- Hi.
Hi.
OK.
Hey, I'm Lee Kalpakis, segment chef at Thrillist,
and this is "$30 Dinner Party."
Woo!
Thrillist is sending me all over New York City to help
people just like you throw killer dinner parties for very
little money.
None of this.
Only this.
We're gonna plan, we're gonna shop, we're gonna cook,
and we're gonna serve your people incredible food without
breaking the bank.
Plan, shop, cook.
It's not hard, it's totally easy.
Do you like exercise?
Me neither.
And I'm gonna show you how it's done.
Today we're in beautiful sunny Park Slope,
and I'm about to
go meet up with Juan.
He's a sketch comic who wants to prove to his friends that
he can throw a killer dinner party for just $30.
Let's go meet him.
- Hey Lee!
- Hi Juan!
- Come on in.
- Thank you.
All right Juan, so tell me a little bit about yourself.
- I'm from Uruguay.
It is mostly known for not being Paraguay.
- What is your favorite food?
- Soups.
- Soups?
- Soup.
- Do your friends make fun of you for this soup addiction?
- When they think about a meal,
people don't think about soup.
- Right.
- And that's wrong.
- How often are you eating soup, every day?
- All the time.
- Yeah?
- All the time that you can think of.
I always like to have one or two soups around just so
- Yeah, got it.
Do you have a favorite bowl that you eat soup out of?
Oh yeah that's--
- Dog bowl.
- That's a dog bowl.
- Yeah, a bowl is a bowl,
doesn't matter if you're a dog or a human.
- So what is it that you're trying to prove to your
friends with this soup-centric dinner party?
- I wanna show my friends that soup can be the main dish,
we can make a dinner around.
- What if we did like a gumbo?
We could do a garlic bread.
- You're blowing my mind.
- And then if we served it with a beer
your friends would leave feeling full.
- I don't care about my friends anymore.
I just wanna eat the soup.
- Think fast, nerd.
- I'm not a nerd!
I just like soup a lot.
I don't eat well.
- But you have to feed your friends well maybe do a dinner
party that's just uh...
- Just ring things?
- Yeah.
- Yes.
- All right Juan, welcome to the Thrillist kitchen.
Are you ready to get started on our dinner?
- Definitely.
- OK, we're gonna start with the gumbo.
First things first,
we're gonna make a roux.
A half cup of oil and a half cup of flour.
Then later on we're gonna add it to our gumbo.
You can use a roux to make a Béchamel,
which people use in making a mac & cheese.
- OK.
- It's close enough to soup so it'll do for you, right?
- I mean, anything that you--
Yes, it's close yeah.
- So you want to get your roux nice and golden brown
until it looks like this.
So you see this nice golden color we have?
What that's gonna do is
it's gonna give our gumbo a beautiful bold flavor.
Speaking of golden brown, we have seared our chicken thighs.
Remove them for now,
because we're gonna shred them later.
And we're gonna leave all the fat
and the beautiful tasty juices in there,
so we can start building the rest of the gumbo.
You always wanna use andouille in gumbo.
That's the classic sausage that you use.
It's nice spicy smoky flavor.
It's gonna go great with everything that we have.
- So I'm gonna put the sausage--
- Go for it.
- Is this a chef move?
- It is now.
So you've never cooked for your friends before?
- No, I have never done that.
- Oh man.
- And I don't think they wanted that without supervision.
That's what my job is.
I'm just supervising.
You're doing a great job.
- Thank you very much.
- [Lee] Now that we have a nice sear on our sausage,
let's take that out.
We're gonna add the pepper,
and the onion and celery all together.
Add our cayenne.
I'm gonna add like a half a cup of beer.
One tablespoon tomato paste.
This looks like it's about ready for our crushed tomatoes.
Beautiful.
- Boom.
- Not one splash or spill.
Here we go with our roux, into the soup.
Do you wanna tilt it a little more for me?
I know that it's heavy.
It's heavy.
I warned you.
- But I didn't know.
It wasn't a matter of feminism.
