--- title: 'The Ultimate Marry-Me Meals | With Babish' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=TggSdedcLJo' video_id: 'TggSdedcLJo' date: 2026-07-28 channel: 'Binging with Babish' --- # The Ultimate Marry-Me Meals | With Babish > Source: [The Ultimate Marry-Me Meals | With Babish](https://youtube.com/watch?v=TggSdedcLJo) ## Summary In this episode, Babish explores three viral 'marry-me' recipes: Wife Me Up Chili Garlic Noodles, Engagement Chicken, and Marry Me Chicken. He adds his own twists to each dish, demonstrating techniques and flavor enhancements while humorously discussing the romantic lore behind the recipes. ### Key Points - **Wife Me Up Noodles Introduction** [00:51] — Babish introduces the Wife Me Up Chili Garlic Noodles, a simplified version of Ian's Po Mian noodles, and plans to make them more flavorful. - **Wife Me Up Noodles Ingredients** [01:59] — Ingredients include ground pork, neutral oil, chili crisp, soy sauce, red miso paste, toasted sesame oil, black vinegar, sugar, garlic, ginger, scallions, peanuts, Sichuan peppercorns, and dried wavy knife-cut noodles. - **Wife Me Up Noodles Taste Test** [05:26] — Babish declares the noodles 'so good,' praising the flavor from chili crisp, fresh chilies, and peanuts, and notes they take about 20 minutes to make. - **Engagement Chicken Introduction** [06:19] — Babish introduces Engagement Chicken, a recipe from Glamour magazine popularized by Ina Garten, and explains he will spatchcock the chicken. - **Engagement Chicken Herb Paste** [07:30] — He makes a herb paste with rosemary, parsley, thyme, tarragon, salt, and pepper, and rubs it under the chicken skin. - **Engagement Chicken Sauce** [10:35] — After roasting, he makes a sauce with caramelized onions, garlic, chicken stock, sherry, and butter, served with roasted lemons. - **Marry Me Chicken Introduction** [12:23] — Babish introduces Marry Me Chicken, a viral recipe from Delish, featuring a rich cream sauce with sun-dried tomatoes and Calabrian chilies. - **Marry Me Chicken Preparation** [13:16] — He butterflies chicken breasts, dry brines them, and prepares mise en place including flour, butter, olive oil, garlic, shallot, tomato paste, anchovy paste, Calabrian chilies, sun-dried tomatoes, chicken stock, heavy cream, and Parmesan. - **Marry Me Chicken Taste Test** [19:47] — Babish calls it 'one of the best tasting dishes possible in 20 minutes,' praising the tender chicken and rich flavor. - **Conclusion on Marry-Me Meals** [20:30] — Babish concludes that no dish makes someone fall in love, but cooking a meal demonstrates care and is a loving act. ### Conclusion Babish demonstrates that while no dish guarantees romance, cooking a thoughtful meal is a powerful act of care. The three recipes—Wife Me Up Noodles, Engagement Chicken, and Marry Me Chicken—are delicious and worth making regardless of their romantic claims. ## Transcript wife me up noodles, have my babies salmon, please don't leave me to loaf, prom with me pizza, why won't you love me lasagna, learn to love yourself first gnocchi, please come back soup, and just give me a chance burgers. Many are real. I'm going to try them out today, put my own spin on them, and see if they're worth making the biggest mistake of your life for. today's episode. These are hands-down the most comfortable socks I've ever worn, and these Sunday slippers are my go-to as soon as fall hits. They have a slipping on to go outside and take out the trash. Comfort aside, my favorite part about Bombas is that for every pair purchased, one is donated, and they've donated over 150 million items. Bombas make great gifts for everyone on your list. Feel good and do good with Bombas, knowing your purchase is doing some actual good. New customers get 20% off their first purchase. Just go to bombas.com/babbish and use code babbish20 at checkout. Do you think the garlic in this dish helps or hurts your chances romantically? Common misconception that having garlic on a date will ruin your chances. If on a date will ruin your chances. If you're both having garlic, >> Okay. Come over here and kiss me, see what First up, the wife me up chili garlic noodles. This was popularized by Ian who looks you right in the eyes and smiles as he chops things. Po Mian. The wife me Up noodles are a much easier, probably more flavorful version of those noodles, and I'm going to make them even more flavorfuller. We're starting off with half a pound of ground pork, a quarter cup of neutral oil, like vegetable or canola, 1/3 of a cup of chili crisp, 3 Tbsp of soy sauce, cup of chili crisp, 3 Tbsp of soy sauce, 2 Tbsp of red miso paste, 1 tsp of toasted sesame oil, 1 Tbsp of black vinegar, 1 tsp of sugar, four cloves of vinegar, 1 tsp of sugar, four cloves of garlic. best for cuz you can smash knob of ginger. Normally, you might want to grate this, but that really makes it into a paste, and I kind of want little little pieces in there. Most recipes call for four scallions. I'm going to do more than that. 2 tsp of toasted sesame peanuts here. I'm just going to crack them up a little bit in a mortar and pestle. Last