Binging with Babish: Cubanos from Chef

Martin: "Three equal pieces. " Carl Casper: "Lets see what we got. " Martin: "Right, here we go.

" Percy: "Ooh, hot. " Martin: "Ooh, I see. " Percy: "Look at that cheese.

" Martin: "Oh my god. " Carl: "This is the shit. " Martin: "This is it.

" Hey, what's up, wildcats, and welcome back to Binging with Babish, where, this week, I'm a little under the weather, but that's not going to stop episode 3 of my sandwich rampage. By popular demand, we're doing the cubanos from Chef. We're starting with a bone-in pork shoulder, whose skin we're going to remove, and fat we're going to score.

And now it's time to build our brine. We're going to start with 4 cups of orange juice, 2 cups of water, maybe a half cup of rice wine vinegar, half a cup of spiced rum, half a cup of Kosher salt, maybe a quarter cup of brown sugar, and maybe the most important part: lots and lots of garlic. I'm going to finely mince an entire head of garlic.

My advice to you is to buy a garlic crusher, because this is annoying. Add all the garlic to the brine before fruitlessly washing your hands and chopping some herbs. We're going to use a few stems each of oregano, rosemary, thyme, sage.

We're going to mix all that up with a whisk before adding three bay leaves, because we almost forgot them, and then we're going to pour this over the pork. Make sure that it's fully submerged in the liquid before covering and refrigerating for a bare minimum of 12 hours. This is a good time to work on your grilled cheese game, but we'll cover that in my Patreon.

It's the next day and it's time to make Mojo marinade. We're starting with about half a cup of olive oil, to which we're going to add the juice and zest of three oranges Just make sure that your hands aren't slippery when you're zesting them--oop. We're also adding the zest, juice and squished carcasses of six limes, making sure to squirt just a little bit directly into our eyes.

Then it's another few tablespoons of chopped fresh oregano, along with a solid half cup of chopped green soap, or as it's otherwise known, cilantro. We're also adding maybe a quarter cup of chopped mint leaves. Another whole head of fresh garlic, finely minced, a few heaping pinches of salt and freshly ground pepper, and two tablespoons of freshly ground and toasted cumin, that we're going to whisk together.

Remove our roast from its brine, pat dry and get ready to smother in citrus and give it a shoulder rub. Heh, a shoulder rub, ladies and gentlemen. Groove out a little bit to the music like John Leguizamo does in the movie, not as well of course.

Cover again and refrigerate again for a minimum of two hours. Once those flavours have had the chance to get to know each other, we're going to place our roast on a wire rack on a rimmed baking sheet. Baste with the marinade and roast at 350°F for about two and a half hours or until it registers 165°F, and smells like a symphony of citrus and garlic.

Hack off a piece for tasting like they do in the movie and freak out a little bit over how incredibly good it is. Babish: "Oh my GOD. .

. Ohmigod. .

. " "Ohmigod. .

. OH my GOD. .

. what--? !

? " Turn the roast around so your audience can't see how much you've eaten of it, and if you're able, try to get your hands on some real pan cubano, it really makes the difference in this sandwich. Make sure your plancha is ripping hot, and it's time to toast the inside of our sandwiches.

We're going to melt some butter, and place the loaves face side down until brown and crispy. You can see in the background I'm frying up some ham and our slices of roast pork, that we're then going to layer on the bottom of the sandwich, topped with two slices of ham, two slices of swiss cheese, place a good smear of yellow mustard on the top half of the bun, top the cheese with three thinly sliced dill pickles, smear the top of the sandwich down with butter, lay some butter down on your plancha and pressssssss. .

. . .

. . .

that's awesome. Remove from the plancha once browned and crispy and the cheese is melted, slice on the diagonal, tear it apart, and dig in. Now this was far and away one of the best sandwiches I've ever had in my life, one of the best THINGS I've ever had in my life, but then again I'm a sucker for cubanos and Jon Favreau.