- I could literally mung on a bowl of these.
That's a bit weird, but I love them.
I love you.
(triumphant orchestral music)
(bubbles popping)
Hey, everyone, it's Barry here.
Hope you are well.
Today we are making a homemade wagamama's clone.
We're doing a yakisoba.
When I normally go to wagamama's,
I have a chicken katsu curry.
It's kinda like my go-to thing. It's amazing.
I've also done a homemade one of those on the channel.
But the other day, I was in there
and I felt like mixing it up,
and I tried this thing called a yakisoba.
All I remember was there was like a sweet, tangy,
chewy, noodly texture with crispy onions,
and like a little bit of zing as well,
and it just blew my mind. (explosion booms)
It literally blew my head off.
And it's kinda like now I've gotta grow out
of chicken katsu.
It's gonna be my new thing that I eat all the time.
And apparently, the recipe we're doing today
should be an almost identical clone.
But what is it?
I actually don't really know.
So yakisoba is known as fried noodle.
It's a Japanese noodle stir-fried dish.
So yeah, it's basically a classic Japanese dish
with a salty, sweet, and sour sauce.
And that, apart from the texture of the noodles,
was what really stood out.
I mean, visually, it didn't look amazing.
It had a few little colours that popped.
But the taste, the combination was epic.
And I absolutely excited to try it out.
Can you tell I'm excited?
I can't stop yacking, well, hey, about it.
But we are using an absolute mountain of soy sauce today.
But there are many variations
where you use oyster sauce instead
or ketchup in the sauce and other different flavourings.
Plus, we're doing chicken and prawn,
but apparently, cabbage and other vegetables
just on their own are very common, too.
So there's loads of variations,
but this is supposed to be the wagamama clone.
(hands slap)
Let's go.
All right, here are the ingredients for that tangy sauce,
which you could probably buy pre-made
in some specialist supermarkets or online.
But by looking at them,
I can now tell why it's so sweet, salty, and tangy.
This is two teaspoons of salt.
This is supposed to be two teaspoons of sugar,
but I decided to do heaped teaspoons
just to try and counteract that.
We've got some Worcestershire sauce for some tang.
We've also got a teaspoon of dark soy sauce,
so this is quite a salty one as well.
Another reason why I try to make as minimal amount
of the salt as possible.
And the rest is 100 millilitres,
so almost this entire bottle, of a lighter soy sauce.
So you've got that real sweetness, tang,
and saltiness going in.
All of this makes the sauce now.
These ingredients are giving me indigestion
just looking at them.
We'll carry on, though.
(upbeat pop music)
♪ Da da da da, oh ah ♪
♪ Da da da da, oh oh ♪
- Now do you know what?
Although this is like the first step,
there's actually, in my mind,
I wanna add a just a little bit of water,
like maybe two teaspoons to that.
Just my preference here 'cause that smells extremely intense
and I just wanna dilute it slightly.
I'm gonna simmer it down anyway.
(burner clicking)
So I've got that on a low flame.
So I'm gonna gently bring it up to a simmer
and about 10 minutes just bubbling away.
I don't wanna burn it, so I will actually keep my eye on it.
Whilst that's happening,
I'll get some other ingredients prepping.
I'll tell you what that is.
But whilst we're on the topic of the actual hob,
if you can imagine, this has got like four burners on it.
If you split that in half down the middle,
so you've got two,
and put it one end and had another two here,
for the garden kitchen studio,
yesterday, I ordered two of those.
So down one end, there'll be two hob burners,
and down the other end of the island,
there'll be another two.
That is so that I can do some cook-offs
with my friends, my family, some guests.
I know some chefs that I can get in,
so it can make it really, really fun
when we're doing that sort of content.
If you wanna sort of have, oh, I'm gonna make this,
I'm gonna make that, and we'll compare and do a taste test,
it just really opens that up,
so there'll be a massive area in the middle to play with
and then those at other end.
It'll make sense when you see it,
but it's all very exciting.
All right, so just in the middle of prep,
but this is starting to come to a simmer.
The smell is incredibly strong, very, very salty,
but at the same time, very flavorful.
You came out your bed, didn't you? You like the smell of it.
You smell that?
Yeah.
I'm just doing my prep. (laughs)
Just I don't know if it's a sign, but my pepper,
when I slice one of the cheeks off,
is like literally a heart.
All righty, that is bubbled away for 10 minutes,
and you can see how much that has reduced down.
I'm gonna take it off the heat.
And that would actually be fine if you kept it,
once it's cooled, in an airtight container
in the fridge for two to three weeks.
