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to gadget reviews.
- Ben, it's not worth it!
- And cookbook challenges,
to a midweek meal packs app.
- [Jamie] Crack your eggs, bake.
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Now you guys know how much we all love watching our friends,
Ben and James, who are actual chefs,
review some kitchen kit.
Well today we've got something quite wonderful for them.
- It's a Wonderbag.
It's essentially a non-electric slow cooker,
and I'm quite excited about this.
How about you guys?
- So I think this is really cool.
I've heard some things about it.
Excited to try it.
- I'm excited to see whether it works,
because how do you put something in a bag
and it keeps it warm 12 hours?
- And also, it's got a really cool backstory to it.
- Every day, more than 3.5 billion people cook
over an open fire,
jeopardising their health,
causing widespread deforestation and burdening women
with hours of unpaid labour needed to keep up
with the demand for firewood.
So Sarah Collins, an activist and entrepreneur
from South Africa invented the Wonderbag.
A non-electric slow cooker.
Just one bag can reduce the amounts of cooking fuels
for a family by 70%,
and saves five large trees from deforestation.
This amazing product has helped to improve the lives
of many communities, particularly those
in developing countries who live day to day
with little to no electricity.
- It's obviously doing some amazing things around the world.
Get it open!
(upbeat music)
I'm massively intrigued by this,
'cause I don't quite understand how it works.
What does it feel like?
What's inside that, that material.
- Feels foamy.
Like insulation.
Funny that.
- It doesn't look like a piece of kitchen kit at all.
It looks something you take to bed with you,
rather than into the kitchen.
- Considering how big it is, it's not heavy,
but I imagine incredibly well insulated.
- I still don't understand how it keeps things hot
for that long.
- Right, let's crack on and cook.
First recipe, lamb curry.
- It's worth saying before we start,
that the lamb recipe is specifically designed
for the Wonderbag.
It's probably gonna work really well.
The other two, we've come up with,
and we have no idea if they're gonna work.
They're a test, an experiment.
This recipe is by the founder of Wonderbag, Sarah,
and it's a Durban lamb Curry.
We're going to start it on the hob,
we're going to get like the lamb chops really brown.
The Wonderbag should continue to cook it
for four or five hours once it's come off.
I'm excited for this.
And it's got bananas in it.
- [Ben] Served with bananas, right at the end.
- I like that.
This is one of those recipes that I have no idea
what it's supposed to taste like, but the flavours excite me
when I look at them.
- One of my favourite bits about this recipe,
is that it's marked as a one out of 10
in terms of difficulty.
So if you screw this up, guys.
(Jamie laughs)
- I'm getting the other base flavours ready.
So an onion, lots of garlic,
lots of fresh ginger, and some chilli all chopped up,
and that's going to go into the pan
with curry powder to sweat off
once the meat has browned.
I know this is all about the Wonderbag, right,
but can I make it about me for a minute?
- Why have you got your hands in your pockets?
- I left home early this morning.
Before I left, I harvested something I've grown
for our curry.
Home-grown chilies.
- Can't stand him.
The swagger.
Hand in pocket.
- My produce from seed.
- Could you not have waited for them to grow
a little bit first?
- It's not about the size.
It's about-
Garlic, ginger, chilli, all into the pan
with the curry powder.
According to Sarah, last flavour that needs to go
into the pan, along with the wet stuff, tomato, and beans,
a little bit of water, is bay leaf.
My other pocket.
Look what else I harvested.
Ebbers' bay leaf!
- They're so sweaty!
- Got everything in.
Ben's chilies and bay leaf are in.
Next up, lamb goes in,
tomatoes go in,
beans go in,
pour some water in.
And that's it, a one out of 10 recipe.
In terms of ease.
- Heat up to a boil.
And I guess you've got to get it super hot
all the way through,
so that it gets maximum chance of staying hot
for four to five hours in this thing.
- [Barry] Tuck him in.
- [James] Lid on.
(upbeat music)
- I'm excited for this.
- So am I, but I just show it in a different way, Ben.
(Jamie laughs)
- It looks like two proud parents
tucking their kid up for bed.
- [James] I just can't imagine how.
- Yeah.
But I'm sure it's hot in there,
but how it stays that hot.
- I suppose now we would chuck that pan into the oven
at 150 degrees Celsius or something for two to three hours?
