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(trilling music)
(simmering)
(speaking foreign language)
(cheerful music)
Hello there.
Welcome back to another episode of, "Anime with Alvin".
Today we're going to be making the chicken meatball hot pot
from, "Jujitsu Kaisen",
in celebration of the second season coming out.
The inspiration for this dish seems to be
Tori Dango Nabe or a chicken meatball hot pot
which is usually cooked in a special pot called
a donabe, an earthenware pot that is perfect
for making things like rice, stews, and steaming.
And this is a new pot, so we'll have to season it.
This works differently than seasoning other kinds
of aluminum or cast iron cookware.
And after doing some Googling, it seems
like the best way to do this is using the water
from washing rice.
So we're gonna wash about two cups of rice
but instead of dumping the starchy water down the sink,
as you would do if you're cooking rice
we're actually gonna pour that water directly into the pot
filling it up 80% of the way.
We're gonna bring this to a boil
and I think the goal here is to essentially plug
up all those tiny holes
in the earthenware with the starchy water.
The starchy water will sort of act
as a glue and a sealant so that when we're steaming
or cooking other sorts of liquids,
those strong flavors don't seep into the pot itself.
Once that's done, give this a rinse and wipe out
and we're ready to prep the rest of this dish.
We have six boneless, skinless chicken thighs
which I'm going to chop up into small chunks.
Finally, chop about four green onions
and peel and grate about one table spoon of ginger.
Sometimes chicken meatballs can be made by hand
but I found it best to do this in the food processor.
So we're gonna blitz the chicken thighs
until there are slight tiny, tiny chunks left
and that gets taken out
and combined with the green onions and ginger.
Once that's done, I'm pouring in three egg yolks
and mixing these by hand, which gives these a little bit
of a slightly rougher texture,
which creates a better bite in your mouth, I feel.
A pinch of salt and pepper
which I'm going to ask a mysterious hand to do
off camera since I don't want to contaminate it.
And this meatball mixture is ready to set
for a little bit in the fridge.
For the beautiful array of vegetables seen in the anime
we're gonna take a leek, cut these about half inch thick
into large slices, peel and cut two to
three large carrots into the same sort of angled shape
and bisect a few trumpet or king oyster mushrooms
and have about one bunch of chrysanthemum leaves on the side
which are a very common green used in Asian cooking.
For the broth, we have six cups of water in this donabe,
and we're putting in one large piece of comb
bringing that up to a simmer and then removing it.
Then I'm adding, again, two tablespoons of soy sauce
two tablespoons of medium, and three tablespoons of sake,
bringing this up to a boil.
And that will be the broth for our hotpot.
Now comes the fun part.
Instead of being baked or broiled
these meatballs are directly shaped
and spooned into the broth to cook.
Often this is done with two spoons,
scooping and shaping the mixture back and forth
until you have what is hopefully a perfect sphere.
Now, I'm not really the best at this
and I've never done this before, so we're gonna give
that a shot and slowly spent a lot of time trying to find
out the perfect shape for these meatballs.
Well, let's just say these meatballs went in
about one at a time.
Each meatball cooks for roughly five minutes
so I had to make sure to keep track
of what time each meatball went in
so that they can re removed after they've been cooked.
This might seem redundant, but we're gonna plate these
up by putting the meatballs back into the broth
and then arrange the vegetables in a nice fan out pattern.
You can eat hot pot any way you like
but I think if you want to make it more
of an event like Fushiguro did when he was bringing all
of his friends over to mourn the death of his friend
Itadori who's actually not dead.
I would say that you would want plate up your hot pot
like this.
After arranging all the meatballs and vegetables
into the pot and shoving those chrysanthemum leaves
in the corner, we're gonna bring this broth back over
to the stove and we're gonna turn on the heat
so that the whole thing can come to a simmer by itself.
And to use the full capacity of this donabe
we're gonna cover it with this uniquely shaped lid
and let the steam inside fully cook the vegetables
on the top.
But once it's brought to a boil,
and all the vegetables have been simmering
for about three to four minutes, this thing is ready to eat.
So just like Fushiguro, I'm gonna turn
off the heat and invite my friends over,
Steve, Rachel, Kennell to come over and eat this
with me as it needs to be a shared dish.
One by one, we're gonna slowly sample each
of the meatballs and the vegetables, making sure to give
that a big (blows) cause it is really, really, really hot.
And over the course of 10 minutes,
we finished consuming this hot pot bit by bit
and this is my favorite part of hot pot.
After you're done eating all the goodies
there's probably a lot of the broth still left
in the bottom of the pot, rather than discarding it
or leaving it at the table at the restaurant you ate at,
I like to use this because it essentially
is a distilled concentrated power bomb of flavors from all
of the vegetables and meat that has been cooking in there.
I have here a pack of really high quality instant ramen
and we're gonna basically cook these ramen noodles
in this broth itself, giving the noodles a ton of flavor
while also adding in the flavor
of whatever flavor packet we decided to choose.
Two minutes in, I'm also gonna crack in two good eggs
just 'cause eggs and ramen go really, really well together.
Let that cook, making sure not to break up the yolk
too much.
And then when it's done cooking, we're gonna add
in a handful of our chopped scallions on top.
And one could argue
that this ramen, egg, soy, miso combination cooked
in leftover hot pot broth may be more exciting
and delicious than the actual contents before it.
But nevertheless, we are going to eat this.
I'm gonna be honest here.
If the whole point of making this hot pot with all
the chicken and vegetables was to flavor of this broth,
well that was worth it because this ramen is insanely good.
You could do this with udon, with rice, pretty
much anything to use up and soak up all of those flavors
which is something I would imagine Itadori would do
after eating hot pot.
Maybe that's how he was able to pull
off four consecutive black flashes.
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(lowkey music)