- [Tucker] It looks so, real.
- I wanna live inside of the crust.
You can slowly crank it up a little bit.
- Oh
(Tucker imitates the blender)
Let's take a peek.
- Wait, turn off.
- Oh my God, it's on, okay.
(beep)
- Hey, what's up everybody.
It's your girl, Merle, and today,
I'm gonna have my very good friend Tucker on the show.
He is a pizza lover.
So I'm gonna take him to what I think
is the best vegan pizza spot in LA,
and then we're gonna come back to the studio
and we're gonna make our own delicious vegan pizza,
and then at the end
he has to decide which one he likes the best.
So without further ado, let's go get Tucker.
- Tucker.
- Hello.
(Tucker Screams)
(beep)
- How are we doing absolutely today?
- Doing so (beep) well
- I am so happy to be here in electric vehicle,
nonetheless, on Brand Vibe.
- Sustainable.
Tucker, you love a pizza.
- Oh my God, are you kidding me?
Of course I do.
I get a lot of Domino's pizza.
I grew up on it and it's in my blood,
it's in my veins.
You can't walk away from eating Domino's
without the nastiest hands you've ever seen, it is insane.
- Yes, yes the sticky jam hands.
- But if we're talking like something
a little less embarrassing, probably Prime Pizza.
Have you ever been, have you ever heard?
- Haven't heard, haven't been
- Oh my gosh, double homicide.
It is so delish, I oftentimes get pepperoni sausage.
- Pepperoni sausage?
Is that like balls of pepperoni.
- Sorry, pepperoni, sausage, both.
- I was like pepperoni and sausage form?
- It's beautifully seasoned,
really loaded up on the meats there,
there are little pepperoni curl up
and it just like catches the wet cheese oils.
You are absolutely drenched
by the time you finish that pizza.
- Drenched right now.
(Tucker laughs)
Is that too far?
- I love jalapenos and onions as well on them.
- Right now, we are currently headed
to a delicious establishment called Pizza 108.
- I think it's some of the best,
if not the best vegan pizza in LA.
The crust is insane.
- So Tucker, I could say you're slightly seasoned veteran
of the old Mobile Vegan Taste Test.
How do you feel about the idea of a vegan pizza,
I mean, we're talking about a lot of vegan substitutes here,
cheese. - Yeah.
- Sausage, pepperoni.
- Some things that I'm gonna be looking for,
definitely obviously look, flavor.
A common problem seems to be the cheese,
whether it is kind of gross, whether it's stretchy
and most importantly, whether it is melted.
- All that's left to do is to go and scope this place out.
(soft music)
Las Vegas is the original location,
I bought a kitchen,
I was originally gonna supply all the casinos
with meats and cheeses that I had already been making
for many, many years.
But I wanted to do something in between
to keep the doors open while I was getting those contracts.
So when I bought the place, it already had a pizza oven.
So I thought, what the hell?
That's exactly what I'll do.
I lived in Los Angeles first, then I moved to Las Vegas.
When the pizza took off in Las Vegas
naturally I wanted to have something here.
I knew that it was gonna be a ghost kitchen.
I just didn't know exactly where until we landed up here.
- Do you have any background with making pizza,
making anything?
- No. - No?
- How did you learn?
- I used to make focaccia bread.
So I basically took that same recipe
and just tweaked it until I got exactly where I wanted to.
Our sausage is made out of P protein and soy protein,
the cheese is a secret.
- Oh my gosh.
- It's not made out of any nuts or soy.
- Is it made on a hope and a dream.
- It took me a long time to figure it out.
That's really what makes Pizza 108 different
from a lot of other places,
cause we don't buy the ingredients from a supplier
or anything, I make it all by hand in Vegas.
If you're gonna go after people that aren't vegan
it's gotta taste the same, it's gotta look the same
and it's gotta react the same.
Before the pandemic about 90% of our customers were vegan,
after the pandemic, it's about 50-50.
- What is the process of making your dough and your crust?
And what is your secret?
If you can say.
