- Hi, I'm Rie.
I'm a Tasty producer.
Today I've been challenged to take
a common food and make it fancy.
Here's today's rules:
You must completely use the food given.
You can only add to the food.
You can buy whatever ingredients you wish.
Let's see what we are making fancy today.
Tater tots.
I have tried this before and I think it's delicious.
The first time I saw this
it was in a movie called "Napoleon Dynamite."
I really like tots.
It's just very simple potato and salt and fried.
But I haven't tried them for a long time
so I want to refresh my memory.
(slides bowl)
- Cute.
(chews)
- Delicious.
I like this because it's crunchy, salty and potato-ey.
So this is delicious as it is but this is not too fancy
so I want to transform this to something very impressive.
Okay I've got some great ideas
and I'm excited to make it fancy.
(flute music)
- Right here's what I got:
dried porcini mushrooms,
onion, rosemary, garlic, thyme,
shiitake mushrooms, butter, ground lamb,
heavy cream, carrot and eggs.
From the pantry I got beef stock, flour, salt,
pepper, non-stick spray, worcestershire -- (laughs)
Worcestershire?
Worcestershire sauce and red wine.
Okay let's get started.
(catches bag)
- Make it fancy.
(string plucking music)
First we are going to soak porcini mushrooms.
I have one cup of hot water,
this is one ounce dried porcini mushrooms.
Soak this about 30 minutes, set this aside
and start chopping vegetables.
- I've never met mushroom I didn't like (chuckles).
There is an expensive mushroom in Japan, though,
called matsutake.
It costs about a hundred dollars per mushroom.
Fragrance is really strong and it's very good.
We are mincing onion like small dice
and I'm going to just peel.
This is the skinniest carrot I've ever seen (laughs).
Cut the same size as the onion.
They are going to be in the same pot
so I'm going to just mix together.
Mushroom is soaked.
So you want to use the soaking water later so don't discard.
Chop mushroom kind of similar size
with onion and the carrot.
It's softened so it's easier to cut.
We also have shiitake mushroom.
Remove the stem, so we are just using this part.
You want to cut all the ingredients
almost the same size so it cooks evenly.
We're using different mushroom because
it has a different texture and a different flavor.
So all the shiitake mushroom is cut.
Cut garlic next.
I have a lot of knife at home
but the one I use the most is the
chef's knife and this is petty knife.
Petty knife is good knife when you are cutting
small things like garlic or like cutting fruit.
So if you want to start cooking I highly
recommend to get chef's knife and petty knife first.
Those are ready to go and we are moving on to next step.
Heat up olive oil, medium high.
Add ground lamb.
(meat sizzles)
- So you kind of want to make it small pieces
so using little spatula and break the meat.
Cook it until it changes color.
I'm using lamb for this recipe.
If you don't have lamb you can use ground beef.
Season with salt and pepper.
You can see a lot of oil come from lamb
so you want to drain it after --
Okay so it looks good.
The reason you drain oil:
you don't want to make the final dish super greasy.
So next we are going to use the same pan
but you want to wipe the excess grease.
Add a little bit olive oil.
Saute vegetable, onion and carrot first.
Season with a little bit of salt.
When you're cooking a lot of vegetables,
season one by one so you're kind of layering the flavor.
If you sprinkle salt on onions or carrots
it kind of helps soften faster.
Okay so onion is softened.
Add shiitake mushroom, porcini mushroom and garlic.
And I'm sauteing with medium
until all the ingredients get softened.
About seven to eight minutes.
I tend to put garlic to the end
because it sometimes it gets burnt.
Add some thyme, a little bit more salt.
And I'm adding back the lamb.
Half cup of wine, two tablespoons of flour.
I added red wine because it
goes well with lamb and it adds depths of flavor.
Add two cups of beef stock.
We are also adding (tries to pronounce worcestershire)
- [Offscreen voice] Worcestershire.
- Worcestershire, two tablespoons.
Bring this to a boil and reduce the heat to simmer.
Simmer about 20 to 30 minutes until the sauce thickens.
Okay so sauce has been thickened.
It's a good consistency.
Transfer to ring mold.
So you want to spray the mold with a little bit oil
and spoon the filling into the mold.
If you don't have ring mold
you can just put it in a bowl or a ramekin.
Flatten it with spatula so it's easy when you un-mold.
Set this aside and moving on to next step:
tater tots time.
One pound of tater tots
and putting in a steamer box.