- Yeah, a couple of hours with lamb.
- With this, it doesn't need any electricity
or additional heat,
which is amazing and confusing,
and I hope it works really well.
- So we're gonna put it to the side in the studio
for four or five hours and move on to recipe two.
- The next recipe is sticky beef chilli short ribs.
Super simple.
- A one out of 10?
- This could actually be a one out of 10.
- I've eaten this before, 'cause this is what we made
for my Made Personal like five, six years ago.
It's a 10 out of 10 eating experience.
- It's cooking more meat on bone, so it's great flavour,
but it does need, beef short rib, a really long, slow cook.
We've also chosen to go cast iron pan,
which we think might hold in more heat.
And we've got
another Wonderbag!
Look at that pretty design,
- This recipe is so easy that we are gonna have to adapt it
a little bit actually, because what we do in the recipe
is marinade the beef short ribs in soy sauce,
star anise, chilli, ginger, garlic, and brown sugar.
And then when we wanna cook it, we just add water,
put it straight in the oven.
So what we're going to do is chuck everything in the pan
and then just bring it up to temperature,
put it in the Wonderbag.
- So you're not the searing off the meat at all?
- [James] Not in this recipe, no.
- Not this one.
'Cause with all the soy and the sugar,
and then all the aromats and the star anise,
you get so much flavour, plus slow cooking the beef,
that we don't even bother searing it off.
- That's not to say that you couldn't sear it off.
You can definitely sear it off.
But for simplicity, this is great.
This has to work, because it's beef short ribs,
and if we can't eat them.
- I don't wanna waste beef short ribs.
- I think what I'm thinking is,
if this is going in the oven,
so this would go in the oven again for like
two, three hours, maybe more,
at a very low temperature,
but it would still be like bubbling away a little bit
in the oven.
Do you know what I mean?
I just can't see how this is going to bubble away.
It's just gonna stay warm,
so are the ribs actually gonna cook?
Compared to the lamb chops,
which'll definitely cook, 'cause you can cook them
fast as well.
(upbeat music)
- Tuck it in
Night night.
(upbeat music continues)
You could try and make that look lighter, Ben.
That was a bit of a struggle with it.
- [Ben] It's quite heavy, it's cast iron and full of beef.
- Just like me.
- You know, we always like to mix things up,
so we're going sweet.
This is a chai and white chocolate rice pudding.
It's from "Can't Be Arsed To Cook Two,"
and it is in the original recipe, a baked rice pudding.
So you start it off, then you put it in the oven.
You bake it so it gets a deliberate skin,
and it's incredible.
We're not obviously going to bake it in here,
but in theory, absorption, same quantities should work.
- This one's really easy.
All the wet ingredients go into the pan.
So that's the milk, the cream, the sugar,
the chai tea bags,
and the vanilla paste.
(upbeat music)
- [Ben] Once our dairy has infused, we scoop out
the chai bags, and we go in rice, nutmeg,
and white chocolate diced up.
(upbeat music continues)
When I first heard about the Wonderbag,
I instantly thought of the times in my life
where I could use it,
which is like camping and picnics and cooler bags
for parks, things like that.
But it's only when you start to read about the difference
they make, that I realised just how important they are.
- That, my friend, is called privilege.
(Jamie laughs)
Because we're testing it. because this could be good
for us to use somewhere in our lives.
Like yeah, when we go camping or something like that.
It's not something that we'd need to rely on every day,
which is the job that they're doing so amazingly,
which is awesome.
- When I go camping, one of my favourite jobs
is collecting the firewood.
But you realise that actually, it's the women and children
who are disproportionately disadvantaged
by sometimes up to four hours of collecting firewood,
stoking fires, keeping it going.
That's just gonna sit there for four hours.
You don't need to burn the word,
you don't need to keep the fire going.
- Yeah, the amount of fuel is massive in terms of savings,
but also the health benefits of not sitting
next to an open fire.
Hadn't even considered that.
- So if there's a saving of three or four hours a day
of wood collecting for fire,
stoking fires, or scrubbing of pans
that've been on the fire for four to five hours.
Across a year, that's 1300 hours saved,
which can be put into education and up-skilling.
Smaller Wonderbag.
Smaller amount of rice.
We'll leave that.
