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- Hello there, welcome back to Arcade with Alvin.
Today, I'll be making the deluxe meat course
from Dragon Ball Z, a feast that comprises of
many of my favorite things,
most of which are made with meat.
One of the dishes in this meat course seems to be a
deconstructed and reassembled chicken drumstick.
So we're gonna start by skinning and de-boning
12 whole chicken drumsticks.
This takes quite a long time, the skin must be removed,
the meat must be carefully scraped off the bone
and the tendons must be also displaced.
And with the mountain of chicken I had in front of me,
I called in some backup.
This is Rachel, she helps a lot of the food staff here
in the studio, and she makes for a perfect helping hand
to get this job done.
After about an hour of this,
we now take our boneless chicken drumsticks
and chop them into fine little pieces
using two large cleavers.
Now, you could grind this into ground chicken,
but I believe this dish is similar to Tsukune,
a Japanese style chicken meatball,
and the best Tsukune I've had
involved hand chopping the chicken in small pieces
that you get nice little fun textures.
So I'm going to do exactly that,
and in many parts of China,
you'll also see them using this technique to do beef,
pork or even chicken meatballs.
We didn't really have big machinery used to grind meat,
so manual labor was all we had.
Another advantage of doing this is also being
able to find those tendons that we'll have to painstakingly
pull out by hand.
And just to have some fun, I also had Steve and Rachel
help come and do some of the chopping.
Turns out banging down two big cleavers
onto a cutting board full of chicken is of great way
to release some stress.
But after picking out a majority of the large tendons
found inside chicken drumsticks and chopping it up some more
we have 12 chicken drumsticks worth of hand chopped chicken.
I also added in our backup pound of ground chicken
that we bought just in case we couldn't make this work.
For seasoning, this calls for a heaping tablespoon
of white miso, a tablespoon of toasted sesame oil,
two thinly sliced scallions,
a one inch knob of grated ginger.
This also gets about a tablespoon of salt
and give this a good old mix,
and you have what resembles a dumpling filling.
This chicken mixture now gets portioned onto a tray
into rough little mountains, then set in the fridge
for about one hour or so to firm up.
In line with the theme
of the Japanese style chicken meatballs,
these usually have a tare or a sauce
that they're glazed with.
To make this, I'm adding half a cup of soy sauce,
half a cup of meaning, a quarter cup of sake,
half cup of water, and a quarter cup of sugar
into a sauce pan until it boils and thickens.
I'm looking for the consistency of maple syrup, not honey.
That goes to the side while we shape our chicken
back onto their drumsticks from once they came.
In the game, I think there's supposed to be a representation
of that cartoon caveman style meat,
which to me says something like a figure eight shape.
So I'm mounting the mixture onto the bone
and sort of pinching it around its waist
like a corset to get that hourglass shape.
I'm baking these at 450 degrees for about 10 minutes.
Once they come out of the oven,
I give them a little once over with the glaze
and they go back into a 500 degree oven
for another five minutes.
Once they exit a little darker than before,
they get a final brush of the glaze
which I've thickened again over the stove until sticky.
Those are going to cool.
The next item from the deluxe meat course and Dragon Ball
seems to be a mound of fried rice.
Start off with a couple of drizzles of oil to lubricate
and in goes the extra chicken skin and tendons from earlier
that we picked out, plus a half pound of chicken thighs.
I don't like when things go to waste,
and I think if we fry this up, it'll give the fried rice
some really incredible flavor and texture.
This gets tossed and stir fried in the wok
for about 20 seconds until crispy and brown,
then removed from the pan.
The remaining oil, I'm going with six eggs.
First, letting the bottom set
and crisp up before mixing it around in a circle.
I found that if you just start to mix
when you throw it right in,
it kind of gets stuck to the side a little bit.
After the eggs get crispy,
I'm adding in three dry Chinese sausages diced up.
These fried with the eggs
until their fats have been released
and their flavors start to come out.