Put the lid back on top
and steam this about 10 to 12 minutes.
Okay it's been 10 minutes.
Transfer this into a bowl.
I'm adding in a potato ricer.
Somehow a lot of cooking tools look like a torture device.
It's making
a weird noise.
When you make mashed potato
you want to use this one
so you can make nice creamy mashed potato.
Tater tots is a bit little grainy
and I wanted to make smooth smashed potato kind of texture.
- Isn't it America?
- Yeah (chuckles).
I think tater tots is a really cute name.
You cannot beat that.
If you don't have potato ricer
you can use potato masher or you can use fork
but don't use food processor
because it makes potato very gummy.
Two tablespoon of heavy cream.
Four tablespoon of melted butter.
Going to use two egg yolks
and I learned tater tots is scraps from french fries
so it's no-waste food, which is great.
(taps egg on table)
Tasty no waste-y.
And season with salt.
Mix everything evenly, combine well
and I'm moving on to the next step.
We have this potato mixture
and I have piping bag.
You can kind of twist and insert piping bag
so it doesn't drip.
Or you can use something tall like a glass.
You kind of want to pipe this.
I'm kind of experimenting with style.
You can also do kind of like lines.
So if you don't have mold
or if you don't have piping bag
you can just use casserole.
It doesn't need to be fancy
but this show is "Make it Fancy" so I'm making fancy.
So I'm going to bake this in a oven 375 fahrenheit
for 20 to 25 minutes until potato is golden brown.
I will need two cups of beef stock (imitates pouring sound).
Using reserved mushroom soaking water.
You want to strain through a mesh sieve
so it catches those like sands and stuff.
One cup of soaking water, three sprigs of thyme and garlic.
You don't need to chop this you just like want to smash it.
Bring it to a boil and reduce to simmer
and reduce this sauce by half
so the flavor is concentrated.
Okay so sauce is reduced by half.
As you can see the color is darkened.
Add butter to thicken the sauce.
I'm adding two tablespoon of butter
and make sure you use the cold butter to emulsify the sauce.
If you use warm butter or if you use melted butter
the sauce won't be emulsified and it will break.
I'm adding one more and you want to whisk constantly.
Since we used thyme and garlic you want to strain.
Sauce is done and we are moving on to next step.
So we baked about 25 minutes.
The potato looks golden brown, it looks delicious.
So I'm going to plate it.
Make it pretty in order to fancy.
Transferring to this sauce to little gravy pot.
Moment of truth.
And final touch.
Top off the rosemary and we are done.
(peaceful orchestral music)
- Tater tots shepherd's pie.
Very fancy.
(relaxing whistling music)
- Ryan.
- Rie.
- Welcome to Tater Tots Wonderland.
- Tater Tot Wonderland?
(Rie laughs)
Cool, that's awesome.
- Yeah.
- I love tater tots.
- Yeah.
Tater tots have always been with me
and when they haven't been with me
I have sought them out.
- What do you think, like, what is this?
- I think that's like -- it looks like a succulent.
(laughs)
- It looks like sweated onions.
- Mm hmm.
(laughs)
- Yeah, that's right.
(chews)
- Mmm.
- What do you taste?
- Beef.
Right, no?
Chicken?
Beef.
- No.
- Lamb!
- Yes!
- [Rie And Ryan] Make it fancy!
- All right Katie, can you guess what I made fancy today?
- It looks like shepherd's pie
but I don't -- I can't tell from here
what you've made fancy.
- Yeah, so --
- [Katie] So is this like a gravy?
- [Rie] Yeah.
- I can only tell right now
that it looks like mashed potatoes on the top.
(Rie laughs)
Mmmm.
This is the best shepherd's pie I've have ever had.
- Yes.
- But I've only had like
Trader Joe's in-a-box shepherd's pie.
(laughs)
- When I eat the top part alone
it tastes a little bit like hash browns.
- Yes and --
- And I don't know is it --
- You're warmer.
- Is it a tater tot?
(cheers and claps)
Do I get a million dollars?
That was delicious.
- [Rie] Thank you!
- Can I just take the rest?
- Oh yeah, of course.
- It"s like my bed time.
- Yeah.
- My bedtime?
- You eat shepherd's pie in bed? (laughs)
- I don't eat food in bed.
I have eaten food in bed.
(laughs)
♪ Rie made these tater tots that say make it fancy. ♪
(laughs)
- [Rie and Katie] Make it fancy.
(light swing music)