We are Sorted, a group of mates from London
exploring the newest and best in the world of food,
whilst trying to have a few laughs along the way.
We've got chefs,
we've got normals,
and a whole world of stuff for you to explore,
but everything we do, starts with you.
- Hi, I'm Barry, and this is Jamie.
- Now, salads, believe it or not, can be really good.
A lot of the time , they're really bad.
Here's three ways to make them really good.
Good.
- Hello everyone, today we're talking salads,
and we have three different ones in front of us.
We have a novice, we have a medium,
and we have a pro version.
We're going to eat them, and we're going to show you
how to make them, and we're going to give you our thoughts
on which one we think you should give a go.
Barry Taylor, I want you to start first, mate.
- Very simple, Mediterranean couscous chicken salad.
- The salad's simple, or Barry's kind of simple.
- The salad, thanks mate.
Yep, I'm making a Mediterranean couscous salad,
and salads are my saviour.
I cook them pretty much every day,
because they're so simple,
there's hardly any washing up, and practically no cooking.
And this is what we're gonna need.
I've got some spinach leaves,
and some salad leaves, and feta.
I've got some couscous, stock cube, olive oil,
a red onion, olives, almonds, sun-dried tomatoes,
some coriander and parsley, and a lemon.
And because this is speedy, some cooked chicken.
And of course to make life even easier, this.
The reason this is so simple,
is this is the only bit of cooking I'm doing.
Couscous, olive oil, stock cube, spinach into a bowl,
with 225 grams of water, boiling water, needs to be boiling.
The reason I'm doing it in grams,
is because it makes life a little bit easier
when you're measuring it out on some scales.
Then cover it up with some cling film,
and then leave it, just leave it.
Now while that cooks, onto the rest of my salad.
Red onion into this.
Once you've tipped those out,
you want to change your thin slicing disc,
and put in a blade, and were going to chop up
our coriander and our parsley.
Next, we need to pull our pre-cooked chicken,
it was pre-cooked to make life even easier.
Now, a good salad is made by those little touches,
and here we have some beautiful sun-dried tomatoes
and olives, which I'm gonna run a knife through,
to chop up a little bit smaller.
With your main bits all prepped,
it's now just basically salad pick and mix.
This is all cooked, it's had five minutes,
We just chuck pretty much as much as you possibly can
into the bowl, and give it a mix up.
I've got some sun-dried tomatoes, olives, feta cheese,
some almonds, and some more salad leaves as well.
Make it a bit like a salad.
Yep, completely filled it, and now I need a bigger bowl.
Put it into there, and then season with some lemon,
some olive oil, a little bit of salt,
but be careful, because olives are already quite salty.
Ah! I mean come on, it looks great.
- Simple, summery, and salad like.
- Um, shall I talk to you about homemade pesto?
- Yeah.
- I am not gonna lie to you, salads are not my first choice,
and I only ever eat them when I'm on a diet.
Now today, I'm gonna try and change that.
I'm gonna try and put together something
that packs such a punch in flavor, and is so filling,
that it will help me change my ways.
I will be using lentils, I'm making a pesto
out of garlic, Parmesan, pine nuts, basil,
and some olive oil.
Amazing crispy croutons using ciabatta,
more olive oil, sage, and some rosemary,
and my protes, chicken breasts, skinless,
more olive oil, and some salad leaves.
And the salad still needs to be a salad,
so I need to keep it easy, and I'm using one of these.
First off, lentils, they take 25 minutes,
so they need to go straight into boiling water,
and my next most time sensitive thing,
is getting my chicken on, so I'm going to butterfly that,
then I'm putting it between two pieces of baking paper,
and bashing it, then cover in oil, salt and pepper,
and I'm going to chuck it on the griddle pan.
The chicken takes three to four minutes on each side,
I'm gonna wash my hands, and clear down,
and we're gonna make some croutons.
Ciabatta, cut in half, cut length ways,
then width ways, and you've got cubes.
Ciabatta then goes onto a tray, covered in oil,
salt, pepper, and then tossed together
with some chopped up rosemary and sage.
That toasts off nicely in the oven,
and I'm gonna make a pesto in the meantime.
Crush garlic, that is massive,
so I'm only gonna use half of it.
Parmesan, pine nuts, and a load of basil
into my chopper, with some olive oil.
By which time, my lentils have now cooked,
so I'm gonna drain those off, let them cool,
and then toss together everything in a ginormous bowl.
This is a bath, not a salad bowl.
Season with some sea salt flakes, and toss.
Make sure all of that pesto has covered everything.
Mm-hm, mm-hm,
- Uh huh, uh-huh, ah!
- Mentalling it up, but, one grain, one grain,
what if you go three grain?
This salad is very similar, in that it's also chicken,
it's also got grain in it, but it's different
because of a whole different host of flavors.
Harissa roasted veg and chicken salad.
We're going to need coriander and cumin seeds,
toasted off and blissed out with harissa and lemon.
We're gonna use that to roast our aubergine,
red pepper, and red onion,
char grill a couple of chicken breasts,
and then toss everything together with quinoa,
and we're going for three different colors of quinoa.
And finish it with pomegranate, pistachio,
fresh herbs and yogurt.
And the awesome paste to wrap around our vegetables,
is gonna be made in one of these.
Now Barry used couscous, Mike used lentils,
I've gone for quinoa, and it's like a rainbow mix,
it's red, black and white, all combined.
I'm gonna cook it off in chicken stock.
The paste begins with cumin seeds and coriander seeds
toasted off in a dry pan, until you can smell them
and they become lovely and fragrant.