Then in goes a diced onion and two diced red bell peppers.
I believe those are the red specks
found in the fried rice from the game.
After tossing and turning for another 30 seconds or so
until they start to get some color,
those crispy chicken bits from earlier go back into the pan
to share their chicken flavor with everyone having a party.
In go the whites of three thinly sliced scallions,
toss and turn for another 30 seconds
and we add in about four cups of day old white rice.
I like to add just as much rice
as I have other stuff in the pan at this point.
This is just cooked rice that's been spread
on a sheet of parchment paper and a tray
and left to dry in the fridge overnight.
The loss of moisture helps the rice break up
a little bit better and ensures that each grain of rice
can be coated with the flavors and stir fry like a steak,
rather than coming up into a giant pile of mush.
This gets seasoned with a tablespoon of salt,
a tablespoon of sugar, and half a tablespoon of MSG,
my preferred seasoning ratios for fried rice.
And when the rice is about 95% done, in go the greens
from those three thinly sliced scallions from earlier.
That seems like enough food for a super saiyan.
Another dish in this deluxe meat course seems to be
just a really simple solid steak dinner.
So I have here two boneless ribeyes
about one and a half inches thick,
and I'm just salting them pretty heavily on both sides.
These get placed over a little wire rack in a pan
and sent to the oven at about 250 degrees
and baked slowly
until their internal temperature registers around 115.
Once they've gotten a nice tan after exiting the oven,
these rest for about 10 minutes or so
before we go over to a ripping hot cast iron pan.
I'm seeing these rather quickly on both sides,
probably no more than a minute total in the pan,
but also making sure to render
and crisp up the fat on the sides, never forget the sides.
And just like me, the steak is gonna go have a nice rest.
Shocking as it is, this deluxe meat course does in fact
have a non meat dish, the dessert,
which I believe are fried sesame balls
filled with red bean paste.
A common snack that I grew up eating in my childhood.
To make the red bean filling,
I'm starting by emptying two cups of red bean paste
already made into a pan with a drizzle of oil
to fry up and caramelize.
We've made red bean paste from scratch on the show
like in the spirited away episode last time.
So if you wanna see that, feel free to watch that.
But honestly, we were a little strapped for time
and decided to go with a really
high quality store (indistinct).
On a medium sauce pan, I'm bringing a half cup of water
and a third cup of sugar to a boil.
Once the bubbles are there, I'm immediately dumping this
into one and a half cups of glutenous rice flour
into a large mixing bowl and mixing pretty vigorously.
Once a rough dough forms,
I'm covering and setting this aside for about 10 minutes.
Then this gets wrapped up and rested for another 30 minutes.
Our caramelized red bean past has cooled by now,
which means it's firm and cool enough to shape
into 12 evenly sized balls.
Initially, I was going to make very small
fried sesame balls, but I remember that in the game,
these were actually the large versions,
so I scrapped that and made large red bean paste balls.
After dividing the dough into the same number
of red bean paste balls we have,
I'm flattening each portion of dough
and attempting to wrap the red bean paste filling inside.
This is essentially like making dumplings,
except that if you overfill these, it's game over,
so don't do that again, Alvin.
The tough part is making sure
that where all the dough folds meet that it isn't too thick
and I was never really good at wrapping dumpling.
So let's just say the good part
is you can put the ugly side down this time,
but hey, we got a couple of dough balls.
These get a nice little coating of sesame seeds.
I like to use little bit of water to sort of roll the balls
in my hand until it gets sticky and just roll them around
in a little bowl of a white sesame seeds.
Once they all have their little armor on, it's time to fry.
In order not to drop the temperature too much,
I'm only frying a couple at a time.
First, at 325 degrees for about eight to 10 minutes.
And once they've expanded and started to rise,
increasing the heat to 350 degrees
for another three to five minutes
until every single part of the balls is golden brown.
In order to avoid uneven coloring
due to the fact that these rise a lot,
I like to press down with a spider to make sure
that it can all get submerged in golden brown.