- [Christopher] The style of pizza is Neapolitan Style,
the signature of that crust is the fact that
it is pillowy, it's crunchy, but yet soft
at the exact same time and the fermentation time as well.
It's not so much the dough itself.
It actually, it's the stretching that makes it
a Neapolitan style.
Most pizza sauces are cooked,
Neapolitan is very, very simple,
it's basically just tomatoes, basil, some salt.
American style pizza is loaded,
whereas in Italy you don't really find that
both the cheese and the meat are the star.
I truly believe since I've been able to live my life
without harming other living entities,
you know, for over 30 years,
I really truly believe that we all can do that.
All we have left to do is to try some pizza.
- Yes
- Yes, let's do it.
- Oh my God, order up.
- [Christopher] We have sausage.
(both shriek in excitement)
(calm music)
- Oh baby.
- Oh my God.
- She good.
This sausage is kind of terrifying,
I'm like, is this real?
Is this another secret that he has up his sleeve?
(pizza crunches)
Oh the crust, look inside the crust.
- My gosh.
- The secrets of the universe live in there.
- Oh.
- I mean, clearly we like it, right?
(pizza crunches)
I always, I'll like come back to the crust at the end,
but I'm eating this.
- I won't make you wait, we can also try this one.
Ready?
- Certainly got the look on these meats.
- Cheers, I know. - Cheers, cheers.
(calm music)
- This is fantastic.
- I can't get over like the sausage.
- The way it looks too.
- It looks so real.
- The texture is so spot on with this pepperoni,
I have to say.
- [Rachel] I wanna try a piece.
- Oh my gosh, look at the drip, it just drips off.
- Rachel can't control herself.
- This is really good.
- Well, that was pretty good huh?
- Yeah, I'm over here moaning.
- We're now gonna go back to the old studio
and we're gonna make our own vegan pizza.
- All I'm gonna say is, good luck.
- Oh.
(Tucker laughs)
- We made it we're back in the studio.
- Yeah.
- And now we're gonna make our own delicious vegan pizza,
I have to compete with the one we just had.
- I believe in you.
- Oh you do?
- I do,
I know that might not exactly be what I said earlier.
"All I'm gonna say is good luck."
I do believe in you.
- All right.
Well actually we're basically on a team together.
- I'm doing it?
Okay, well there goes that hope of a good pizza.
- Well, since you love pepperoni and sausage on your pizza,
we're gonna make like a meat lover's delight.
- Oh my God, you know, I love the meat.
I'm sorry guys
- We're gonna make a vegan sausage
and we're gonna make a vegan pepperoni.
- Yummy, yummy.
- So first thing we're gonna do is
we're gonna make a vegan mozzarella.
So we got some soaked cashew there,
you can add those in to water, refined, coconut oil
meso paste.
So next we're gonna add nutritional yeast,
and then we have some tapioca starch,
and this is going to add the stretch,
and then we got some lemon juice,
that's gonna add like the little cheesy tang.
All right, next up, not as exciting, but salt.
- Some Na Cl
- Sugar.
- Don't know the chemical compound for that one, sorry gang.
- Oh come on, damn.
- So how long are we going for,
oh you gotta hold that apparently,
how long,
(both laughing)
We have to be wearing goggles, apparently.
- Helmets, I feel like,
- Yeah.
I'm interested to see how in the heck
this is gonna turn cheesy cause right now
this is the liquid, I would swim in this.
- All right, I feel like that's pretty good.
So now look at our little creation.
- Oh my gosh it's beautiful.
- So you're gonna strain that, yes.
- Strain, strain, strain
- Yeah strain here just to get any last little chunks
or like cache bits and then we're gonna just whisk
that constantly.
We're gonna experience science ILL right now
because it's going to become, - Oh,
- Like you just saw a little globular
- Wait, it's already happening, it's cuddling as we speak.
- There you go.
- Oh my God, it really does happen fast.
- It does.
- Oh my God, it's gone from pancake mixed to mash potatoes,
- There it is. - Real fast.
- You were born to do this, God damn.
All right, it's a live one. - Its alive.
- So I think it's a time to transfer.
So go ahead and deliver the baby.
