AI Summary
This video is part of a series where the host tests viral cooking videos to see if they live up to the hype. In this episode, he tries a creamy ground beef pasta recipe from the channel Timeless Food Recipes, which has 1.3 million views. He critiques the recipe's method, offers his own improvements, and ultimately gives it a solid rating after a taste test.
Chapters
The host introduces his series where he tests viral cooking videos to determine if they are worth the hype. Today's recipe is a creamy ground beef pasta from Timeless Food Recipes.
The recipe is only five minutes long, suggesting it's easy. The host notes the video's popularity with 1.3 million views.
The host notices the chef uses a combination of oil and butter to sauté onions, a technique he likes because it allows higher temperatures without burning the butter. He also comments on the unusual onion cutting technique.
The host dislikes dry basil, noting it can burn quickly in hot oil. He also objects to adding flour to the pasta sauce, arguing that the starchy pasta water and cream are sufficient thickeners.
The host observes the sauce looks too thick before adding pasta, predicting it will seize up. He prefers a thinner sauce for better coverage.
The host starts cooking the beef, emphasizing the importance of browning. He uses a technique of spreading the beef and not touching it for at least three minutes to achieve better browning.
The host suggests using the same pan with beef fat to cook the onions and garlic for more flavor, but follows the recipe's separate pan approach for accuracy.
The host promotes Trade, a coffee subscription service, highlighting its personalized matching and fresh roasted beans. He offers a discovery trial with the first bag free.
The host adds garlic and smoked paprika, cautioning not to cook spices too long. He reiterates his objection to flour, but adds it to follow the recipe.
The host explains his preferred order: add tomato after spices, cook down, then add broth, then finish with cream. He believes this deepens flavors.
The host asks viewers to like, subscribe, and hit the bell to support his content, humorously threatening to review frozen pizzas otherwise.
The host recommends two big pinches of salt and black pepper, but suggests tasting after adding cheese before adding more salt.
The host adds cheddar cheese in batches, noting it thickens the sauce. He admits he would have added the beef after the cheese for smoother incorporation.
The host adds cooked penne to the sauce, letting it absorb the liquid. He observes the sauce thickens instantly due to the flour, reinforcing his preference to skip it.
Marcus, the taste tester, gives the pasta a 7.9 out of 10. He praises its ease and family-friendly appeal, though he agrees with the host's critiques about the flour and ingredient order.
The viral creamy ground beef pasta recipe is a solid, easy weeknight meal that delivers on taste, but the host suggests skipping the flour and adjusting the order of ingredients for a better texture and flavor. It's worth making, especially for families looking for a quick and satisfying dinner.
Mentioned in this Video
Tutorial Checklist
Study Flashcards (5)
What is the host's main objection to adding flour to the pasta sauce?
easy
Click to reveal answer
What is the host's main objection to adding flour to the pasta sauce?
He believes the starchy pasta water and cream are sufficient thickeners, and the flour makes the sauce too thick.
01:22
What technique does the host recommend for browning ground beef in a pan?
medium
Click to reveal answer
What technique does the host recommend for browning ground beef in a pan?
Spread the beef out and don't touch it for at least three minutes to allow proper browning without killing the heat.
03:09
What order of adding ingredients does the host suggest for deeper flavor?
medium
Click to reveal answer
What order of adding ingredients does the host suggest for deeper flavor?
Add tomato after spices, cook down, then add beef broth, cook down again, and finish with cream.
07:24
Why does the host like using a blend of oil and butter?
easy
Click to reveal answer
Why does the host like using a blend of oil and butter?
It allows you to raise the cooking temperature without burning the butter.
00:42
What rating did Marcus give the creamy ground beef pasta?
easy
Click to reveal answer
What rating did Marcus give the creamy ground beef pasta?
7.9 out of 10.
13:14
💡 Key Takeaways
Browning Technique
Provides a practical tip for achieving better browning on ground beef by not moving it for three minutes.
03:09Ingredient Order
Explains how changing the order of adding tomato, broth, and cream can deepen the sauce's flavor.
07:24Flour is Unnecessary
Challenges a common recipe step, arguing that pasta water and cream naturally thicken the sauce.
01:22Family-Friendly Appeal
Highlights the recipe's practicality for busy families, making it a reliable weeknight dinner.
