How to Make a Vegetarian Sandwich That Doesn't Suck (It's Actually Awesome)

- We're making the bean torta today. - Last year, you were
crowned king of pork. And what are you making me? (Laughs) (bright music) Chef Ray Garcia, of B. S.

Taqueria in downtown LA. The king of pork is
going to make vegetarian. - Yeah, well I've been typecasted as the king of pork. Everyone expects trotters, and bacon, and snouts and ears.

And we do that. We do plenty of that. But this is something to show that we know how to
use vegetables as well. This is a sandwich that
is inspired by my wife and in-laws and in her family.

She's Argentine and
milanesa is a big thing. It looks very much like a French pieyard or an Italian milanese. It's a cutlet that's breaded and fried. It's not unusual to
see milanesa in a torta but usually it's chicken, or it's pork.

You know, it's not usually a beet. - So what exactly are this patty that you're working with? - What we've done is
we've taken a large beet, we've poached it in a little bit of, sort of a vinegar water, to give it a bit more flavor. Sliced it thin, breaded and fried. - So this isn't actually
like a beet patty, where you've broken it down and reconstituted a patty.

This is like a big ass beet.
- [Ray] I've cut just a big ass beat that we've taken a slice of and breaded. - Nice. So it's like you take it to the fryer, and then how long do you
drop it in there for? - For a piece this size, it takes maybe about two minutes or so. With a beet, you're not
going to have to worry about it being raw the same way you would, you know, a piece of chicken.

You just have to be
careful because the beet has so much natural sugar that you don't want it to burn. But you do need to make sure that you get a little bit of that crunch. Because you know, a
soggy, oily breaded beet is no fun. This is it in it's pre-fried state and now you can smell it.

A little bit of a cumin comes out, some of that pepper and a lot of the crunch and the caramelization of the beet itself. So we have a little bit of telera bread is the name of this style of bread. We make it here in-house. It has a nice, soft sponginess to it.

We're going to cut it in half. You always want to balance
flavors and textures. We're going to put a little bit of butter on the inside, then toast it lightly on the griddle so you get a little bit of that crunch. Just giving it a little butter here.

We'll put it on our flat top. - What was the inspiration
behind B. S. Taqueria? - B.

S. Taqueria is in the same family as Broken Spanish, my other restaurant. It was the opportunity to showcase a lot of these flavors and dishes that I'm very familiar with. There's introduction of French technique and a little bit of Italian style.

But really playing into
my own Latin roots, and the roots of this city. - How long do you end up toasting this guy off for? - On this grill, the grill's pretty warm, it takes about a minute. And again, you just want
that golden crunch there. Going to put a little bit of mayonnaise.

We make a homemade Kewpie mayonnaise so it's in that style of Japanese. - Japanese style? - Kind of Japanese
style so it a little bit of rice wine vinegar, malt vinegar, a little bit of sugar. - It's going to give a little bit more depth to the flavor
than your best foods? - Exactly. A little bit more depth.

And again that's something
that's Broken Spanish. It's a Japanese type of ingredient but it has all of the flavor components that are going to make this torta great. - So when you have
something like the flavor of the beet which can be pretty earthy, what do you try to balance it with with the rest of the torta? - You want to balance it with a fair amount of acid, and you want to tone down, like you said, some of that earthiness. If we took the beet and roasted it, it could become almost muddy and very strong, which is not what we want.

We want the sandwich to
eat light and bright. We get a little bit of the freshness from the cilantro, a little bit of lemon
juice that I have here. Again it's going to help cut through some of that richness. We have some, what's called escabeche, which is carrots, serrano, onion, garlic, and apple cider based vinegar.

And then some pickled beets, which get a similar treatment as the escabeche. - Again the beets fried in there, but then you're getting them tied into the pickle flavor component. - Right, when you taste it, it's not completely soft or not fully broken down. This is going to bring back some of that punch.

Then we put the lid on. Just like any good sandwich, there some of the good toppings that fall off there. (Jeremy laughs) So now we cut the sandwich in half. Gives us a chance to see all the beautiful ingredients inside.

You can see you have the red beet, some of the escabeche, some of the lettuce, the herbs. And that's the beet torta. At B. S.

Taqueria. - Okay. - It's time for us to do
the most important thing. Let's try it out.

- Yes. That's why I have this show. I just want to go and
get as fat as possible. Even though it's a beet, it's deep fried, so it still works for me.

(Ray laughs) - I've had it a hundred times. I still love it. - You had me eating blood the last time I was here. The fact that you could
get me eating blood and now it's like you're getting me eating beets.

Now you just need to make me broccoli (Ray laughs) and get me enjoying that. That would be a miracle. I love that it's not hammering over your head that it's a beet. You get the earthiness of it, but it's not like you're drinking a bottle of pressed beet juice
or something like that.

- Exactly. And that's part of the challenge and the excitement, especially as big meat guys. I want to leave you satisfied. I don't want to go "Oh, okay, "of course I had a beet sanwhich and so "it wasn't satisfying, "it was filling.

"I'd love to add bacon to it". I'd add bacon to most anything but this is probably the one that I think, "You know what? "I don't think it needs bacon". - You're converting me on beets. (Ray laughs) I don't actually like beets and I can't stop eating this, which is insane to me.

I couldn't believe it. - We'll work on broccoli
for next time then. - It's not going to happen (both laugh) (bright music).