- Oh my God, four to five minutes, my ass cheeks.
Oh, that just globed the hell out.
- So we're gonna let this cool down for 40 minutes
and then we're gonna freeze it for about four hours.
Are you ready to make this log baby?
- I am look at all these ingreds.
- I'm gonna have you add our dry ingredients first,
that's some vital wheat gluten, which is basically
what's gonna be like the base of this thing.
And then let's add in our nutr, instant tapioca
this is gonna serve as like the little fat pockets
that you would get in pepperoni,
and then we got some smoked paprika,
we got some fennel seeds, black pepper, some salt
and then red pepper flakes
and then finally some garlic powder.
So the vital wheat gluten is going to give it
the body that we want for our pepperoni
and like a nice chewy meaty texture.
We're gonna mix up our wet ingredient.
- Yes, that's just your classic run of the mill water
- Or H2O.
Tomato paste, some vegan worcestershire sauce,
and then we've got some soy sauce
and then some molasses, melted, refined coconut oil,
then finally some brown of sugar.
And now we're just gonna add our dry ingredients
and you're gonna whisk that together.
This is gonna transform.
- Oh my God, you're not lying.
This thing is shaping up nicely.
- Yeah.
Are you ready to manhandle this meat?
Because we have to force this into a log,
you know, bring them together.
(Merle laughs)
Okay, yeah, or that, you can do that too.
- If we can get as many hands on this as possible.
Nice.
- Yeah.
- Look at that.
Oh my gosh, premature, but beautiful.
(Merle laughs)
- So you're gonna put it on here basically.
- Oh.
- So we're gonna use this to kind of roll it up,
roll it up and then we're gonna twist the end.
We're gonna steam it and I wanna put the seam down.
- Seam down, here's the seam.
- And now we're going to steam
our little baby pepperoni for 30 minutes.
It's sausage time.
- Oh, hell yeah.
What do we call this in the English language?
- In the English language one might call this tofu
that has been pressed, crumbled frozen and thawed.
So I'm gonna have you take this tofu,
I'm gonna have you transfer it over
to our little mesh sieve.
It's gonna be kind of the base for our vegan sausage.
- We're pressing, pressing, pressing.
Oh, got some juice coming out.
- Yeah, you're doing great.
Tucker.
- Yes.
- Do you know what time it is?
- What time is it?
- Vegan Trivia time.
(Tucker shrieks)
How much waste?
And I do mean feces,
do you think industrially raised pigs produce in the US?
- Hogs be pooping, I don't know much about hogs
but they do be pooping.
- 2 billion? That feels like a lot.
- The amount of waste we're dealing with here
is about as much as half the us population every year,
- Poops?
- Poops dumps. - Wow!
- One might say,
but the problem is that this waste runs off
into our ocean ways, creating dead zone.
So dead zones result in like a reduced level of oxygen
in the ocean or in the water.
So it forces fish to either migrate or just die.
So currently there is a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico,
that is about the size of Connecticut.
- The industry is just like, that's chill.
- Yeah, I guess they just, they consider that a write off,
they're like, yeah well, (beep) happens, am I right?
There's a song and dance for these walnuts.
So we want them to come together into a bit of a paste
but not like a butter, like, you know like,
any nut can be a butter, nut butter, like almond butter.
- Any nut can be a butter, but not all butters can be nuts.
(bell dings)
Should we go with this?
Oh, oh, oh my God.
(soft music)
- So now we're gonna have you add in some fennel seeds,
add the garlic clove, and then we've got some coconut oil,
apple cider vinegar, red pepper flakes,
and then we got some sugar and salt.
We're gonna blend those up again.
All right, so now we're gonna add in our mushrooms
and then we're gonna toss in some corn starch
and some flour.
We don't wanna ground this down to an absolute paste.
We want it to be kind of mixed,
but we still wanna see some mushroom life.
Shall we add it to our tofu?
- Of course, please.
- All right.
So the tofu's gonna kind of be like, again, the fat.
- This is really starting to look like ground sausage to me.
- Okay, so now we're gonna take
like little two teaspoon clumps,
and we're going to pop it on yield skillet.
