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everything we do starts with you. - Welcome to FridgeCam. Today, we're gonna be
talking about tinned food, good or bad. You're gonna help us decide. Now we did one of these before and there were some very good and some very questionable items in tins. Today, more tinned treats, and I'm gonna cook up
some stuff with them, with a few little tips and
tricks along the way as well. - I am ready. - You know, I love meat in
a tin from that first video. So I'm excited to see where we can go. (upbeat music) - [Ben] Number one, lift the cloche. - What on earth is this? - [Ben] We've deliberately taken, obviously the wrappers and the labels off to see if you can identify
what might be inside. - Looking at the top,
I could make a guess. 'Cause that looks like a burger bun. - Oh my goodness. - It's a tinned burger. - It is a cheeseburger in a tin. I thought we'd start strong. We saw it. We couldn't resist buying it
because we were so intrigued. This particular one came
from a company in Germany that specialises in trekking food. So the stuff that you might
have out in the wilderness, obviously long shelf life,
the beauty of all tinned food, and then easy to prepare. This one, you have the option, but you can just put it in a
pan of water and heat it up in the tin before you open it. - I really wanna try this. What on earth is this going to taste like? - [Jamie] Oh, that's a
cross section, isn't it? - Now when you can things, there's certain ingredients I just would never imagine canning and cooked bread is one of those. Going back to some of the
positives of tinned food. Basically it's a preservation method. So it keeps items safe for consumption without the need for refrigeration. If you are camping, for example. - It smells more of brioche
than it does anything else. - It smells like Christmas. - Joy. - [Jamie] No. - Christmas brings me great joy. Does that bring you great joy? - It smells like Christmas spices. That does not smell like a burger. - It's not delicious. - That is not a tasty burger. - It tastes very fatty, very oily, very sweet from the bread. And then the meat tastes of,
I can't tell you which meat. It tastes of generic meat. - It squeaked as I put it in my mouth. So texture wise, everything
was the same consistency. - What if I told you a tinned cheeseburger was five euros 99. About a fiver. - I mean, if you're in the
wilderness, you'd eat it. You wouldn't enjoy it. - If you're camping, probability is that you've got access to a fire. - Look, we've been camping before and we've created some
amazing things outside on open fires and you can
definitely cook better, but most of those things
need a refrigerator or stuff. So I can absolutely see a place for that. If I'm honest, I chose
to start with this one 'cause I thought it was gonna get a worse reaction than that. - Yeah, unfortunately you are dealing with the basicest of (beep) and that's not that bad. - [Ben] Number two. - Here we go. Oh, now this is what I was expecting. That is, oh, it's really wobbly. - Intrigued so far. There's like a brown gravy, unidentifiable meat coming out of it. - Do you know what? Actually, it looks like
it could be dog food. - First impressions from
looking at it, dog food. Second impression from sniffing it, barbecue, barbecue sauce. - Feel free to decant it. See if it changes your mind. See if you can identify the meat. Yet again, any food straight out of a tin that's supposed to be
served hot never looks good when it's cold. - No. It looks meaty. It's like beef in gravy or something. - Ebbers, would that be pulled pork? - This man knows his meat, even in a can. - Come on, come on! - [Ben] That is pulled pork in an American-style barbecue
sauce with lots of molasses. Now the cheeseburger
absolutely is just meant to be eaten as cheeseburger. This we've actually done something with. - You can actually see the
fibres of the pulled pork before it's even been reheated. So interesting. I would love this to taste good. - Bear with me. There you go, J, you can
lift that little mini cloche. What you have is a pulled pork burrito. - Oh, Ebbers, I knew it! - So you got some lime and coriander rice. You've got pulled pork. You've got pico de gallo
and a homemade guac. The pico de gallo I
made and the guac I made in the time that it
took to boil up the rice and the pulled pork
heated in the microwave in its own sauce in a couple of minutes. So instead of hours and
hours and hours of waiting for pulled pork to do its thing, could cheated tinned
pulled pork be any good? - That's very nice. - The barbecue sauce flavour
really comes through. It's a very strong barbecue sauce. It's very tangy, very
tomatoey, very, very sweet. It's not how I would want pulled pork 'cause it masks the flavour
of the pork too much. - The pulled pork itself
isn't obviously as good as if you slow cooked a pork shoulder. However, if you put that in front of me and I didn't know what
it was and tasted it, I'd tell you it was barbecued pulled pork. So it does, absolutely does that job. If I want a 15 minute burrito, then that's the only way I can get that. - When you put it into a
burrito and you've got rice, and you've got guac, and you've got everything
