking in foreign language].

Egg drop huevos ranchero sauce.

The special thing about the sauce

that is gonna have eggs in the sauce.

All right, so we're gonna start with some neutral oil.

We are gonna add some onion, and I'm adding salt.

That will help sweat the onions.

Take some of the liquid out of this pico de gallo.

I'm gonna add some juice.

And I'm gonna add a little bit of tomato.

Just have some little texture. And a little bit of water.

I'm gonna mix, mix, mix.

Simmer this for maybe two or three minutes.

And in the meantime, I'm going to mix some eggs.

So I'm gonna do some chopped cilantro, Canadian bacon.

And I'm gonna do just a little bit of queso.

Black pepper. [pepper mill grating]

Mix it.

So now the most important part of this salsa,

the egg drop soup technique.

You shut it off.

If you add the egg when it's boiling,

the egg is gonna break.

And now you're gonna do this.

You make little strings.

[lid clunks] You cover it.

Let the egg come together.

Cook. Time to assemble.

[upbeat music]

All right, it is time to plate.

I think that first we're gonna want the tostadas.

Next add the beans-ville.

Duck, duck, duck.

♪ Salsa ♪

We don't wanna put it all over the duck

'cause we wanna keep the crisp.

And summon our eggs. Yes.

Let's get some avocado going.

This is the queso fresco,

and I'm just gonna make sure there's a lot of it.

Radish, radish,

radish. you're radishing baby.

Some cilantro macho and some sorrel.

It has a little bit of acidity,

but also it will make this plate look beautiful.

[Emily] And this is my take

on Chef Saul's huevos rancheros.

It's time to put all these layers together.

So I'm gonna do just slices of avocado.

This is one layer. Second layer.

So crispy corn tostada with the cheese trick.

I'm gonna add some refried beans.

And a crepe [speaking in foreign language].

I'm gonna put the other one here.

A roasted ranchero salsa.

Now second tostada. The [speaking in foreign language].

Now let's do the egg.

Let's do the [speaking in foreign language].

Let's do the avocado.

And since this is gonna be the face,

we're gonna do drops of salsa.

And now the egg drop ranchero salsa.

I make it more watery

because the tostada is dry, the cheese is dry.

[speaking in foreign language]

Oh, it looks so pretty.

Wait, there is more.

Bunch of cilantro.

Wait, there is more.

Running from the egg yolk on top makes huevos rancheros

the best huevos rancheros.

And here's my cheesy tostada egg crepe huevos rancheros

with egg drop ranchero sauce.

Emily, hope you like this.

And if you don't, [camera clicks]

don't worry, I'll eat it.

[suspenseful music]

Hey! How's it going? Hey!

Nice to see you. Yay. It's good to see you.

[Emily laughs]

This was really fun.

I like the smell of the kitchen right now.

I'm really excited to see what you did.

Oh! Oh!

[Emily and Saul laughing]

See, this is what I mean when I say,

Emily, she's ready to be a pro.

Get outta here. See, look at this.

[Emily laughing]

This looks like I did it.

Oh, my. I'm so proud of you. [hands slap]

Thank you. [laughs] Oh.

I worked really hard. [laughs]

You wanna try it?

Yes, I wanna try it. Me too. Good, yay!

I wanna try this one first.

[Emily chuckles] [tostada crunches]

I'm the luckiest chef ever.

[tostada crunches]

The meat is so tender.

It looks beautiful. It tastes really good.

I just wish

I had an enchilada. Mm.

Because, you know, it's a breakfast thing.

A Mexican Bloody Mary will be nice.

Should have put it on the recipe. [laughs]

I know. I always forget.

Let's try my dish.

And this is what I call a huevos ranchero's heart attack.

Basically, it's layers of pure amor.

So you see all these layers.

This is what I love, seeing what I'm about to eat.

Yeah, that's beautiful. It's like a sandwich for a king.

[Saul] Huevos rancheros [speaking in foreign language].

Ah. Like, really great.

It is, like, tangy, and crunchy, and soft, and chewy,

and, like, the layers really make it

like all of the flavors and all of the textures

in one bite every time.

A spec-quack-ular day.

Quack! Quack!