- Hi y'all. I know you are here to look at my kitchen in all of its splendor,
but before we do that, can I make a very exciting announcement? Thanks to all of you who watch
"Budget Eats" fanatically, we have been nominated for one of the best food videos on the internet. If you wanna make us win
this award, you gotta vote. The link is in the description box and we would love it if you would. Thank you so much in advance. I love you all. And now we can look at my kitchen. Oh hi Delish. Welcome to my kitchen that you definitely haven't seen
20,000 times before. Good morning. Aaron says our walls are sweating? See you tomorrow. I keep waiting for birds
to land on the fire escape 'cause I just wanna see something alive, (alarm rings)
but there's nothing there. I'm so delighted to see you. Come on in! Come on in! Just one sec. We're gonna plug in the Christmas lights. Tah-dah. Y'all have been requesting this video despite seeing my kitchen in literally every single episode of "Work
From Home: Budget Eats", but Julia, our beloved try-it-all queen, is tired of seeing your kind compliments and desires and needs to see
every crevice of my kitchen and so today, we bring to you
"A Kitchen Tour From June". This kitchen tour is gonna look a little different than the other ones you've seen on our channel. One, because I'm self-shooting it today. Aaron is out. Two, my kitchen might officially be the smallest kitchen we've ever
shown on "Kitchen Tours" because it is about 100 square feet. I live in a studio/junior
one bed apartment and so this is the only other full room besides my living/bedroom combo. So welcome to my 100 square
feet of cooking oasis. So, my favorite part
of this entire kitchen is just how long it is. It actually is great for shooting in. Aaron and I have been in this apartment for close to four years now and we were actually thinking
about moving this year, but because we couldn't find a kitchen that was better than this
to shoot in, we stayed. Another favorite facet of
this kitchen is my windowsill. It's where all of my plants are growing. My basil is dying after three years because I guess pandemic stress is just getting to everyone. This windowsill is where I shoot a lot of my food stills
now for site and I love it. It gets amazing amount of light and it just has a very
naturalistic look about it. It's also quite wide for a window and it's got that gorgeous
kind of mahogany tone of wood. And you know, it lets in all the beautiful sounds of the city. (engine running) Really bummed that my
garlic chives are dying, but my scallions are
thriving, so trade-offs. What are the three things that you'll always find in my pantry? Generally speaking, all the cabinets above
the fridge I cannot reach, so I never put anything I actually wanna use on a daily basis up there. That usually has like bean
curds, woodier, canned stuff, random spices and pastry items that have just been lingering for years that I'll probably never use until maybe the zombie apocalypse? You'll find stuff in like containers that say they're hummus, but they're actually just you know like two pieces of
crushed dried salty kelp that I had leftover from
my ramen experiments. That's what that cabinet is. And then gradually, as we're moving over, you'll see a cabinet where I store all of my plates and
bowls and endless jars that Aaron keeps wanting me to toss out because they keep falling
and crashing and it's a mess just like my life, but
they're still holding on. This is my drying rack that
I stole from my ex-roommate and the bottom baking sheet
tray is actually from Delish. It's great for baking, but
even better for dish drying. This is where all of our
oils and vinegars live. This is Aaron's citron
peppercorn oils that he loves, olive oil, the ushe. As we get to this side, we're gonna hit the jackpot of spices. Now I cleaned this area out for you guys because if I didn't organize
it at least a little bit, we would not be seeing
the end of this episode. As I have it now, as you can
see, an abundance of spice. I honestly don't know if there's a way for me to choose three favorite spices out of this ginormous collection of spices that I've accumulated over the years, but I think if I had to choose, oh God, I think for sure, we're a
citron peppercorn household, we have it ground, we have the red one, we have the green one. They're all delicious,
