- Taco babies.
Like a mustache.
Hey guys, what's up?
We are here in K-Town, Los Angeles.
I'm about to train with Chef Ki.
This guy's trained at some of the best
Korean fine dining restaurants in the country.
We're gonna make the most inspired taco
I think I will ever have,
which involves kimchi-jjigae,
pork belly, and seaweed.
Doesn't that sound incredible?
Let's go find out.
(upbeat music)
- Today, we'll be making our kimchi taco.
- [Nyesha] Wow.
- This is actually a dish that's in R&D right now.
- Okay, cool.
So we get the exclusive.
- Yeah, we're super excited to test it out with you.
We're gonna start off by cooking our rice.
- So we're starting with just washed rice here?
- And this is dashi.
So the point of this dish,
even though it doesn't look like it,
we're gonna make it taste like
our grandma made it.
So braised pork is a very popular method in Korean cuisine.
We braise it until it's super tender,
and then usually it's eaten with kimchi and rice.
So this is why I chose pork belly
to mimic that flavor.
We're gonna braise the pork,
and also use the pork for the kimchi sauce.
- [Nyesha] Okay.
- So it's gonna be,
it's a double pork dish.
This is our pork braising mix.
You wanna take a smell,
and guess what's inside?
- Honestly, by the looks of it without smelling it,
it looks like cocoa powder.
But, I could be wrong.
And it is cocoa powder 100%.
And bay leaf, black pepper.
- That's it.
- Okay, great.
Yes!
- The reasoning behind this
is that our grandmas used instant coffee mix
to braise a pork belly in, right?
- Dude.
Literally, yes.
Oh, my gosh.
This is exciting, actually.
- So I was like, oh like what can I use
without stealing my grandma's jam,
you know?
And then we came to the R&D
and found out cocoa powder worked really good.
So that's how we got to this.
- So essentially the cocoa powder's
offsetting that sort of like really upfront
flavor of the pork.
- [Ki] Right.
- Interesting.
- I'm gonna put this in.
Put the whole thing inside.
- It's so funny.
My mom, like she would use Coca-Cola actually.
- Oh really?
- It's so random I know.
- I'm gonna put some salt in here.
Minced garlic.
Then while this is happening,
we're gonna make our kimchi sauce.
This is minced garlic, sugar, homemade kimchi,
sweet onion and fish sauce.
I'm gonna start off by cutting some pork belly.
This is gonna become a sauce
and everything's gonna get blended eventually.
The size of the cut isn't too important
but we want everything to be cooked at the end of the day
at the same time.
I would say maybe about this thick.
We actually use a separate stock for this kimchi-jjigae.
We're gonna use anchovy stock.
Which is the fundamental stock for Korean cuisine.
We're gonna slice up some kimchi.
This has been purposely over-fermented.
You can see how translucent this is.
They're the perfect type of kimchi for kimchi-jjigae.
- [Nyesha] So how long has this been fermented roughly?
- This has been about three weeks.
- [Nyesha] And obviously you make this in house.
- We bought this from the store
Obviously that's what we did.
- So we're just gonna slice it very roughly.
So we're gonna use everything
because kimchi's so valuable.
It takes so long to make.
We're gonna put some kimchi juice in here.
Very important.
So we're gonna top this off with anchovy stock
and then we're gonna put some minced garlic in here.
- So everything up until this point is fairly traditional.
- Exactly.
Now we're gonna take this back and boil it up.
- So what is your general like R&D process like?
- A lot of my ideas start
from shopping in Korean grocery stores.
When I look at something in the Korean grocery store
it just reminds me of something,
you know my grandmother did, or my mom did
when I was growing up.
And then I just dig through my memory
of like what it tasted like and how they made it.
And then I would try to apply the techniques that I learned
in my career and then apply it to my nostalgia.
Sometimes we hit it on the first time.
Like, oh my God, I'm so good at cooking.
- Totally, totally.
- And sometimes you like make, you know,
something really shitty and you roll with it.
- It's a hundred percent yeah.
- So this is a rice space paste
made from sweet rice flour and water, salt, sugar.
We're gonna lightly brush it onto the Silpat.
- So the first step is to...(singing) do a jig!
Excellent.
That makes the food always tastes better right?
Why do we use rice paste?
- So this technique is actually very traditional.
This is very ancient Korean technique.
Making this chip called bugak.
That's made with the rice paste.
Not so popular anymore,
but it's like a very elegant
and like high-end technique of Korean cuisine.
And we're gonna put a layer of seaweed.
So there's two sides of seaweed.
There's a shiny side.
And the rough side.
We're gonna put the rough side up.
- And what kind of seaweed paper are we using today?
- So these are called san gim.
The literal translation is a raw seaweed
and obviously it's processed,
but it hasn't been toasted yet.
- Wow, it's smells so ocean-y.
- And we're gonna apply another layer of rice paste.
This is the final layer of the rice paste
and then we wanna push it out like this.
So it'll stay flat while it's dehydrated.
You wanna try one?
- Please.
And so it should be fairly thin, the layer?
- If the layer is too thick,
when we cook the chips.
You'll see the traces of rice paste.
It'll just turn white and won't be so pretty.
That's like so perfect.
- Excellent, I love that.
Any differences stand out
that you've noticed K-Town New York,
K-Town LA?
- K-Town in LA is bigger than one block.
That's for sure.
Also a lot of the businesses that are
in K-town LA have been here for decades.
All right.
And we're gonna let this dry for a day.
So this is what it looks like after 24 hours.
- [Nyesha] We are 24 hours in the future.
- This is the rough side.
And then this is the mold
that we're gonna use to make taco shells.
