Chef John’s 10 Most Popular Asian-Inspired Recipes

[Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with bulgogi beef that's right i'm going to show you my take on what's generally referred to as korean barbecue although many barbecue purists will claim this has nothing to do with real barbecue but that's okay the vast majority of people don't really care what barbecue purists think they're usually more concerned with how good something tastes and when it comes to this stuff there is no issue in that department this really is incredibly delicious so let's go ahead and get started with the most important component no not the beef the marinade so in a large mixing bowl we're going to start with some flavorful vegetation including some crushed or finely minced garlic and then a little bit of grated onion and sure if you want i guess you could mince that really fine but if you use a cheese grater for this you're going to get more of a liquefied onion which is really what we want here plus who doesn't enjoy good cry once in a while and then speaking of grated we'll also add some finely grated ginger i did that on the microplane we are also going to toss in some toasted sesame oil as well as a spoon of brown sugar okay so we have our aromatic nutty and sweet covered which brings us to our salty element so we'll toss in a generous splash of soy sauce and none of that low sodium stuff we want to go full sodium here and then of course we're definitely going to want some heat which we'll do in the form of korean chili flakes which goes by the name of hold on i wrote this down phonetically go to garo gochugaro i think that's pretty close or not so we'll go ahead and toss in a nice big spoon of korean chili flakes and then last but not least another key ingredient we are going to peel and grate in about a quarter of this asian pear i know it does look like an apple but it is actually a kind of pear and not only is that going to provide some additional sweet flavor but there's actually an enzyme in the fruit that's going to tenderize our meat so we'll go ahead and grate in a little bit of that and then we will take our freakishly small wooden spoon and give that a stir because we are pretty much done with the marinade so we'll stir that together and simply set that aside and go find some meat to slice this magical marinade works beautifully with chicken pork and beef and today i'm going to show you my personal favorite cut for this which would be the boneless short rib which at my butcher at least is sold in these fairly well trimmed chunks you might see a little bit of fat and connective tissue here there but that's okay and all we need to do to prep this is slice it up but not too thin i like to shoot for something between an eighth and a quarter inch and by the way in the blog post i'm going to cover the two major variables here how thin you slice your meat and how long you marinate it for okay by tweaking those two things you can get a vast array of different textures here but like i said i'm gonna go for something about 3 8 of an inch thick since that's my personal preference and as usual we're going to slice across the grain if possible although as you may be able to see i think i did one piece with the grain but that really didn't seem to cause any major problems but generally as a rule we do want to slice across the grain and then once that meat is sliced up we'll go ahead and transfer it into our marinade and stir it together which you could do with your tongs or spatula but i really enjoy using my fingers this feels surprisingly good and i'm not at all embarrassed to admit that it is strangely satisfying not to mention your fingers are always going to do a more thorough job here than any tongs or spatula so we'll go ahead and give that a mix at which point we want to cover this and pop in the fridge to marinate it and how long is going to be up to you the accepted range would be from one hour to overnight but i never let mine go that long i'm a one or two hour guy and again i'm gonna go into that on the blog but my preference is to wrap that up and pop it in the fridge for about an hour or two at which point we're gonna pull it out and prep it for the pan and all that means is we're gonna unwrap it and season it up with a little bit of salt some people will just add more soy in the beginning but it's already a very wet marinade so i do go with a little bit of salt at this point and then to finish this up we'll also add a little drizzle of vegetable oil and we'll give that a quick toss with our tongs and why not fingers this time that's a good question i got kind of tired of washing my hands and once that's mixed up we are ready to cook and for me the best choice is a smoking hot cast iron skillet then i'll brush with a little bit of oil and we'll go ahead and transfer in our bulgogi beef into hopefully a single layer if you're using more than a pound or so of beef you want to do this in batches and then what we'll do is cook this for about two or three minutes per side on the highest heat setting possible and that's going to be it and of course that's an incredibly short cooking time for something that usually is braised for hours but that is the magic of this marinade at work we're gonna get something tender and delicious in like five minutes so just one of the many reasons i love this recipe and of course because this is such a wet marinade you're probably not going to get a super awesome sear on this but that's fine you'll see when we plate up it's going to be gorgeous and having said that you will get some caramelization around the edges but anyway to recap we're going to give that first side a couple minutes and then we'll flip that meat over and then we'll go ahead and give that side a couple minutes and i always know i'm getting close when the moisture in the pan kind of evaporates and it starts to smoke again and yes a well ventilated kitchen with a fan is highly recommended in fact at the korean restaurants where you do this table side they have a fan right over the table but anyway we're going to cook that for about five minutes total at which point we can turn off our heat and pull that out of the pan and we'll serve that up immediately on some steamed rice which is being featured in my traditional korean style plate which by the way is also my japanese style plate chinese style plate vietnamese style plate and i believe also indian style plate so as you long time viewers know that play gets around but anyway i'm going to pile up a nice generous portion of our beef and then i'm going to finish up with some sliced green onions as well as an extra touch of our korean chili flakes or as i attempted to pronounce earlier gochugaru and then if you want you could also top with some sesame seeds but i was out but of course that's up to you you are the young mc of your bulgogi and speaking of bust a move one move i didn't bust was to pick up some kimchi at the store which is pretty much mandatory on this plate so i tried to photoshop some in but you know what that was just not the same so i was forced to serve this as is and yes i do like to give my guest a choice of chopsticks or a fork mostly so my guess using the fork can be shamed by the people using the chopsticks it's all in good fun so let me go ahead and grab the aforementioned sticks and go in for a taste and that really is every bit as incredibly delicious as it looks i mean that marinade really is borderline magical i mean forget borderline it's magical to transform something as tough and chewy as beef short rib with just one hour of marination into something this tender and delicious i think is pretty impressive and something else that would be impressive is if i could get the rice and the meat in the same bite i've really not perfected that move yet but hey i'm only 53 there's still plenty of time oh and by the way not that it needs it but if you did want to splash a little water in there and deglaze that pan you could serve this with some of those caramelized drippings that's usually never a bad thing to be honest i usually don't because it's so flavorful as is that's actually going to benefit the rice much more than the meat but anyway that's it my take on bulgogi beef which as i mentioned is just as effective used with chicken or pork or pretty much any other animal we could catch and slice thinly which really does include a lot of things so i really do hope you give this a try soon head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy korean fried chicken that's right sorry kentucky but for my money this is the best kfc and while this does not include 11 secret herbs and spices it's still incredibly flavorful teeth shatteringly crunchy and there's no bones to deal with so you can eat it super fast alright so let's go ahead and get started and the first step would be to prep the chicken and for this we're going to use boneless skinless chicken thighs and for the size of thighs i'm using i'm going to go ahead and cut these in four pieces each and if you flip it over this way with the smooth side down and the rougher side up you're actually going to see some natural seams in the meat so this one side here that's a little thinner i like to cut it right there which is kind of like i said a natural seam and then another cut right here and then that other side which is just a little bigger a little fatter i'll just turn and cut that in half and that's going to give me four relatively similar sized pieces and then once we've cut up our thighs into chunks we're going to go ahead and toss those in a bowl so we can start the marinade which is super simple so to the chicken we're going to add some salt some freshly ground black pepper some finely finely minced garlic and believe it or not some grated onion oh yeah who does not enjoy a good cry so we're going to take an onion and we're going to take a cheese grater and we're going to grate the onion right into the bowl and by the way do yourself a big favor and just get a half a small onion and grate it i was trying to use up some pieces i had left over which ended up being very awkward to great and hard and i almost lost a nail but eventually i did get it done and no it's not going to be the same if you dice it all right it has to be grated we want all those cell membranes in the onions being torn apart so a bunch