How to Make Okonomiyaki with Ivan Orkin | Dear Test Kitchen

all right so we can flip that one more time and look at that oh my god right looks so good that's super lovely [Music] here in the food 52 video studio with ivan orkin one of the preeminent ramen chefs in new york one of the most well-known ramen chefs in japan i'd say also yeah no don't be don't be honest i'm here with like a ramen a ramen hero today so i'm very excited uh today we're cooking uh okonomiyaki right and we're featuring a recipe that's in your new cookbook yes my new cookbook i'll just show you how would you describe okonomiyaki to people who might not know what that is well i mean the simplest way is that it's a savory pancake from japan right it's uh it's a pancake usually uh it's a very simple quick batter you know filled with cabbage and then the world is your oyster right you know those are my favorite types of recipes is when there's sort of a basic thing that you can work off of and then almost a blank slate to get as creative as you want to so for today we're going to be working with cabbage and also this sliced pork belly but at home you can incorporate any number of vegetables or meats into your oven yeah sure i mean this is as i say in the book it's a it's a it's a a refrigerator clearing recipe you know you're like i got like little nubs of zucchini and and and a little piece of onion and carrots pull it all out shred it up mix it in the batter throw it in your pancake don't be shy you know the best part of cooking sometimes is messing something up because well it is because you are obviously well we talk about what we're about mistakes right mistakes are important yeah um because you learn from them and i think that the the one of the good things about messing up in the kitchen is especially if you burn something and it's embarrassing you never forget so you remember that horrible feeling when everybody in the whole room is just sort of realizing they're not having dinner it's a terrible feeling so you know the next time you do better that's how you learn right [Music] all right let's get started so essentially this okonomiyaki is a batter with vegetables in it that then be cooked in the pan with meat without meat with eggs with all kinds of things but we have to start off with our you know the basic beginnings right i like how you mentioned earlier as sort of a way to clean out your fridge it's one of those like what do i have that's left over what can i get rid of throw it in your throw it in your pancake basically yes right so we can just cut this guy up i would say that's about you i would say it's about two and a half pack cups now depending on what region of japan you're in you'll see different toppings different ingredients with okonomiyaki is cabbage one constant sort of through it all it's it's it's definitely a constant but i once again i really do think this is something that there's no hard and fast rule rules and so i'm from the tokyo area where they don't really eat okonomiyaki they go to okonomiyaki restaurants but but if you go to osaka or to hiroshima people will really they'll talk about their feelings and what they love and don't like those are the two regions that are most known for this yeah so now we have our veggies here right yeah and we're gonna take our our bowl and we're gonna mix our one cup of flour yeah and our it's actually a very simple yeah it's flour baking powder yeah okay look at that the sugar and the salt is together in one bowl we're gonna add that too right take our little whisk and mix it all around here right always mix up your dry ingredients right otherwise it might taste funny all right now we're gonna do our wet ingredients one egg yeah some water you know when i have a a bigger measuring cup i just mix everything in the measuring cup and whack it around you know there you go one less thing to clean when you're working your home well i live in the burbs so i have a big kitchen but my friends who live in the city are always looking to have fewer dishes me i don't really care all right now you know with a you can have a couple lumps with these you know you can overwork your dough so you know just like pancakes so you want to be as gentle as you can right and we're just going to add in our cabbage all right now we're going to mix it around [Music] so we got the cabbage and the batter all mixed together very simple right and uh and that's that really right yeah i mean if you had carrots or you had zucchini or you had whatever right you might add you know pull back a little of the cabbage and add in something different and always keep in mind that something like carrots really hard so yeah you know it might cook a little take a little bit longer to cook maybe cut a little bit then right okay [Music] all right so here we are now we're geared up everything's did you believe how fast that was right i mean seriously it was like three minutes yeah i mean you could make this in three minutes you know remember i'm sure here at 52 we talk a lot about nissan plus so if you have your nissan plus gigged up then this is a this is literally like a 15-minute meal seriously it's pretty you know so we have our batter made we have our pork belly you know in in asia getting thinly sliced uh any kind of meat beef pork lamb whatever it's very common everybody buys it and uses it here it can be that's your biggest obstacle yeah you could always slice your own pork belly or at the butcher ask butcher to slice your pork belly thin so i like to put it into the pan i like to kind of shingle them in i think in the cookbook because i say three strips which is fine but you could also just do what you know whatever size pan you have and you know you could just start it like this you know it's in a bit of a it's a bit of a rectangle but that's fine it'll flop over we're at a low medium heat at this point is that what you're looking for yeah the way that we added the pork first at the bottom of the skillet would you ever add vegetables yeah you know i was thinking and i didn't i i think an interesting thing to try would be like thin sliced uh zucchini yeah or thin sliced uh eggplant right right could also give the same effect it probably won't you know when you shingle meat it kind of glues together a little bit so any raw ingredients here would have to be thinly sliced though because it's cooking for not a very long time exactly i didn't shape the meat too much right but we're gonna we're gonna spread this out right normally it's it gets to be a little bit of a pancakey shape so we'll we'll pancakey shape it a little bit yeah all right and we didn't add any fat to this skillet right we just used the rendered