Sohla Makes an Ancient Chinese Hamburger (Rou Jia Mo from 200 BCE!) | Ancient Recipes With Sohla

okay thank you to oh god i don't sound like me hold on hold on let me start thank you to everyone who watched me make some cool ancient recipes we've been watching all your comments and suggestions and we love it we're gonna take a little break brush up on our history look for some scrolls and then we're coming back baby we're coming back in the summer for some grilling and chilling and i'll see you then on ancient recipes with sola on the history youtube channel hey there i'm sola always and this is ancient recipes with sola in each episode we're gonna take a dish you may recognize and attempt to recreate one of the oldest versions of it to ever exist it's a little history it's a little cooking and it's a whole lot of me what's not to love in this episode we're going to make a version of the original hamburger i mean is there any food that feels more american than the hamburger my mind goes straight to the 50s and 60s americana summer barbecues drive-ins roller skating [Music] and yes the hamburger we recognize originated in the u.s around the turn of the century but a dish of meat between a couple slices of bread has been a part of many cultures throughout history we're going to focus on recreating one of the first versions of that sort of dish from around 200 bce ancient china roh gmo which literally translates to meat in mo which is a type of chinese bread so let's try it out so the first thing we're going to do is get our pork belly braising because it's going to take a little bit of time for it to get nice and tender and fall apart we want the pork skin on there because it's going to give us a lot of gelatin so we have a nice anxious like brace so the first thing i'm going to do is crush up some rock sugar we're going to start this braise by caramelizing the rock sugar in a little bit of oil before we add everything else to the pot so i'm gonna do a little smish smash we don't need this to be a totally fine powder we're just breaking it up so it melts a little bit more evenly for us okay that feels good [Music] and now i'm gonna heat up a little bit of oil before i add that sugar and we're gonna cook it into a nice dark caramel now already this is really different from the hamburger you or i might recognize because we're using braised pork belly instead of ground beef but uh it's the past this is what they that's how they did it meat and bread okay rock sugar's going in and i'm just gonna do this over like medium high heat while stirring we want the rock sugar to melt and caramelize in the oil it's not gonna like totally mix but don't freak out it's gonna kind of look a little clumpy but that's fine we're just looking to develop some nice color at this point so we're gonna season this with a bunch of spices aromatics but the proper rogimo establishments they actually have a heritage broth that's been simmering for like 50 60 sometimes even 70 years they'll refresh and reseason it but it's essentially the same pot that simmers away for over half a century keep this moving around so we can evenly caramelize it keep an eye on it because after it melts it goes pretty quickly and we just keep stirring getting oh that's the cutting board burning just a little bit just slightly there we go it's going to add a nice smoky aroma there's the scent of it's like a smoked cutting board rice pork if you have the bone on your pork belly i would throw that in here too it's going to add a lot of nice flavor to the broth if you just got boneless that's good too try and get like bona bone in skin on whatever you got because that's how they would have done it before it adds a lot of collagen a lot of flavor now you can see it's kind of starting to smoke that's how you know we're getting to a caramel stage we're so close it's melting but it's still in clumps it's not gonna fully dissolve in the oil and that's okay this is a really um typical way that a lot of chinese phrases are started with this like dark caramel it adds a lot of depth ooh ooh and we're getting there this is like amber and i'm gonna have my water ready to be glazed because it's gonna go pretty fast smoky sizzly and now it's time step back when you add the water because it's gonna splatter wasn't that exciting okay and now all that's in there is the water the sugar and the oil but because we took the time to caramelize that rock sugar it already has a really nice color to it and now everything just goes into the pot i'm gonna add our pork belly and we're gonna add a little bit of cherry here because it's what's easy to find but traditionally there would be a chinese wine in here you can use a modern chinese wine like liao zhu but they wouldn't have something exactly like that but chinese wine does date back as far as 2000 bce and here i've got a little bit of ginger they might have also used galangal which is pretty similar to ginger but it has a little bit more floral aroma and it's not as like punchy it's not spicy now here i've got some here i've got some szechuan peppercorns szechuan peppercorns taste really unique they're not spicy it's more of a sensation than a flavor kind of has this like numbing tingling effect and it's really nice to incorporate in dishes that are spicy because it almost like cools you down like a little bit of like a menthol kind of situation we're going to add a little bit of star anise for that you know licoricey flavor and we're gonna bump up the licorice flavor with a few slices of licorice root now licorice root also has a history of its own king tut was buried with it in his tomb in 1350 bc and chinese ruler shanang that had magical rejuvenating powers back in 2300 bce okay add a few cloves a little bit of cinnamon and here i have some chanza this is actually a berry so it's going to add some nice sour tart flavors brighten the whole thing up they're going to kind of plump in