of crazy compounds will be released and that's what's going to do the magic in this marinade so we're going to take a spatula we're going to mix that very very thoroughly make sure all that garlic and onion is evenly distributed and once that's been mixed up very very thoroughly what we're going to do is wrap that tightly and refrigerate that from four hours to overnight and while i do prefer leaving this overnight it's totally fine and delicious with as little as four hours okay so we're gonna pop that in the fridge and then really nothing happens until you're ready to fry so we'll fast forward 10 hours our chickens marinated and we're ready to make the batter so that's going to start with some self-rising flour which is just flour with baking powder and salt in it so if you don't have that of course i'll give you the full recipe on the blog and then to the flour we're also going to add some corn starch and then we'll season this up a little bit with a pinch of salt a little bit of sugar and some freshly ground black pepper and that's going to be it for the dry ingredients so we'll go ahead and give that a whisk mix everything evenly and then the last and most important ingredient ice water so we're going to take some ice water we're going to stir that in until we basically have something that resembles a pancake batter and by the way one tip don't just read the measurement i give you for the water and just dump it all in and mix it because what if it's too much all right add 80 of it give it a stir see what you got add a little more etc okay but basically when you're done it should look exactly like this and of course you're gonna give it the old polka poka with your finger to test and it should coat your finger nice and thickly like that so that looks perfect at that point we're ready to preheat our fryer for the first of two fryings so we're gonna go ahead and preheat our fryer to 340 degrees and while that oil is heating up let's go ahead and transfer our chicken into the batter so we'll go ahead and pull our chicken out of the fridge unwrap it and transfer those chunks into the batter and please do not worry about any little pieces of onion or garlic sticking to the chicken all right we want those stuck on there that just adds to the awesomeness and some people do like to do this one piece at a time they'll batter a piece of chicken and throw it in the fryer i like to put all my chicken in the bowl first and then just pull them out one by one and into the fryer so once our oil is up to temperature we're gonna take a piece of chicken that's been thoroughly coated in that batter and we're gonna carefully place it into the oil trying super hard not to splash ourselves in fact feel free to lower it in slower than i just did and speaking of lowering the chicken in you shouldn't have too much trouble with this stuff sticking to each other just make sure as you lower one piece you're not lowering it right on top of a piece that just went in so a crust is going to form on there very quickly but as you're placing these pieces in try to place it into a fresh spot in the oil or at least a spot where there's already been a chicken piece frying but anyway what we're going to do is we're going to fry that chicken for four minutes and obviously because i have a small fryer i'm going to do this in batches so we're going to go four minutes at 340 at which point we're going to remove that to a cooling rack or a crinkled up piece of foil and we'll let that cool down and prepare itself for the final frying and by the way you can do this step ahead of time that's something else we'll discuss on the blog so i went ahead and i did the first fry on the rest of the chunks and even though it's only halfway done there's definitely going to be a little bit of crispiness to it but as they say except in grammar class you ain't seen nothing yet when you are ready to serve you're going to crank your fryer up to 375 and we're going to pop those back in for another frying about three to four minutes or until beautifully golden brown and insanely crispy and of course exact cooking times are going to depend on the size of your chunks but for me about four minutes on each frying was perfect and when your chicken chunks look like that we're gonna pull those out we'll throw them on the rack to drain for a second and at this point you may want to turn your volume up just a little bit because check this out oh man fork don't lie and you know what else doesn't lie teeth anyway as delicious as that was right off the rack and i could have totally eaten that whole batch just like that we are going to plate this up so we can spoon over our amazing and 100 perfectly authentic korean fried chicken sauce maybe garnish with a little bit of green onion if you want to throw some toasted sesame seeds over that's also very nice but suit yourself you are the michelle wie of your kfc and then just in case you thought i faked those sound effects earlier let's go in with the fork and above and beyond the amazing amazing texture that chicken's so moist and flavorful and you got those little microscopic pieces of garlic and onion in there just a fantastic experience so anyway there you go korean fried chicken and by korean of course i need south korean i'm sorry but i just can't officially recognize any country that finds dennis rodman interesting and i'm telling you i like all kinds of fried chicken but this is by far my favorite method so i really do hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy spring rolls that's right i'm very excited to show you this technique and i did say technique not recipe since what you put in here really doesn't matter what matters is that you realize all the magic that can be created with little more than a damp piece of rice paper and hopefully once you see how cool this stuff is you'll go out pick up some of these wrappers and go hog while creating your own custom rolls and by the way wild hog would also be very good in this as are pretty much anything edible you can cut into strips so let's go ahead and get started and speaking of edible strips one big tip here make sure you get all your fill ingredients ready before you start production and for this particular roll i'm going to go with chicken and while i did poach it for this recipe if you happen to have some leftover grilled chicken that would be even better and then besides the meat i want a nice selection of veggies i'm going to go with some strips of sweet red bell pepper as well as some english cucumber which of course has a nice mild flavor hardly any seeds and a great accent it's true english cucumbers just sound smarter than other cucumbers and then i also did some strips of carrot and i'm using what's called rainbow carrots in case you're wondering flavor-wise are exactly the same as regular carrots just more expensive so if you can't swing those don't worry just regular peasant carrots will work and then besides our strips of chicken and veggies we also want some greens so i'll be using some baby lettuces the ubiquitous spring mix and then besides the baby greens i also like lots of fresh herbs i'm gonna go with basil mint and cilantro so like i said we will get all our filling ingredients prepped ahead of time before we move on to the star of the show the rice paper these are made believe it or not with nothing more than rice flour and water and they look and feel exactly like a translucent piece of plastic and what we're going to need before we can use this is to give it a dip in cold water and what we want to do is soak it in that cold water until it just starts to become bendable and pliable are those the same things okay if it's not wet enough it's going to snap and that's not good but if it gets too hydrated it's actually going to get too soft and sticky and you won't be able to work with it so i'm going to keep mine in the water until i get to this stage where it's just like i said sort of bendable and the reason we only want to go to the just flexible stage is because when we pull it out of this bowl we're going to set it down on a slightly damp towel to work and because the little bit of moisture in that towel as well as the water that we've hydrated it with by the time our fillings have been placed in it should be at our desired level of flexibility as you'll see and at this point we're ready to start filling so what i'm going to do first is place down some of my baby greens right near the bottom and as you're about to see i like to do my fillings in two sections so this is the first one so i'm going to place down my baby lettuce and then we'll go ahead and top that with some strips of chicken and then along with our chicken let's go ahead and add a few strips of pepper and then i'm going to take the bottom of that wrapper which by now has absorbed enough water so that it's going to be very flexible sort of rubbery and sort of sticky and what i'll do is i'll kind of roll that over kind of pressing down as i roll and as soon as i roll that over and that rice paper touches the rest of the rice paper it sticks right there and at that point we're going to stop and do the second part of the filling so i'm going to go ahead and place down some more chicken and then since we focused on lettuce in the first section we won't do any greens in this section we'll focus on lots of veggies so i'm gonna go ahead and place in some more peppers and cucumbers and rainbow carrots and of course it should be painfully obvious that this technique will work with literally any ingredients so if you're not into the chicken what about some strips of steak maybe with a little bit of arugula some crumbled blue cheese oh that would be good or what about one of these with ham and swiss we could even sneak in a few spears of our homemade pickles and then we'll top those veggies with a generous portion of herbs and one tip here especially if you're not going to eat these right away is you always want to tear your herbs see i'm just tearing off pieces of basil and mint and cilantro i'm not cutting them because that can make them turn black so it's generally better just to use your fingers and tear the herbs up and then once we're happy with the second part of our filling we're simply going to complete the roll again kind of pressing down keeping everything nice and tight together folding in the sides