fat yes pork belly yes well that's the beauty of the non-stick pan right you can add a little oil if you want it works but with the pork belly though look how much things just popping around there so now i can just take a look in here right and we're gonna look under a little bit it's still and remember you want you know when you make a pancake in general right you you're looking for little bubbles to come up from the top and the edges to start to cook a little bit so right you know you want the meat to cook a little bit slow while the bottom of the batter cooks and then you'll flip it and finish it now that we hear that nice sizzle should we turn it down and touch it sure turn it down we're gonna slow it down a little bit while this is cooking should we talk about the toppings a little bit sure that the the the batter was easy i feel like the toppings and the garnishes are where the creativity really comes into play right well you know it's where the junkiness comes into play all this stuff piled on top you know and it's really fun um so we have katsuobushi katsuobushi is bonito that's been dried and smoked and then shaved uh basically it's in almost everything in japanese food if you know when you taste katsurobushi you think of japan really just it's in the die it's what makes dashi which is katsuobushi and kombu seaweed that's the basic soup and it flavors almost everything you eat in japan um we mound up the pancake with this on top and then we also do squiggles of kewpie mayo which the difference between this and hellmann's or dukes is that it's super eggy and really fun and delicious and once you like it it's kind of hard to go back i don't think i've bought a jar of helmets in many many years and the bulldog sauce right the tonkatsu sauce are used for you know crispy fried things and it's it's sort of a sweet worcestershire sauce would you say those three are very typical as far as toppings go i would say that's the standard topping all right so we're starting to see a little bit of caramelization now in the bottom let's go ahead we are oh it's looking real nice yeah so we could do it two ways we could do it this way or i could do my way would you probably flip it which is almost perfect we talked about not worrying about being perfect all the time yeah it's what you were saying earlier that the shingled meat starts to almost fuse together on the bottom of the pancake exactly really nice does some people have preferences for more well done versus lighter color referring to the meat the meat the pancake itself like how dark how caramelized do you want to take it i mean i i think that caramelized meat is pleasing it i mean you don't really see it once it's dressed right you're not really looking at the coloring of the meat anymore but i think it i think it gives it nice texture i also think because it's pork belly if it's two under then it's it it has a more of a gelatinous texture to it which i don't think everybody loves yeah so um all right basically it's use your common sense let's use your common sense i mean that's to me the day the day you're comfortable enough to make your own call is the day you're a real cook yeah so anyway the first time i ever made food that i knew was my dish i was just you know thrilled yeah so this is coming along we'll take a look real quick you can even peek under the meat and just to check um because i have done you know as i said i am fallible and i have made these before where i did it and then i looked under the meat and it was still the batter was still wet when you're when you're mounding up your batter yeah just keep in mind if it's this thick it will puff up and look cool but it might also be very rare so either put the temperature way way down and let it cook super slow or don't use so much right that's why you get that batter on top of the meat when it's still really just starting to cook you let it come together you flip it it finishes it's a really simple dish but like with any kind of cooking if you don't pay attention basically you're really food it's just i mean i think even jello you can mess up you know you can mess anything up all right so i think we're almost ready to kind of i think this guy is i think he's pretty ready you can do this a couple of different ways you can just put this on a plate and dress it and then cut it on the plate but it's easier to cut it on a cutting board so if you happen to have a cutting board you know you can just carry the whole pan over yeah put your spatula up underneath you know drop it right down there straight from skillet to the cutting board straight from how easy it is the cutting board and then you know i'm just you know we'll wash this when we're done so let's let's take our uh mayonnaise right and and this is just the deal right we're just gonna we're just gonna squiggle that stuff all over there and it's gonna squiggle this stuff all over here you can't have too much you know you can't have too much ketchup and you can't have too much bulldog sauce honestly right and then we have our aonori right which is powdered seaweed and it's got this sort of sort of really fresh herbaceous kind of seaweed flavor it's not too strong and it looks really pretty right so you can just sprinkle it on top yeah so there's a lot of savory elements going into this night it's you know it's just so fun it really is and then you you know using pork belly you know i know it's not everybody's favorite cut all the time it's fatty and stuff but it adds it adds an unctuousness and it really it you know it adds something that a pancake normally doesn't have right it has that that fattiness in it right and then we're going to go and grab our our fish flakes this looks like something i'd want to have after like a night out of drinking is that common too or oh yeah or just for dinner um i'd say it's it's more just for dinner but as i said i'm from tokyo so they might eat this right so this is it right and then we just grab a nice knife and cut through and it's just like a pizza right perfect all right so now you can grab a hunk yeah and now this is a famous thing too right that katsuoboshi on top yes it's kind of dancing right yeah you can do that too it's easy that's beginner stuff there you go the katsuoboshi has this nice smoky aroma to it yup really nice yep so dig in man all right [Music] really satisfying really good the mayo adds that creaminess like you were saying very good this is also something you can have friends over you know for for dinner and you can serve this as a as a pre you know a pre-thing or it's great watching the football game yeah it's really easy to make and one and if you set it up so you got your cutting