else going on in there you can't really tell because it's masked by
everything else around it. - Interestingly, the cheeseburger does not interest me in the slightest,
but if I went camping. - Yeah, absolutely. - That, boil up some rice and cook that, suddenly that might be an easy solution. It does the job. - It does. It does a job. It doesn't do the job. - In comparison to, you know,
a kilo of pork shoulder, which is about seven or eight pounds. I can see where I'd go for it. - Mind you four quid. - Oh, what? No. Double that and you can get- - Twice the amount of pork
shoulder that you could cook. - If I have a craving for pulled pork, I'd rather go to the effort of making it. I'd rather do that. And then at the end of the day, have an amazing pulled pork
dinner and then have it for lunch on Saturday
and breakfast on Sunday. It's just there. I'd rather do that than get it from a can. I mean, I'm still gonna eat it. (upbeat music) (people clapping) - [Ben] Number three. - When I knew we were doing this video, this is the type of thing
I expected from you. - It looks like something that clings to a rock under the sea. I'm guessing it's a fruit and I can- - [Ben] You can. I'll prepare it in a nicer form in a bit, but you can. Stored in brine so it's probably
a little on the salty side. - It tastes of vegetable, but like a really diluted
sort of mild vegetable that doesn't taste of enough
to be offensive or delicious. - I have no idea what that is. - That's jackfruit in a tin. So I don't know if collectively we've ever had fresh jackfruit. I know we have had it
as a meat substitute, a meat substitute to pulled pork, sometimes a meat substitute
to chicken wings. I think we had on a street food stall. Most, if not all, UK
supermarkets now stock it. And I think in Southeast Asia
and other tropical climates, they are used as a fruit in themselves. They make great ice cream. They make great smoothies
and things like that. But commonly we see it as a substitute or alternative to meat. - You know, I'd really like
to eat some jackfruit prepared in a way to celebrate
jackfruit instead of trying to be something else. Oh, have you fried this in like
Buffalo sauce or something? - Let me present you with an idea. - Okay. - This is not what I was expecting. - Oh. - So what I've done for you
is heat up the jackfruit which I've sliced a little bit with some Chinese five spice and hoisin and then put it into a pancake roll with cucumber and spring onions. So it is replicating
duck and hoisin pancakes. So it absolutely in this instance is a substitute for duck. - It smells exactly like
a duck and hoisin roll. It looks amazingly like shredded duck. - [Ben] Some of it looks
like leg meat of a duck. Some of it goes nice and crispy. So you get like the crispy bits of duck. - That is delicious. - The texture's like a vegetable. It is fibrous and stringy, but it's got that sort of bite, crunch, of a vegetable, not meat. However, when it's in this, there is no difference whatsoever that I can work out
between this and a duck and a hoisin pancake roll. - Because you're packing
so much flavour into it, it has a really great texture to it. The flavour across the
whole thing is lovely. I really like that. That is such a great substitute. - Whether it's a meat substitute or a great standalone vegetable or fruit. One of the reasons I chose it in a tin is because in a tin, it is so much easier to get hold of, A, and B to prepare. I don't know if you've seen jackfruit. They're big spiky things that need sort of getting into, and therefore, another reason why tinned
food can be excellent because it gives you access to ingredients that are already prepared
consistently for you, without you having to bother. A tin that size from UK
supermarket in brine, one pound 60. So, you know, pretty affordable too. The only comment I would make is if you're using it as a meat substitute, nutritionally, it's not. It's really high in
fibre, which is excellent. It's high in lots of great things, but it is not comparable
as a protein source. Meat typically 25% protein. That's about 1%. So it's not comparable nutritionally, but it is very good for you
because it's high in fibre and all the other wonderful things. - It's amazing. It's really cool. - That's a winner for me. - Do you want one more? - I would love one more. (bell dings) (people cheering) - I'll be intrigued to hear
what you think about this one. - Oh, we're not off to a
good start, are we Ebbers? - This looks like scrambled egg. - [Jamie] Please, please tell
me that's not scrambled egg. - I genuinely think it might be something you've not tried before. I've only tried it once
and up until today, I've never cooked with it, which is why yet again,
after 10 and a half years, I love what we do. Fish a bit out if you want. Have a taste. And then I'll prepare a dish for you. - It's like eggy and cheesy, but watery. - Genuinely, genuinely, genuinely, I wonder if this is
because of the unknown. Because you don't know what it is, because I promise you, it's not that bad. In fact, it's actually quite delicious. - I know, but I'm trying. - So it's salty. It's got really nice texture. It's really creamy. Like, it goes really smooth
