Binging With Babish: 100 Recipes Recreated from Your Favorite Movies and TV Shows

Best for fans of the YouTube show, who want to recreate the creations in their own kitchen.
As a standalone cookbook the recipes are a bit haphazard, and loses the benefit of seeing the clip from the film/TB show the dish is based upon, and the process of making it, both the screen accurate and more culinarily correct versions.

The recipes themselves tend to be fairly traditional renditions of popular dishes, with a few oddball concoctions. Some require expensive ingredients and are likely more time consuming than they're worth, hence better watched on YouTube than actually making yourself. In fact, in several of the recipes the stated verdict by the author himself is that they aren't worth the time or effort, which begs the question of show more why they were even included.

To make things worse, the author seems to have little to no confidence in his own recipes a lot of the time, even the ones that are entirely his own creation, and hence theoretically not unduly constrained by the source material. In an illustrative example, he complains that his eponymous version of the fictitious "butter beer" from Harry Potter is "far too sweet", yet he still includes a rather large amount of sugar syrup in addition to the other ingredients, which should be plenty sweet without it. Why he includes an unnecessary ingredient that ruins the dish is not explained, and makes the reader question the quality of the recipes and the author's commitment to the entire project. It would be simple enough to have listed the syrup as "optional" or else note that the recipe is the way he made it for the show, and present an improved version (or at least suggestions for improvement if that is too much hassle for the more complicated recipes) for anyone attempting to make their own.

The motivation behind which foods to replicate from which shows is occasionally revealed, but mostly left an unexplained mystery to the reader. As is the reasoning behind the particular direction chosen for interpretation from vague on-screen references. Including this thought process would have made the book a lot more interesting and useful, to use a jumping off point for further experimentation.

A disproportionate number of the recipes are various types of sandwiches, including lots of burgers, such as four (4) different versions of Krabby Pattys. Again, the lack of consistency is befuddling. Some start from scratch, with lengthy marinating, homemade bread, and reducing of sauces. Others rely on pre-packaged or commercial ingredients. But it's not always the ingredients that make the most sense, in either case. A lot of the recipes fall into the laborious "make it once so you can say you did", such as homemade McDonald's chicken nuggets or Thomas Keller's elaborate take on ratatouille.

Since the order follows the way the episodes aired, there is no rhyme or reason to how they appear, bouncing between sweet and savory, Asian and Italian, fancy and trashy. Since the food in each episode didn't seem to be in any particular order either, this makes for a bewildering mishmash, and renders the table of contents useless. For instance, even the multiple renditions of Krabby Pattys are split into 2 sections many chapters apart. Only the index will ever be of use to refer back to a specific recipe. At the very least, there should be a clear indication of episode # (assuming these are available to cross-reference) and a link to the corresponding video so the reader can follow along.

On the positive side, anyone who dared follow along "Julie and Julia" style would be rewarded with a variety of cuisines and techniques, and would undoubtedly be a much better and more confident cook by the end of it. show less

I love this man’s YouTube show! The book was excellent and I loved the verdicts under each recipe explaining his thoughts on the food. I am still waiting for him to make Adrian Veidt’s Birthday cake from HBO’s Watchmen but time will tell.

I never watch Babish YouTube channel so this is a review from a tv/movie fan. I did watch his channel afterwards and liked it.

The cookbook cover just happens to have Confit Byaldi from my all time favorite animation movie Ratatouille, indeed I have to borrow this book from my library. I haven't make it yet, I don't own a mandeline and even though I can do it all manually, I am saving this for later. Recipe is simple enough.

Chef is another favorite movie with Jon Favreau. I made Pasta Aglio E Olio for 2020 New Year. A tradition to eat long noodles for longevity (superstitious...I know