the cooking liquid as well and now i'm going to add a little bit of fermented soybean paste you could also use soy sauce back then they wouldn't have had soy sauce they didn't even have soy bean paste that came a few centuries later but they would have probably used something like fermented soy beans all in the pot everybody's joining the party we're gonna add the salt at the end because this fermented paste does have some salt so it'll be easier for us to adjust the seasoning at the end so getting all of it scraping it in there and we're gonna just let this come to a simmer and this is gonna slowly braise for about three hours we wanna make sure it gets totally tender completely fall apart and in the meantime we're gonna go make our mo bread so this bread is pretty simple it's gonna be all-purpose flour yeast salt and oil the thing about it that's unique is the way that it's formed into these coiled buns it's almost like laminated a little bit but comes together pretty easily i've got my all-purpose flour and i'm gonna add some salt and yeast and whisk it up with my finger whisk you know this this the finger whisk is making a lot of appearances in this show now in the modern day mo breads often have a little baking powder baking soda but they wouldn't have had that back then so we're gonna give it a go og style none of that extra powder stuff so i just like to start by whisking up my dry and then we're gonna pour our water and oil right into the middle and start kneading so here we go this is just a little bit of room temperature water a little bit of oil and then i'm going to return to the finger whisk first just you know we're just kind of moistening everything bringing it all together and then we're gonna get in and knead at this point when i'm like bringing it together i'm gonna see sometimes you need a little add a little bit more water sometimes you need to add a little bit more flour you just gotta you gotta feel it as you go the goal here is we want a really nice soft supple dough this is called shaggy mess you can see everything we're getting everything wet but it's not really come together this is a stage you'll see in a lot of recipe writing shaggy mass that's what it looks like it's shaggy i suppose it's a mass and i think i need a little splash of water a little bit more it's feeling a little dry so i like to go just like a tablespoon at a time don't get too crazy because then you got to add more flour we're just going to be going back and forth so this dish rojimo it actually originated in xi'an which is one of china's oldest cities it's famous for their terra cotta army that was erected to protect this tomb of their first emperor who died in 210 bce which is actually when this dish also originated so you can you know hang out with the terracotta army eat some rosia mo a little bit more water we want this to be nice and supple and soft a chinese bow buns it's a pretty similar dough but those buns are steamed they're also filled with meat so it's kind of like the burger situation you got some meat in some bread but it's a much newer dish than this one we wanted to go back we want to go back as far as we could that's why we're making this okay i think i'm feeling good about my hydration now we just need and i think i'm gonna need a little height now i'm gonna really get in there so it looks really rough right now but it's gonna come together it's gonna get nice and smooth you just gotta keep going just take some time since we're using a white flower here instead of like a whole grain we're gonna end up with a really fluffy and tender bread it is really fun to see how much the dough transforms from just like kneading it like it was barely a dough but as you see just from a few turns it starts to get smoother and smoother and smoother i kind of want to just like can i just go on the board can i just go for it and there's power through i need more power i need more speed i need the speed to need okay guys are you ready to hold this table down so my dough is kneaded smooth taut let's return to the bowl i'll go back to my standard height and we're just going to cover this and let it proof for about 40 minutes before we divide and portion towel please thank you all right so we're gonna just let this rest for about 40 minutes and it's gonna be ready to roll my bread's been poofing for about 40 minutes and it's gotten light it's gotten fluffy it's nice and soft now i'm going to divide it into 10 portions and we're going to start forming our mob bread so you want to deflate just a little that's to help distribute the gases that have developed during this first fermentation it takes it's going to take a minute to proof this so it's going to keep growing keep poofing i like to roll it up really make sure not only does this really make sure that we deflate the dough distribute the gases but it's going to make it easier to portion all right so i find it easier to make a nice big long log try and make it even they wouldn't be portioning with a scale so this is about using your eye making it look even we want nice pretty even mo buns but also they're gonna cook evenly that way okay so we'll cut this in half are you half yes then we're gonna cut each portion into five five is a hard number to nail let's see three wait a little bit more we're gonna nail it these are gonna be such consistent portions man we're not gonna know what's going on okay so let's cut this up if you had a scale you could be really precise but you know you just wanna get close you wanna get there now i'm gonna keep the rest of my dough covered while i work with one piece at a time because we don't want it to dry out it proofed really nicely and it's looking really good actually i'm gonna do two i can do this with two hands yeah we're gonna lightly form these into balls before we make coils so we don't have to be crazy perfect at this point because we're not going to make rolls this is