when you bite into it. - I mean, I'm guessing it's
a fruit of some description. - So it is ackee. - I have heard of this. I had no idea it looked like this. - From our research,
it's native to western Africa, but now one of the national fruits, pretty much, of Jamaica and they have a dish
called salt fish and ackee which they commonly have for breakfast. In fact, I think it's arguably one of the national dishes of Jamaica. Would you like me to prepare you some? - Yes please because it must be good. And I'm obviously not
eating it in the right way and that's your fault. This is awesome, okay, great. I can't wait for this. - I learnt this dish from
two YouTube channels, Chef Ricardo Cooking
and the Caribbean Pot. We'll put the links down below. Basically onion, bell pepper, and salt fish fried off in oil, scotch bonnet, thyme,
tomato, and then the ackee, which is just drained and used as it is. You don't wanna cook it too much 'cause it will break down
'cause it's quite soft. That is salt fish and ackee. - That is absolutely delicious. - Oh now see, that is really good. - It tastes smoky and
spicy and of the sea. It's like sea salty,
obviously from the fish. - It does the tofu thing
of taking on flavour. - This sort of melts in your
mouth and goes really creamy. And in a dish like this, like you can absolutely
see why it's so popular. So how do you prep the ackee? How do you cook it? - Great question and the reason
why from a tin is the best. If you prepare it wrong, i.e. harvest it when it's not ripe or under prepare it, it
is known to be toxic. It has toxicity levels of things that your body just does not agree with. So you absolutely don't
wanna get it wrong. However, by buying it in a tin, somebody's taken all of
that risk away from you. And it is always consistently reliable. It's a very, very simple recipe once you've got the ingredients. So a big tin like that you
can get from UK supermarkets for between four and five pounds. So again, quite expensive
as a tinned food, but I'm sure you can get fresh
ackee somewhere in London. I've never seen it, but then maybe that's 'cause
I've never looked out for it. What I do know is in a
tin it's very affordable, very easily got hold of,
again, stocked in supermarkets. And you know that it's
always consistent and safe. - Interestingly, I think
the only way you're going to buy that is if you know
what you're doing with it. But what I'd love to do is
go to the international aisle in a supermarket and
find some tins of things that I don't recognise, like the ackee, buy them and then research
what to do with them to make the most out of them
'cause that is delicious and I've never had that before. - What you just described is the journey that I've been on the last
week in preparation for this. And you realise there's so many great
people out there cooking their national dishes
as beautifully as that. And then we can be creative. - That is cool. I'd be fascinated to see what
else you could do with that. 'Cause that is delicious. - Tinned food still
gets a bit of a bad rap. And to be honest with
you, often fresh food, if put side by side with tinned
food is going to be better. However, there are so many circumstances where the benefits of tinned food, whether it's consistency,
the price, the accessibility, the safety of it, or if you're in the middle of wild camping and want something in a tin, like there's always a situation where tinned food does have a role. - Absolutely. I think the main thing
that I've taken away from this is that canning something from the other side of the
world is an amazing way for someone like me to
taste something brand new from a culture that just does
such an amazing job with it. - I've never thought
of tinned foods before as a method of food exploration. You know, at the moment I
can't travel to Jamaica, I would love to go. If this is the next best thing and it's made possible by tinned food, then it's a massive win for me. This is what's great about having you on the other end of the camera. Let us know what tinned foods, dishes, should we be trying
from different countries and cultures that are
different from the UK and who should we be looking at, as experts, as contributors, as chefs to get involved and teach us how to make the most of those ingredients? 'Cause if we can travel the world from our studio here in London, whilst we can't actually travel the world, then I think that's a win for all of us. - 100%. - [Narrator] Do you ever
have one of those days where you just can't be
arsed to cook anything? Well we certainly do so
we put together volume two of our best-selling
club book, "CBA 2 Cook". It's a load of simple recipes
which have been hacked by our chefs to make life so much easier those days you just CBA. Head to https://www.sorted.club/bookshop to get your copy. And now for a blooper. - During lockdown, I've gone through waves of trying to eat healthily and then just goin' on an utter blowout. And there's been times where I've got up at one in the morning absolutely ravenous and eaten things like
pita bread outta the bin, slices of Edam. So if I was in a similar situation knowing I had a cheeseburger in a tin, I can see myself eating that
at one in the morning, easily.
