"I can't make a double Krabby Patty with the works!"

"I can't put a patty on a bun with lettuce, cheese, onions, tomatoes, ketchup, mustard, pickles,"

"and top bun together in that order!"

"It's time."

It is time.

As a thank-you to everyone who helped make "Binging with Babish" my full-time job,

it's time to finally make the all-time most requested dish on this show: "The Krabby Patty".

The ingredients of which are laid here before you except, of course, the secret ingredient.

What is the secret ingredient?

Well, I just happen to have some right here.

That's right, I've finally cracked the code.

After a year of research, I've come to the conclusion that the secret ingredient

is a heaping tablespoon of,

nothing.

That might seem anti-climactic. But it actually makes a lot of sense.

Mr. Krabs is a shrewd business man and it makes sense that rather than buying

expensive secret ingredients, he would create a burger that

is its own guerilla marketing campaign.

That being said, several sources cite the secret ingredient

as being a pinch of King Neptune's "Poseidon Powder,"

which I think is monosodium glutamate or MSG.

So we're going to start by seasoning a store bought frozen beef patty with

salt, pepper and MSG.

Now some people are saying that it's a crab burger but

Mr Krabs is a crab. That's pretty horrible and barbaric even for Nickelodeon.

So, once thawed, we're going to

prepare our burger as much as we would any other burger:

vegetable oil, high heat, cast iron.

Then we are going to follow Spongebob's exact order of assembly,

which starts with lettuce on top of the burger. Which is a terrible idea.

Never do this. I'm doing this for science.

Then we're going to single slice of yellow American,

single slice of Vidalia onion,

tomato, ketchup, mustard,

and, the absolute most important part:

do not forget the pickles.

We don't want Bubblebass doing that God-awful laugh of his.

Top bun, and there you have it: a Krabby Patty with the works

Even kinda looks like that one in the training video, right?

Normal fast food burger protocol would be

to just dig in, but I haven't been able to do

a cross-section in this show in a while.

That's a big relief for me.

Now as expected, this was a totally delicious burger. MSG makes things taste better.

And while it's perfectly safe, I understand if people have reservations about eating it.

And now if you want to up the natural umami content of your burger, here's a few ways to do it.

The first stop is to make a seasoning out of some natural umami bombs.

We're going to start with a bit of bonito flake, which is a shaved dried fish, some dried shitake mushrooms,

some dried konbu, which is a sort of sea kelp. So this seems even more accurate.

If I had to really realistically guess what Mr. Krabs' secret ingredient, it would be that.

And a single anchovy.

Now, this is all sounding pretty fishy--sorry.

But rest assured, this would not make your burger taste like seafood.

We're going to grind this to a fine dust and all we're going to get from them flavor-wise is their glutamate content.

Use a spice grinder like this one to completely powderize these ingredients so they make an easy sprinkling dust for later on.

Now onto the burger patty. Umami refers to the unctuousness and savoriness of a dish

so it would only make sense to use some fatty flavorful cuts of beef.

So we're going to cut equal parts beef short rib and chuck steak into 1 inch cubes

that we're going to place in the freezer for about 15 minutes along with the blade of a food processor to get

everything nice and firm and cold.

Pulse in your food processor until you achieve a nice pebbly ground beef.

Make sure not to over-process your beef or you're going to end up with soft balls instead of burgers.

Back on umami duty, it's time address tomatoes. We're going to oven dry our tomatoes

in a low oven on a nonstick surface like a Silpat. Drizzle with a little bit of olive oil, sprinkle with

a little bit of kosher salt and place in a 200 degree Fahrenheit oven for about an hour and a half

or until they come out frankly little prunes like these guys.

Next to up the glutamate content of our ketchup, we're going to make a puree of sun-dried tomatoes

Add a little bit of olive oil if they're not smooth enough and combine this with a bit of good old-fashioned ketchup.

This is going to add a few additional megatons to our taste explosion. Each one of these steps is optional

but this one is especially optional if you'd like to additional amp up your mustard

and if you like the taste of yellow miso, combine the two.

Last but certainly not least is the issue of cheese. We're going to make parmesan cheese crisps

by baking grated parmesan at 350 for about 15 minutes.

Season and sear the patties as usual and make sure you remove the burger from the heat before

adding your spice powder unless you want to set off every smoke alarm in your zip code.

We're going to assemble our burger properly this time starting with the patty followed by some

caramelized onions, one of our oven dried tomatoes, a bit of our miso mustard, a bit of our sun-dried tomato ketchup

This stuff is awesome.

A parmesan cheese crisp and last word belongs, handful of iceberg lettuce.

Top your burger and slice in half for that cross section and try to contain your embarrassment

over the fact that you've overcooked the patty but celebrate the fact that this burger is a symphony of flavor.

You guys know me, I don't clean my plate unless it's really really good.

Especially because these things are going straight to my thighs before I blow up.