but not least, I've got 1 tsp of Sichuan peppercorns here. I'm going with the same noodles as Ian, some dried wavy knife-cut noodles. Now, just going to combine all the liquid sort of sauce ingredients. I've got my soy sauce, black vinegar, toasted sesame oil, little bit of sugar, and the chili crisp. There we go. That way I can just add this bad boy all at once. And just to be cool, I might finish things off with one of these little hot finger peppers that I got here. If you can make each other spicy I'll see you next tomorrow." That's real love right there. Okay. We have boiling water at the ready. Put down our quarter cup. It's probably more like 3 Tbsp of oil. Okay, oil's nice and hot, very nearly smoking. Just going to break up our pork. little bit of nice color before we do any flipping. Break everybody into little tiny tiny pieces. Don't want any big pieces when I'm going to scoop it out using a fine mesh spider. You can see we got some nice fond on the bottom of the pan there. That's That's very welcome, garlic, our ginger, and our scallion whites. going to add our Sichuan peppercorns, let those toast just a little bit, our peanuts. Just let those get a little bit Now, we're going to add our sauce mixture. Just let that come together. Let's get these noodles going. Now, nothing's going to get ruined by taking this off the heat. This can just sit. But, also, while it's not not hot at all, I'm going to add our chilies. If If you add these really hot, they're going to the capsaicin is going to aerosolize, and the air is going to get unbearably spicy. Add our toasted some for garnish. Add some of our scallions, too. Got things nice and sizzly. I'm going to add our pork back to the equation. Get that pork nice and coated in the sauce. Let's add our noodles. And, of course, give things a spirited toss. Making a mess, but having a good time. assume. All right. Way I like to do it is noodles first, that way we can top the noodles with all the meat and stuff. Garnish with some more toasted sesame seeds, scallions, some chilies, and a couple crushed peanuts. And, there you have it. There's my Wife Me Up Chili Garlic Noodles. That is so good. Oh, that is so good. Oh, there's so much going on from the chili crisp, which just brings so much flavor and spice, the fresh chilies, the peanuts. It brings a much livelier color, I think. These aren't like dark and brown and muddy, and a ton of rich, savory flavor. So, this took just about the same amount of time as normal wife me up noodles. It's really special. It It looks as good as it same amount of time, about 20 minutes. So, forget wife me up noodles, these are noodles. And they're my actual lunch, so goodbye. goodbye. What are the rules of engagement? No bio weapons, no chemical or biological weapons, and no nukes. do what you want. >> Okay, what does that mean in this context? Oh, you're talking about uh engagement, act of love. Yeah. >> I was talking about the act of war. Isn't that ironic? Engagement chicken, a recipe first developed by Glamour magazine in the 1980s, popularized by the one and only Ina Garten. Ina, it's the Hamptons. You know where to find me. Or I'll find you. No, that didn't sound right. First thing not keeping the chicken whole. We are going to spatchcock or butterfly it, heavy-duty kitchen shears. Now, at the base of the rib cage, you can see right here, it's the sort of a sternum bit, I'm going to place a shallow cut right there. Bring out your inner chiropractor and bone, something we want to get out of here. Right here in the back, I'm going and it should pop right out. Then we're folding it over, and we're tucking the wings underneath the breasts. I'm going to do about a tablespoon's worth of fresh rosemary, maybe that's a quarter cup of packed parsley leaves, maybe a tablespoon of fresh picked thyme leaves, likewise with fresh tarragon. So, now I'm just going to really finely mince I'm just going to really finely mince these herbs. along with a hefty pinch of salt, a few twists of freshly ground black pepper, we're going to basically just going to make like a herb paste that we're going to rub underneath the skin. We must separate the skin from the meat on our chicken. This is pretty easy to do. You literally just lift up, find the You literally just lift up, find the gap, shove your fingers. It's just world. I'm going to lift this up and I'm going to start pumping it full of herby oily stuff. But, this isn't meant to be the main flavor of the day. This is meant to be an augmentor, so don't don't go too crazy with this. Now, we're going to let this guy hang out for at least an hour at room temperature, ideally 4 hours to even overnight in the fridge. Now, for the other mise that we have to put on plus for this recipe, we got to thickly slice some onions, two lemons that I'm cutting into quarters lengthwise. Got a whole head of garlic that I'm going to cut in half withwise, exposing all of the lovely cloves. And that's pretty much all the prep we need to do for this recipe. Not bad. So, to make this chicken, I'm going to use the Babish Everyday Pan. This is basically