Toast Hawaii, a Traditional German Dish

this video is sponsored by filmora 10. hey guys so please forget everything you thought you knew about german food because today i'm gonna show you a legendary dish that i guarantee everyone who grew up in germany knows very well and probably grew up eating are you ready first you take a piece of toasted white sandwich bread you top it with a slice of cooked ham a canned pineapple ring a slice of cheese usually processed cheese i know i know please bear with me we're gonna get to the good stuff this goes into the oven until the cheese has melted and then traditionally the whole affair is topped with a candied cocktail cherry voila this is called toast hawaii a nationwide classic if you're not from germany you probably have a lot of questions right now but you know the truth is look i don't know if it's childhood memories or what but this stuff it actually tastes kind of good however however you as a person of culture you have certainly noticed the well the low quality ingredients haven't you well that's about to change look here's the deal i understand toast hawaii is pretty trashy as it is however however there's something oddly fascinating about this unique sweet and savory flavor combo it's got going on it's like it has everything that makes putting pineapple on pizza good but without the actual controversy of putting pineapple on pizza it's genius so today i want to try something bold what if we made toast hawaii from actually good stuff i'm talking diy bread diy ham fresh pineapple even some homemade processed cheese perhaps the big question is can we take toast hawaii from trashy to tasty we're about to find out right after i thank the sponsor of this video filmora10 filmora 10 is a video editing software and guys i've been making videos for a long time over a decade now and you don't want to know how many different apps i've tried especially before i could afford professional level software and i seriously wish i had filmora 10 back in the day the user 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this video so we're about to make toast hawaii from fancy or at least homemade ingredients and while i do have high hopes i gotta say this is kind of going against the original spirit of this dish because it was designed to be made with exactly these types of ingredients toast hawaii became a thing in 1950s germany a time that we sometimes call the economic miracle because it's where germany kind of put itself back on its feet after many years of disastrous war and among the many innovations people were introduced to in that time one stands out in particular the home television which would really change people's lives for decades and this is where i say enter clement's wilmod clements wilmenrod was basically germany's first star tv chef and he was incredibly good at coming up with creative and fun recipes that people could make with the simple things they could buy at german supermarkets in the 1950s and later 1960s and you don't need to be a food historian to know that back in the day highly processed and high convenience food was all the rage and one of clement's wilmington's legendary recipes was toast hawaii which managed to take people on this culinary journey around the world in a really delicious but also cheap and easy way pre-sliced white bread was quite new back in the day and stood for the united states of america which were culturally very popular at the time and the canned pineapple also somewhat of a novelty in the 1950s invoked exotic feelings of tropical countries most people would never be able to travel to and then topping everything with both ham and cheese that was a symbol of post-war prosperity and you know people's yearning for just living the good life what's curious is that even though clement's wilmington is usually credited with inventing this dish it's not that easy you might have heard of spam the iconic american processed luncheon meat right well hormel the company behind spam published a recipe book in the late 1930s and one of the recipes in there is pretty much exactly what toast hawaii is only with spam instead of ham anyway since this dish was practically foolproof it only took like 10 minutes to make and it was loved by adults and especially kids alike no wonder that it really caught on it even spawned some variations like schnitzel hawaii or pizza hawaii which is what we call pineapple pizza to this day in germany you gotta understand between the 1960s and the 1980s this dish was literally everywhere like birthday parties weeknight dinners um pubs and bars everywhere and while it's still extremely well known i mean everyone has had toast hawaii here at some point in their lives i think it's safe to say that its popularity peaked a long time ago i mean we live in the 21st century now and cooking with processed foods is just not as popular as it used to be fortunately but that doesn't mean we should generally discredit the idea for this dish instead let's see what happens if we try to improve every single element of this dish and then we're gonna sample our fancy version of toast hawaii to see if it can live up to the traditionally trashy goodness of the original let's start out by making a basic sandwich loaf which i really recommend you try at home because it really is super simple we begin of course with flour