as we go and because our rice paper is so soft and flexible and sticky as long as you've left yourself an inch or two at the end you'll be able to finish off that roll and it should seal perfectly and there you go so that looks pretty good so sure i could have done a better job tucking in the ends but hey what are you gonna do that looks good enough to me and then as i do these i like to transfer them onto a plate that has some just barely damp paper towels you just want to dampen it and squeeze it out as best you can and that will prevent these from drying out as you work and do not under any circumstances let the spring rolls touch each other otherwise when you go to serve these they'll be all stuck together and when you try to separate them they will tear open and you will be sad so make sure these are separated by either paper towels or plastic wrap so i continued on i'm just going to do four and if you're not going to serve them right away we can go ahead and cover those in plastic and pop them in the fridge for a little bit and then once you're ready to eat all you need to do is pull these out slice them in half and serve so let's slice in and see what we got and if everything's gone according to plan you should be looking at something like this just beautifully colorful and vibrant fresh looking healthy looking with everything being encased by that impossibly thin see through rice paper wrapping that is borderline provocative and once all your stuff is sliced so insanely easy so i'm gonna go ahead and serve up two rolls which i think is a nice appetizer size portion and i went ahead and i served mine with some spicy peanut sauce which really worked beautifully so let me go ahead and demonstrate my dipping technique which i have perfected with years of practice and that was absolutely delicious and sure if you want to make these a little more filling you can go more traditional and do it like you may have had it in the vietnamese restaurants where they also stuff it with those angel hair noodles and that is quite nice they usually do with shrimp so while i really do specifically like these particular ingredients in this i'm almost going to be insulted if you do it exactly like i did it here i mean i really do want you to make this technique your own and brainstorm some incredible versions you are after all the sally bowls of your spring rolls so if lately life has not been the cabaret you've hoped for i really do hope you give these a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] sticky garlic pork chops that's right it's been quite a while since we posted a pork chops recipe i think to be honest at this point they sort of all blurred together but i believe it's been a while and it's not like i've been holding out on purpose i was just waiting for something extra special which this truly is and when you consider the amount of deliciousness you're going to be enjoying after making this other than chopping up some garlic there's virtually no work involved here so with that let's go ahead and get started and first up we're going to prep our sauce which by the way is also our marinade so into this bowl i'm going to add some brown sugar and by the way have we ever gotten an answer from brown sugar on how come it tastes so good i don't think so but anyway besides some light brown sugar we're also going to need six or seven cloves of crushed or very very finely chopped garlic we will also want to pour in some rice vinegar as well as the exotic and odd-smelling asian fish sauce which as they say smells like hell tastes like heaven and hell is a little strong it probably smells more like purgatory and then we will also add a little splash of soy sauce as well as one plop of ketchup which is a new unit of measure i'm trying out the plop and then we'll go ahead and finish this off with some freshly ground black pepper as well as a little squirt of hot sauce and we'll go ahead and take a whisk and give this a mix and by the way if you want to add cayenne go ahead i din because of the shiraza but of course that's up to you you are after all the moms and pops of your sticky garlic pork chops so if you want to shake a little in go ahead but anyway we're going to give that a mix at which point i'm going to pour about half of that into this baking dish in which i'll be marinating my pork chops which are going to look a little something like this so what i have here are two thick cut pork chops those go about 12 ounces each and these are bone in by the way but this will work regardless and then what we'll do is pour the rest of our sauce marinade over the top and we'll sort of toss those around until they're well coated and yes of course you can do this in a zip top bag but one of my new year's resolutions was to try to waste less of those so i'm just going to go ahead and do them in this dish and once those are set what we'll do is wrap that up and transfer them into the fridge for about one to two hours all right a little longer is probably okay but i would say one or two hours is the minimum and if you are going to marinate in a dish like this what i like to do is pull it out and give those a flip every half hour or so which may or may not be important but i try to remember to do it anyway because it just feels right but anyway i let my marinade for about an hour and a half tossing occasionally at which point they're ready to unwrap and prepare for the pan and all that means is we're going to pull them out of this marinade and sort of scrape off the excess and please whatever you do do not discard it we're going to use that to make the sauce in fact that is the sauce so we'll go ahead and remove those chops to a plate and as i said we'll scrape off any excess sauce and garlic and once that's that we can head to the stove and start cooking these up and i'm going to be doing that in this non-stick skillet into which i've added about a teaspoon of vegetable oil and with our heat set to medium we'll go ahead and place in our chops and the reason we're doing these on medium is because there's so much sugar in the sauce we don't want it to over caramelize and get too too black all right we just want a little bit of black so what we'll do is cook these for about five minutes per side on medium and then if need be we'll finish them the rest of the way in the sauce so i gave that first side about five minutes and then went ahead and flipped them over as you can see we have some beautiful caramelization happening and by the way if you're new to cooking caramelization is just a fancy term chefs use for burning things on purpose and believe it or not that's exactly how we want this to look so we'll do five minutes on one side and then about five minutes on the other and at that point these should be close but not quite cooked which is exactly what we want to have happen and feel free to use a thermometer but for me the poke test works pretty good and is very similar to cooking a chicken breast okay when it goes from soft and mushy to kind of firm and springing back to the touch you know you're pretty close and then what we'll do after about five minutes per side on medium is remove those to a plate to rest at which point we'll go ahead and take a spatula and scrape all that marinade into the pan whereas you'll see it'll transition into a sauce which is really more of a glaze and then once that's been added what we'll do is raise our heat to medium-high and reduce this down until it's thick and sticky which is only going to take a couple minutes and you'll be the one that decides exactly how far to go but as a visual guide i'm going to let you see how far i went which was this far and then what we'll do once we've decided that's reduced enough is transfer our pork chops back in along with of course any and all accumulated juices and then our end game here is to reduce our heat to medium-low and simply cook these pork chops in that sauce turning and basting occasionally until they're cooked exactly how we want and for me i'm going to shoot for an internal temp of about 140 to 145 which is generally lower than a lot of pork cooking guides give but i'm fine with that there's nothing worse than dry overcooked pork and it's really not a problem that there's a little touch of pink left in the meat all right just a little but anyway like i said we'll go ahead and finish on medium-low tossing and basting those chops as we see fit and by the way to make truly authentic sticky garlic pork chops you're supposed to reduce this sauce all the way down to like a gluey glaze but i don't like to go quite that far all right i want it thick and sticky but i still want to be able to sort of spoon over the sauce so i'm going to stop right about here and if you did want yours thicker just go ahead and turn up the heat and just let it reduce a little bit more and that's it once our pork is cooked to our liking and the sauce is as thick and sticky as we want we can go ahead and plate up and in case you're keeping score at home i'm going to serve that next to some bok choy brown rice and we'll go ahead and spoon some of that amazing sticky garlic sauce over the top and that's it for something that required so little work that looks stunning and as gorgeous as this appearance truly is the taste is equally if not more impressive so let me go ahead and slice in and try a piece and see how i did and above and beyond that intensely flavorful slightly sweet incredibly garlicky somewhat spicy sauce the texture of this pork is absolutely fantastic all right because of the salt and sugar in the marinade we've basically sort of achieved a brining effect and as long as you don't overcook it you are just going to be blown away at how moist and tender this comes out so i really do love everything about this technique and yes we are consuming more than a few grams of sugar here but because of that highly nutritional bok choy in the rice it basically cancels it out and long story short everybody wins so you can enjoy this guilfory which is scientifically proven to be much better for the digestion but anyway that's it what i'm calling sticky garlic pork chops if you like pork chops and you like garlic and you like things that are sticky you are going to love these so i really do hope you give these a try soon head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] beef ran dang