a huge 14-in cast iron kitchen equipment. You can buy it on Amazon. But, if you don't have one, you can totally just use like a roasting pan. That'd be just fine. I'm preheating this guy over like medium heat. Now, I'm just going to hit the outside of the chicken with some neutral oil, just some vegetable canola oil. I'm going to crank it up toward medium-high now. Bigger flame means more heat out here around the edges. That's where we want to live. Got some little wisps of smoke coming off the the oil in the pan. That means it's time to go. Place it down in the pan. yet another pan. Hell, you want. That's going to ensure that the chicken skin is making as much contact with the bottom of the pan as possible. Just in case my stove or my pan has any hot spots. Just going to rotate this guy 90°. Now, I think we're probably good to go. put it back on the tray where it's going to hang out for a sec. Now, into that, have a nice sear, let's give them a little I'm also going to clear a little bit of space here. I'm going to throw down the garlic cloves. heat. I want to put some sear on them. And we can start adding the lemons. Give everybody a toss. Oh, yeah. Picked up some great color on those onions. Place the chicken back in. Now, this whole guy is heading into a 400° F oven with convection. Finish cooking the chicken, finish crisping everything up, give us some really beautiful jammy onions and roasted lemons for our sauce. onions and roasted lemons for our sauce. Here comes our engagement chicken. I'm going to remove the chicken from the situation yet again. Still glassy crisp. Now, in the pan, we have all of these beautiful browned onions and garlic. Crank it over medium-high heat. Just look at those jammy caramelized onions. We got this guy back up to a simmer. Now, I'm going to add half a cup of each chicken stock and sherry. Not cooking chicken stock and sherry. Not cooking sherry, not sherry vinegar, dry sherry. head cuz it's got the paper still on it. Now, we're just going to cook this down until it's nice and thick. Look at that. Look at that sauce. Oh my god, Babish Nation. Wow, that's good. What it needs is fat. I have some nice cold cubed butter here. I'm just going to drop that in. I'm also going to add some of our herbs. Now, to plate up the chicken, I'm simply going to take a pair of shears and just cut down right through the center. And there you go, perfect half a chicken. I'm going to lay down a bed of our sauce, blanket with some of our hand-seared lemons, place the bird over top. And there you have it, my take on engagement chicken. is is good for camera on the bottom, but when you eat it, just put on top. Cuz it get to under. It's less engagement chicken and more is the courthouse still open at this hour. Do you have a dress? Let's get married right now. trouble. What's that? I mean, isn't it illegal to marry a chicken? No, but the heart wants what the heart wants. Doesn't it? I can't argue with that. No, you can't, and neither will a circuit judge. Uh, well, I No, the name marry me chicken was coined by Lindsay Funston in 2016 over at Delish. It has since gone viral several times over and with good reason. It is so so good. It is a rich cream sauce laden with sun-dried tomato and spiciness and protein pasta and the make is that we're going to make stock. Like you do not need to make chicken engagement chicken left over in the fridge, so we're going to tear that apart, add some aromatics, simmer it for a few hours, and it's slightly, it's going to elevate whatever the inclination, and a big old pot, make yourself some For this recipe, we need three chicken style breasts. I'm going to pat all the back seal goo off of these. It's not to rinse off bacteria or any bull. It's It's to to get the goo off. Sometimes there's goo dry breast for a lot of applications. Now, we're going to butterfly these want them nice and thin into two distinct pieces. Maybe pound these out just a No, these guys are really thin. These can stay as is. These guys could use a little pounding. So, this is a good illustration of when and when not a good illustration of when and when not to pound. even flatness and a relatively same thickness as these little guys. Now, what we got to do is season not too so thin, you don't want to, you know, really overdo it. Now, I'm just going to dry brine them. This is going to keep them moist and tender. You can just do this at room temperature for 45 minutes to 2 hours, or you could do at least 4 hours in the fridge. So, now to get the mise en place for this dish, we need a of flour in there for coating the chicken. We need 3 Tbsp each butter and extra virgin olive oil. We need four to I'm going to do six cloves of garlic. I love taking the whole clove and slicing it lengthwise. It's something I learned from the owner of Cafe Spaghetti. Trade-off is that you don't get as much garlic flavor. So, I'm using a little more garlic. We end up of garlic. All right, I've got one shallot here that I'm just going to very, very finely mince. A quarter cup tomato paste. I like it when this sauce is a passionate red. Teaspoons