12:21Full Transcript
[00:00] What's up dudes? Have you ever seen these super viral cooking videos on YouTube where it's always just a pair of hands, there's some peaceful music, and they have like a billion views? And to be quite honest, some of these recipes look amazing while some of them look absolutely
[00:12] terrible. In my series we'll see about that, I put such recipes to the test to find out if they're worth the hype. Now let's go! Today's recipe is coming from the channel Timeless Food Recipes and it's titled, I tried the viral creamy ground beef pasta recipe, so easy and delicious. It's
[00:28] It's only five minutes long, so it must be easy. Okay. Starting with browning some ground beef. Tell you what, I got some thoughts on that. Really graying some ground beef. Steaming some ground beef, really. Then they're doing a combination of oil and butter to start,
[00:42] which I think they're going to put these onions in here. Oh, a bunch of root now, huh? I've never seen someone cut an onion and then start dicing it from the root end. That's the first for me. Maybe it's a new technique we don't know about.
[00:54] If it's wrong, I've definitely done it. Wait, that's not fully true. for cooking. Okay we're sauteing the onions in the oil and the butter. And I like that trick because you can basically turn up the temperature without the butter burning which is nice. Okay now they're adding dry basil to the onions and the garlic along with smoked paprika. I'm not a huge
[01:10] fan of dry basil. Man those kind of herbs are so dry so when you put it in the hot oil like that they can burn really quick. Oh then we're adding flour in a pasta recipe. Generally we'll cook it
[01:22] in tea but that's that's a no-no for me because you can just thicken it up with the pasta itself in the starchy water. Bit of a rouge she's making. She's making a pasta gravy. Beef broth going in next. All right. Then tomatoes. See I have some thoughts about the order of how you put this
[01:37] together but I'll save that for when we actually cook it. Right on top. Cream and tomatoes going in after the beef broth. Okie dokie. I mean it's gonna work obviously but you can really deepen the flavors here by changing the order of how you put that together. Looks like Kraft mac and cheese.
[01:52] That's a nice orangey color, heifer, okay. Or as the Germans would say, Okay, now the beef's going back in. All right. It's like the lazy van bolognese, which isn't a bad thing, if I'm being honest.
[02:04] But to me, that looks way too thick before the pasta goes in, because as soon as you put that starchy pasta in there, it just kind of seizes up. She used pre-shredded cheddar cheese. Okay, pasta's going in.
[02:16] You can see, even like with her video here, as she's putting that pasta in, it's just immediately seizing up. And if you like a really thick sauce, more power to you, but I like when it goes down a little bit easier. It can be sometimes a little bit too rich if it's that thick.
[02:29] The thinner it is, the more sauce you got. Pearly parsley. That's for turkey's armpits and nothing else. We're really shredding this recipe, but you know what? I bet it's going to be good. It's just, yeah, I got some thoughts on this. It looks cool, but no one's ever been like, damn, I wish there was parsley on this.
[02:43] Well, that's it, my friends. Let's give this thing a cook. Marcus is going to film it. Let's see if it's worth the 1.3 million views. Now, let's start with the beef. I'm going to preheat this pan for a couple minutes. And then I'm not sure if you put oil first with the beef, but I always like doing a little just to start that process.
[02:57] It tends to stick really bad if you don't, unless you really don't move it for a while first. In we go with the beef. See if we can't just, you know, do something like this. Oh, yeah. Circuit area, baby. Giant smash burgers.
[03:09] Works pretty well. I always find when you're trying to brown beef in a pan like this, it's best to sort of spread it out first, and then don't touch it for like at least three minutes, something like that, because generally if you working with ground beef straight out of the fridge it actually going to take a lot of energy out of that pan when you cook with it And so if I flip this over right now we moving around Essentially I going to put this cold top side back onto the pan and it kills all your heat and all your momentum and all your
[03:35] browning. I'm sure if you've ground the ground beef yourself, you may have noticed that. So I'm just kind of letting this cook like a giant smash burger for a bit. And then if we can kind of flip it over in more or less one or two goes and do the same thing on the other side, I think you just
[03:49] get better browning that way. Alright, it's been about three minutes. Normally I like to season it a little bit here, but I'm going to stick to the recipe as close as I can. The other thing is if you flip your spatula upside down like that, you just get better scrappage. So let's try that.
