- Okay.
Here I am.
In my own kitchen.
Filming myself.
Which is weird.
My name is Andrew, you might recognize me
from the show Worth It,
eating foods at different price points
with my pals Steven and Adam.
Or from the show Eating Your Feed where Adam,
the same Adam, challenges me to recreate foods
from the internet.
And today I'm gonna be doing a little bit of both.
Today I'm gonna be recreating one of my favorite dishes
from Worth It, vinegar pie.
"Wait, you guys never ate vinegar pie,"
some of you savvier viewers might say.
In our pie episode at our second location,
Underbelly, we're mainly eating this delicious
carrot cake hand pie.
The restaurant actually had a few other pies on the menu
that they wanted us to try.
This is the one that Adam
is giddily poking at with his fork.
Super delicious, and it explores a thing
that I'm really obsessed with,
which is the fundamentals of why something tastes good.
Vinegar pie.
Holy (beep).
Doesn't sound like it should taste good.
And yet this version was extremely delicious.
To get a little more background on this dish,
I'm going to be speaking with Victoria Dearmond
from Underbelly about how it's made,
where it came from, and how,
how does it taste good, and why?
Ah, wanna see my big frying pan?
(pan dings)
Hey Victoria, thanks for chatting with me.
- Hey yeah, thanks Andrew, good to see you again.
- Everybody that I've brought up this recipe to
is like, "What kind of pie?
A what pie?"
- (laughing) Nine years of my life hearing, "A what pie?"
- Yeah.
- Every person that came into Underbelly,
there were two things their server told them to get.
Korean goat and dumplings, and it was the vinegar pie.
And there's a lot of people that are like,
"Man this thing is so weird but so good, but so good!"
- Yeah.
- Well I'll actually show you where I got
the inspiration for it.
It's called "Hillbilly Cookin'".
Chef Chris Shepherd got from maybe a garage sale?
So he just writes "yep" and "yes".
The recipe itself is up to translation, I guess?
A nubbin of butter.
I made it at first with straight distilled vinegar.
- Oh, interesting. - It was not good.
So the whole point of it is, it's a pie that you can make
when citrus isn't in season.
So I use Steen's sugarcane vinegar
and Korean double-strength apple vinegar.
- Are you willing to share more of the recipe with me
for me to recreate it or is it
more of a secret? - Oh yeah, for sure!
It's actually in Chris's book that came out.
- Honestly, confession.
That is probably my favorite pie I ate
in the entire video.
- I'm not mad about that confession.
- Thanks for chatting
and I'll let you know how it goes.
- Send me a picture, can't wait to see it.
- All right, bye.
So it's another day.
I've got the exact Korean apple vinegar.
I wasn't able to get that second vinegar,
but I was following the Underbelly recipe
from their cookbook that used entirely
just apple cider vinegar.
And, since I'm exploring taste,
why not do a side-by-side taste test
with my American apple cider vinegar?
Is that weird?
(sniffing)
(smacking lips)
Maybe I regret this decision.
Just the smallest of tastes.
(whimsical music)
Yeah. (coughing)
Very vinegary.
Also incredibly appley.
By comparison, this is Bragg's.
Mm.
Much more, like, fermenty, kombucha-like.
While this one tastes like an apple sour candy.
That's great.
But I have the exact vinegar I need.
It's on to make the crust.
So in the Underbelly book, it recommends using a hand mixer.
I don't have a hand mixer, but I do have a stand mixer.
As you can see, I don't have Adam here to follow me along
so I'm moving the camera.
I didn't realize how annoying that would be.
Going to put it in some plastic wrap
and leave it in the fridge.
It's been 30 minutes, the dough is chill.
It's time to put it in my tart pan.
(chuckling)
I'm gonna grab some flour for my surface.
Ooh.
That is a soft blob.
This feels incredibly fragile.
And now, I'm going to do the thing
that I've only watched other people ever do.
Going to try gently rolling this up.
This is, I can already tell this is a huge mistake.
And then unrolling it.
Ooh.
My dough is not a circle.
So I'm filling in the cracks and crevices.
This looks like crap.
I know, I know what you're saying.
You're not wrong.
Next I have parchment, into which I will pour
old beans to weigh down the crust.
I'm now gonna put this in the oven for 15 minutes.
Okay, it's been about 15 minutes.
Time to check on the pie and remove the beans.
It doesn't look done, but it doesn't look terrible.
That could turn into a pie.
10 more minutes.
It's been 10 minutes.
Uh!
I, I, I don't, I don't know.
This looks like it doesn't wanna get any darker
so I'm calling it there.
The next step is to make the filling
and that's when the vinegar comes into play.
(clapping)
I am not a very well-seasoned baker.
What are the things I'm gonna mess up?
