(upbeat music)
- [Mike] 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.
(cheerful laughing)
We've got chefs, we've got normals,
(beep)
and a whole world of stuff for you to explore
but everything we do starts with you.
Hi everyone, I'm Mike, this is Baz.
Welcome to fridge cam.
- Today our chefs, Ben and James, go head to head
in the ultimate Chinese food battle.
- We've teamed up with Lee Kum Kee,
who make authentic Chinese sauces
and they've sent us a whole load of stuff to play with.
One of which is their original oyster sauce.
- [Mike] Oyster sauce is a rich and savoury
condiment that is essential within Chinese cuisine
because of it's delicious umami flavor.
But where did it come from?
Let me take you on a journey back to 1888,
where a restaurateur named Mr Lee, from southern China,
was boiling a pot of fresh oyster soup.
After forgetting about it, he returned
to realise the soup had simmered down into
a thick gravy with an irresistible new flavour.
Mr Lee proudly named his creation oyster sauce
and has been selling it under the brand
Lee Kum Kee ever since.
So chefs, equipped with that knowledge, you now have
90 minutes to cook up an amazing Chinese dish.
- And we have even brought in a
special guest judge to help taste.
- He was the only one left.
- Three, two,
one,
cook!
- I'm doing four dishes because it's kind of
a feast of delicious Chinese flavours that you put
in the center of the table and share.
So I've got a clay pot style rice.
I've got a sesame stir fried wok vegetable dish.
I've got an amazing beer fish dish.
And a snoozing dragon.
- [Mike] What's a snoozing dragon?
- I'll show you later.
- Ben is doing four simple dishes,
and I'm doing one slightly, maybe slightly more
complicated but not overly complicated dish.
- Okay.
- It's a Sichuan hot pot broth,
a traditional dish but I'm putting it with
slow cooked char siu pork, which is definitely
not traditional to put the two together.
So, the first thing I've done is get my pork on,
it needs to be in a pressure cooker
because I don't have time to slow cook it
in the oven for three hours or so.
So, I've put a broth of orange juice,
soy sauce, oyster sauce and char siu sauce into
a pressure cooker with some star anise
and a little bit of water just to,
kind of, almost cover the pork.
I'm going to put that on for about 40 minutes.
And the pork should be really, really tender by then.
And then I'm going to reduce the sauce down
to be nice and sticky.
- [Mike] You alright James?
- I've somehow stuck the...
(Mike laughing)
I've got it stuck.
- [Jamie] No pressure, mate.
- This could be awful.
- If you can't get that off with those guns,
then no one in this office can.
- The real question is in 90 minutes,
not only can he cook pork belly,
can he get around the corner to a shop to buy
a new pressure cooker, get back and still cook pork belly?
(cheering and applauding)
- Come on! Disappointing.
- The battle is back on.
- For me, it's lots and lots of veg prep up front
because most of my dishes, if not all of them,
cook super quickly at the end,
so I just need to get everything ready
and it's clever because where I'm using
half a red pepper in one dish, I'm using half
in the other dish so they kind of mix and match
peppers, mushrooms, cabbage, courgette,
spring onions, ginger, tomato, it all needs prepping.
This was one of the most interesting meals
I had when I was away, partly because
we cooked some of the dishes in a cooking school
when I was there and secondly,
the snoozing dragon, I just think is
really, really cool and interesting.
So much so that the second night,
I had to ask if I could go into the kitchen
and watch them make it, and--
- He still hasn't told anyone here
what a snoozing dragon is yet.
- We'll build to that.
- For my broth, I have fried Sichuan chilli pepper
and Sichuan chilli flakes in lard and then
I've fried spring onion and ginger in sesame wok oil.
- What is wok oil?
- You can't use sesame oil to actually
like cook stuff in because it burns.
This is sesame flavour but it's good for cooking with.