[04:03] And obviously I can't flip the whole thing over, but I can like, you know, take chunks like that. And there we go. We got a little browning to start. Obviously it needs more, but I'll just keep letting it cook on this other side now. And so I noticed she's starting all her pasta
[04:15] ingredients in a separate pan. I'm going to do that because I'm going to follow the recipe, but whenever I make something like this, I like to just take the beef out of the pan when it's done and then use the same pan with all the beef fat. And then you can cook the garlic and the
[04:27] onions in it, which only does it a lot of good in spots you don't carry in a pan. But hey, all good. And I actually like taking a potato masher here to break up my beef. It works surprisingly good
[04:39] because it pushes the beef through all those little holes on the top. So you're breaking it it up by smashing down and then you're also breaking it up by pushing it through those little holes and like, look how well that works. So I'll continue browning this off behind me on my actual stove while we build this off. Now I don't know about you, but I absolutely love
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[05:55] Thank you, Trey, for sponsoring this video. Now back to the recipe. And I love these kind of pots for pasta. If you have one, if you don't have one, just use a big pan or whatever. And now she does a blend of oil and butter, which I actually love that move because you can raise the temperature of what you're cooking without burning the butter,
[06:10] which is always nice. By the way, I designed this kitchen knife. It's not ready for release yet, but I've been prototyping this for a year and a half now, and more on that soon. So here we go with the onions, just diced yellow onions, and let's cook. The urge to add salt and pepper right
[06:24] now is immense, but sticking to the recipe, I'll explain my thoughts about how to put this together a little bit while I do it and a little bit after. I can already tell the recipe is going to be good. I just have a few thoughts about how to put it together, like the order basically. After about
[06:39] five minutes. Then these onions are a little soft and translucent. I'm gonna add my garlic and we cook this out for another couple minutes and we add our smoked paprika and you don want to cook these spices too long though They can burn so I just gonna go like 10 15 seconds before adding the flour now I have a problem with the flour here Look to each their own if you want a thicker sauce
[06:59] and a lot of people like that, you can put flour, no problem, but when you have cream and you have the starchy pasta going in here, you really don't need to add flour. It's gonna be plenty thick without it, but let's stick it in anyway.
[07:11] And whenever you're working with flour in a sauce like this, or roux, or bechamel, you definitely want to cook it out for at least a few minutes to get rid of any of that raw floury taste, just FYI, which I've done right now. And at this point, we're going to add our beef broth.
[07:24] So if it were me, I would add the beef broth after the tomato. Like if I were cooking this, I would have skipped the flour and added the tomato right after the spicy soup. Cook that down to sort of intensify the flavor of the tomato.
[07:37] Then add the beef broth. Then cook it down again. Then finish with cream. So that is something I can tell you right now I would change about the order. And also, whenever you add your broth after the flour here, you need to let it heat back up and cook out for a minute or two to really get the effect of the thickness from the flour.
[07:51] Just FYI, if you think it's like, oh, why isn't it thick? It just needs some time and heat. Oh, by the way, I didn't put dried basil in with the smoked paprika because I hate dried basil. I don't think it tastes like anything, and I'm just going to be adding fresh basil later in the recipe.
[08:04] But if you have it and you want to use it, go for it. Also, those kind of little dried herbs, man, those things will burn like almost instantly. So you can see now it's already thickened back up. Just see by me stirring this, right? It's like a gravy almost.
[08:16] At this point, we're going to add in our tomato sauce, which, by the way, isn't marinara. It's literally just tomato sauce. And so you see here, I feel wrong for me to do that because I've just been trained to cook out tomato products to intensify that flavor and remove that sort of tart tinge before moving on.
[08:31] But I think if we cook it out here a little bit now, it should be fine. And she adds the cream like immediately. God, I guess I'm going to do that. I really don't want to. I want to cook this down, but I'm going to. because that's what she does. So in we go with the cream. And real quick, unless you want me to start
[08:44] making videos where I try every single frozen pizza in America, please consider liking the video, subscribing, and hitting that bell notification so I can continue to do what I love, which is just to provide you with awesome home-cooked recipes. I'll never forget one of the first restaurants I
[08:59] worked at when I was like 17. I used to make myself a little pink pasta just by using marinara and cream and meatballs and some cheese. And I loved it. I would eat it like every day as my And the chef one day asked me if I could make him one.
[09:12] And dude, like, I poured my soul into that pasta. I was shocked, dude. It was like a big moment. I'm like, the chef wants my food. And I don't really remember what he thought about it, but I was scoring pretty high that day. All right, now we know this is gonna need salt, guys.
