- Huh? I don't think any of us actually ordered this.
- On the house.
We usually only offer this to customers on rainy days.
(dramatic music)
- Wait, that's...
It takes understanding to accept it as a whole,
knowledge to set the proper pace,
courage to attack the mountain of meat,
and dedication to keep on eating.
All of these skills are needed to finish
off the mega beef bowl!
- [Alvin] Hello, everyone.
Welcome back to another episode
of Anime with Alvin.
It's raining today,
so I thought it'd be fun to take a look
at the mega beef bowl challenge from "Persona 4".
I've decided to interpret the recipe similar to dishes
like gyudon or sukiyaki,
both of which which seem to be enhanced
by making your own and dashi from scratch.
I'm gonna start by taking a bag of niboshi,
which are dried little sardines, and,
oh wait, just take out that little packet there.
And I'm going to separate the head from the body.
The head may contain unwanted flavors,
and if I was super hardcore, I'd also take out the guts,
but these are a little too small for me to do that.
I've also seen ramen chefs do this,
and I don't envy them, because this takes quite a long time.
And now that the fish are decapitated,
it's time to make them swim.
So I'm swirling them around in a quart of water
to soak and let their flavors come out.
And while the headless fish are swimming around
in their kiddie pool, I'm gonna make the rest of the dashi.
I'm combining several quarts of water with bonito flakes,
some dried shiitake mushrooms,
with a little one, two, three,
and some kombu.
And when the ingredients are combined,
we're gonna transfer the naboshi and its broth
into the larger swimming pool,
so that everybody can become friends.
Now that everyone's in,
I'm gonna bring this up to a boil
and then down to a simmer for a couple of minutes,
just until the flavors have infused.
After some simmering, this pot is very hot and heavy,
so I really hope I don't spill the dashi.
Oh. I have spilled the dashi.
I'm glad we made a big batch
because we're also going to be using the same dashi
for future episodes on this show.
Dashi can keep up to a couple months in the freezer,
so once we've portioned out what we need for this recipe,
that's where the rest of this is going.
After it cools, of course.
Since I'm referencing gyudon for this recipe,
that means the bottom of the mega beef bowl is rice.
And it's a lot of rice.
So I'm filling up a rice cooker with short grain rice
up until its maximum capacity.
And after rinsing the rice in the sink
to get rid of any excess starches,
I'm filling it up with water,
using an Asian household trick.
My grandma taught me that if you touch the rice,
the water level should come up to the first indent
on pointer finger.
Close the lid, press the button,
and it's time to let the rice cooker do its magic.
Another component that makes gyudon delicious
are the thinly sliced onions that
simmer along with the beef.
Here I am, probably doing something
we've all done in our lives.
I'm cutting and peeling a couple of onions,
lining them up, and slicing them into thin little rounds.
There's no need to slice them super thin.
They're gonna cook down in the sauce
and it's nice to have some texture.
And just like we've all probably done in our lives,
I'm also crying, because this stuff hurts,
no matter how many times I've done it.
But after some painful blinking,
we have our bowl of sliced onions.
And finally, we get to the beef part
of the mega beef bowl challenge.
I'm using thinly sliced ribeye.
This is some beef that we got
at some really, really, really nice butcher shops.
And you can tell that the beef has beautiful marbling.
This kind of stuff is what gets me excited.
I'm bisecting each pack of beef down the middle,
so that it'll be easier to cook,
but we don't want them too small
or else they'll disintegrate.
I think we bought out what they had in the store,
so we also had to get the frozen thinly sliced ribeye,
which is also perfectly fine,
because it's designed to be used in dishes like hot pot.
And I have to say, that cross section looks pretty cool.
Like a forbidden pastrami sandwich.
And now that we've portioned out six pounds of beef,
it's time to cook.
Into a very large sauce pan,
I'm combining the dashi that we made eat earlier,
along with a healthy glug of mirin, a good cup of soy sauce,
and some granulated sugar to add some sweetness.
Once everybody's in the pan and starts to become friends,
I'm just gonna warm up my hands a little bit,
while I wait for this to come to a boil.
After the sauce is hot enough,
I'm gonna first start by putting in the onions,
a handful at a time.
I'm giving the onions a little bit of a headstart
because they'll take some time to tenderize before the beef.
Once the beef goes in, it cooks very, very quickly,
so I wanna make sure that both of them
are tender at the same time.
As this is cooking,
I'm also stirring constantly to make sure
that the beef is not sticking together
and it cooks evenly at the same time.
And once all traces of pink have disappeared,
I'm transferring all of the beef and onions
to a separate bowl,
leaving the sauce behind to cook the next batch.
And we repeat.
First go in the onions to tenderize
with a little bit of a head start,
and then I'm adding in another batch of the beef,
cooking it until there's no pink left
and using the sauce again to cook the next batch.
As each batch progresses,
the sauce becomes a little bit cloudier
due to the residue from the beef and the onions,
but we'll find a solve for this later.
And after 30 minutes of cycling beef and onion batches,
we end up with a huge bowl of deliciousness.
So this is the sauce left over from all that cooking.
It's concentrated, it's reduced,
it's infused with all of the flavors
of the beef and the onions, and it smells amazing.
But it is quite cloudy,
so I'm gonna run this though a cheese cloth
to remove the sediment.
Now, on top of the mega beef bowl rests
a very cartoon-like sunny side egg.
So into a small sauce pan,
I'm heating up a little bit of butter and cooking an egg.
And to help give that egg that perfectly smooth look,
I wanna do a little bit of plastic surgery.
And with the operation turning out successful,
it is time to assemble the mega beef bowl.
Into a huge, massively oversized bowl,
I'm dumping in approximately two rice cookers worth of,
ooh, nice save.
Two rice cookers worth of freshly cooked,
fluffy, steamy white rice.
And on top of the rice, I'm piling on every ounce
of that delicious beef and onion mixture from earlier.
I studied engineering in college,
but I don't think this is the kind of stuff they hoped
I'd be doing.
Nevertheless, I will say some of those skills
do come in handy when making a mega beef bowl.
Let me just, ooh, that's nice.
But the mega beef bowl would not be complete
without its crown jewel.
The perfectly cooked sunny side up egg.
Now that is awesome.
Oh, oh. Oh, it's pretty heavy.
Oh geez.
But, how does it taste?
Let's give it a try.
And to no one surprise, this tastes amazingly delicious.
Oof. But, our taste has remains incomplete,
unless we let the beef ooze beautifully down the beef.
The delicious volcano, if I've ever seen one.
And that is a perfect bite.
The sweetness from the onions, the meatiness of the beef,
the richness of the yolk,
and the comfort of the rice all together is something else.
And this is amazing,
but I don't have the courage, understanding,
knowledge, or diligence to finish this thing,
so I'm gonna have to call in some backup.
Oh wait, just kidding. I forgot the sauce. Get outta here.
Adding back in the sweet and savory cooking liquid
from earlier will allow us to
add all those wonderful flavors back into the dish.
Alright, now you guys can eat.
This was a crazy but fun adventure to make,
and I'm just really glad
that we have about six to seven people in the house today,
'cause one of the best parts about cooking
is sharing it with other people.
For me, nothing makes me happier
than feeding my friends and my loved ones.
Well, maybe except for video games. I really like those.
(gentle music)