You might be able to hear that the oven is on.
(seeds rattling)
That is because these are some sesame seeds.
And you can't buy toasted sesame seeds,
so I'm gonna put 'em in the oven.
Obviously, the Barry Lewis baking mats are mandatory.
To be fair, we have saved an absolute fortune
on baking parchment since having those.
So we've got onions,
we've got sliced-thin peppers of green and red,
and these are some spring onions, all right?
I've gotta say this sauce smells insanely strong. (laughs)
Other ingredients we're gonna need, two eggs.
These are the soba noodles, and you can see they look brown.
That's because of the buckwheat in them as well.
They're not sort of like that more paler colour
that you'd expect with noodles.
Japanese-style wheat and buckwheat noodles,
lightly textured and earthy.
Nice.
A good word, earthy.
(plastic crinkling)
What does that mean, though?
Like is it like the Earth?
Ah, yes, this tastes like a planet.
We also got some bean sprouts.
You've gotta have bean sprouts.
And that, I think, is where you get that real texture
and crunch from.
So yeah, I mean this is effectively a stir fry, really.
This is good. We like that.
I could literally mung on a bowl of these.
That's a bit weird, but I love them.
I love you.
We've got some dried onions.
The recipe did call for dried scallions,
but Chloe and Phoebe bloomin' love these things,
so it was a good chance to buy a tub,
and they were way much easier to get than dried scallions.
But you could always dehydrate your own if you want.
I wanna try and make it easy.
Speaking of which, (lid clicks)
ooh.
♪ Ba, ee, ya ♪
You're supposed to use something,
and this was what made the dish pop, called gari, G-A-R-I.
I just wanna call it Gary.
Now that is supposed to be a pickled ginger just to garnish,
and it's pink.
I found that in the store, pickled ginger,
but it wasn't that gari type.
So instead, I found these pink pickled onions cut
into little strands, which would absolutely be perfect.
(coughs) And they're about 1/3 of the price. (clears throat)
We have got our optional things.
Obviously, if you wanna make it vegetarian, like I say,
maybe load it heavy with more vegetables,
carrots, and the cabbage.
We have got one chicken breast that I've sliced thin
and also some cooked prawns.
Remember, you can get the raw ones in the supermarket.
They're normally like grayer in colour,
but you can literally, I'm very tempted,
you can peck on these if you want, but yeah.
Oh, blimey, (nails tap)
took me hand off.
All right then, folks, (air whooshes)
this is some gently bubbling water,
and we are gonna cook these noodles
for about two to three minutes.
This is gonna parcook them,
but then we're gonna plunge them in cold water.
(water burbling)
Nice.
Ooh, steamy.
Straight into cold water
to stop them cooking even more.
Oh, they do look a little bit like insects,
but very excited.
So just drain them off.
They're still slightly glistening,
but we're gonna add to it now.
In this bowl, I've got the onions, and the prawns,
and the bean sprouts all going on.
And that sauce that we just made,
we are gonna pour that all on top
and coat that sauce all over those noodles,
prawns, onions, and bean sprouts.
Oh, my gosh, it's staining it.
It still smells super intense as well.
Sesame seeds are done. That was 15 minutes in the oven.
Or if you do it on the grill,
you could probably do it in literally minutes.
There is a potential pun right here.
Open sesame.
Platinum dad joke.
And there we go.
Nice and toasted. It smells incredible.
Let 'em cool down a little bit,
and we're ready to bring it all together.
Just a little reminder,
I have done the bao buns from wagamama.
Ah.
That is on the "Taste the World" playlist.
When I do recipe clones, like wagamama, McDonald's,
that is on my "Clone" playlist,
both on the YouTube channel and the website.
But any future ideas, do let them keep coming in.
So we've got the dried onions, the sesame seeds,
and those pickled onions, ginger, to one side.
The rest is going in that wok right now.
Medium flame
(pan clanging)
and no oil right now.
It's potentially gonna get a little bit noisy
in a minute and very frantic.
It's all gonna go in and happen very, very quickly.
We're effectively just cooking the chicken,
the peppers, and the eggs, and stuff.
Remember, the noodles are cooked.
I don't know if it's just me, but I would quite happily,
now that the noodles are cooked, just sit and eat that cold.
I just like, (laughs) I would eat that.
But anyhow, oil about to go in.
Let's fry it up.
(upbeat jazz music) (oil sizzling)
So normally, I'd keep the camera running,
but the battery's about to go.
I'm gonna try and change it now.
(upbeat jazz music continues) (oil sizzling)
It's fine.