just to make sure that when we go on with the next stage of forming it'll be nice and even so just a gentle roll on the board to kind of roughly make balls we're going to do that with all of them if i was making like a dinner roll and i was going to keep it in the shape i would keep going until it was perfectly smooth we don't need that right now so just quick spin on the board to get it nice and evenly bald but uh this is a move that i've noticed a lot of like new bakers if you haven't used a lot of dough it can be kind of hard the key is don't push down too much you're not putting you're not squishing it you know if you squish it that's gonna happen we're just like rolling it against the rolling of the board you know like you're playing with play-doh what you're doing with the board so you're gonna do two two hands at a time if you're new to this you can start with one hand or even two hands on one ball and i'm kind of just scooching it around the board with my palm but we don't need it to be too perfect right now so i'm gonna give it a quick circle okay now the forming now this is i've actually never made this dough before so i'm really interested it kind of comes out looking a little bit laminated kind of like uh when you're making a scallion pancake we're going to get some layers in there so we start by making this into a snake we're going to just keep rolling you want to try and keep it even smooth if you've got seams like that just give them a pinch and then they'll roll together and this is going to help us create a little pocket when we split it open like a pita pocket this is fun this is the dough got really nice and smooth and supple from resting not only does it ferment when you give it that time to hang out but the glutens are going to rock so it's a little bit easier to like manipulate it and handle it and do what you need to do so we have our snake now we're going to roll it flat this is a really fun dough to make so like like this we're going to go flat we want to go kind of thin here because that's what's going to give us those nice layers but it doesn't have to be perfect because we're only in like step two of the forming and okay i feel good with that now we're gonna smear a little oil down the middle this is going to keep this little pocket happening in the middle so when we split it it's just going to like easily open up for us just like a pita a little smoosh nothing crazy we're going to fold this over hot dog style i mean this is a really fun bread to make fold this over and we're gonna coil it up like a cinnamon bun like one cinnamon bun okay now i'm just gonna gently flatten this now we're going to use a rolling pin to roll it in a way where we're going to roll just the edges because the goal is for it to end up kind of like a bowl shape this is a little tricky and i haven't done it before so i'm going to try my best but our goal is for this to ultimately be just under one centimeter thick so we're going to use the end end of the rolling pin and turn as i roll and hopefully we end up with a kind of a cup shape i don't know honestly it's my first time doing this thing so we're figuring that together but uh i think something passable might be happening this process is called lamination which sounds super fancy and scary but all it means is you're just layering the dough with some fat and that's how you get something flaky and tender and that can be as simple as something like this or something as complex and difficult as like a croissant it's just about layering but i feel like we're getting our bowl shape huh we're kind of a in shallow bowl territory all right that looks cool just a little bit thinner and we have one mo i believe we have one mo guys we did it okay this side's a little bit thicker than this so i'm just gonna try and even it out a little bit even if you can't get the bowl shape the most important thing is that it's an even thickness so it cooks evenly it's going to cook pretty quickly kind of in the same way as you cook an english muffin we're going to griddle it and then it's going to go in the oven so both sides are going to get direct heat on a hot cast iron pan all right there's one mo let's make mo mo mo mo mormo i'll stop now we're going to bake our mo bread they would traditionally bake this bread in a clay oven which gets really really hot so to try and mimic that heat we're going to use a preheated cast iron skillet so this guy has been in here getting nice and hot but we need even more heat so we're actually going to turn the burner on and give it a quick griddle on both sides over some intense heat we want to develop a little bit of color this is going to help it poof give us a little immediate lift so i'm popping these on here it's a lot like cooking a english muffin but because this dough is a little bit more dense than an english muffin we have to finish it in the oven it needs a little bit more heat to cook through we're going to just do this for 30 seconds on here until we get a nice light golden brown color flip repeat and then we're going back in our hot oven this is a good way to mimic that like raging hot heat clay ovens get super super super hot like 100 like 800 900 degrees a lot like a pizza oven uh your oven at home is never going to get more than 500 so giving it a start on cast iron is going to help us out a lot cast iron does a really good job at retaining heat and look at that we already have some nice golden brown color so i'm going to flip these over let them go for about 30 seconds on the other side and then we're going to go right into that hot oven i can already feel the side that was on the cast iron is feeling dry crisp and a little a little bit of fluff and then once we split these open it should be nice and fluffy on the inside and because we put that little smudge of oil in the middle before folding it and coiling it up we should if everything goes right it should kind of have a