Cooking is just as much an art as it is a science, so it's no surprise that Andrew would often want to improve upon a given food item.
- Since the "World's Greatest Sandwich" is just a BLT with cheese and a fried egg, Andrew decided to go through the time and effort to make homemade bread in order for the video to have more content.
- Similarly, the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.-inspired sandwich is quite simple, so a significant portion of the episode is devoted to making homemade ciabatta bread for the sandwich.
- "Eggs in a Nest" once again sees Andrew go through the extra mile to make bread from scratch, except here he decides to make a loaf by weight of ingredients following five "dud loafs" made by volume of ingredients. It's worth mentioning he's doing this while on vacation in Vermont.
- The breakfast sandwich from Birds of Prey (2020) also went the route of making the bread from scratch but went a step further by making the sandwich how it was really made, in this case substituting the chicken eggs for duck eggs because the actress for Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) is allergic to the former.
- Before McDonalds came out and rereleased it, Andrew decided to make "Szechuan Sauce" from scratch based on what he thought it would taste like. When it was re-released, he got his hands on a sample and the recipe and attempted to make an exact replica.
- Since, based on appearance, the Big Kahuna burger looks like just a regular cheeseburger, Andrew decided to go the extra mile and (after making that burger) cook up what he thinks a Hawaiian-style burger would be like; a double smash burger with Monterey Jack cheese, ketchup, teriyaki sauce, caramelized onions and grilled pineapple, served on a toasted King's Hawaiian roll.
- In a similar vein, he improves on the Krabby Patty by adding more ingredients to increase its savoriness and assembles it in what he considers the proper order.
- After making the Ultimeatum, Andrew decides to improve upon it with more flavor variety; meaning more meats and cheeses (most notably, adding fried Pastrami and Pepperjack Cheese), no buns soaked in burger juice, a unique cheese and bacon-stuffed patty, and all slathered with homemade Himalayan-style Ketchup.
- While making an actually palatable version of the Every-Meat Burrito was out of the question, Andrew made an Every-Pork Burrito based on several Mexican pork dishes/products (plus bacon) that was actually tasty and even larger in size than the Every Meat.
- Andrew improved on Rachel's trifle with the result being not awful, though still not great.
- Similarly, improving on Beet and Acorn Cookies resulted in cookies that were not disgusting but still inferior to pretty much any other kind of cookie.
- The Cheesy Blaster was simple enough that he made it twice, with the second attempt using a better pepperoni pizza. He then made a third one in the form of a calzone from scratch.
- Averted with the Car Panini; after making it more structured with the second attempt, Andrew suddenly felt stumped over how to make the sandwich somewhat palatable, so he has turned the challenge over to the viewers, with the winner's recipe being featured in the three-million subscriber special.
- The three-day potato salad was easy enough on the first go, as Babish noted that the potato salad shown appeared to be the standard form of potato salad (with the only real difference being Babish pickling his potatoes in order to achieve the "three-day" prep caveat). But then Andrew noticed that pickling the potatoes didn't really make a difference taste-wise, so he kept trying alternative variations of potato salad until he achieved a noticeable difference. However, what he ultimately did to accomplish that was to just make french fries instead.
- The bacon & egg breakfast from Howl's Moving Castle sees Andrew try to make the episode much more interesting by making his own homemade seasoned, cured and smoked thick bacon from scratch.
- For the secret ingredient noodle soup from Kung Fu Panda, Andrew attempts to make genuine Chinese lamian (hand-pulled noodles), and learns firsthand why it takes decades to master that skill. He then shows his audience how to get close-enough results by running the dough through a pasta maker attachment (which basically makes the noodles the same as fresh Japanese-style ramen,note though it's not far off from the daoxiaomian or knife-cut noodles served in Lanzhou-style lamian houses).
- Since the $5 shake was just a regular vanilla milkshake, Andrew decided to use Vincent's sticker shock over the price as a baseline for figuring out just how expensive he can make a milkshake be. It's also worth mentioning that Andrew decided to factor in inflation with thisnote .
- Because Tonio's Caprese salad is mainly tomato and mozzarella, Babish uses it to finally home-make cheese, along with Tonio's own Anchovy Dressing as opposed to the usual plain olive oil. Likewise, for Joseph's Spaghetti Al Nero Di Seppia, Babish makes his own homemade Squid Ink pasta — despite showing off a pre-made packet of the stuff beforehand — and a black tomato sauce with the leftover Ink.
- Another aversion in Meat-ghetti and Spag-balls. While it fared better than the last attempt at a dish from a Seth MacFarlane project, Babish was stumped on how to render ground beef into noodles and noodles into balls, and turned it into another viewer challenge just like the Car Panini.
- The Pumpkin Pasties Botched by Babish episode turns out to be one in a roundabout way. Babish's original version — which was essentially a sweet pumpkin-filled pastry — was criticized for not being like a traditional Cornish Pasty,
which are usually savourynote with this episode thus being about creating a savoury Pumpkin Pasty. Kendall then points out that in the books/films, the pasties were part of a trolley of sweets, implying that they too were sweet; and Sweet Pasties, while notably less common, still exist. Babish thus realizes that his original version was not exactly "Botched" — being a reasonably plausible recreation of the books'/films' description of the snack — meaning that the episode as a whole falls under this trope. - Tyler's Bullshit is pretty much making something delicious from the ingredientsnote of an incoherent and borderline-inedible mess of a dish thrown together in a panic by a Know-Nothing Know-It-All. Likewise, for Chef Slowik's Cheeseburger, Babish went all-out on it by blending his own beefnote , crinkle-cutting his own friesnote , baking his own sesame-topped potato buns, and most notably, creating home American cheesenote before going back and doing the latter twice because he wasn't quite satisfied with how the first batch looked.
- While making Coffee Jelly from The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.. Babish decides to make the dessert using Kopi Luwak: the single most expensive coffee in the world (starting at 600 USD per pound), in order to reach the proper price range. Despite this, he would comment that the coffee, while smooth and pleasant, tasted "boring".
- To show solidarity with the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes, Babish would make some recipes from fake movies, like "The Crispiest Sandwich" from "They Kidnapped my Son on Christmas." So not only was Babish improving recipes from movies, he had to intentionally make the recipes "subpar" so he could later improve them.
- After making the El Burdigato Supreme from Teen Titans Go! and not being satisfied with it due to too many clashing flavors — itself being a combination of a Cheeseburger, Taco, Pepperoni Pizza and Hot Dog — Babish tried several different variations, with one of the four ingredients being the basis for each one. Although he didn't like the Taco version, he thought the Cheeseburger version was okay and that the Pizza version was good; but the winner was the Hot Dog variation; which had him combine the sandwich in question with a Chopped Cheese to represent the Cheeseburger element, and that he considered genuinely delicious.Babish: I think the biggest takeaway is to make Chopped Cheese and put it on your hot dog, because the Chopped Cheese Dog needs to become a thing; it's tastier, less sloppy and easier to make than a Chili Dog.