I don't know, I'd give it 90 minutes in the oven,
but let's just leave it for a while and see how it gets on.
- Yeah, I think we just leave it the whole time.
(upbeat music)
- We've got three dishes!
- They look fantastic.
- They all had six hours in the Wonderbag
while we were doing other stuff,
and when I opened it up, they were all still hot.
A good eating temperature.
Not cooking at that point, but a good eating temperature.
- Shall we start with Sarah's lamb curry?
- Yes.
- [Ben] Dig in.
(happy music)
- So we're looking for like sauce that's thick
and coating the beans.
We're looking for beautifully cooked lamb,
and all those flavours like just
getting know each other a little bit.
- [Jamie And Ben] Cheers.
- [Barry And James] Cheers.
- That is far from dry.
- It's delicious.
- Oh wow.
- Your fears have been put to bed.
- It's perfect, isn't it?
- Yeah, it's great.
- Absolutely perfect.
- This is me stepping outside of my comfort zone,
lamb and banana.
- Why not, eh?
- I really like that!
- It really works.
- Shall we try the second one?
Okay, short rib.
I think we should say up front,
we were quite bold in recipe choice here,
because we did choose probably the biggest chunk of meat
on the biggest bone to cook this way.
- [Barry] It's a proper test, isn't it?
- Yep.
Not done.
- [Barry] Whoa.
- [James] It actually it looks really appealing.
- This looks amazing,
but it is not what you expect from beef short rib,
and we would typically cook it
for about the same length of time, but continually,
and you want it to melt in the mouth.
We kind of pushed the boat to see what had happened.
It's not kind of worked.
- I mean, I'm just gonna try that bit there.
It's an end bit, so.
- Oh, great recipe.
The flavours are amazing.
- I would look at that and say failure.
Wrong recipe choice, wrong meat choice,
but it's still delicious.
I think the key here is
either 50% cook and then 50% Wonderbag,
so you're still halving the fuel use.
Or cut the beef up.
Like they suggest in the recipe book.
We should stop trying to push the boundaries.
- Definitely cut the beef up.
- If that's a failure.
- That's the tastiest failure I think I've ever had.
- Well done!
- Thank you, it's brilliant.
- Delicious.
- Right, third one, dessert.
This excites me.
- [Jamie] So remind me again.
- [James] Chai rice pudding.
(pop music)
- That takes me to being four, five, six years old again.
It's like rice pudding just takes me back to being a child,
except that has the elegance of the chai
and the white chocolate.
- I love that warmth of the chai.
Love it.
- That worked well.
- I'm gonna call it, two and a half out of three.
- Yeah, bang on.
- Biggest lesson learned?
Listen to the professionals and stick to the lamb dish.
(Barry laughs)
- Now obviously none of this is #ad,
we would have told you that upfront.
But since buying the Wonderbags ourselves,
and testing them, we've been speaking to Sarah,
who is the founder,
and she's actually offered to donate 1000 Wonderbags
and 400 Wonder Masks to help with COVID,
to the communities that need them the most,
and do it in Sorted's name,
which is amazing. - Incredible.
- But we don't wanna leave it there.
We'd love to see if Sorted as a community
can match or exceed Sarah's donations.
So there is a link in the description box down below.
If you click on that, it will take you
to the Wonderbag website where you can donate.
Donate whatever you can.
If you can afford it,
every Wonderbag that gets donated will go to help
communities that really need it.
- If you are able to donate,
then make sure you comment,
"Love from Sorted,"
and we'll be able to collate it all,
see how much we can do as a community,
and we'll keep you updated on the progress.
Thank you in advance.
- Can we still keep eating this delicious failure?
- Yes.
- Perfect.
- [Mike] The Packs app is just one of the tools being used
as part of the Sorted club.
Members are also discovering and sharing
restaurant recommendations using the Eat App,
listening and contributing to our "Feast Your Ears" podcast,
and giving us inspiration for new cookbooks
received throughout the year.
It's all included, so check out Sorted membership
by heading to sorted.club.
And now a blooper.
- Oh.
Oh, chef.
- It's like, we're both thinking ahead, init it?
- Yes, chef.
(Ben laughs)
You go with yours.
- We've both simultaneously folded a cloth,
'cause we have to put that in the bottom.
- We both read the instructions.