they're all kind of different. I also really love my seeds,
my fennel and my cumin seeds. There's also coriander seeds that I like toasting in a pan and
grinding down into a powder. Homemade ground coriander seeds taste very different
than store bought ones. It's a lot toastier, it's a lot nuttier, it's a lot more savory and
it's a lot more complex. Asafetida/Hing is a recent discovery that I found at "Patel Brothers". It's used in a lot of Indian
cooking, South Asian cooking. It's very pungent, it's very savory and it's got like a very like stinky, questionable factor to it that when you put it into food, divine. I also have an entire collection
of different furikake, also a Japanese condiment. It's got different kinds
of sugars and salts and seaweeds and sometimes bonito flakes. This one is a mala flavored one, this one is a fried chicken flavored one. Guys, options. So many. And that was only the first shelf. Don't worry, it's a lot less overwhelming when we get to the higher shelves, which is where I keep all of my kind of sweet-ish leaning spices, whole spices that I don't use a lot, maybe sometimes I pull
out for specialty cooking, stuff like caraway seeds and cardamom pods and some toasted cloves,
stuff like black cardamom, lavender flowers and also
ground juniper berries. I experimented with ground juniper berries with a cold-cured salmon lox recipe and I don't know what I'm
gonna do with the rest of this. Smells good. Now we've found some spices that I don't even know what they are anymore because I bought them at one time thinking I would experiment with them, but then I didn't and
so now, 30 years later, we have them. If you know what these spices are, drop a comment down below, please. Let me know how to use them. Over there is the spice backup and over here is our tea and coffee backup along with all of our liqueur, all of our vinegar and any big oils that don't fit elsewhere. Small kitchen, make do. But speaking of tea, let's take a class trip to
my tea and coffee collection. So, you may or may not have noticed, I'm not a coffee person,
it sets me on edge, it makes me feel like I'm about to die ina very, very bad way, not
in a calming, soothing way and so we have tea. We have green tea, we have red tea, we have herbal tea that's mostly Aaron's for his sleepy times and I just drink like two
jars of tea every day. I don't know if that's good for me. Probably not. I think if you've watched
one episode of "Budget Eats", you've always noticed
just a jar of mysterious liquid hanging around on the
counter in the background and that's usually tea. I brew tea day and night, I drink it cold, I drink it warm, I drink it iced, I drink it like water. (light guitar music) (man farting) (woman laughing) He's like "Toy Story". He doesn't come alive until he needs to, until you're watching. So two things that I wanna clear up that people always see on my
counter and are always like, "Do you always have crushed tomatoes and do you always have
this yogurt container?" This isn't yogurt and this
isn't crushed tomatoes. This is just a lovely tin that used to hold crushed tomatoes that now holds a random hair and
my scrubbies for dish washing. And this, this is not yogurt,
this is my compost bin. Yum. (woman giggling) Three things you'll
never find in my kitchen probably include margarine,
that might be it. Aaron, is there anything you never buy for our own eating purposes? - [Aaron] Coconut? - That's not true. I buy coconut. - [Aaron] Steak. - Steak. Yup. This is true. We're for the most part a
vegetarian/pescatarian household. We'll cook bone broth from time to time, buy some off meats like organ meat and stuff that people don't normally eat just because it's there and there's no demand for it in North
America, so figure why not. They're also super healthy
for you and as much as we can, we try to stay away from meat products. Having said that, we do like
buying lunch every Tuesday from this Indonesian place
near us and Aaron got... Aaron, what did you get? It looks delicious. This plate comes from Indo Java. - Indo Java Groceries, yes.
- In Elmhurst, Queens. - This is chicken sambal ijo, long hot green pepper with lemongrass, spicy fried shrimps with an egg, sauteed potatoes in coconut milk and spicy crispy sweet
potatoes and peanuts. Can I eat it now? - Yes.