(oil sizzling)
All right, that was very frantic. (laughs)
It wasn't what I was expecting.
We are frying this up.
Make sure, that's why I cut the chicken thin,
it gets cooked through, okay?
We don't want no medium rare, all right?
So we now dump this in,
the noodles, onions, prawns, and sauce.
So this is where we can really stir into it.
It's dropped the temperature brilliantly, actually,
giving us a bit more time,
but we can really weave those other ingredients.
(upbeat jazz music continues)
That's a big word, isn't it? Weave.
I've done over 1400 videos now,
and I don't think I've ever used the word weave
apart from a bacon weave maybe.
So you're just threading it through
so it's not just a big puddle of one ingredient.
Oh, it's getting nice and warm again as well. Awesome.
That's all we're doing, warming it all through.
Beautiful. Apologies about the blob on my lens.
I'm not sure how long that's been there,
but I'll get it off in a minute, all right?
Because for now, we get the two eggs
that I've beaten together
and we just stir that through over that heat.
So they're just gonna cook in
and drive another layer of flavour throughout it.
You might not be able to hear a thing I'm saying, folks,
but if you can, it smells amazing and thanks for watching.
Right, this is warm enough. It's all cooked through.
Let's serve it up with those other three things.
Oh, my gosh.
You know it's good when you're about, mate.
As you know, my presentation is horrendous,
but it is not about that, folks.
I always want yours to look better than mine.
It normally does, and then you guys go to town on it.
But that is the whole point.
I want yours to look better than mine.
Yeah, I'm actually quite happy with how that looks.
I mean, it looks like a big pile of craziness,
but I will take it.
We'll drop on those dried onions.
This is where that crunch comes in.
They have got these pickled onion strips on them.
That's what makes it pop a little bit.
And they have got that cheeky sweetness in.
It really surprised me, actually.
There's a little bit extra sweetness,
and I am not mad about that.
And finally, I mean, toasting them is optional,
but that little effort of the sesame seeds on top,
I think that looks blooming awesome.
And this is my lunch
and probably dinner as well, if I'm honest.
Wow.
I'm gonna try and get a bit of everything in one mega bite.
Mm.
I don't know if that tastes like the exact thing right now
'cause I'm a bit confused
and I'm in the mental wagamama zone when I'm there.
I'm in my house. I'm in my house.
I was still thinking, oh, that's gonna be too salty,
but I can't.
It's this perfect tangy, zingy balance.
There's a little chewy friedness to the noodles,
which I love.
You got the crunch of the onions, too.
I maybe would've liked to use sesame oil.
That is phenomenal.
And despite this video taking me my entire morning
and into the afternoon now,
if you're doing it in real time,
obviously, not filming it,
it was ready in an absolute flash.
And it will store easy.
Make the sauce ahead as well. (fork clangs)
(fork clangs)
Incredible. Mm, that is so good.
And the only eye-opener is, of course, making it
and putting that amount of salt in.
I think you could probably get away
with reducing that down slightly anyway.
I don't think it would make a huge difference.
But it doesn't taste overpowering
or certainly not like the sea.
It's only when you make something like this
that you realise that you can omit,
and make tweaks and things,
and skip things, and personalise it the way you want,
which, again, is the whole reason I do this.
Thanks for watching.
If you try it, send me a photo of it,
of the recipe, not you.
You know who you are.
And if you enjoy the video,
don't forget to give it a like.
Share it with some people you think might enjoy it, too.
And subscribe if you're not already for regular food fun.
See you later.
Oh, that wasn't very good, was it? Hang on.
Yeah, that's better.
Cover the whole camera.
Ooh, now I'm still talking. Why am I doing this?
Right, bye-bye.
♪ Cookin' ♪
♪ Ah, ah, ah ♪
♪ Is nice ♪
♪ Ah, ah, ah ♪
♪ 'Cause cookin' ♪
♪ Ah, ah, ah ♪
♪ Is nice ♪
♪ Ah, ah, ah ♪
♪ 'Cause cookin' ♪
♪ Ah, ah, ah ♪
♪ Is nice ♪
♪ Nice, nice, nice ♪
- It's too much for you, isn't it, mate?
He's looking, going, I'm not sure.
What he doesn't know
is I've got him some dog-friendly beef jerky,
some special dog stuff, that he can have later on.
So this is my lunch.
Give it a go.
It is stonk, absolute stonk on a plate.
All right, this is Mrs. Barry's one-word review.
- Flavoursome.
Did we get it? - Ooh, yes.
Good word. - Awesome.