[09:26] I wouldn't do one little pinch either. I would do kind of two big pinches. So a little progeny of it before we put it in the foodie. Black pepper. This is really a preference thing. I've never been upset about too much black pepper in the dish, so in you go. And there is some cheese coming next, so you may not want to go too crazy with the salt.
[09:42] I'm thinking about it rationally. You might want to taste after the cheese and then add more salt if it needs to. But I didn't put salt in any of the stages in this recipe, so I think it's going to be fine. Let's see how thick it gets when you put the cheese in, because this is quite a lot of liquid for a little pasta dish.
[09:56] But I think the cheese is going to thicken it back up. She puts the cheese after the beef as well. Or maybe I put the cheese first so I can really whisk it in and make it nice and smooth without having the chunky pasta in there. But it's going to work either way. So in we go with the ched.
[10:09] And let's turn the heat down a little bit now. And I gonna work it in in batches like this Never a bad move Oh man I had to put the beef first It too late now I already doing it So there you go You know what It all just a flop at the end of the day which is the best kind of food man It not knocking it I love flops I like the idea of cheddar in here man
[10:28] I just like cheddar. And now back in with our beef, which as you can see, I ground a little bit more. See, man, if I were to build the sauce in the same pan I cooked the beef in, I'd be getting a lot more flavor in there. I can scrape this pan a little bit, but all that
[10:41] clog. It's worth using. Sorry about the sound. It didn't sound great. All right. Here we are, friends. You can see it's pretty thick now with the added cheese. I like the consistency. At this point, I'm going to just tear some basil leaves in here, whereas the English would say, I'll just
[10:54] finish with this. I say, yo, this pasta's looking nice and orange. Family rushing in so fast that they break the door hinge. It was pretty good. All right, friends, here we go. Honestly, it looks pretty good. Let's get the pasta in here. I'm just using a penne. You can do whatever you want.
[11:08] Just a little stir. Then we can just get the pasta in. You always want to cook the pasta in the sauce a little bit. Let it absorb that nice liquid you made. I mean, I can tell right now. Look at it. It's not going to be bad. That's for sure. So I'll cook it in here for literally two minutes, three minutes.
[11:23] Look how, like, you see what I mean about the flour? Look. Instantly. I mean, it's been in here for 20 seconds. Instantly. Super thick. I just think you could skip the flour altogether. It's still saucy, but I like my pasta a little bit loose.
[11:37] The good news about a pasta like this is that you can get pretty high with it. Let's see how high we can go. You just gotta take a medication, plop it up, and then it goes. Not so bad. Quick one, and high again. Oh! That's it. Okay, and one more. Oh! Didn't spill a drop, baby.
[11:49] Still got it! Alright, friends, let's plate it up. Here's our final product. Ew, look at that. Got a little more basil here. Let's finish it off. She did parsley, but hey. Hey!
[12:01] Honestly, it looks really, really good, but let's get Marcus in here and get this in the taste test and get the proper rating. Howdy. He's a dangerous man. All right, Merchants, here he is. Let's see.
[12:21] I mean, you know, there's nothing wrong with it at all. If you make this for your family and you're not all Michelin star chef, you're just going to be like, that was great, let's make it again sometime. It feels like a mom came home from work and made dinner for everyone
[12:33] and no one's mad at her. Very easy to pull off. I stand by everything I said in the video. I'm not going to repeat myself. I just wasn't here. But just in terms of how you put it together, reduce the tomato hurt, then add the cream. This would be great with Parmesan.
[12:46] I actually like the cheddar here. You know there's cheddar in there? It doesn't taste like cheddar cheese, but it does add this nice umami saltiness from the cheddar that I like. But I really like cheddar. I think it's great if you got ground beef and made all the other ground beef things and you want some pasta.
[13:01] Yeah. The other thing I would say is just skip the flour. It's a little too thick for my liking, and it would thicken up just as fine without that flour. But I'm a sucker for pink sauces. I like that combination of tomato and cream. It's nice. Cream is fatty.
[13:14] Tomato is acidic. It just makes sense that they go together. Yeah, this is a solid recipe, guys. Nothing, not a lot to really fault here, except for all the things I already faulted. Marcus and I have discussed internally, and he gives this a solid 7.9 out of 10. It's definitely worth your time.
[13:27] Make it. And if you've ever wanted to be part of a really cool food community here on YouTube, definitely check out the Sea Chef and that's my members community here on YouTube if you want to learn more just watch the trailer by clicking that join button