and i recommend getting strong bread flour if you can to that i'm gonna add yeast and sugar as a little snack for the yeast and ourselves later on and then season with salt give everything a quick mix which you can do by hand but i decided to go the convenient route and use a food processor with a dough hook attachment now slowly drizzle in some milk which is a bit richer than water and in need for a few minutes until the dough comes together nicely before adding a pretty generous amount of butter which is gonna make our bread nice and soft once smooth shape the dough into a ball and let that rest in a slightly greased bowl until doubled in size usually around 90 minutes now punch it down and roughly shape into a rectangle which you can then roll up carefully tightening it with your fingertips when you're about two-thirds of the way you can fold the floppy sides in and then finish rolling for a prettier look now get a rectangular loaf pan something like this and carefully place your dough baby into its cradle cover that so it doesn't dry out and let this rise another time until puffy and doubled in size again this bread you don't need to score you don't need to brush it with anything just bake in a preheated oven at 200 celsius for a good half hour or until nice and deeply golden brown on the surface check this out you guys it looks almost too good to be true almost like an emoji of bread and the best part is once it's cooled down it gets really really fluffy soft and tender you can eat this any way you like but for our toast hawaii i'm gonna cut it into slightly thicker slices to get more of that good good and yes i'm using an electric slicer which i know i know but if there was ever a time for me to invest in something like this it was this video you're gonna see but don't worry anything i do here you can totally do by hand or with a good old knife now let's talk about hem it's one of these recipes that is simpler than you think it just takes some time we're gonna start out by making a brine i'm gonna use half curing salt also known as pink salt even though it's not pink and half smoking salt balance that out with a bit of sugar and then we can add a typical german spice mix for ham that's bay leaves star anise fennel seeds caraway seeds juniper berries coriander seeds black peppercorns and a bit of garlic powder top everything up with water and don't forget you'll always find the exact amounts in the video description below give everything a good mix simmer for about 30 minutes to infuse the flavors and then that is your brine now get a big boneless chunk of pork like a loin and you're gonna need this scary looking tool which is actually just a meat injector you'll fill that with your brine and well inject that into the meat this way you can season the pork from the inside which is quite important for a big chunk like this then i'll add everything to a ziploc bag together with the brine and we're gonna let this cure in the fridge for around three days you can then discard the brine but leave the meat in the ziplock bag because we're gonna cook this sous-vide for four hours at 70 degrees celsius after this we're almost done the unsealed pork will have to go into the fridge overnight to rest but then all we gotta do is give it a very good rinse under cold water to remove the gelatinized juice and we are at last able to slice the meat it really works best if you have nice and thin slices so yes a slicer is really helpful but by no means required so ham sorted but what about cheese can you even make processed cheese at home and if yes should you i know it sounds very scary and unhealthy but if you actually go through the process no pun intended you'll actually see it's not that bad the key to making processed cheese is a substance called sodium citrate which is just a type of salt you can buy it online but you can also make it at home with supermarket ingredients for that you want to dissolve citric acid powder and a little bit of water to which we're then gonna add good old baking soda it's gonna start foaming and fizzing like crazy which is completely normal keep stirring the mixture until the fizzing stops which can take a while like 10 minutes or even more but once we're there simply put it on a low flame and carefully simmer until all the water evaporates and you're left with this weird dry residue now i thought it would be a smart idea to use a non-stick pan for this but um yeah it was not because you might need to do a bit of scrubbing so i just ruined my pan instead but hey i got what i wanted which is this crystalline powder that i'm just gonna pulverize and the mortar ready magic salt for cheese making so what exactly is the point of making sodium citrate you might ask and that would be a very fair question adding the proper amount of sodium citrate to melted cheese does three important things first of all it's gonna keep the cheese from separating that's good secondly it's gonna help you to mix the cheese with other things like liquid or other cheese and then thirdly it's gonna give you that silky smooth texture that you know processed cheese is known for first you're gonna grab any types of cheese you like it can even be leftovers i'm gonna use a funky mountain cheese then some gouda also amentol and cheddar which we're gonna shred so they melt more easily next warm some milk in a