- So that's the best part about this pie, meaning the worst.
Every time you make it is totally different.
- Okay.
- So the biggest thing you wanna watch out for
is that it is a cornstarch base
so you do have to boil it.
Like you gotta go for three-ish minutes.
- And what happens if you don't do that?
It, it'll be soup.
- It'll be soup?
Oh, interesting.
Well maybe I'll invent vinegar soup,
(laughing) if things don't go well.
So starting off, four eggs.
Two cups of sugar.
Which, I mean, I guess desserts just have a lot of sugar.
But I am, I don't know, a little surprised.
Whisking this together until there are no more clumps.
The magic ingredient part.
1/4 cup.
Two cups of water.
Yeah, this pan is definitely not large enough.
Oh well.
Lemon juice.
Salt.
Cornstarch.
Okay, so now, bring this to a boil, whisking constantly.
Did not realize how stressful baking was.
I think this needs to like achieve the boil.
'Cause that's what the instructions say.
But it also says whisk constantly.
I mean, this is medium heat.
God, this is the most stressful part of anything.
It's like the do nothing, like I'm used to failing
on Eating Your Feed, but failing is a lot less funny
when you're by yourself.
Are bubbles coming up?
Yeah, we got like a slow burble now.
Oh, it is quite thick now.
Yeah, it's like, it's a pot of pudding now.
I see some dark bits, so now I'm scared
that it's burning on the bottom.
But Victoria said, "Boil the crap out of it."
Jesus, it's only been one minute,
I can't do this for three minutes.
The smell, ooh, you know,
the smell's not pleasant currently.
Okay, we're up to two minutes, we're almost there.
This is the (beep)ing, this is the stress (beep).
We're right at three minutes.
Got my butter here.
I have this vanilla paste.
Okay, it seems to be all incorporated.
It's my cooled tart.
There we go, ready?
(lush music)
And I have a little bit of excess here 'cause, and actually.
(lush music)
Oh!
Ooh.
The last instruction, take some plastic wrap,
directly onto the surface so that it doesn't form a skin
'cause this has to go in the refrigerator now, overnight.
(gasping)
(laughing nervously)
Forgot that there was a separated bottom
on the bottom of this.
One more quick wrap.
I think I'm gonna call that
a pie that's ready for the fridge.
So here we are, the pie has been in the oven.
Uh, not the oven.
The pie has been in the refrigerator overnight.
It looks like a pie.
But there's one more element that I want to recreate.
The caramel brittle.
This is not in the Underbelly cookbook
but this is the way that I had it in the restaurant.
So here we go.
One cup of sugar.
A quarter cup of water.
And now I'm turning it on.
Like medium, I don't know, I've never done this before.
I think you're not supposed to stir it
but I wanna stir it because I can see where the sugar is
and it's kind of pushed away from the bubbles.
Okay, it's now a nice, even bubblage.
Bubbles are trippy, like a Miyazaki movie
where every bubble is a little creature
trying to eat the air.
It's suddenly smelling very caramelly.
I'm at around 320, okay.
That goes off.
And now I'm gonna pour this on here.
A little bit of salt.
Did I just make caramel?
Did I just freaking?
Okay.
It seems firm.
Ooh.
I know I should've done a better job
getting those bubbles out.
Gah!
There has got to be some baker's trick
to get plastic wrap to be perfectly smooth on the surface.
Still pretty vinegary in smell.
Yeah, look at that thing!
That's a fricking pie!
I'm dying to know how this tastes.
Ooh.
Uh oh, I'm scared.
It feels very loose.
God.
(smooth music)
Oh, oh, ho ho!
Hell yeah.
Is this why they say, "Easy as pie"?
I (beep)ed the crust for sure.
Look, it's got that wobble.
The caramel.
This is a big sheet of something here.
It's definitely screwed up in some way.
It has this like cloudiness over it.
(smooth music)
(caramel crunching)
Hurts my teeth.
So looking at our video, the little shards of brittle
are just cascading off the side.
Should I just stab a little piece in?
This is my pie.
I think it's time to try it.
(whimsical music)
Doesn't taste terrible.
It really doesn't.
It does not taste the way that it smells.
I don't know what to call the taste.
Is this as good as the restaurant's version?
It's not, no.
The crust is too thick.
I clearly screwed up the caramel.
It doesn't taste like a weird, wacky thing.
It's just got like, enough butter from the crust,
mellowness from this vanilla, a sourness that is
kind of familiar but it's still curious and interesting.
It's a pretty good pie.
I think the only thing I wanna do now is
see if Adam wants a slice.
(pleasant music)
- Oh.
(laughing)
It smells like vinegar.
- [Andrew] (laughing) Yeah.
(pleasant music)
- Oh yeah!
Mm. (laughs)
(pleasant music)