SETH: I've been coming to kitchens long enough to know we're looking at a uh, different kind of cut of meat here.

What is this?

NICK: This is a sweet bread.

SETH: A sweet bread, which I know is neither a sweet nor bread.

NICK: No, it isn't.

SETH: Discuss.

NICK: This is part of the offal that's inside the animals.

This is actually the thymus gland from a calf.

This was one of the things when I went to culinary school that changed my life when I had it.

These are like adult chicken nuggets and then my favorite way to cook them is we're going to roast them in brown butter.

SETH: All right, because I know we're talking about French cooking, there's going to be some butter involved.

NICK: Just a little bit.

For the sweet bread, we would soak them overnight in a slightly salted ice water.

Then we're going to take that, put it into a pot, cold, with your aromatics, put all that onto a burner at high heat, and then we dump it into an ice bath.

SETH: So, these are the ones that were boiled in the ice bath?

NICK: Yep, so we're just going to do like this, and you can see how that skin just peels right off.

So, depending on how much you love it, this is one portion or two.

We'll do two so we can share because I love it too.

We're going to take our pan, we have a little bit of clarified butter.

We're going to start it on some high heat and then... SETH: The real star.

NICK: Because you can't have enough butter, so I'm going to just season.

(sizzling) Some people like to flour them, I don't.

I like to use them as they are.

We start them in high heat and then we're going to introduce the butter and the herbs.

SETH: Nice.

Nice, healthy amount of butter there.

NICK: I got garlic, I got some bay leaf.

SETH: It's just a butter bath at this point.

NICK: So what's happening is the butter solids are caramelizing and that's what we want to baste over top of the sweet bread.

You want that beautiful foaminess, right?

So, we're basting over the top while it's also going underneath.

SETH: And you can't walk away from this.

I mean, you know, it's, if you're not careful, this thing will burn quickly.

NICK: You can't go take a phone call and have a beer.

It's like when you're making caramel, think of it that way, right?

It goes from nothing to almost on fire.

SETH: Oh, my goodness.

And there's just a beautiful aroma happening already.

NICK: And that's where you're getting all the milk solids, toasting and caramelizing.

SETH: Smells like caramel almost.

NICK: Just flipping these over.

So we can color both sides evenly, but we're going to continue to baste.

SETH: And is butter what drew you to French cooking as well?

NICK: Well, I was trained in all the beauty of Hollandaise and lamb navarin, and duck a l'orange, so it was always a foundational base of my cooking.

SETH: And it's such a cliched expression to this point to say butter makes everything better, but... NICK: Butter does make everything better.

SETH: It's actually true.

NICK: Pull these guys out, and then in our same pan, we're going to also cook our garnish in.

Right now we're doing it seasonally with celery root and mushrooms.

We have all that flavor of the butter that's in there.

While that's roasting, we're going to do the brown butter sauce.

So we take some more butter and we're going to bring this up.

So now we're going to take this, we're going to finish this with some fresh cut parsley.

SETH: Ooh nice.

This is looking mighty good, chef.

NICK: So, I'm going to put this out to blot and dry.

You can see in here the butter starts to foam.

Once you get to this light blonde, foamy spot, we're deglazing the pan with lemon juice, and then we're going to add our veal stock.

Well, the veal stock's going to give us a little bit of body to help keeping it from the sauce splitting.

SETH: And the lemon juice will give you a little bit of acid to balance everything.

NICK: The acid to help cut through some of the fat and the butter and then that brings it all together.

There we go.

We're ready to plate.

SETH: Nice.

♪ ♪ All right, chef, I'm excited to try this.

Just swimming in this brown butter.

NICK: Smells delicious too.

SETH: It sure does.

NICK: And it pairs great with red burgundy.

SETH: Of course.

NICK: Cheers.

SETH: Cheers, chef.

Delicious.

All right, and no steak knife needed for uh, for the sweetbreads.

NICK: No, the protein's soft enough.

The knife should cut right through it.

SETH: Gosh.

You know, I was expecting something super gamey.

The brown butter though, a little bit of lemon juice, that acid and just how unctuous the texture of that sweetbread is.

That is just outstanding.

NICK: That's good stuff.

SETH: I can see why you fell in love with brown butter.

These mushrooms, the celery root as well.

Also going to have a similar meaty texture to them.

NICK: Yeah.

And as you're putting the components of a dish together, you want some things that give you some contrast but also give you some balance so, that play well with it.

SETH: I like this butter, not a fleck of black.

You pushed it right up to the edge, I'm sure just, you know, one minute too long and you're going to have a totally different... NICK: Like 10 seconds too long.

SETH: And I think this is delicious and I'll eat just about anything, but what would you say to people who are maybe scared off by the idea of organ meat or offal just generally?

NICK: If you see it on the menu and you're at a restaurant that you love and trust, from a place that you frequent, I would give it a try because you'd be pleasantly surprised.

SETH: And there's probably going to be some organ meats that are a little gamey or a little more out there flavor-wise than this.

NICK: 100%.

Where you know, like liver has... You got that irony mineraly piece to it.

So this is a totally different, different flavor profile from it.

SETH: A little starter organ meat.

NICK: There you go, the gateway.