Then into multi mill with harissa, olive oil,
zest of lemon, and a little squeeze of the juice as well.
What you have is an incredible spice blend.
That we're gonna toss our aubergine,
pepper and onion through, all need dicing up.
Season with salt and pepper, and into a hot oven,
220 degrees Celsius, and it'll need maybe half an hour.
The chicken I'm preparing in much the same way as Mike's,
except I'm adding in the other half of the harissa marinade,
so butterfly a breast, bash it out between
grease proof paper, season it, rub on that harissa marinade,
and then three or four minutes on either side,
in a cast iron griddle.
If you haven't got one, you can do it
under a really hot grill, ideally,
this is perfect for the barbecue.
You saw the size of the bowls of Barry and Mike.
This salad is the same, mix up loads,
and it's great to share for barbecues,
picnics, or salads you make at the start of the week
and take for lunch for a few days.
Whilst we wait on quinoa and chicken and vegetables,
we can prep everything else.
So a pomegranate, cut it in half and bash out the seeds
into a bowl of water.
What that does if any of that pith floats,
and you can just scoop it out, and you're left
with the seeds in the bottom, once we drain it off.
Really roughly chop up some coriander, and mint.
(upbeat music)
And just like the others, when everything is cool enough
to mix together, simply combine it in a big bowl.
You don't want to do it when it's too hot,
because it will wilt those gorgeous salad leaves.
Generous amounts of fresh coriander, mint.
Because the harissa's quite warm, finish it
with a blob or two of yogurt.
Gorgeous.
Ah! And I even finished it with a bit of yogurt for you.
- It looks very chefy, you've done well.
Let's eat them. - Okay.
Already, with all three, I love that there's chicken,
there's grain and there's leaf, and it's in the right ratio,
it's not like a couscous salad,
that's 90% couscous with a few bits.
- Yeah, - It's all mixed in.
One stand out thing about these visually,
are none of them are boring, which,
- They're really not!
- Sometimes salads can be.
- I think they have that stigma but they shouldn't be.
- Cheers.
- Cheers. - Cheers.
- It is light, but at the same time
you get the satisfaction from everything there.
- If it's hot outside, and you want something light.
You would eat that, wouldn't you?
But also be filling.
- What I love, lots of cheats.
The kinds of ingredients you got in the cupboard,
like olives and sun-dried tomatoes, stock cube,
it kind of all goes in and yet it combines
to this delicious thing on the plate.
- For me, croutons.
- You've got to cheers it!
- Cheers - Cheers.
- Cheers. - Cheers.
- This is the best bit.
- This is bit I'm most excited about.
A salad isn't a salad until your croutons are on top of it.
Oh, yes!
- Do I like that?
Yes is the answer.
- Now you absolutely could make that
with a shop bought pesto, in a jar.
- Your shop bought chicken, and a shop bought pesto,
you could get to the dizzy heights of this salad
if you wanted, mate.
- But what I was gonna say, was that has got nothing
on shop bought, the freshness of the basil,
you've just blessed, is a whole other level.
- I said earlier that I only ever
eat salads when I'm on a diet,
and if I'm calorifically restricting myself.
This is balanced, I mean this isn't particularly
low in calories, but it's a whole plethora
of all the good stuff, and it is balanced,
and it is nutritious.
- It's one thing this taste that will put people off,
which is the lentils, and I think that's unfair,
because people are used to eating lentils
piled up high and going, "Oh, it's so boring."
- That's because no one flavors lentils properly.
- No, when it's mixed up in that, every bite is delicious.
- Man, this is literally your type of dish.
- Cheers. - Cheers.
- Lads.
- Cheers.
- If you go into a fancy shop, or a deli,
and there's a selection of salads at the counter,
it's often quinoa one that people sort of go to.
But it's that easy to make at home.
A fiery red sauce, be that romesco, gojuchang,
sriracha, and then pairing that, or offsetting that,
with a yogurt, or a cream, or a mayonnaise,
that is just my flavor profile down,
I'm glad it is quinoa, not mustard seeds,
as I first thought when I looked at it,
- (laughs) - 'cause I'd be dead.
- I want to mix and match completely.
- You will wait for the the mix and match.
- I want to pick and mix everything we have.
I love the pomegranates, I love the croutons,
but it's the couscous there,
the herby couscous does it for me,
that's my favorite of all the grains.
But I want a bit of these as well.
- Cards on the table, I'd say that harissa and yogurt,
combination of that, with all the sweetness
of the roasted stuff, that is the tastiest thing
on the table for me.
Even though I think that pesto is amazing.
- I think lentils are underrated as a salad,
and I love croutons in there, well they're crispy,
but also they start to get a little bit soggy,
because they've all been mixed together.
- Panzanella.
- That is outstanding, that's my favorite.
- He's gonna pick his own.
- I'm not, I love mine, I'll cook that the most,
but I'm gonna treat myself to the lentils I think.
- Who'd of thought that?
- Who's ever said that? - No.
- I'm gonna treat myself to lentils, do you agree,
will you treat yourself to lentils?
If you do, let us know, comment below,
which one is most interesting to you?
Let us know and keep on suggesting
which dishes we should be making,
and comparing at three different
difficulty comparison levels, time,
all of those things, next.
- Salads? Good.
- Yeah, if you're liking salads, and liking these videos,
then make sure you like this video.
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- See you next video, bye.
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YouTube videos, -LOL.
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we've learned, to create stuff,
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and useful to other food lovers.
Check it out if you're interested, thank you for watching,
and we'll see you in a few days.
- First up, my lentils, go into some boiling water.
Oh my God!
(laughter)