Hey what's up guys, welcome back to Binging With Babish, where this week
thanks to a sponsorship from Crunchyroll, we are taking a look at the okonomiyaki
from Sweetness and Lightening a dish whose name literally translates to as
you like, so you can really put pretty much whatever you want there. But we're
gonna take a look at the more traditional fillings that you might find
in this Japanese Street food. We're going to start with the okonomiyaki sauce, a very simple sauce that
starts with a tablespoon of white sugar 2 tablespoons of oyster sauce 4
tablespoons of ketchup and 3 and 1/2 tablespoons of worcestershire sauce I know
it said it wrong I'm just trying to trigger you. We're gonna whisk everything
together using an appropriately cute little whisk and pour it into a squeeze
bottle for easier distribution down the line. Now ideally we want to score some
actual Japanese Mayo for this recipe but we can make a close approximation at
home using 1 cup of plain old mayo combined with 1 tablespoon of rice wine
vinegar and a tablespoon of sugar. Viscosity is key here we want a
consistency a little bit runny or just slightly than regular mayo you can see
mine is a little bit too thin I'm gonna pay for that later on. And now for the
non batter elements of our pancake. We're going to roughly chop some pickled red
ginger, a few scallions, and a whole half a head of cabbage. To do that we're gonna
start by cutting the half in half, cut out the core, and slice into thin ribbons.
Then cut those ribbons into bite-size pieces by cutting crosswise until you
can imagine them fitting in your mouth. Make sure everything's chopped down to
size and now it's time to start making batter. Now you can buy packaged
okonomiyaki flour, but well it seems to be generally frowned upon by okonomiyaki
enthusiasts, so if you want to be legit combine 1 cup of cake flour with a
teaspoon and a half of baking powder. You'll see that I'm making some dashi
broth we'll use that in a minute. First we've got to whisk together our dry
ingredients and then it's time to wrangle one of the strangest vegetables
we've ever had on Binging With Babish, the Japanese Mountain yam which when
grated turns into ectoplasmic goo. This apparently not only helps bind the
pancakes together but contributes to its signature flavor. If you can't find one
of these just use 1/2 a cup of milk with an extra teaspoon of baking powder.
We're adding the 1 cup of dashi broth to the dry ingredients along with the yam,
and whisking to combine but just barely. Just like any pancake we don't want to
over whisk we want to prevent gluten development and allow the dry
ingredients to fully hydrate in the fridge for 30 minutes. Then we were going
to crack and lightly beat together four large eggs and add that to our fresh out
the fridge batter yam mixture. Gently whisk the whole
thing together until homogenous and then it's time to add our desired fillings
which can vary wildly but we're gonna go for a sort of traditional red pickled
ginger, tenkasu or fried tempura scraps, maybe two scallions worth of our chopped
scallions, save the rest for garnish and of course our cabbage which we're going
to add maybe about half of to start. Get it nice and mixed in there make sure
it's all evenly coated and add the remaining cabbage. We're looking for a
ratio of cabbage to batter that looks sort of like coleslaw. That's right about
where we want it, this is more of a pancakey cabbage then a cabbagey
pancake. And now finally it's time to cook. In a large non-stick pan heat two
or three tablespoons of vegetable oil over medium flame until shimmering and
then dump in about half of our cabbage the pancake batter. Use some rubber
spatulas to coax it into the proper shape. You want this thing about an
inch and half thick and maybe eight inches around. Then it's time to layer
the top with thin slices of pork belly. If you can't find this you can use bacon.
It's not as authentic, but are you gonna tell me that bacon on this thing is
gonna taste bad? No. Unless you're a liar. After covering and cooking over
medium-low heat for about five minutes it's time to flip. You're probably gonna
want to use the two spatulas to do this, but if you got a big old badass one like
this you just might be able to... huh oh, that's a relief.
We're gonna cover this guy up and let him cook for another five minutes or until
the bacon, er...not bacon pork belly is nice and crisp. Give it a little visual
inspection and flip it out onto a waiting plate, and now it's time to sauce
and garnish. We're gonna start with the okonomiyaki sauce. Brush a nice generous layer on top, you can't really have too
much of this stuff, and then stripe it with our Japanese mayonnaise, and as you
can see like I mentioned before I made mine too thin. You want the stripes to
still hold their shape as you zigzag across and use a wooden skewer to make
the decorative pattern on top. Since this one's a little screwed up why don't we
top this with the traditional accoutrements starting with some bonito
flake which is really cool you can see it waving around there from the heat.
A gentle sprinkling of aonori which is a seaweed powder and our sliced
scallions and there you have a pretty standard okonomiyaki. I'm really curious
to try this thing because it's been filling my kitchen with crazy smells for
the past couple hours and I got to say really really good. I'm not a huge bonito
flake fan but this thing is savory, saucy, crunchy, and a worthy member of the clean
plate club, but this time why don't we try making one just like they did in the
show. Let's start with our okonomiyaki sauce, and let's give our store-bought Japanese Mayo a shot as
you can see it's not as thin this is the consistency for you're going for if
you're making it at home dry Gardel and look at that how pretty and not to be a
wimp about bonito flakes but I think I'm gonna like this version a lot better and
what do you know I was right these things are great they're easy to make
tasty filling they'd be most welcome at your next dinner party hangover
breakfast or I don't know baby gender-reveal barbecue
hey guys I just want to say thanks to crunchyroll for sponsoring this episode
if you haven't already go to crunchyroll.com slash babish for a
30-day free trial unlimited anime professionally subtitled and available
on all your favorite devices if there's one art form i can think of that truly
loves food its anime so give it a shot and let me know in the comments what
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