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Photo:Courtesy Photo
Courtesy Photo
If you’re an avid YouTube watcher, you might already know and love The Try Guys. FromWithout a Recipe(a series where The Try Guys compete in making classic dishes without a recipe) to member Keith Habersberger trying complete fast-food menus, the trio are one of the most popular influencers on the platform, with 8 million followers.
To celebrate the new era, I was given the opportunity to talk to two of The Try Guys members (and soon-to-be contestants) Habersberger and Zach Kornfeld. Read on to find out how much preparation goes into eachWithout a Recipeshoot, the behind the scenes, their food hot takes and more.
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EatingWell:Is there any way you can prepare for aWithout a Recipeepisode, especially a live special like this one?
Habersberger:There’s two types of preparation. One is that us contestants are not allowed to be prepared at all in terms of what we’re doing. The only thing we know is what we’re making—we’re making chicken and waffles for the live special—and we need to tell them what we think is in that so [production] can buy those ingredients. But past that, it’s really trying to actually avoid accidentally learning anything. We won’t watchThe Great British Baking Showor other food shows for the few weeks before because you don’t want to accidentally learn anything.
Then on the production side, there’s a ton of prep. We have to build a second kitchen set. We already have one kitchen set, but we have to build a second one so that we can do this. All four of us are cooking at the same time, there’s the camera team, we have to hire live-stream pros, and we turned our podcast studio into a control room. I think our human count for this is like 30 to 40 people coming on to do this show. You go in there and there’s nine screens and people are live, switching through everything. It looks like a football control room.
Kornfeld:It’s funny because, logistically, it is the biggest prep we do as a company. It is the biggest production, the most moving pieces. All of this prep needs to happen ahead of time so it can happen seamlessly in the moment without relying on an edit after the fact. But as contestants, our job is to not think about it at all. I think about it once when I tell the team what I’m making, and in this moment, if you ask me what I’m making, I don’t actually remember! I flush it from my memory so that I am as pure as possible when it is time to film the way to do it.
EatingWell:Since the start of theWithout a Recipeseries a few years ago until now, are there any cooking mistakes that stand out or any lessons that you’ve learned through mistakes you’ve made?
Kornfeld:Everything I know about baking is through the mistakes I’ve made in the show. That’s it. I didn’t bake before, I don’t bake when the cameras stop rolling. I think I see it as my job to only get better on camera, so there’s no extracurricular cooking. You kind of forget a lot that you might have learned, so I just get so frustrated, and [the audience will] watch us make a mistake again. When you watch the episode, you see the chef teaching you what to do right and showing what we do wrong, but we’re not shown this part. We see the tutorial only once, just as every audience member does.
Habersberger:I say the thing that I learned the most, and Zach has learned this too on different episodes, is don’t store cooked meat with pineapple. It makes things go bad. It can taste delicious and then you put it in the fridge for the next day, it tastes terrible.
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EatingWell:Through this series and your other food endeavors, is there anything that stands out to be worth making instead of buying, through its fresh quality or taste?
Habersberger:There’s some simple things that I make now instead of buying, which is corn tortillas. They’re really easy to make: you just buy masa harina, you get some water and salt, that’s it. And once you understand how to do it, which probably takes maybe once or twice of trial and error, they taste so much better. They really are quite easy and it feels like you’re being really impressive when people are over for dinner, but it’s actually way easier than any other bread you can make. The other thing is, I have a sous vide now and I feel like people think of sous vide as things that are for high-end chefs. It’s foolproof cooking; you put something in a bag and you put it in water and time it like a slow cooker. It’s a fancy slow-cook approach, but wow, it makes things so good. It’s totally worth the cost if you ruin things a lot because it’ll sort of prevent you from being able to ruin things.
EatingWell:Anything that you’d never attempt to make again?
Kornfeld:All of it! Especially any of the breads, you’re not better than a baker. Croissants should cost $100, they’re so hard, I don’t understand it! It takes muscles, physical muscles and time and sweat. I’d say any kind of bread is not worth making. If you go to a baker, it’s gonna be way more delicious and it should cost way more than it does.
Habersberger:Don’t make your own hamburger buns, don’t make your own dinner rolls, and don’t make your own bread. I think cakes people can make at home because there’s so many cake mixes, but there’s not popular bread mixes for a reason. There’s still too much margin for error.
EatingWell:Your go-to drink to help you stay hydrated or energized?
Habersberger:The caffeine is definitely flowing forWithout a Recipeshoots. When we’re shooting the episodes, they’re normally 12-hour days and they’re very active. You might be standing up the entire day, so there’s normally a morning caffeine run and there’s an afternoon caffeine run. People are having coffee, tea and Red Bull all in one day. We always forget to drink water. The No. 1 mistake is that we don’t hydrate enough because you’re going really fast and then it never gets into the episodes, but someone will bring one of us a bottle of water and we’ll chug the entire thing in one gulp. We’re just so thirsty.
Kornfeld:For me, it’s matcha. Filming is physically draining, even just standing over a table. Your back hurts, your knees hurt, I got all of us those mushy mats so we’re not standing on concrete all day. Every part of it is tough and the adrenaline is part of it, too.
Habersberger:Zach is a multi-drink queen. He always has a tea, a water, some other kind of sparkling water, a smoothie.
Kornfeld:I like to have two teas, one hot and then I put an iced one in the fridge for later. Off camera right before we film, you’ll catch our producer yelling at me to hide my drinks.
EatingWell:Any food hot takes? Something you don’t like or weirdly love?
Habersberger:I think dessert is overrated, or rather, at least every dessert menu should have chicken tenders on it. Some other savory item for those of us who just want a little more dinner. No one ever comes around and asks, “Did you save some room for more dinner?” I know I would say yes, but they’re always saying, “Did you save room for dessert?” I don’t really want dessert, I would buy some chicken tenders though at this point. Maybe like one like a single chicken tender.
Kornfeld:What I’m about to say is blasphemous within a baking context, but I think butter is weird. I say this as someone who’s severely lactose intolerant and so all of these desserts hurt me. I would be a lot happier if bakers stopped using butter and learned how to make dairy-free treats that I could enjoy.
EatingWell:What does “eating well” mean to you?
Kornfeld:Food and diet is super important to me. I have an inflammatory condition, a disease called ankylosing spondylitis. So I have a very controlled diet because different foods trigger my arthritic pain in different ways. My body is a rocket ship, and the food that I eat is the fuel that allows me to do anything. There is a joy in breaking that diet sometimes, but for the most part I try and think about eating well and feeling well and connecting food and food habits to really reduce my pain but feel good on a day-to-day basis.
Habersberger:Eat the best that you can. If you’re in a restaurant, do your best to eat consciously, but also don’t deprive yourself of a unique experience and then feel mad at yourself for having to stick to that. I was vegan for a while for a project and I really, really enjoyed it. What I learned after coming out of it was that being vegan was tough for me because it made me feel very disappointed that I couldn’t have other things. But I did really like how I felt. There’s eating well in the idea of experiencing all the delicious culinary flavors the world has to offer, and then there’s eating well in the purity of food. And there’s a huge economic component of the ability to eat well in either of those senses.
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