- Is this a deli cup top?
- Oh yeah.
- Oh, I love it.
- We're gonna cut the taco shells into this size.
And these shells are as valuable
as the kimchi because takes forever make.
And this is what we're gonna get.
Do you wanna try once
- Love to.
- We actually opened the restaurant with an à la carte menu.
In the beginning
I think it was our customers
that wanted us to do the tasting menu.
They wanted more guidance.
- All right.
Welcome to the table.
Here, what are we playing? No, just kidding.
- So now we're gonna fry the seaweed.
We're gonna put it in and then flip it.
Then we're gonna take it out.
- Wait a minute chef.
How did you even get to that stage?
Was it like a trial and error approach to that
in figuring that out?
- Bugak again is a very traditional method
and that there's a record
of our ancestors doing it this for hundreds of years.
Thank God I had a guideline.
So essentially we have dehydrated at the right stage.
And we want to puff it up again.
We tried just frying it on one side and triple frying it.
But it turns out
that when we triple fry it, it becomes really dense.
And when we just fry it on one side
it gets soggy in the center.
So that's a sweet spot that we found along the way.
So we fry it on one side and then we fry the other side
and then we shape it with the taco paper.
This will be really fast.
Put it in.
It'll bubble up.
The other side.
Take it out.
It doesn't have to be in the center perfectly
the first time
'cause it's still a little flexible
after it comes out of the fryer.
Something like this.
We can get it more even that's better.
- On either side.
I'm ready.
Here we go.
Pull it off.
A little dark.
Honestly though,
there's like a little special spot in my heart.
I know like a nice soft
delicious corn tortilla shell
is the way to go for a street taco.
But my mom growing up,
she would make hard shell tacos
and my first job, believe it or not was at a Taco Bell.
So these were giving me like Taco Bell vibes.
- That's funny
because we actually wanted this
to look like a Taco Bell taco.
- Is that right?
Oh my gosh.
- So the shells are ready.
and now the jjigae is also ready.
I garnished it with some scallions on top,
some green onion on top
this would be a kimchi-jjigae.
It's ready to go.
So our grandmas would stop here,
but we're gonna keep going
until it reduces and become a really fortified sauce.
We made this in like 30 minutes
but really like in real time,
it's like a three week or a month process.
- Exactly.
- Now we're gonna blend this
reduced kimchi-jjigae into puree
and boom.
Here's our kimchi-jjigae sauce.
- [Nyesha] I love that the pork
and the cabbage are the thickeners.
We're not using anything to thicken this
other than the natural ingredients that are in kimchi.
- [Ki] Exactly, it's like a kimchi-jjigae smoothie almost.
- [Nyesha] It's what I want for breakfast.
- So everything's almost ready now.
So now we're gonna pull the pork.
- We have our braised cocoa pork.
- It looks pretty intimidating
because it's so dark.
There's a lot of chocolate.
- But it's not really the predominant flavors,
the cocoa right?
- You'll get like hint, a tinge of like a...
- Je ne sais quoi..
Exactly.
- [Nyesha] Wow,
you can see how the gelatin's really broken down.
- Let's give this a try.
- Wow.
It just melts my mouth.
Honestly, I'm not getting a lot of chocolate flavor.
- There's a little bitterness of the chocolate.
- It's a pleasant bitterness.
That's like playing very well
with the richness of the pork.
- Now we're gonna put this into the fridge
and then chill it down.
Once this chills,
we're gonna cut this into a smaller pieces.
It doesn't really have to be a perfect size.
Because it'll get folded into the rice.
- [Nyesha] So all these components coming together
for this one delicious like miraculous bite.
Gotta love it.
- [Ki] Usually when we put lots of labor and love
into a one bite dish, it usually works out.
We're gonna cut some sangchu.
So sangchu is the most common
wrapping vegetable in Korea.
So we're gonna separate these into stems and the leaves.
And then the stems, we're gonna use it
for the taco fillings
and the leaves we're gonna use for garnish.
- [Nyesha] So how did you come about
this part of the process
in your R&D sort of development?
- We wanted it to look like a Taco Bell taco
like we discussed earlier.
So we started only using leaves on top as a garnish.
And then when we did that,
there was no flavor of lettuce.
- This is gonna give you flavor.
It's gonna give you mouth feel, texture already.
- Now everything for the taco is ready.
The rice is ready.
Our sauce is ready.
Pork is ready
and the garnish is ready.
- Drum roll.
- It's time to assemble everything
- So we take our cooked rice.
Every grain, so beautiful.
- [Ki] Put some kimchi puree, salt,
lettuce stems and we're just gonna fold this.
- [Nyesha] This feels incredible.
- [Ki] A little more salt.
I'm gonna put this into a piping bag.
This is for the convenience and for an efficient pickup
for the service.
Cut the bottom.
Fill up the taco shell with the rice.
Steamed pork belly that we just cut earlier
and I'll be generous.
We can only fit so many in here.
So there's no point in saving.
- This is amazing.
Where you would almost see like carnitas,
we have braised pork belly.
- [Ki] A little bit of sous vide egg yolk for the glue
for the lettuces.
And this is our kimchi taco.
- Just like dissecting this in my brain,
it's super complex, but like, it makes so much sense
- It's Korea in the shape of LA.
- Yeah, totally.
Chin chin.
Here we go.
- It's giving taco for sure.
So many layers of flavor.
Super progressive.
Paying homage to tradition.
Phenomenal, chef.
Thank you.
- Well, thanks for joining me
on making this long taco process.
- I cannot wait to enjoy it on that side.
- Yeah, please come back.
I will, absolutely.