that's right if you had all the most knowledgeable most well-traveled food writers in the world compile a list of the all-time most delicious foods there are only a handful of recipes that would make almost all of them and this incredibly delicious indonesian curry would be one of them and if you've had this before you know exactly why and if you haven't you seriously need to watch the rest of this video so you can make some so with that let's go ahead and get started by cutting up our beef and what i have here is a nice big hunk of beef shoulder or as it's more commonly referred to beef chuck and what we want to do is cut this into about two inch pieces and as usual the exact size is not as important as getting them nice and uniform because if you do it means they're all going to cook at roughly the same rate so as we like to say around here pick a size and stick with it and by the way while beefchuck is a fine choice something even fattier with more connective tissue like a beef short rib or beef shank would also work beautifully but anyway regardless of what we use we'll go ahead and cut that up and set it aside while we move on to what i call the power puree or as michelle refers to it the dry curry slurry and what that's going to include is some sliced shallots or i guess some red onion if you can't find those we'll also toss in some peeled garlic cloves as well as not one but two kinds of ginger all right we're going to do some peeled and sliced regular ginger root plus some of this which is galanga root which has a thinner skin and lighter color and a similar flavor to regular ginger although it's a lot more fragrant and a little more citrusy and if you can't get that just the regular ginger will do and then we're also going to toss in some hot chilies i'm using some serrano and a red fresno and then we'll go ahead and season this up with some kosher salt as well as a whole bunch of dried hot chili flakes and i'm using korean because i was out of indonesian and then we'll go ahead and finish up with some ground coriander some turmeric some cardamom which not to brag but i ground myself and then last but not least some freshly grated nutmeg and that's it once we have all that in the bowl of our food processor we'll go ahead and blitz this until it's very finely ground and i'm not going to show it but it's a good idea if you stop a couple times and scrape the sides down with a spatula but anyway we will blitz that on and off until we have a relatively finely ground mixture looks a little something like this and then once that's been accomplished we will transfer that into a large saute pan which contains a couple tablespoons of oil and what we'll do is cook the stirring over medium heat for about seven or eight minutes or until most of the moisture has evaporated and what we're doing here besides taking the raw edge off the garlic and shallots is also sort of waking up those spices and activating our ginger not to mention galanga which is almost as much fun to say as eat so like i said we'll go ahead and cook that over medium until that mixture dries out and it's actually okay if it starts to brown a little bit and what we'll do once that steps been completed is go ahead and add our beef to the pan and yes in case you're wondering it is unusual we didn't brown the beef first but according to my sources not browning the beef is the most authentic way to do it plus as you'll see this kind of browns at the end of the process so we'll go ahead and add our beef unbrowned at which point we will add one can of full fat coconut milk which is why it looks all separated okay please under no circumstances should you use a low-fat coconut milk for this right this is called beef rendang not b friend diet so we want that fat and we need that fat and then if you can find it we also want to add a little touch of tamarind paste which is kind of sweet and very sour and very citrusy and then to help balance things we'll also add a little bit of brown sugar which should probably be palm sugar but we don't have that which reminds me i'm going to give you a few tips in the blog post on what to use if you can't find some of these more exotic ingredients but anyway we'll go ahead and stir that together and then because this is going to cook for so long we'll also want to add some water which we will do by filling up and rinsing out our can of coconut milk and we'll go ahead and stir that in as well and then what we can do at this point is crank our heat up to medium high because we want to bring this up to a simmer and while we're waiting for that to happen we can go ahead and prep the last ingredient which would be our lemongrass and if you can find it it will look like this and what we'll do is use about six or seven inches off the bottom end also known as the bigger slightly lighter end and before we add lemongrass to anything we always want to pound it with the back of a knife to bring out the flavor okay just think of the difference between the flavor of a sliced garlic clove and a crushed garlic clove okay the latter is always going to be way more intensely flavored than the former and the same thing is in effect here so we'll go ahead and bruise that with the back of our knife and then we'll cut that up into a few smaller pieces and we'll add that to our mixture and by doing big pieces like this we'll be able to pull those out later or at the very least avoid eating them since lemongrass is extremely tough and fibrous and pretty much inedible but anyway we'll go ahead and add our lemongrass and wait for this mixture to start simmering and then here's the game plan we're going to cook this on about medium heat uncovered for approximately four hours or until two things happen all the liquids in the pan reduce completely and coat our beef as well as our meat gets perfectly fork tender and once in a while you'll win the rendang lottery and both those things will happen at the exact same time but that is extremely rare so you're gonna have to be prepared to adjust near the end of the cooking time depending on which of those two things happens first and if our sauce happens to reduce all the way before our beef's tender we will simply add some more water and continue cooking or on the other hand if our beef is tender and we still have too much liquid we can just crank our heat up to high and reduce it down and by the way how often you have to stir this is inversely proportional to how much liquid is in the pan meaning the less liquid you have in the pan the more you have to stir okay so for the first hour or two you might only have to stir every 15 or 20 minutes but as our curry sauce reduces and gets thicker we're going to want to stir and toss that beef a lot more often and yes this is what they call a dry curry so for it to be considered authentic quote unquote you're not supposed to see any sauce in the pan but of course having said that if you want sauce half sauce i mean you are after all the vera wing of your beef rendang so you are designing this dish but originally this was a way to preserve meat which is why it was cooked all the way until the beef was dry but anyway to summarize i cook my stirring for approximately four hours until all my sauce had reduced and stuck to the meat and the beef was fork tender and i went ahead and pulled that off the heat and transferred it into this dish so i could show you exactly how gorgeous it looks but also so i could mention for best results we should probably let this cool and then wrap it up and refrigerate it overnight and eat it the next day and supposedly all the flavors will continue to develop and be even more delicious but having said that i was starving so i went ahead and served some up and i topped that with a little bit of freshly chopped cilantro and because this beef is so rich i do like to serve it with a little bit of fresh lime as well right classically this is served with a garnish of thinly sliced lime leaves which i also do not have and that's it our beef rendang is beef ren done and i will admit visually this does not look that impressive i mean it looks kind of dry and boring and you're thinking hey i need some sauce for this bought a couple bites in and it will all make sense because all that sauce didn't go anywhere okay the only thing that evaporated was water vapor all that goodness is now stuck to the meat which is just so incredibly intensely flavored you really don't want or need a sauce and while like i say things might look a little bit dry your watering mouth will more than make up for that and above and beyond the shockingly intense flavors the only thing that can go wrong texturally is if you don't cook the beef long enough so please take your time i mean if you're going to spend four hours cooking something don't stop 50 minutes too early but anyway that's it my take on beef rendang as the old joke goes sure there's a lot of ingredients but at least it takes a long time but the recipe is actually quite simple and i have a feeling if one day you make a list of the most delicious things you've ever had i really believe this will be on it which is why i really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy chinese scallion pancakes that's right i have to admit i was pretty confused the first time i had this since it was nothing like any pancake i'd ever had before the outside was kind of crispy and crusty and while layered the inside was kind of dense and a little bit oily and i wasn't exactly sure if i liked it or not but i also couldn't stop eating it but anyway over the years i came to appreciate this for what it is a very interesting very enjoyable and extremely fun to make flatbread so with that let's go ahead and get started with our extremely simple dough which is going to start with some bread flour to which we're going to add some salt and then what we're going to do is make a well in the middle and we'll go ahead and pour in some very hot but not quite boiling water and we'll use our wooden spoon to mix this together until it forms a shaggy dough and as you'll notice we had way more water than would fit in that depression we made so i guess what i'm trying to say is we made that wall for nothing but anyway like i said we'll give that a mix with our wooden spoon until everything comes together and sort of looks like this and forms what i've already referred