pan melt a knob of butter in there and stir in your sodium citrate then get your shredded cheese in there and keep stirring until it has fully melted into a smooth paste this is actually mildly satisfying now pour the cheese into a mold and you really want to make sure it's lined with parchment paper if you ever want to get that cheese out of there in one piece let this cool in the fridge overnight and you got yourself a big hunk of processed cheese it's quite difficult to slice though even if you freeze it and then use the slicer yeah not that much more success and here's the thing guys i want to be honest it definitely tasted alright but not great i mean it definitely did have that classic processed cheese taste but maybe that's exactly the reason i wasn't so impressed by it but look that sodium citrate thing it's still a very useful technique just maybe not for making processed cheese at home which is kind of pointless maybe instead just use the same technique but add a lot more liquid which is gonna give you a very very smooth and very stable cheese sauce and i think that is what this technique is really much better suited for and as for my fancy toast hawaii i do want it to taste good so i'm just gonna go for a few slices of real cheese instead i'm pretty sure that's the right call the last thing i want to mention is the pineapple you might notice it doesn't look super fresh but that is actually intentional the supermarket pineapples over here in germany tend to be very unripe i like to make sure they smell of pineapple and aren't too hard to the touch which usually ends up being the more rugged looking ones but that's okay what matters most is what's on the inside am i right so cut off the top and bottom and then just carefully remove the sides take your time doing this and you can always correct as needed then cut into slices and use a little shot glass or something to cut out the core there you go wonderful pineapple with a hole in the middle and now with all our ingredients ready to go let's assemble that sandwich start with a thick toasted slice of our sandwich bread topped with homemade ham a fresh slice of pineapple and a slice of each cheddar and swiss almontol cheese now into the oven it goes for a few minutes until the cheese has melted i decided to add a little bit of char with a torch but that's completely optional and you know what i did try frozen cherries but i'm just gonna keep the candy cherry on top because i actually like it i was gonna add a real cherry originally but those are aggressively out of season so you know candy cherries it is and of course there's always the option of just using a spoonful of cherry jam or don't tell anybody but cranberry jam is even better for this but then you can also just not add anything because trust me it's good as it is and now for the moment of truth is my completely almost completely homemade hawaii toast actually worth the effort days of effort i hope you're ready cheers this is good [Music] literally every single element of this is better i love having a thick slice of bread for this because it allows you to add more cheese a thicker slice of pineapple you know the good stuff but then the thick bread still kind of holds everything together and if it's fresh bread fresh homemade bread like what we have here it's totally delicious the ham itself i mean i think i could have added a bit more but it tastes so much better than the store-bought one it's like worlds apart the fresh pineapple the fresh ripe pineapple i would say it's comparably sweet to the canned one but this is a very different type of sweetness like this is natural sweetness while the canned one i'm pretty sure there's plenty of sugar in that one using real cheese that's the big game changer here like if you want to make toast hawaii it's fine just get the store-bought stuff but don't get processed cheese just use real cheese and it's already like a thousand times better and finally of course the cherry you guys might be wondering by the way i added both the frozen cherries and the candy cherry but nothing nothing comes close to the candied cherry it's just it's so delicious in its own very weird way okay okay so there you go i wanted to make this episode for a long time it's a little bit funny because people ask me to do more german food on the channel from time to time and usually people have the wrong idea of german food they always think of like bavarian crazy giant pieces of pork that i don't think people eat that much here but you know this toast hawaii that's something people actually grow up eating here and so with that being said i hope you guys learned something today i'm gonna see you in the next video

Channel: My Name Is Andong

Views: 171,012

Rating: 4.9113584 out of 5

Keywords: My Name Is Andong, grilled cheese, german grilled cheese, grilled cheese toast hawaii, toast hawaii, history of grilled cheese, how to make grilled cheese, how to make toast hawaii, hawaii toast, food review, pineapple pizza, pineapple, german foods, traditional german food, toast hawaii recipe, grilled cheese recipe, toast hawaii grilled cheese recipe, making toast hawaii, history of toast hawaii, germany toast hawaii, toast, lear nine tiny, andong, german recipe, traditional

Id: ytAbB7PdBZU

Length: 16min 35sec (995 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 06 2020