- Okay, how are they looking? Do we look?
- Shall we flippity flop them?
(yells) Oh my God.
- No, I'm kidding.
This looks so much like sausage, I'm really impressed.
- Oh yeah, they're looking crispy.
- Maop
(both laugh)
Nonstick, more like slippery as hell.
- All right, we're back.
Our cheese is here, our pepperonis here.
- Boom.
- And it's time to grate and slice.
- Sounds great to me.
- Oh.
We're gonna use your big hand
and we're gonna have you grate our cheese
and we had to freeze it
because if you just let it cool down,
it's still gonna be kind of flexible,
so we won't be able to grate it.
- Here we go.
- You're doing amazingly.
And now what we're gonna do is we're gonna slice up our
pepperoni.
- She looks so good.
- Now it's gonna be time for us to assemble.
- Oh, already.
- What you're gonna do is get our little dough baby
into a little ball for us.
We got the corn meal on there.
- A sprinkle, a dust.
- Yeah, so it doesn't stick.
- And then we just slap her on there?
- Slap her on there and then you're gonna press it out
into a nice little pizza crust.
- This is looking delicioso.
- Look, it goes against the laws of nature
that this is such a perfect circle.
You wanna sauce it up?
- Sauce it up?
I'm always ready to sauce it up.
Look at that mozzarella.
- Mozzarella.
Oh my gosh, so now are we adding our meats?
- Oh yeah, we are.
(soft music)
- I mean, you can't have enough pepperoni.
- Oh, he did it.
- Oh
- Gorgeous.
Oh my God, this pizza's gonna be on fire.
Wow.
- Now it's time to bake.
Yay, look at our pizza.
- The pepperoni is looking fire, the sausage is scaring me,
it's so good looking.
Okay, so we have some chili oil
- Cut her up.
(Tucker groans)
Oh, wow.
(Tucker groans)
Oh my God.
(soft music)
- Yeah, I'm gonna take this one,
let's see that spread.
Oh my gosh, this is looking good.
- Damn, the crust came out nicely.
- That crust is great and this cheese is impressing me.
- I know.
Cheers. - Cheers.
Ah.
- That is (bleep) good
- That jalapenos, those beautiful spices,
oh my gosh, in the meats.
- I'm really impressed with sausage, it's like a tofu base.
- I don't think I would be able to tell the difference.
- Really?
- To me for that sausage, that's unreal.
- I'm feeling really good about what we made here.
- Yeah. - Today.
So all it's left to do now is for you
to rate each of our pizzas that we tried.
Here we are,
we have finally reached the final frontier Tucker.
- Oh my gosh.
- I here have your 10 out of 10 pizza from Prime Pizza.
Then we have the delicious pizza we had from Pizza 108.
And then finally we have our pizza
that we just made here in studio.
So why don't you go on down the line
and take a bite of each one to jog the old memory?
- Yeah, I should probably try to remember that.
- You know
- The 10 holds up, that's some good stuff.
Little chewier than I remember.
Yeah, so I remember that from five minutes ago.
- Yes, yes, yes, yes.
- Hm, over here, I think the bread is hard to beat,
I know he has, his cheese is like his specialty.
I think we did a pretty good job with the cheese.
Our cheese is fantastic and you know, I love the sausage.
So this one it's very simplified, it's not busy.
I think this one could potentially be viewed as busy.
Damn.
Here's the God's honest truth,
eight, 9.5.
- Uh, Yay.
I'm very happy, but I didn't expect it.
Let us know in the comments below.
That was really good.
- Thank you so much.
- Who you would like to see on the show next?
What you would like us to make vegan?
- Boom. - Mic drop.
I don't know if you've seen it done like this before.
(glass shutters)
- Oh, there's a box, there's a box, okay.
[Tucker] I might like this sausage better
than that sausage and I'm not lying.
- [Merle] The real sausage?
- [Tucker] I seriously think I do.
- [Merle] Damn.
- [Tucker] It literally just has more flavor to me.
- [Merle] I mean, I would love to try,
but I won't just cancel myself on the vegan internet
right now.