to as a shaggy dough and once it reaches that point as usual what we'll do is transfer this onto our work surface which as you can see has been lightly dusted with a flower and we'll give it a quick but important kneading until we formed a very sticky but relatively smooth and elastic ball of dough and of course if you need to sprinkle a little bit of flour onto your fingers or some more onto the surface go ahead but try to be careful not to add too much all right i know sticky doughs are annoying to work with but if you add too much flour to make it easier you're not going to get as good of a texture later so we're just going to use the bare minimum and after a couple minutes of working that over you should end up with something that looks like this and then what we'll do is wrap this up and ideally leave it overnight in the fridge before we use it although i'm not going to do that i'm going to use the shortcut method of just leave it on the counter for a couple hours and we'll talk about this on the blog but both systems will work so we'll go ahead and wrap that in plastic and let that dough rest and while it does we'll head to the stove to make one more key element and that's going to be an oil flour mixture we use to paint the dough before we roll it up so into this pan we're going to add some vegetable oil as well as some sesame oil and then just a little bit of flour and what we'll do is mix that together over medium heat and we'll wait for that stuff to start bubbling and if you're thinking to yourself isn't this sort of a roux and what is the chinese word for roux well i guess this sword is even though we're not going to use this to thicken a sauce and i do not know the chinese word for roo although thanks to the simpsons i do know they have the same word for crisis as opportunity which of course is christ's attunity but anyway i've killed enough time and this is all stirred together and then all we're going to do is let this cook on medium until it starts to bubble at which one we're going to cook it for exactly one minute more and that's it we'll simply turn off the heat and let that cool down to room temp and once it is cool what we'll do is grab a brush and we'll use that to brush it down to our dough once rolled and then besides the dough in this oil mixture the only other major component is of course the scallions ores are more commonly referred to in these parts green onions and i tend to use mostly the green parts but if you want you can use the lighter parts as well and then once we have everything prepped assuming our dough is rested long enough we'll go ahead and unwrap it and i'm going to go ahead and cut mine in half because this recipe makes two pancakes and what we'll do is take that half and go ahead and roll it out as shown into sort of a tube shape like this and again just like when we made the dough we want to use the minimum amount of flour and what we'll do once that tube's been formed is kind of press it down with our fingers before switching over to the rolling pin and then what we're going to attempt to do is roll this out to about an eighth of an inch thick while at the same time achieving some sort of rectangular shape or maybe one of those oval rectangles that we like to call a rectaval and about halfway through i like to flip that over and apply a little more flour and then we will complete the rolling process and i probably err on the side of going too thin versus too thick since the thinner we roll this at this point the more layers our finished pancake is going to have so keep that in mind since this is ultimately going to be up to you i mean you are after all the jeremy lin of how thin but as i said i like to shoot for about an eighth of an inch or less which is what i believe i have right about here all right so that's looking good and once that steps been accomplished what we'll do is take our oil flour mixture and paint the entire surface except i like to leave about an inch unoiled all the way around the outside around the outside around the outside and by the way we just want to brush on enough to cover all right we don't want puddles of oil on this so be thorough but not excessive and then once that's set we will proceed to scatter our scallions being fairly generous and no i didn't measure how much i put down sorry that amount in the ingredients will be listed as needed oh and i should mention if you were going to sneak in something like red pepper flakes or other embellishment this is when you want to sprinkle that over and then what we'll do once our dough has been green onions is start rolling up this dough as shown and we want to do this pretty tightly so we don't get a lot of big air bubbles and having said that we are going to end up with hundreds of little bubbles which are fine we just don't want to intentionally trap large bubbles of air while we do this rolling step and thanks to this rolling along with our oil of flour mixture this is what's going to create all those layers you're going to see in the final pancake and i'm not sure how well you can see it but as we roll this closer to the opposite edge what i like to do is start pulling the dough just a hair sort of tuck it back a little bit as i roll to keep everything nice and tight and our dough thin and then what we'll do once we've rolled to this point is stop and take the excess dough and sort of stretch it over the top and of course if any of those green onions try to escape you just stick them right back in and then once we've gone along the length making sure that sealed and not sticking to the table what we need to do is coil this up all right so just start at one end and sort of wind it up towards the middle and normally what i'll do is roll it about halfway up and then go ahead and grab the remainder of the dough and finish that coil by wrapping it around like this and then yes we are going to tuck any excess underneath all right you saw that coming and once that coil has been formed we are almost done all we have left to do is dust this with flour and then attempt to roll it out into about a quarter inch thickness and of all the various things i've rolled in my life and i should specify in regards to dough this is probably the most fun thing to roll out because of all those trapped air bubbles in there i can't explain it you're just going to have to experience it but there's just something about rolling this dough out that's strangely satisfying i guess a good analogy would be popping bubble wrap which reminds me as you roll this yes you are going to press out a lot of that air but that's fine thanks to us applying that oil flour mixture before we rolled it all those layers have already been formed but anyway like i said we'll go ahead and roll that out to about a quarter inch thick and if a couple of those scallions happen to break through the surface no big deal you could just pick them off or leave them there really doesn't matter and then once our pancake has been successfully rolled out we are ready to head over to the stove to cook this which i'm going to do in a nice hot cast iron pan into which i drizzled a couple tablespoons of oil and what i generally like to do here is start on high heat to get the pan hot and then once we carefully place in our pancake i'll back the heat down to medium and cook this for about four minutes per side which is why you have to monitor your heat all right we don't want the outside turning black before the inside cooks through so if you have to adjust your heat a little bit feel free that is just you cooking so anyway i gave my first side about four minutes and flipped it over and then gave the other side about the same and what's kind of interesting here is one side generally will have sort of a uniform browning but then the other side will have a lot more contrast and you'll actually be able to see those coils and i'm never sure which side looks better for presentation but anyway that's it after about four minutes per side we'll go ahead and remove that to our cutting board and before i grab a cleaver and chop this up let me go ahead and grab a fork and make sure this sounds okay oh yeah that sounds just about perfect so let me go ahead and cut this up and we'll take a look inside to see what's going on and as you can hopefully see thanks to the oil and all that rolling we've created all this beautiful layering and it's the contrast between that moist layered oniony center and that crispy crusty outside which really is the magic behind the chinese scallion pancake and while this is tasty enough to eat as is i'm gonna go ahead and serve up a few slices next to a dipping sauce and by the way since i showed the one side when we cut it let me go ahead and feature the other side in this plated presentation and i'll proceed to enjoy a few more slices with this dipping sauce which is pretty much just rice vinegar and soy sauce and a few other things but i'll give you that recipe on the blog post so don't worry and not surprisingly since we're talking about a fried dough but that little bit of acidity and salt really does amplify all the flavors but anyway that's it my take on chinese scallion pancakes which we've done to honor chinese new year which if you're watching in real time is tonight and i believe if i'm not mistaken it's the year of the manatee or is it the year of the squirrel i forget but regardless of what year it is i really do hope you give this fabulous and very fun to make flatbread a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy garlic noodles that's right i'm going to show you how to make san francisco style garlic noodles which i'd have to say is one of our lesser-known local delicacies and while this is usually served as a side dish for garlic roasted crab it would pair perfectly with pretty much any other main course or as i'll be enjoying it today all by itself so with that let's go ahead and get started and we'll begin with our secret sauce and for that what we're going to need is some soy sauce and not the low sodium kind okay we're going to need that sodium we're also going to need some oyster sauce and if you're not sure what that is i'll explain in the blog post and then we will also drizzle in a little bit of worcestershire sauce as well as this distant cousin asian fish sauce which i always feel like i have to remind people tastes like a