little bit of a pocket situation when we split it open and fill it up with meat oh oh we have nice golden brown color on both sides i'm gonna pop this in the oven now to finish cooking this goes really quick so here we go can we wait two minutes just enough time you know to do nothing i think our mode bread is done now so i'm gonna take a look oh yes we have achieved puffs and another way to tell us when i pick it up it kind of sounds a little bit hollow so we know that it's nice and dry cooked through it's not going to be dense or gummy on the inside and we're just going to let this cool slightly and then we can fill it with our pork so let's uh let's put this thing together okay so our pork is nice wiggly tender we've got our meat we've got our mo and now we're gonna make our rojiamo let's build it so let me pull this pork belly out the liquid has really nicely reduced and it smells very good i mean this smelled pretty good immediately after putting those spices in there now when i'm shredding meat i like to go for like big meaty bites there's a lot of nice color even though we didn't give it a sear that caramelized sugar cooked down and kind of like coated everything really nicely so we got some good color there i imagine this is going to have a really nice deep flavor from that long cook i'm pretty impressed by how much color developed just over time on this pork belly because when we put it in there we just dropped it in there no sear none of that but it really darkened and that's what happens with the braise you can get some really nice color and develop a lot of good flavor okay let me break this up a little bit more and then we'll build one now i don't want to let any of this braising liquid just go to waste so i'm going to sauce it up just a touch a little bit of moisture oh yeah [Music] now the the modern rogia mo the street vendors at this point would add the chopped peppers and cilantro but the classic version the ancient version it would just be this meat inside of the bread that's good i like like nice big hunks now let's check out our mo oh yeah these are so cute they came out really nice and fluffy swirly hold on i want i want the prettiest one i like this one they're all cute in their own way but if you see it got a little bit fluff after it baked it kind of feels like a fancy swirly english muffin i'm gonna go ahead and slice this let's see if we got that pocket this feels really nice and fluffy and tender it smells good it smells like yeasty and fermented now let's just pile up the meat get in there okay i'm gonna be like kind of generous right let's let's get crazy that looks good already i'm excited it doesn't look like the hamburger i know but i don't mind i think i'm gonna do even more braising liquid cause that fluffy bun can like sop it up a little bit here a little bit here why the hell not who needs mayo when you have fatty porky bracing liquid right okay so we got our rojamo we got our mo we got our meat here we go should we get in there let's do it this looks really juicy and moist and i think this is gonna be a messy bite but let's let's get go for it is this for my face so it's a lot of it's what i expected the bun is super fluffy and tender the meat is really like succulent and fatty but the flavor combo is like a new thing for me i'm not familiar with a lot of these flavors the star anise the licorice the shanza berries but when you bring it all together it's like really floral and aromatic even though it's like got that long cooked braised thing happening there's this brightness from the florality of all of the aromatics we put in there it's kind of surprising to me i really do like the hint of sweetness whenever you have something really fatty like pork a little bit of sweetness kind of really like it really works it really works together with the youngsters anxiousness of the pork it wasn't a whole lot of rock sugar in the beginning but it really made a difference um this tastes nothing nothing like a hamburger it doesn't feel like a hamburger you know i'm used to the you know american cheese onion lettuce but it feels like a hamburger you know what i mean we got the meat between the bread it has like this satisfying vibe i feel like this would be something that i would want to eat like in the middle of the day when you're busy working it would be filling give you everything you need i would definitely make this again i especially really like this bread it's pretty cool how these really basic ingredients and it's a really standard bread dough that you probably have the stuff to make now but just by forming it a little bit differently using a different technique you get this totally new texture it does like when you bite into it these coils do kind of pull apart so it has this like almost flakiness this bread is really fun and i hope you give it a shot and i am very surprised by this like combo of spices i definitely would make this again but i know that this isn't exactly the hamburger we all know and love so if there's another original hamburger out there that you want us to try out let us know in the comments and if you liked this episode be sure to subscribe and as always hit us up in the comments if there's a vintage or ancient recipe you want to see me try out and i'll see you next time you

Channel: HISTORY

Views: 372,502

Keywords: Sohla, Ancient Chinese Hamburger, original hamburger, first hamburger, hamburger, burger, Rou Jia Mo, 200 BCE, Ancient Recipes With Sohla, Ancient Recipes, Recipes, Ancient, Ancient Recipes Sohla, episodes, episode, full episode, ancient recipes full episode, ancient recipe episodes, ancient china, china, chinese, chinese hamburger, recipe, secret, history, history channel, history shows, history channel shows, the history channel, documentary, history channel full episodes, documentaries

Id: W_34Gg9Oiqw

Length: 26min 41sec (1601 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021