board your knife and you just make it and plop them down and then start another one and then cut it up and send it out and it's i mean it's really just a pizza right yes it's great for groups because if you have a big batch of batter let's say you can make four or five pancakes from your batter you send one out with pork belly you send another out with zucchini you send another out with like squid or udon noodles yeah absolutely whatever you want it's yeah this is great so it's a lot of fun easy and delicious yeah and that sort of gets to the heart of your book you talk about cookability in the beginning of your book some cookbooks people like to just sort of browse and get inspired these recipes are meant to be cooked and that's something i really like so we've seen the standard typical okonomiyaki pancake now we're going to show how you can sort of add some variety to it customize it make it your own right well you know this is this is actually a really simple version we're gonna do my wife said bring these so uh you know this is benishoga which is sort of a ginger right uh um colored red um it's not uh it's it's a little different than sushi ginger it's a little sharper um it's cut thicker um but when you bite into it has this really pleasing sort of burst of of of of gingery stuff we taste a piece now yeah yeah absolutely i'm curious how it compares to the sushi ginger oh it's totally different from the sushi ginger um but uh this is a very common topping and all kinds of food in japan you mean sharper yep it's a little more aggressively salty and also acidic i guess so i'm not measuring this out but why don't you know you guys at home kind of have fun with playing around you can taste it first and if you love it put a lot in if you don't love it as much if you hate it don't put it in yeah um and right so we'll mix it around in here we probably used about one-third of the batter so i mean if you i think this recipe can make about three pancakes roughly okay so i also brought some tenkasu when you make tempura you have little bits that float that come off of the vegetable and they float to the top and in japan and the oil in the oil and you scoop those out and you save them and you can use them for all kinds of applications you can put them in soup noodles you can put them as garnish and they're really nice in here so that was a tablespoon and i'm going to do another tablespoon and when you put this in the batter it gives you a little this little kind of fun crunch all right so we so we're going to lay these guys down again starting to make some noise and you added those tempura pieces directly into the battery yup directly into the do they stay crispy or do they start to they stay crispy the other day when i did them i liked it easy such a great technique lay down the pork belly add the batter on top yeah super fun yeah super easy you can add cheese uh you know at the end you know when you when you when you're just ready to flip it over yeah you can add it and then flip it and it'll be nice and crispy cheese on the bottom sounds great you know right so there we go all right that looks so good [Music] we'll flip it again and we'll look at the cheese yeah in a couple of minutes so now that this pancake has the ginger and the tempura batter right would you still add all the toppings that you added to the first pancake absolutely okay yeah i know you got that that always goes yeah god you know it's it's it's what makes it taste so good all right so we can flip that one more time and look at that oh my god right lovely it looks like our our pancake is cooked through right yeah all right so we can you know what mom why don't we do it cheese side up this time all right and then we'll go with some topping again we use monterey jack cheese here are there any other cheeses that you would use well you know in japan believe it or not japan probably has as good or better cheese than america but the um they usually use what they call white cheese cheese from hokkaido it's which basically means it doesn't it doesn't have all that much flavor but it melts really nice right and uh so really melty cheese is nice monterey jack's always a nice option because it's it's a relatively mild cheese and it real and it melts pretty evenly yeah yeah so i that's usually my my choice right so now we have the benishoga right we have the tenkasu and we have cheese so we put a little spin on here right and otherwise we kept it the same all right you can just crunch this guy up a little bit and they're really fun you can put more or less depending on how you feel about it everybody is now that i know how good the first one tasted i'm like can't wait all right chef thank you so much if uh if there's a big difference or not yeah fun right get the ginger probably could have taken more cheese yeah you know what it was subtle there with all the other big flavors it looked beautiful yeah it did look good the combination of all these bold savory flavors is just fantastic it works right it really works more than words i mean this is a true pleasure to eat yeah and like you said you could also probably add a little you know little tiny ringlets of squid you know at the at the end you know or or shrimp or you know there's a lot of you could really just if you could just open yourself up and not worry about it i wish i could just put it in your brain that it's okay yeah you know because i mean because i i'm in this 30 years and i do worry about it too but when i don't and i just let myself go yeah i i find it to be so fun you know well that's great advice the home cooks out there please go to ivan's restaurants he has two of them one on the lower east side and then one in midtown on the west west yep gotham west market yeah yep please do and uh pick up the book remember the gaijin cookbook and check out my uh instagram ramen junkie yeah i give lots of tips on cooking and on where i like to eat chef this was so much fun thanks again thank you all right for the folks at home if you're getting creative out there with different toppings leave a comment i want to hear what ingredients you're using in your okonomiyaki you

Channel: Food52

Views: 64,993

Keywords: Food52, food, cooking, recipe, chef, foodie, cook, home cooking videos, recipes, okonomiyaki, okonomiyaki recipe, okonomiyaki hiroshima style, okonomiyaki recipe simple, ivan orkin, Dear Test Kitchen, Josh Cohen, japanese street food, how to make okonomiyaki, japanese pancake, okonomiyaki recipe easy, okonomiyaki osaka style, okonomiyaki street food, okonomiyaki osaka, okonomiyaki sauce

Id: YrKiT0rLEAE

Length: 20min 24sec (1224 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 23 2020