Once the balls are done frying, they get sent
to a paper towel over a tray to drain.
Despite having eaten these for years and years and years,
I never really thought about how these were made.
And I will say definitely feeling a little bit of pride
over these little balls I've created.
Another dish in this deluxe meat course
seems to be a nice bowl of ramen.
And look, I know making ramen from scratch
is probably what you might expect
and we've done that in other episodes like the Naruto one.
But I want to do something more genuine to how
I usually eat ramen, which is taking really nice packets
of instant ramen that I like to go out and find
and cooking them,
but also adding homemade touches to make them
a little bit more cool in my opinion.
So we have a nice packet of tonkotsu flavored ramen,
cooking two of those noodles as per package instructions
and adding all of those beautiful delightful seasonings,
oil packets, flavor packets, sauces
inside our finishing bowl.
In goes the water that we cooked the noodles in
and we bring on the homemade toppings.
This is chashu that we've made
by rolling a pork belly, marinating it, braising it,
and now, slicing and torching it.
Into the soup, go our ramen noodles,
which I'm going to attempt to do the full tech
that will help present a bed of noodles that the toppings
will have a better time resting on and not singing into it.
Onto this ramen bed, goes four slices of torched chashu,
cascading towards the edge of the bowl, one piece at a time.
Adjacent to the pork slices, go on a couple pieces
of marinated bamboo shoots or menma,
opposite the pork goes a soft boiled jammy egg
marinated in soy and cut in half.
Next to that, a handful of sliced green onions
and opposite that two slices of (indistinct).
Now that pretty much every dish
in our deluxe meat course is ready,
it's time to finish plating.
For our steak dinner, seems like there's a brown sauce
that goes on the base of the plate in the game.
So I whipped up a quick hiyashi sauce
made with hiyashi sauce blocks found in packages,
and just like in the game,
a couple of green beans right next to the steak
to keep it company along with one single slice of
grilled onion, and a handful of fingerling potatoes.
And the final touch toward deluxe meat course,
those chicken meatball sticks from earlier.
We're gonna play a little bit of edible Jenga here,
but instead of having the whole thing fall,
when one of them does, you're just gonna put it back on top,
and to finish the rest of that soy glaze
that went on the trump sticks in the first place.
Finish with the sprinkling of the leftover greens
from those thinly sliced scallions.
And I present to you our version
of the deluxe meat course from Dragon Ball Z.
We have soy glazed chicken meatball drumsticks,
chicken egg fried rice with scallions, bell peppers,
onions, and Chinese sausage.
Instant tonkotsu ramen with a few homemade additions,
a seared ribeye steak with green beans,
onions, and hiyashi sauce.
And for dessert, a mound of fried red bean sesame balls.
Was everything homemade and completely done from scratch?
No, not really,
but I'd argue for a saiyan that needs this much food,
I really think they prioritize speed
and quantity at this point,
which still begs the question, how does everything taste?
I'm gonna go for one of these chicken drumsticks.
I've been waiting all day to eat 'em.
Honestly, yeah, definitely a little cold
'cause this took some time to put together,
but the flavor is there
and the texture is really nice from the chunks of meat.
And while I clean this drumstick off camera,
Rachel's gonna go in for one of those fried sesame balls.
She's never had one before and she seems to like it, nice.
After that drumstick is taken care of,
I'm going back in on the steak.
Let's check for doneness here, get a slice of the sauce,
yep, that's just how I like it.
Nothing to say here, except that beef goes really well
with the hiyashi sauce.
Steve's gonna jump into here and eat some of the ramen.
He's probably the most saiyan like out of all of us,
so his opinion really matters.
Yep, he approves, and I wish I could have shared this
with the whole entire BCU team,
but it was only three of us here today in the studio.
And even though we couldn't finish this all in one sitting
like Goku might have,
we did the right thing and took everything home.
There's a tournament of power tomorrow in my city,
and I feel like I'm gonna need all the help I can get.
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