hundred times better than it smells and then we will finish up with just a little touch of sesame oil as well as the obligatory shake of cayenne and that's it we will give that a stir with our freakishly small wooden spoon and as soon as that is mixed our secret sauce is done although once everybody sees the video we're going to have to come up with a different name for the sauce and then besides that very savory solution we're also going to need a ton of finely minced or crushed garlic as well as some butter to saute it in and believe it or not a little bit of freshly and finely grated parmesan cheese and then last but not least a little bit of sliced green onion to garnish the top and by the way since this recipe comes together so quickly we are probably going to want to prep all that stuff before we head to the stove which reminds me let's head to the stove where we're going to melt our butter in a skillet set over medium heat and what we'll do as soon as that butter melts and starts to bubble is carefully add our garlic and we'll cook that stirring for just about one minute okay we basically just want to take off the raw edge we do not want this to brown so like i said we will stir that around for about one minute a fair warning it is going to smell insanely good and then you may have heard the old saying keep your friends close your enemies closer and your secret sauce even closer than that and the reason we want that sauce right next to us is because as soon as our garlic has sizzled for about a minute and we think it's just right we'll go ahead and quickly stir that in which will immediately stop the garlic from cooking any further in the butter alright so do not add the garlic to the pan unless you can reach your sauce and as soon as that's been stirred in we will simply turn off the heat and reserve that until needed in other words until our noodles are cooked and by noodles in my case i mean spaghetti which i'm going to go ahead and add to this very generously salted boiling water and in case you're wondering if other kind of noodles will work yes every single one of them so if you want to use some actual chinese egg noodles like the ones they use for chow mein or maybe some ramen go for it i mean you are after all the alexander graham bell of your garlic noodle so feel free to experiment with different varieties but personally a nice thick spaghetti is my favorite but anyway we have our sauce in the pan ready and waiting and our noodles are boiling nearby oh and i should mention we're not going to drain the pasta when it's ready i'm just going to use my tongs to fish it out like this and add it to the pan directly because we actually want a little bit of water coming with it oh and one tip here cook the noodles all the way all right al dente pasta really doesn't work as well here so i cooked that spaghetti for the full time until it was perfectly tender at which point like i said we will fish that out and add it directly to the pan and the reason i'm doing it this way is you can probably see a little bit of water is coming with it which is very important all right we want to keep things nice and moist and what we'll do here is toss those noodles in the sauce until it's completely coated at which point we'll stop and add our cheese if we're using it and basically as soon as that's all been stirred in we are pretty much ready to serve and remember just like virtually every pasta noodle dish we make if we think things are getting a little dry we can always just add a little more of that pasta water into the pan which is what you see me doing here and that's it once our noodles have been successfully sauced we can go ahead and plate up which i will be doing in one of my two asian style bowls and then because this is maybe not the most visually impressive dish ever i do like to finish the top with a few red chili flakes as well as some sliced green onions and that's it our san francisco garlic noodles are done and if there was ever a recipe that under-promised and over-delivered it's this one all right it might seem kind of simple and not look that exciting but assuming you enjoy garlic this is gonna be one of the best things you've ever eaten and it actually reminds me of the italian pasta dish alyolia and that it is so deceptively simple yet profoundly satisfying although i have to admit thanks to our formerly secret sauce this is actually much more savory and as i mentioned earlier this is traditionally served with a roasted garlic crab which really is an incredible pairing but these noodles would be just as good paired with something like shrimp or chicken or maybe even underneath a nice pork chop but of course the true test of any pasta noodle dish it has to be good enough to eat on its own and this my friends most certainly is and as you saw this was very simple to put together and extremely fast to make which is why i really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] chinese barbecue pork that's right i'm very excited to show you my take on chinese barbecue pork or shar su if you want to save a few characters on twitter or sarshu sarsou or sharshu i'm probably saying i'm both wrong but regardless of what you call it this stuff is very delicious and as you can see extremely shiny and as you may have heard me say before people love shiny food so with that let's go ahead and get started by putting together our chinese barbecue sauce and that's going to involve adding the following ingredients to a saucepan and we'll go ahead and start with some hoisin sauce which like me isn't very attractive but it is effective and then we're also going to dump in some ketchup which if i'm not mistaken is actually a chinese invention and then we're definitely going to need a whole bunch of soy sauce as well as some brown sugar and i'm using light brown sugar here but the dark will work and then for a little extra sweetness we'll also add some honey and if that looked kind of runny that's because i had to heat the jar to get it out i always feel like i have to explain that stuff because people will email me saying hey that doesn't look like honey but anyway let's continue by adding a little bit of chinese wine either rice wine or plum wine and if you can't find that you could use sake which is what i'm using or i hear even some dry sherry will work and then we'll also toss in a few cloves of crushed garlic and then as far as seasonings go we're going to go ahead and add a spoon of chinese five spice which is one of the signature flavors in this as well as some freshly ground black pepper and a little touch of cayenne for good luck and then last but not least one very optional ingredient a very tiny amount of pink salt and no that's not himalayan pink salt this is actually the pink curing salt i made you buy for the ham video and i'm going to talk about that on the blog but it is optional and then what we'll do is take this to the stove and place it over medium-high heat and we will whisk that all together and then all we're going to do here is let this come up to a boil and let it cook for exactly one minute and believe it or not that's it as soon as that mixture is boiled for about 60 seconds we'll simply turn it off and maybe give it a stir and then all we have to do before we can use that is let it cool down to room temp and while we're waiting for that what we'll do is go ahead and prep our pork and while you can pretty much use any part of the pig for this recipe my favorite option would be a big old piece of pork shoulder pork loin is also very popular but for me it's a little too lean okay as you can see the shoulder has a good amount of fat which means we're going to be able to barbecue for a lot longer without it drying out so that is my recommendation but of course that's up to you you are the tyron liu of your chinese barbecue and as far as prep goes here i'm simply going to attempt to cut this three pound roast into four equal sized pieces so i'm going to split it in half lengthwise like this and then i'll cut each of those halves in half and as usual if there's any natural separation we will use that to help us guide our cut and for me this is kind of an ideal size since we're cutting this small enough to get lots of surface area but not so small where we're going to risk the meat drying out but of course having said that it really doesn't matter as long as your pieces are consistently sized and will cook at the same rate you can go ahead and cut that any way you want and then what we'll do once our pork is prepped is go ahead and combine it with our sauce assuming of course has cooled down to room temp but before we do that i'm going to go ahead and add one more very special very secret ingredient a spoon of red food coloring oh yeah it's just not for red velvet cake anymore so i'm gonna go ahead and add one spoon of this very optional red food coloring which is gonna help give our pork that signature mahogany color oh and if you're wondering if red food coloring is safe i'm really not sure but i assume so and then what we'll do once that's mixed in is go ahead and transfer in our pork and toss them around until they're thoroughly coated always of course being conscious of any nooks and crannies that may not have any sauce in them and for something like this it's usually not a bad idea to transfer it into a zip top bag but i happen to have room in my fridge so i'm gonna leave it in this bowl so we'll go ahead and combine our pork with our sauce which i guess technically right now is a marinade and i'll cover that with a piece of plastic and then what we're going to do is let that marinade in the fridge from anywhere between 4 and 12 hours and while i'm generally not into long marination times this is one recipe i think you should let sit overnight which is exactly what i did and then the next day we can go ahead and pull that out of the marinade sort of wipe it off the excess as i transfer it onto this pan and speaking of excess we're definitely going to save all that extra sauce for future glazing purposes and then even though our marinade had a good amount of soy and hoisin i do like to fairly generously salt the surface before this goes on the grill so that's what i'm doing here i'm going to sprinkle each side with some kosher salt and then once our pork has been properly panned up and seasoned i'm going to