(suspenseful music)
- [Aang] Hey, there's some food.
- [Sokka] Finally. (footsteps pattering)
What do you have?
- [Man Vendor] Flaming Fire Flakes, best in town.
- I'll take 'em!
Mm, mm! (flakes crunching)
Ah!
Oo, hot, hot! (panting)
- [Katara] Flaming Fire Flakes, hot.
Whataya know.
- [Andy] Hey, what's up guys, welcome back to
"Binging With Babish" (upbeat music)
where this week we're taking a look at the Fire Flakes
from "Avatar: The Last Airbender".
Here before me are some real-life fire flakes,
Flaming Hot Cheetos.
This, of course, is a very, very funny joke
but as funny as this joke indisputably is,
if Flaming Hot Cheetos is still
your spicy, crunchy snack of choice, ah, your welcome.
Anyway, this is not a show about comparing
different types of spicy snacks,
this is about making our own and my first attempt,
mixing Corn Flakes with cayenne pepper
yielded mixed results. (hand banging)
(coughing)
And flying in the face of all conventional wisdom,
milk offered no improvement
so it looks like we're gonna have to start from scratch
and for our Fire Flakes foundation
there's a really cool recipe on ChefSteps
for a sort of fried, puffed rice cracker thing
which I think is gonna do the job nicely
with some added spices because,
"Flaming Fire Flakes, hot".
So, in a medium saucepan we are combining
100 grams of long grain white rice and 400 grams of water.
While that cooks we're gonna make a spice blend
reminiscent of Chinese five spice.
Into the mortar of a mortar and pestle
goes half a small cinnamon stick,
half a small star anise pod,
about a teaspoon of fennel seed
and a generous shake,
Oh!
Not that kind of shake.
A generous shake of spicy, tingly,
oddly numbing Szechuan peppercorns.
I want this to be both predominate flavor and sensation
so I'm gonna add about two tablespoons.
Then, by virtue of my pestle,
I'm going to mortar and pestle these spices together by hand
into a finely ground powder,
which, as you can see is pretty tiring.
You can do this, Andy, you've got this.
You might not have made it on the football team
but you can out,
screw it, I'm gonna get the blender.
So, instead by virtue of a high-powered blender
we're gonna grind our spices into a fine powder
then we're gonna pass it through a fine mesh sieve
to capture any big ol' honking pieces
and then the resultant powder is gonna be a kinda
bitter, acrid, strange spicy stuff but do not worry,
once it gets a little bit of heat treatment
it's gonna taste a lot better
but then to compliment it's color and spiciness
we're gonna also add some cayenne pepper and sweet paprika,
about a teaspoon each, tiny whisked until homogeneous.
Meanwhile, over on the stovetop our rice has cooked
for about 15 minutes and is total mush.
So now, using that selfsame, high-powered blender
we are going to liquefy it into a paste
with a couple teaspoons of our seasoning mix,
give it a little taste to make sure that it is spicy enough.
Don't worry if it tastes a little off,
it's gonna taste a lot better once we cook it
but before we can cook it
first we must dehydrate it.
So, using an offset spatula we're gonna smooth it out
to a one millimeter thick sheet on a Silpat.
You obviously don't have to measure it or anything,
just make sure that it's really thin.
The thinner your sheet the rewards will be sweet
and now bust out the biggest dehydrator
you got in the house,
pop in your spiced puree of rice spread,
that sure sounds appetizing, right?
Close your frankly charming French doors if you got 'em,
crank this fellow up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit
and let it dehydrate for two hours
during which time your sheets should mostly dehydrate,
more towards the edges then the center.
So, when we remove them we're gonna do two things.
First, we're gonna peel them off the Silpat.
They're probably still gonna be gooey on the bottom,
don't worry about that
and we're gonna flip those sheets gooey side up
on top of our dehydrator racks and break off the parts
that are fully dehydrated.
They should be ever so slightly bendy
but snap when stressed.
Everything else that's not yet dried out
is getting another 30 minutes in the dehydrator
after which time you should have two sheets
of very unsettling looking,
skin-like rice cracker, uh, things
which we are now going to breakdown into flakes
because, you know, Fire Flakes.
You wanna break 'em down into about half the size
that you would eventually want them to be
because they're going to expand by about 50 percent
when we deep fry them.
Into some 350 degree Fahrenheit oil
they go for like five seconds,
that's all the time it should take for them to puff up
and float to the top.
Drain them on some paper towels, rinse and repeat
and then it's time to discover
just how surprisingly good they are.
Let's listen to my unfiltered reaction.
Mm, oh, my God.
Huh.
Oh, my God, that's actually good.
That's actually good.
Holy (beep)!
I'm not always surprised
when the food that I'm making comes out right
but my pre-fried taste test had not given me high hopes
but here we are with some spicy, tingly, flavorful,
crunchy, oily, delightful little snacks
which I think could use a little bit more kick
and, of course, a generous pinch of kosher salt
applied and tossed together while warm.
I don't know why I'm using so many bowls here,
at least I can't use anymore in making this recipe,
ah, damn it!
So, there you have it,
Fire Flakes as I always kinda imagined them.
They are spicy and tingly
and the flake itself has this light, ethereal,
bubbly, disappear-in-your-mouth, munch-o like crunch
and they are spicy from the cayenne pepper
and the Szechuan peppercorn
but they're not "scratch off your tongue" hot.
If you want to make it "Avatar: The Last Airbender" accurate
just up the spice content
because, you know, "Flaming Fire Flakes, hot".
(upbeat music)