Hey what's up guys, welcome back to
Binging With Babish, where this week thanks to a sponsorship from Crunchyroll,
we are taking a look at the okonomiyaki from Sweetness and Lightening a dish
whose name literally translates to as you like, so you can really put pretty
much whatever you want there. But we're gonna take a look at the more
traditional fillings that you might find in this Japanese Street food. We're going
to start with the okonomiyaki sauce, a very simple sauce that starts with a tablespoon of white sugar
2 tablespoons of oyster sauce 4 tablespoons of ketchup and 3 and 1/2
tablespoons of worcestershire sauce I know it said it wrong I'm just trying to
trigger you. We're gonna whisk everything together using an appropriately cute
little whisk and pour it into a squeeze bottle for easier distribution down the
line. Now ideally we want to score some actual Japanese Mayo for this recipe but
we can make a close approximation at home using 1 cup of plain old mayo
combined with 1 tablespoon of rice wine vinegar and a tablespoon of sugar.
Viscosity is key here we want a consistency a little bit runny or just
slightly than regular mayo you can see mine is a little bit too thin I'm gonna
pay for that later on. And now for the non batter elements of our pancake. We're going to roughly chop some pickled red ginger, a few scallions, and a whole half
a head of cabbage. To do that we're gonna start by cutting the half in half, cut out
the core, and slice into thin ribbons. Then cut those ribbons into bite-size
pieces by cutting crosswise until you can imagine them fitting in your mouth.
Make sure everything's chopped down to size and now it's time to start making
batter. Now you can buy packaged okonomiyaki flour, but well it seems to
be generally frowned upon by okonomiyaki enthusiasts, so if you want to be legit
combine 1 cup of cake flour with a teaspoon and a half of baking powder.
You'll see that I'm making some dashi broth we'll use that in a minute. First
we've got to whisk together our dry ingredients and then it's time to
wrangle one of the strangest vegetables we've ever had on Binging With Babish,
the Japanese Mountain yam which when grated turns into ectoplasmic goo. This
apparently not only helps bind the pancakes together but contributes to its
signature flavor. If you can't find one of these just use 1/2 a cup of milk
with an extra teaspoon of baking powder. We're adding the 1 cup of dashi broth to
the dry ingredients along with the yam, and whisking to combine but just barely.
Just like any pancake we don't want to over whisk we want to prevent gluten
development and allow the dry ingredients to fully hydrate in the
fridge for 30 minutes. Then we were going to crack and lightly beat together four
large eggs and add that to our fresh out the fridge batter
yam mixture. Gently whisk the whole thing together until homogenous and then
it's time to add our desired fillings which can vary wildly but we're gonna go
for a sort of traditional red pickled ginger, tenkasu or fried tempura scraps,
maybe two scallions worth of our chopped scallions, save the rest for garnish and
of course our cabbage which we're going to add maybe about half of to start. Get
it nice and mixed in there make sure it's all evenly coated and add the
remaining cabbage. We're looking for a ratio of cabbage to batter that looks
sort of like coleslaw. That's right about where we want it, this is more of a
pancakey cabbage then a cabbagey pancake. And now finally it's time to
cook. In a large non-stick pan heat two or three tablespoons of vegetable oil
over medium flame until shimmering and then dump in about half of our cabbage
the pancake batter. Use some rubber spatulas to coax it into the proper
shape. You want this thing about an inch and half thick and maybe eight
inches around. Then it's time to layer the top with thin slices of pork belly.
If you can't find this you can use bacon. It's not as authentic, but are you gonna
tell me that bacon on this thing is gonna taste bad? No. Unless you're a liar.
After covering and cooking over medium-low heat for about five minutes
it's time to flip. You're probably gonna want to use the two spatulas to do this,
but if you got a big old badass one like this you just might be able to... huh oh,
that's a relief. We're gonna cover this guy up and let him
cook for another five minutes or until the bacon, er...not bacon pork belly is
nice and crisp. Give it a little visual inspection and flip it out onto a
waiting plate, and now it's time to sauce and garnish. We're gonna start with the
okonomiyaki sauce. Brush a nice generous layer on top, you can't really have too much of this stuff, and then stripe it
with our Japanese mayonnaise, and as you can see like I mentioned before I made
mine too thin. You want the stripes to still hold their shape as you zigzag
across and use a wooden skewer to make the decorative pattern on top. Since this
one's a little screwed up why don't we top this with the traditional
accoutrements starting with some bonito flake which is really cool you can see
it waving around there from the heat. A gentle sprinkling of aonori which
is a seaweed powder and our sliced scallions and there you have a pretty
standard okonomiyaki. I'm really curious to try this thing because it's been
filling my kitchen with crazy smells for the past couple hours and I got to say
really really good. I'm not a huge bonito flake fan but this thing is savory, saucy,
crunchy, and a worthy member of the clean plate club, but this time why don't we try
making one just like they did in the show. Let's start with our okonomiyaki sauce, and let's give our store-bought Japanese Mayo a shot as you can see it's not as thin this is the
consistency for you're going for if you're making it at home dry Gardel and
look at that how pretty and not to be a wimp about bonito flakes but I think I'm
gonna like this version a lot better and what do you know I was right these
things are great they're easy to make tasty filling they'd be most welcome at
your next dinner party hangover breakfast or I don't know baby
gender-reveal barbecue hey guys I just want to say thanks to
crunchyroll for sponsoring this episode if you haven't already go to
crunchyroll.com slash babish for a 30-day free trial unlimited anime
professionally subtitled and available on all your favorite devices if there's
one art form i can think of that truly loves food its anime so give it a shot
and let me know in the comments what you'd like to see next from your
favorite show
"Gender reveal barbeque."
I think the next anime edition of BwB should focus on a classic moment in anime dubbing...
"Jelly Donuts" AKA: Riceballs from Pokemon. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjUtoQaRfE0)
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Ay! I just watched this show! Very sweet story about a single father learning to cook for his daughter and trying to be a better parent (he's already pretty good tbh).
Fuck me, my ex loved this anime... I'm gonna have to resist the urge to send this to her. Looks delicious though
Hey u/OliverBabish, that's Osaka style okonomiyaki! Everything is mixed together
I thought Hiroshima style okonomiyaki was better. Instead of mixing everything together, everything is layered on top of each other.
That said, I'm excited to try this recipe for that little bit of Japan trip nostalgia
Since I loved the anime, this is a no-brainer for me. Probably one of the easier recipes from the show, but nevertheless looking good.
Crazy I just made the Hamburg steak from this anime on Sunday, very delicious btw, and you can actually find all the recipes the show because the author puts them in the manga
It probably doesn't make a huge difference but the ginger that /u/OliverBabish is usually used for sushi. The red pickled ginger that's usually used for okonomiyaki is called beni shoga - tends to be a bright/deep thats a bit chunkier unlike the shavings that sushi ginger comes in. Anyway I'm just nit picking - that okonomiyaki looks real tasty :).