worth of anchovy paste. This is optional, but fishy, just richer. Most recipes call for red chili flake. I'm going to go with Calabrian chilies. These are a wonderfully unique tasting fruity little going to make this pretty spicy, so I'm going to do probably, uh, eight of these. Next up are sun-dried tomatoes. Uh, the oil that these are packed in is also just laden with sun-dried tomato flavor. I swear though, even if you don't like sun-dried tomatoes, you're going to love this. Basically, I'm just going to rough chop these into strips, and then dinner. Did you know? Did you know that this is my dinner? My actual dinner? So, it better be good. So, it better be good. Just kidding. We'll be right back. marriage is an outdated institution invented to consolidate land ownership? Well, to them I say, sounds like you need some of my chicken in your mouth. Normally, I like to go with fresh oregano for this dish because it's big bracing flavor really fits in well with the other big bracing flavors, but we're just going to do dried today. I couldn't find any fresh. About a teaspoon and a half's worth. I'm going to grab about a cup and a half of our homemade chicken stock, one cup of heavy cream, 2 oz of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano, plus more for serving. And with that, we have to cook. Over on the stovetop, this is pretty much ready to start engaging with the chicken, so I'm going to lightly coat it. Start laying them down. Just doing a little bit here. We really don't need that much health thickening the sauce. Now, these boys need to fry until they're lightly browned on one side. Also, I'm just trying to very very gently cook these. We're not trying to like cook these through. They do not need to be done right now. They can finish in the sauce. All that to burn. So, once it starts getting dark brown like that, time to evacuate. Take it off the heat. Okay, now, over lower heat, it. We're adding our shallot and our garlic. then garlic, but this is all going to cook at a relatively low heat here. Oh man, that smells good. So, we're just going to very gently cook the garlic, no browning, know, 30 seconds of this stuff cooking, I'm adding our tomato paste, our oregano, our anchovy paste, and our Calabrians. Now, I'm basically just going to cook this until the tomato paste starts to stick to the bottom of the pan. We add our sun-dried tomatoes as well. Just let them get to know everybody. chicken stock while I shoot some slow motion. Here we go. And now we want to reduce this by about half. It's going to help continue cooking our veg and and letting all the flavors meld. It already smells incredible. Once we add the good night. Good luck not getting married. See how thick it is? See how it's like having a hard time moving around too much. This is just a big layer of thick, nasty, awesome sauce. I'm going to turn down the heat all the way to low. Let the simmering subside a little bit. Okay, so I have a cup of heavy cream here. I'm going to give it a nice stir. Get everybody all incorporated. Let's add this chicken back in. Nestle into the sauce there. very, very gently for about 5 minutes, just enough to finish cooking the out. We don't want to make it tough or stringy. Once we get that back up to a look like hell till we do. might be a little bit of grease sitting on top, but that's not the end of the world. We could towel it off like a piece of pizza. Of course, we have cooked our pasta 1 minute shy of done, so So way we can minute shy of done, so So way we can finish cooking it in the sauce. In goes along with I'm going to start with probably about 1/3 of a cup of that probably about 1/3 of a cup of that pasta cooking water. going to add a bunch of this Parmesan. Kill the heat. Fold it in. And let that cheese melt gently. And pasta, a couple pieces of chicken. Garnish with some more Parmesan. And of course a bunch of scattered fresh basil leaves are essential for this dish. And there That isn't marry me chicken. It's going to be for the amount of time and effort expended, one of the best tasting dishes possible in 20 minutes. Like it's so chock-full of flavor. I would call it everything that's great about chicken parmesan with more flavor and done in 20 minutes with no deep Mhm. The chicken is tender and juicy from the dry brine. One of the most delicious things in the world. let's get married, never have kids, spend all the money that we save on traveling the world, going to live shows, doing whatever we want, but then we just end up doing what we always did, chilling on the couch, watching Netflix, other. And it's pretty awesome. So what did we learn today? There is no dish that's going to make somebody fall in love with you or marry you or become engaged with you, to you. But rather making a meal for somebody demonstrates just how much you care about them. It's a loving, nourishing, and giving act. But you have to use one of these three recipes, otherwise it's not going to work. my way or that's that's it. Bab with Babish. Will you marry me? Will you marry me? Will you marry me? Good, I don't want to, either. It's fine.