- [Alvin] Thank you to Bokksu for sponsoring this episode.
Bokksu is a monthly subscription service
that delivers premium Japanese snacks and tea pairings
straight from Japan to your door.
Every box has a new theme,
and this month's is sakura season,
so the snacks are inspired by cherry blossoms.
If you want to taste these snacks for yourself,
head to the link in the description and use code Alvin
for $15 off of your order.
(Scout soldier speaking Japanese)
(speaking Japanese)
- [All] Kanpai!
- [Alvin] Hello there, welcome back to another episode
of "Anime with Alvin."
This is a potato.
Today I'm gonna be taking a look at making the roast beef
in one of my favorite personal anime, "Attack on Titan."
The first thing I'm starting with is a peasant loaf
which seems to be accompanying the beef on the table.
In the bowl of a stand mixer,
I'm combining bread flour, salt, yeast,
and after giving the dry ingredients a mix,
I'm following up with some water
and setting that on a mixer at very low speeds.
So while everybody's kinda becoming friends,
I like to stop the process every now and then
and use the dough hook to scrape down the sides
so that the flour does not get a chance to escape.
And with the magic of a stand mixer,
this is gonna slowly turn into a ball, which is kinda cool
'cause I really don't have to do anything.
I can just wait here.
I could chat with the homies,
I could check my email,
or I could just walk away and let this thing do its thing.
Once the stand mixer has done its job though,
I'm gonna oil up a container
and use a bowl scraper to get the dough out of the mixer
and into its little greasy bedroom in one solid piece.
In this little box, the dough ball's gonna have
enough space and quiet to proof up nicely.
Peace out, little dude.
So here I am, furiously grating ginger for our ginger beer
that is gonna wash down the whole meal.
My hands hurt, so I asked Kendall to step in.
She's gonna help out, and thank you, Kendall.
And after that we have Steve. Steve is grating...
Oh, he dropped that. All right.
Here you go, don't drop it again.
Oh, you did it again.
Everybody, say hello to Steve.
He's the newest member of the "Anime with Alvin" team
and we could not be happier that he is behind the camera
and not grating ginger.
Oh, hey. What's up, Andrew?
Thanks for stepping in as well.
I really appreciate the little relay race we got going on,
'cause I've been playing too many video games
and my hands have been hurting.
And while all of this has been happening,
I've been simmering ginger slices
in a simple syrup in this little pot,
which after straining, turns into ginger syrup.
Hooray! Now that we've made the syrup, we're just...
Hey! Who keeps putting my food like this, huh?
Was it you, Steve? I'm gonna roll these lemons.
Wait, uh, cut the video. Cut the...
After cutting the lemons in half,
I'm gonna run them through a full body press
in this citrus torture device.
Now that's a lotta juice.
Into a large glass vessel with an airtight container,
we're gonna combine the lifeblood of two lemons
with the precious, painstakingly grated ginger from before.
After swirling them around a bit,
you'll notice that it'll start to turn pink.
So naturally I went to Google,
and someone who's smarter than me
told me that this was a product of anthocyanin,
a compound found in new ginger,
reacting to the acid in the lemon juice,
AKA it turns pink and nothing's wrong.
After filling this vessel almost to the top
with some clean distilled water,
I'm adding in some champagne yeast.
This is gonna cause the fizzly, bubbly thing
that we all like in ginger beer to happen.
Uh, there is a hole in this container.
I thought this was not supposed to have a hole.
We're gonna insert this plastic thing into the hole.
After a little love tap by Kendall,
I was told that this device uses water
as a way to prevent air or bacteria from entering,
but allows the beer to expel any air outwards.
Here I am, clearly fascinated by this device.
Just imagine burping,
except it was one way and you can't breathe in.
Goodbye, beer. Go burp over there.
I'm not sure what the bread was doing back there,
but it looks like it's inhaled
an entire Costco rotisserie chicken,
so I'm gonna have to transfer this into a larger vessel
where I can have a little bit more room to do...
Ooh, ooh.
Now that's a good bread.
Here I am, folding each corner of the bread
over its opposite side,
kinda like a four-way diaper/mozzarella ball situation.
This allows the smooth side to face up.
And now it goes in the back for a final proof.
I was getting kinda lonely up here making all this food,
so I decided to make a little bread friend for myself.
I think I'll name you Sascha.
She'll keep me company while I unveil the star of the show,
a three-bone, 30 day dry-aged prime rib roast.
This is such a beautiful piece of meat
that it should only be brought out
on the most wonderful of occasions,
or as your last meal before you go fight some Titans
and probably lose.
It makes sense that this meat would be dry-aged,
because in the world of "Attack on Titan,"
meat was very scare so it had to be cured
and probably hung for a while
before they could even bring it out to eat.
Anyway, since this is dry-aged,
I am trimming off a lot of the fat cap
and a lot of those funky areas that you can't eat.
One thing that I like to do with the fat
that is near the cap at the bottom
is to sorta give it a cross-hatch pattern.
This allows the fat to render more and allows the seasoning
to penetrate that little fatty area.
Now, this is a beautiful but huge piece of meat,
so the amount of salt and pepper I'm gonna need
to even begin to season this roast is going to be a lot.
I'm setting it on a wire rack over a tray
so that the airflow can circulate
completely around the meat, drying out the exterior
and allowing for a better crust to form faster.
In order for the salt to work its magic,
I'm leaving this uncovered in the fridge for a whole day.
I'm gonna make a simple vegetable stew
to accompany the beef,
but before we can begin, we need to chop the vegetables.