head out back and throw this on the grill and by the way if you're going to use a grill for this it has to be over indirect heat as you may be able to see the ceramic grill i use has this sort of heat diffuser which protects the meat but if you don't have one of these type of grills i'm going to give you all the options on the blog post including how to do it in the oven which actually comes out quite nicely so we'll go ahead and place our pork down over indirect heat and we'll go ahead and cook this covered adjusting our vents to maintain a temperature somewhere between 275 and 300 all right closer to 275 is better and we will barbecue this pork for a couple hours until it's beautifully caramelized and ideally reached an internal temperature of between 185 and 190 and what i'll usually do is place it down and leave it on for about 45 minutes or so before flipping them over and then once i have those turned over i'll go ahead and give them a brushing with our sauce which we don't have to boil before we brush on since this sauce is going to be cooked on but if you're planning on brushing some of this on the cooked meat which we are you definitely want to boil it first and i'll remind you that later but for now let's go ahead and brush it on and we will continue that same process of letting it cook maybe giving them a turn brushing on some more sauce until like i said we've reached an internal temperature of about 185 to 190 which for me took about two and a half hours oh and by the way just so there's no confusion if you're used to barbecuing your pork shoulder until it's soft and succulent and falling apart this is not that all right the final product here is going to be way closer to like a ham or a roast pork than it would be to like a pulled pork so just something to keep in mind but anyway like i said i cook mine for about two and a half hours to an internal temp of about 185 and if everything's gone according to plan it should look something like this okay ideally it's fully caramelized and absolutely gorgeous and we'll go ahead and pull that off the grill and head inside where it looks like the color change but it didn't that's just my suspect lighting skills and then if we want before we transfer this onto our serving platter we can go ahead and glaze this hot meat one last time but as i mentioned earlier if we're going to use this sauce on the cooked meat we have to have boiled it first otherwise you might be looking at a stomach ache or even a lawsuit but anyway i glazed that up with some more sanitized sauce before transferring it onto a platter that i garnished with some grilled green onions since our coals were already hot and that's it what i assume is my totally unauthentic take on chinese barbecue pork is done and i could look at that all day but a better idea would be to slice it up and go in for a taste and thanks to that little pinch of curing salt and our secret optional ingredient of red food coloring this stuff should look very close to what you see in your friendly neighborhood chinese takeout place so i'm gonna go ahead and slice this up and see how i did and while this is truly a beautiful style of barbecued pork i find the taste and texture just as impressive alright just a great balance between the sweetness and the saltiness with both of those being elevated by the smokiness plus that little hint of exotic aromatic spice in the background just absolutely gorgeous looking and tasting and of course what to serve this wither on is so obvious i won't even go into it okay any way you'd serve any other kind of barbecued pork or ham will work here although having said that i'm going to take out with a little bit of a tease since wondering if i master the steamed bun i'm going to show you that video because that is by far my favorite way to enjoy this ok pile a few of those slices on a steam bun and drizzle over some hot chinese mustard and maybe some chopped green onion and that my friends is just an incredibly amazing bite of food but anyway that's it my method for doing chinese barbecue pork not only is this insanely delicious and pretty easy to produce it may also bring you some luck since in china the color red symbolizes prosperity and communism but mostly prosperity so for those reasons and more i really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] spicy thai basil chicken that's right i'm going to show you my take on what my favorite neighborhood thai restaurant calls pad crow pow guy although it sounds much better when they say it anyway the name actually means fried holy basil chicken which i always assume meant they considered the basil sacred but as it turns out that's actually a specific variety of basil nutritionally used in the dish but either way this is probably my all-time favorite thai dish and as you're about to see it's fairly easy to pull off at home so let's go ahead and get started with what we're calling the sauce even though it's really more of a glaze and we'll begin by adding a spoon of oyster sauce to this bowl and yes this dark shiny mysterious sauce is made with oysters which is pretty much all i know about it but hey that's enough and then to this we're also going to add a little bit of soy sauce as well as some asian fish sauce and then what we'll do to balance out those fairly salty ingredients is add a little bit of coconut sugar which i don't have and you probably don't either so what we'll do instead is combine some brown sugar with some white sugar to create a fairly passable substitute and then last but not least we will add some chicken broth or if times are tough you could just use water and that's going to be it we will go ahead and grab our whisk and mix that up and simply set that aside till needed and then besides the sauce the other thing we're going to want to do ahead of time is slice our basil and i did say slice not chop okay so what we're going to want to do is wash an entire bunch of basil and pull off all the leaves at which point we're going to slice these nice and thin by rolling up five or six leaves at a time okay so start with a nice big one plus five or six more on top of that and then we'll just roll that up nice and tight like a cigar and then using a very sharp knife we'll slice across like this into these beautiful thin ribbons and then what i like to do once that's sliced is turn my knife and cut two or three times across the other way so those ribbons aren't quite as long so these extra cuts are optional and up to you you guys are after all the herbs of your herbs but i do it because i think it helps make the basil easier to mix in later and by the way in an incredibly ironic plot twist i'm actually not using thai basil since i couldn't find any alright so chances are you're gonna end up using the regular basil at the market which works beautifully just not as well as the much more intense way more fragrant thai basil varieties but anyway i went ahead and sliced up that entire bunch of basil and then besides a ridiculous amount of that in our sauce mixture we're also going to want a whole bunch of minced garlic as well as some thinly sliced shallots or i guess red onion although most stores carry this and last but not least we need some sliced hot chilies which really should be thai bird chili but i had to settle for serrano and red jalapeno and that's going to be pretty much it for the prep except for of course our chicken which i really hope you're going to chop yourself using boneless skinless chicken thighs and what i like to do before chopping them with this nice heavy cleaver is pop those in the freezer for about 10 minutes to firm them up a little bit which does make them easier to chop and by using a nice big cleaver like this or other large knife you can chop a pound of chicken in about three minutes and of course a lot of recipes just say to buy a pound of ground chicken but i really do want you to do this yourself because not only will you be able to control how fine you chop this but more importantly because the following conversation has never happened at a grocery store meat department hey joe do me a favor can you go grab all our freshest best pieces of chicken and grind them up no that's usually not how it goes down it's more like hey what should we do with this chicken and the manager says i don't know grind it up but anyway one way or another we're gonna need a pound of coarsely chopped chicken and once that's all set we can head to the stove to put this all together which i'll be doing in this very large cast iron pan that i've gotten smoking hot over high heat and once our pans hot will drizzle in some vegetable oil by the way extra credit if you use rendered chicken fat and we'll go ahead and transfer in our chicken and what we'll do is sort of stir fry that for about two to three minutes and because this dish is called fried holy basil chicken i will of course be using my holy spatula and i'd love to share the fascinating story of why these spatulas have holes in them but i assume everybody knows so i won't but anyway like i said we're going to cook that chicken for about two to three minutes on high heat basically just until it loses that rock color at which point we can transfer in our shallots and garlic and sliced chilies and by the way you could just dump everything in and stir it there is really no need to clear a spot in the center that's just one of those things that looks like something you should do but anyway we're going to stir that in and continue cooking on high heat for another two minutes or so okay these pieces of chicken are pretty tiny so they're probably already cooked through but we do want to give this a few minutes for those juices to sort of caramelize onto the bottom of the pan and by the way this is definitely not the same technique they use in a restaurant where they have industrial strength walks that will cook this dish in literally 45 seconds so save your cards and letters i know this is not the classic technique but it works but anyway we'll cook that for a few minutes and as soon as we see stuff caramelizing to the bottom of the pan we're going to add some but not all of our sauce mixture what i like to do is drizzle in a couple tablespoons and what's going to happen over the next minute or so is that little bit of sauce is going to caramelize to the bottom of the pan mixing with the