- Can I eat it? - Yes. Take it. - I'm gonna go take my lunch. - Do you want a fork or just you're gonna dump your face in it? Yeah, just like that. Three things you'll always find in my fridge or freezer
are, I don't know, man. There's a lot. (woman giggling) I would say it's highly
dependent week to week because I'm developing
different recipes for Delish. You will probably always,
always see peanut butter, you will always see just like endless amounts of apples everywhere. They are my favorite fruit,
they are my favorite food, they are my everything. I love all of them. Butter. For the most part, we only
use a pack here or there for pan frying certain things or putting on pancakes, that's it. The top shelf is just reserved
for like random condiments. My favorite mayo, some
dried ass chili peppers, some miso, this random
apple syrup that I made because Julia sent me a
whole gallon of apple juice because Amazon Prime
didn't have Martinelli's. And then just your normal stuff, you know? Maybe some cheese, maybe some eggs, some olives, carrots, maybe
not totally normal stuff. I have like a jar of soaked cashews here. I don't know what I was thinking,
but we'll use it somehow. Aaron always keeps a box of these on hand. He likes to just stir-fry some vegetables, put it over rice and it's
absolutely delicious. And we have a lot of hot sauces and my fridge is now very angry at me, so we have to close it so
it stops beeping at me. My freezer is very random. You may think that this
is frozen strawberries, but it's actually a frozen bag of compost. Here is a container of fried chicken bones that we didn't use our
mouth to bite off of that we will maybe make some stock out of. I don't know why I save
these things, but I do. It's just what I do. And then it's just a lot of ingredients that I buy because I see them at the store and I'm like I want that. I don't know what I'm gonna
do with it, but I want it. Here is a pound of ricotta
cheese that expired last May. I also tend to keep a lot
of my flours frozen in here, especially whole flours. Nuts and flours, anything
that has oil really, can go rancid at room temp or
even refrigerated sometimes, so for longer holding
periods, for longer storage, freezer is the best option for me. If there's one thing you can
change about your kitchen, what would it be? I would love to have another window just to have more natural light. It's really useful now that
I'm shooting videos at home. Maybe getting a little bench setup here so that I could have more workspace, like a nice little butcher's block. What is the biggest disaster
you've had in this kitchen? There's been a lot. I would say that a near-miss disaster was I left a pot of
boiling water on the stove and forgot about it and
then we went for a walk that was like four hours and we came back and thankfully nothing was burning down, but that could've been really bad. Other than that, I've
just burnt a lot of pots. You might or might not have seen me use these pots over and over
again in all of my videos. They are very thin, cheap
stainless steel IKEA pots. They were like $14 for
a set of three of them and they burn so easily if
you don't control your heat very well. Who is the coolest person you've ever cooked for in your kitchen? Myself, obviously. I don't really have
friends and also Aaron. Have you met him? But no, I do love him, I
do love all of my friends. It's a lonely existence here
in Woodside, Queens, guys. Can you talk us through some of the cookbooks in your kitchen? I actually started this thing on Instagram a couple weeks ago where I just started auctioning off a lot of my
cookbooks because to be honest, I have them, I almost never read them, they're very pretty and I feel like they deserve to go off to better homes, but I still have a few on hand. You know, to stay on brand, I have to have a couple of these. A little plug here for
our breakfast and brunch quarterly that just came out, featuring a congee and youtiao
recipe from yours truly. I don't know where it is
'cause I haven't read it yet. Oh my God, I don't read any of my books. It's got beautiful photos shot by Andrew and it has a little bit of a blurb about my memories of growing
up eating congee and youtiao. Look at me. I'm so cute. Here's one that my former
pastry chef Diana gifted me for Christmas one year. I've read most of it, Diana. I did. And here is a huge tome on
Islamic world food traditions that I hope to, I don't
know how that got there, that I hope to read one day. I also have a couple of books that I'm hoping will help me with a lot of my autoimmune issues, with a lot of just my eczema. In case you're like the
true Peeping Tom type and you really wanna know what's in every single corner of my kitchen, let me show you my
drawers, except that one. I can't open that one because I have a mobile phone tripody thing stationed and clamped to my countertop. So, this one is no longer accessible. It just has like cat and dog treats in it even though I don't have a pet. This is where most of my
cooking supplies live. We've got a rolling pin,
we've got a bench scraper, we got the best can opener in the world, the only one worth having is OXO, we have a microplane that's actually OXO, we have a tea strainer,
we have measuring cups and just lots of things. Too many. The rest of those are all fake
except for my junk drawer, which has junk it in. All of my Tupperware
live here, just random. Everything falls out constantly. Kitchen cleaning supplies. It's a mess, naturally. We have a lot of big bowls,
my strainer, my lids, my pots and a mixer. This is where all of my
large baking vessels live, but if they don't fit in there or if I feel like I definitely jammed something in there and