Now that the vegetables have been chopped,
it's time to make the stew.
After heating a little bit of neutral oil
in a pot over high heat,
I'm throwing in the whites of the leeks first
to sort of get them translucent and a little bit tender
before adding in the other vegetables.
This includes carrots, parsnips, and potatoes,
and we're adding the vegetables at different times
because each vegetable is cooked and cut differently.
After enjoying the aroma
of sizzling vegetables for a little bit,
I'm adding in a good amount of vegetable stock
to serve as the liquid for this stew.
Once the root vegetables show no resistance when stabbed,
just like me, that means it's time
to add the broccoli and the mushrooms.
We're adding these two vegetables last
because they cook the fastest,
so after stirring a little bit,
giving a little bit of taste,
and seasoning with some more salt and pepper,
the stew's pretty much ready.
After the beef has been hanging out in the fridge
for about 24 hours at least,
a lot of cool things have happened.
The color, as you can see, is a very deep, dark red.
The salt initially pulls water out,
but after dissolving into the water,
the saltwater goes back in,
seasoning the meat more thoroughly.
What's left is a deep, rich, beautifully dry exterior
which is essentially begging to be thrown into the oven
and turned into a golden brown crust.
So after sticking my probe inside,
I will gladly do what the beef commands.
Since this piece of beef is so large,
I'm gonna be using the reverse sear technique,
which means I'm cooking it lower
at around 275 first for a few hours,
and then finishing it high at around 500 degrees Fahrenheit
to get that nice and beautiful crackly crust.
While the beef slow roasts in the oven
for just a little bit longer,
I'm gonna get up to some more bread shenanigans.
Uh, as you can see, I'm having quite the trouble
holding onto this piece of parchment paper.
Oh, there...
Yeah, and it's on the ground.
So after wildly flailing around for a little bit more,
I'm able to finally get the bread onto its baking sheet,
followed by some not-so-great scoring marks,
but, you know, it's a peasant loaf.
I don't think they really cared about that
when they had Titans to fight.
And into a very hot oven the bread goes.
And after filling the studio
with that really good fresh bread smell,
it emerges: a golden brown, crusty loaf of bread,
perhaps foreshadowing for how the beef might turn out.
And without further ado,
the beef makes its grand reentrance into the stage.
However, even though it is completely cooked
all the way through and registers a nice 120,
we still gotta give it that nice,
beautiful golden crust jacket at the end.
So I'm brushing it with the beef drippings
that naturally came off during that first cooking process,
so that way it'll really give the beef a really nice crust.
And a ton of flavor as well.
It's almost unfair if you think about it.
The best part about prime rib
is that spice crust that everybody loves,
so I'm adding a little bit more seasoning
and some pepper on top, and back into the oven it goes,
500 degrees for a couple of minutes.
If I could wolf whistle, I'd be doing that all day right now
'cause this smells amazing.
The fat is sizzling. The flavors are just so aromatic.
(sighs) Man.
I really wish Sascha could see this.
I totally understand why the Scouts in "Attack on Titan"
went so crazy after seeing this meat.
It's beautiful, it's golden, it's...
It's an event, and if I was about to go fight
some man-eating Titans out there,
I'd probably wanna eat something like this beforehand.
So as the beef rests,
because it is still very, very, very hot,
we're gonna plate it up like they did in the show.
So we're gonna use some butter lettuce,
the fanciest kinda stuff, to kinda lay down a base.
And our vegetable stew, our peasant loaf,
and our hard-made ginger beer in the back.
Just please hold while I make everything look good.
And there we have it,
the final meal presented to the Scout Regiment
the night before they fought valiantly on the battlefield.
The thing that's scaring me the most
is if I actually cooked this right,
so let's just cut it open and see.
I now await judgment from the steak gods.
Now that's looking pretty good!
The center is nice and pink.
The crust is a little more done
than I personally would've liked,
but the only thing that matters is: how does this taste?
Yep.
That's a good piece of beef.
I was actually more curious
about how the bread and the stew tasted,
because that seemed like something the soldiers
in "Attack on Titan" would eat on a more regular basis.
It is also very good!
The bread is nice and fluffy and soft.
The stew is flavorful and the vegetables add a nice touch,
definitely giving you the energy and stamina
necessary to fight on the battlefield.
And because all the soldiers are basically kids,
this beer is non-alcoholic.
It is also very good.
And because wine is pretty common in that universe,
I decided to make my personal recipe for red wine sauce
that I use for steaks.
Honestly, pairing these two together,
I think this meal would've made Sascha very, very proud.
Don't mind me, I'm just gonna stuff my face
for a little bit and...
Ooh! Ow, I think I cut myself.
Oh no! Oh, no.
No, no, no, no! I didn't, I didn't...
Aw, come on! I was eating!
No, no, no! Stop!
(blast roars)
Thanks again to our friends at Bokksu
for sponsoring this episode.
Bokksu provides authentic Japanese snacks
that you can't really find anywhere else,
which I really appreciate,
especially during a time when people can't travel to Japan
as easily as they'd like.
The theme this month is sakura season,
and as you can see, the box is packed
with limited edition cherry blossom-themed snacks.
The cherry blossoms in Japan are beautiful.
People sometimes celebrate
by gathering under the trees and having picnics.
A lot of the snacks are flavored with cherry blossoms
and use a lot of the components,
such as this rice cracker,
which is savory, delicious, and crunchy,
and this mochi, which is chewy, floral, and not too sweet.
If you want to try Bokksu for yourself,
head to the link in the description and use code Alvin
to get $15 off your order.
(mellow music)