existing caramelization and as soon as that first additional sauce has kind of disappeared we'll go ahead and dump in the rest and we'll give that a stir scraping the bottom of the pan with our wooden holy spatula and if everything goes according to plan that sauce is going to deglaze everything that was on the bottom releasing all kinds of intense flavors and goodness and then all we have to do at this point is cook this for another minute or two until that sauce sort of glazes onto the meat and it looks a little something like this and then what we'll do once it reaches this stage is turn off our heat and we will stir in our basil which at this point is going to look like a ridiculously large amount in fact if someone's watching you they should definitely say hey have a little chicken with your basil we also would have accepted holy basil batman but just keep stirring and in about 20 seconds or so it's gonna wilt and mix in and turn into this glorious deep green color and as soon as our basil is mixed in it looks like this we're done except of course for the official taste so we'll give that a sample maybe we need a little more salt in the form of regular salt or a little more soy as well as maybe some hot pepper and that is it once we determine it tastes exactly how we want we'll go ahead and serve that up next to or on top of some rice and other than adding maybe some contrived garnish what i'm calling spicy thai basil chicken is done so let me go ahead and grab a spoon and dig in and while i will admit this is better if you use a thai basil even using this regular standard basil this stuff is incredible right basil has a beautiful sweet fragrant herbaceousness that is just absolutely perfect with that sweet salty spicy meat for me just a stellar combination and why this is one of my favorite dishes of all time and i'm not just talking thai food i'm talking like dishes of all time but wait there's more if you want for an extra dollar fifty we'll go ahead and top this with a fried egg which my sources in thailand say that's how you always get it if you order this on the street and above and beyond the borderline inappropriate visuals it provides that egg and the yolk in particular really do elevate this which is not easy since this was already pretty elevated but anyway that's it my take on spicy thai basil chicken whether you top this with an egg or not i really do hope you give it a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy crab rangoon that's right this ancient asian appetizer is neither ancient nor asian having been invented in san francisco in the 1950s but despite that it's a common fixture on many thai and chinese restaurant menus which i think is a great testament to just how delicious this fried crab and cream cheese wonton really is and not to mention it's super easy to put together so let's go ahead and get started with our cream cheese filling so in a bowl i have exactly one half pound of real cream cheese to which we're going to add an equal amount of crab meat and in case you're keeping score at home i'm using blue crab but any real and or fake crab is going to work here and no that's not some kind of cruel joke this actually works pretty well using imitation crab and then we're also going to add a nice big handful of sliced green onions and for this we can use the white and the green parts and then we'll also do a clove of finely crushed garlic as well as a little bit of soy sauce and some worcestershire sauce as well as a little touch of asian fish sauce and then just a little hint like a quarter teaspoon of toasted sesame oil and then we'll finish up with some freshly ground black pepper as well as some cayenne pepper and then last but not least a big pinch of salt and then we'll take a fork and we'll mix that thoroughly and it is worth noting we're using a very generous ratio of crab to cheese here okay in your typical restaurant you're talking about three or four parts of cream cheese to one part of crab in fact i've had this before and i swear it was just cream cheese i mean who knows maybe they stirred it with a crab leg or something but i really couldn't taste or feel any crab so with this we're going to take the opposite approach and be extremely generous but anyway like i said we will mix that thoroughly with our fork then once that's been accomplished what we'll do is we'll clean up the sides with a spatula and we'll cover that in plastic and we'll let it rest in the fridge for a couple hours to let the flavors develop and as usual this is a totally optional step if you have the wicked munchies and need immediate rangooning you can start making these right away but i really do think it benefits by sitting in the fridge for an hour or two and while we're waiting we can go ahead and make our dipping sauce which is going to be an extremely simple ketchup base sweet and sour so in a bowl i have some good old-fashioned american ketchup to which i'm going to add some sriracha hot sauce and then to that we're going to add some rice vinegar and we'll finish up with a spoon of brown sugar and that is it we'll take a whisk we'll mix that up thoroughly and we'll simply set that aside until needed so our dipping sauce is done our mixture sat for a couple hours in the fridge and we are now ready for assembly and for that we're going to need some wonton wrappers and at your store they're going to sell two kinds the round and the square so we do want the ones with the corners and one important tip when you're working with wonton skins you do want to keep those covered with a moist paper towel so they don't dry out and then besides that we need a little bit of water to moisten our wrappers with as well as of course our chilled filling and something to portion it with so what we'll do is we'll take one wrapper and dip our finger in the water and kind of paint that all over and some people just go around the edge but i actually go for total coverage and once our wrapper has been moistened we'll place down about a teaspoon and a half of filling in the center and then there's two ways you can fold these the way i'm about to show you and the wrong way so all we're going to do is bring in those opposite corners towards each other but don't squeeze the tops together yet we want to wait until we've brought together all four corners at the bottom and then we'll simply work our way up pushing out any air bubbles squeezing those edges together to form something that looks like this and we certainly don't want to squeeze out the filling but we do want to make sure those four edges are sealed very well especially in the center where they come together and as we complete those we can just place those on a dry plate and that's pretty much all there is to it so let me show you one more with feeling so i've already moistened my wrapper and we'll place down our filling right in the center and we'll bring together two opposite corners and we'll bring in the other two corners and once we have those in the right position at the bottom we will work upward again pushing out any air and sealing those edges to form i'm not sure what the shape is the only shape i can think of is warhead it's not very appetizing so i'm not exactly sure what that shape is but i can tell you it does fry up beautifully and what makes for an excellent crab rangoon is that play between the crispy and the creamy and this specific fold is going to maximize that effect but anyway that's how i recommend we fold these up at which point they're ready to fry so i'm going to go ahead and fry those in 350 degree oil for approximately 3 minutes or until golden brown and crispy and for a little fryer like this you don't want to do more than six and what i like to do is toss them in and let them fry for about a minute at which point i kind of like to move them around a little bit with my strainer kind of give them a little tossing here a little ducking there all right we want to make sure all those edges are cooking nicely and it's not super easy to see here because of the lighting but we do want to get these fairly browned and i would say that 30 seconds overcooked is going to be better than 30 seconds undercooked here okay but anyway like i said we'll cook those for about three minutes at which point we can remove those to a rack to drain and right here you're going to get a much better look at the level of golden brownness we're going for so to summarize we're going to fry those until they're extremely beautiful and we'll let those rest for just maybe one minute or so so we definitely want to eat these warm but if you're too anxious and try to eat these right out of the fryer all you're going to taste is pain so letting them rest for a minute or two is not a bad idea at which point we can plate those up with some of our dipping sauce of course and those crab rangoons are officially done and i think looking magnificent so let me go ahead and try one we'll give it a little dip and as i mentioned earlier what makes these so extraordinary is the play between that creamy crabby center and those crispy crunchy edges and i can't really let you hear the creamy sound but here's the crunchy part oh yeah that's the stuff and of course anytime we're stuffing a wonton with something it goes without saying you can pretty much put anything else you want here you are the daniel boone of your crab rangoon and if you thought the alamo was memorable wait until you taste these i mean you serve these at a party people will talk about this for a long time to be like remember that time that dude made that thing at that party that was amazing and that thing they're talking about is this okay so i really do hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music]

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 607,429

Keywords: asian food, asian recipes, chinese food, chinese recipes, chinese takeout recipes, spring rolls, garlic noodles, crab rangoon recipe, sticky garlic pork, beef rendang, char siu, pad krapow gai, spicy thai basil chicken, chinese barbeque pork, chinese bbq pork, scallion pancake, scallion pancake recipe, top 10, chef john, food wishes, korean fried chicken, bulgogi, beef bulgogi, bulgogi beef, indonesian recipes, chinese cooking, korean cooking, takeout

Id: 8fSHXpss7O8

Length: 74min 25sec (4465 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 17 2022