broke all the other things, I'll start using my oven for storage. What do you never use but can't bring yourself to get rid of it? I mean, there are too many things to name, but one thing that has always been just like poking me in the eye every time I open up my fridge is this. I got this off of the free table at work maybe two years ago now. What is time anymore? And tasted it once and it's
quite powdery and earthy and a little bit bitter and I have no idea what to use it in. So, please let me know if you
have ideas of how to use this. And the last question, what do you find yourself
making most often? I mean, whatever you
see on camera, I guess. Filming videos is now my life,
maybe for better or worse, and what you see is what
I eat most of the time. I'm big on food waste. I don't really like to throw away food unless I absolutely have to
and I almost never have to. Most of the time, it's just apples and peanut butter, though honestly. When you cook for a living, sometimes you just don't
wanna do it for fun. Do you wanna show off your
favorite spicy things? - Absolutely. Everybody knows these
from the budget series. - Red pepper, nice tasties. - Red pepper, nice tasty. - Do you have a preference on which one? - The flakes, not the ground powder. - Why is that? - I don't know. It just tastes better. - I find that this one
blooms better in oil and this one has a more fragrant taste when you just put it into stir-fry. - Dried chilies, very important. - Any dried chilies? - Yeah. I mean, these are really flavorful. I think these are from
a Chinese market, right? - We got them for a dollar
for the Thanksgiving special. - I love doing these in
the stacks that I make. (woman gasping) - Oh yeah, nice and smokey. - Next, we have classic sambal, which I like much better than
Rooster Brand's sriracha. You can tell how much we like it by how much we've used it. - It also makes my hands flare up so bad because it triggers my eczema. This is the best brand
of sriracha sauce ever and if you see this
brand ever, you buy it. If you ever find like
the hot, spicy hot one, get that one too because
that one is delicious. This one is a little bit sweeter and the best thing about this is... Oh no! When did they start putting
preservatives in this? Now I'm sad. And it also has a no MSG sign on here. - I thought I loved you.
- It still tastes good. - The question that I've
been asked so many times is, how do you keep your stove so clean? Guys, get a really nice microfiber cloth, preferably one with a
little scrubby built-in. How cute is that? And then, grab yourself some white vinegar and just have it. Elbow grease. We don't all have the same playing field, but if you got one like I do, vinegar and a scrubby is all it takes. Yes, it's in a massive bottle, but it is just white
vinegar, I assure you. Try not to use an abrasive scrubby. It will scratch up some of the surfaces and then those little scratches will trap dirt and then make
your life very sad. In terms of tools that
I consider essential, I don't think there are many. Obviously, I love my chef's knife. I bought it many years ago when I first started out as a
rookie cook, which I still am. Not a chef, guys. I'm just a cook. It's a high carbon steel number
and it's a santoku shape, which is very nice for
rocking back and forth on, but while high carbon is really good at maintaining its edge and staying sharp without much maintenance,
it does rust very easily. So if you get one of these, make sure that you're drying them off as soon as they touch the water after you clean them because if you don't, they will rust. And I also love my mini rubber spatula. It's by Tovolo and I just love the curves on all of their silicone spatulas. It's really nifty for
getting into corners, scraping along jars,
getting every last bit of every last drop of everything. I also really love these tongs. They fit in my hand just right, they take just the right
amount of force to control, they don't hurt your hand like you're getting an arm workout or anything. And they're a musical instrument. Fantastic. And these aren't so much tools as they are just a part of
my very kitchen existence. I love utensils. I like to collect them from thrift stores, I like to steal them from airlines, I like to just have them. I want to own all of the cool spoons. And if you watch "Budget Eats", you know that this one is my favorite. Aaron gave me this one
for my birthday one year and it is honestly probably the best gift I've ever received
because it's beautiful, it's simple, it's
functional, it's practical and I use it every day. It's a gift that is apart
of my very existence. Thanks, Aaron. I could do this all day, but I'll just show you
my new favorite fork. It is I guess a serving fork, but I like to just use
it to eat my food with and I believe it is a
silver-plated number. I thrifted this in a thrift
store in Astoria in Queens and it just delights me to my very core. I'm a simple girl. This guy is a very meaningful and sentimentally important number for me. This is a timer that I've
had since maybe like 2014 in my second kitchen
ever in New York City. This guy has survived
being next to the fire for three months, getting lost underneath all of the lowboys and getting flooded every night for about 10 days when we were cleaning the floors and me not knowing where it was and then finally, one day, we flushed it out and
I was like oh my God, my dearly beloved timer. And three days later,
it came back to life. Doesn't have a backing,
but it still works. (timer beeping) And it's adorable and I love it so much. Thank you for coming to
my kitchen once again. I hope you enjoyed this tour and let me know anymore
questions you may have for me and I'll just address them
in the next "Budget Eats". And I'll see you next
time, whenever that it. - June, I didn't wanna finish this without offering you some. - Yes. Give it to me. (upbeat jazz music)