It was matter of "I'm an idiot."
- Why soup?
- Soup is the best.
My soup journey started more as a survival mechanism,
because soup is also very cheap.
Initially, I was eating canned soups.
But the thing about those, is that you eventually,
if you eat them every day, you die.
You just need a spoon and a big dog bowl.
You just do like this, and you're set.
- We're gonna add this four cups of water, frozen okra.
The final stage of our gumbo.
We're gonna add our chicken and our sausage.
So we have some rice cooking on the back burner.
Just regular rice, nothing fancy,
because the gumbo is the star of the show.
The rice is just backing it up.
It's time to work on our garlic bread.
Four tablespoons butter, five cloves of minced garlic.
We're doing these little bite-size, pull-apart pieces.
That way, we can get every bit of our garlic butter
inside of the baguette.
- That's gonna be inside there.
- That guy's gonna be in that guy.
- Oh my God.
- Yeah.
We're gonna pour our garlic butter on top.
Last thing, we have to make our shandy.
We're gonna start with a simple syrup.
A half cup of water, a half cup of sugar,
with celery, lemon peel, and parsley.
We're gonna add our beer, our simple syrup,
a little lemon juice.
Top it off with seltzer.
Celery stock there.
Lets get a little parsley in there.
Let's cheers, to Juan and his $30 dinner party.
- Thank you very much.
I feel like I'm drinking in a jungle.
- I was gonna say a garden,
but maybe it is more intense than that.
- It's a jungle.
- Hey guys! - Hello!
- Come on in!
- Wow!
Are you guys ready for some soup?
- Whoa, now you're speaking our language!
- Here comes the soup, baby!
- Wow, yeah!
- Soup's on, man!
- Gumbo!
- Juan, you put seasoning in something?
- Yeah!
- Did someone give that to you?
- Soup, there it is.
- This soup,
it looks like you might need a fork.
- Well, you get spoons.
- I'm very excited to eat it.
- You guys wanna toast?
- You don't think this is a meal, right?
- I can't wait to prove you wrong.
- All right, we'll see.
- That's a good shandy!
You can really taste the celery.
- Juan, this garlic bread is so garlic-y, in like a good way.
Mmm, it's good.
- Juan, this is delicious.
- When you take a bite it's like it's good,
but then you get the heat afterwards.
- Juan, I'm saying if I had one meal
left on this God-given Earth, I would have this.
- You think I don't believe you with that
and I appreciate it but-- - What, look at me!
- So you would call this a meal?
- Now I would.
And I used to say that soup was not a meal,
remember I had that shirt?
Is gumbo a soup?
- Yeah because if not this whole thing is void,
because this isn't a soup.
- What's a soup?
- There's no one type of soup.
- So there needs to be a specific definition of a soup.
- I don't think there is one definition of a soup.
- But there has to be because then everything is everything.
But to me this is not a soup.
- Why not?
It's a soup!
- Because soups-- - It's a hearty soup!
- are more brothy.
- It's a hearty soup! - Guys can we just get along?
- No, no!
It's a hearty soup!
- Listen!
Soup can be whatever you want in your heart.
- There's rice in this!
- And that is fine!
- Wait you're from Romania, right?
- I'm not from Romania.
I think we went through this a bunch of times.
- Where are you from?
- I know I sound like a drunk Dracula,
but I am not.
I am from Uruguay.
- How much did you spend on this meal?
- $30.
- No.
- Yup.
- That's insane.
- 30 American?
- $30 per person?
- No! - That's it.
- No it's $30 the whole thing.
- I love this meal, I love this soup, and I love all you.
- Aww.
- To Juan!
- A great man.
- Thank you very much.
- 'Cause friends know what friends are saying
even if they're foreign.
- What was that about?
- Get out of my house!
- Get out!
- Well, we nailed it!
Juan set out to show his friends
that he can serve a soup-centric dinner party
for just under $30,
and he did just that.
So, in the words of the great Juan Nicolon,
"Soup, there it is."
- Thanks so much everybody for watching.
Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe
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