Added some five spice powder, cumin seeds,
cardamon pods, some chilli garlic sauce,
black bean garlic sauce and then I have added
chicken stock, Shaoxing rice wine, caster sugar
and porcini mushrooms and then I've poured in
the Sichuan chilli flakes and Sichuan pepper
that I fried in the lard, along with the lard,
into the broth, simmered it for ten minutes
and then steeped it for 45 minutes.
- So why are you gonna win?
- You know what, I don't know that much about
Chinese food, I'm gonna admit it.
So what I'm doing is taking two things that I think
look absolutely delicious and putting them together
into something that I think is better
than the two when they're combined.
- Whilst Ben is taking tradition,
and doing a little bit of a twist on some dishes,
you seem to be taking tradition
and throwing it out of the window.
- So, I'm gonna cut all the way along the aubergine,
at 45 degrees, about 80% of the way through.
- [Mike] That is a hasselback aubergine!
- [Jamie] A hasselback aubergine!
- You roll it over, 180.
And you cut through this side, square onto the board, 80%.
Oh no, that might have been a bit deep, that one.
And what you get--
- [Mike] Is a concertina, long, thin aubergine.
- Is it a little bit style over substance though?
(chuckling)
- When you built it up, I was skeptical that
I would be even interested.
(laughing)
But, I am actually fascinated by that.
- And then basically you get the cornflour,
so you get crispy bits sort of all in, seasoning all in,
because it's quite heavily seasoned cornflour.
- [Mike] Oh no, the tails come off!
- No, well, that's a tester, that is just
to test in
the oil to see if it's hot enough. - [James] You sure, you sure? Yeah.
- Boys, you have one hour left.
- So a generous teaspoon of oyster,
and about a tablespoon of soy in with the corn starch,
mix it up into a paste and that becomes the thing
that we add into the pork and the pepper
and the mushroom and all the other wonderful flavours
later on, to thicken it, to season it,
and that will just ooze over our snoozing dragon.
- How do you know what is good oyster sauce?
- It's thick, it's shiny, it's gloopy.
You want to look for one that has got fresh,
oyster extract in it and therefore,
when it gets reduced down into this,
it's just got all of the fifth sense, the fifth taste.
- [Mike] Umamz.
- [Ben] Umamz.
This is my clay pot.
Clay pot style rice.
- Everything you say has an asterisks attached.
- So in there, we have got washed and drained
jasmine rice, shiitake mushrooms, vegetable stock,
a little bit of Chinese rice wine,
in a wok, with a lid, and then you cook it.
You bring it up to a very, very gentle simmer.
You cook it on the lowest heat possible,
for about eight to ten minutes,
and then you take it off the heat but leave the lid on
for another five, six, seven, eight minutes.
And it should steam it all in it's lovely juices,
absorption method.
It should be okay.
Dragon.
In.
- [James] Come apart, come apart, come apart.
Come apart, come apart.
Oh, it's fine, that's a shame, that is a shame.
- What you were hoping that was going to break apart?
- I mean that's the most complicated part of your dish.
- Boys, you are half way through your time.
You have 45 minutes remaining.
Double tong method.
- [Mike] And it's safe.
- [James] Oh, that was so boring.
- [Mike] The dragon is safe.
Is using all of these sauces cheating?
- With these, have been like perfected.
I would never try and make my own oyster sauce.
- So proper Chinese chefs would use sauces, like this.
- Yeah, these are just amazing condiments
and sauces, you then, notice how many different things,
even though we're using the same soy, oyster, sesame,
four dishes will all be very different.
(saucepan sputtering)
- Oh no!
- Ben, is that okay?
- [Ben] No, that's not okay!
- I've used half my char siu sauce in the broth.
Now, I'm going to brush the pork with the rest of it
and then I'm going to glaze it over a kind of
low to medium heat. - Oh wow.
- So the key here is to fry off the pork mince
in a little bit of the sesame wok oil.
Now, you don't actually have to add the pork mince,
you could keep this whole dish vegetarian
by leaving out the pork mince
because there's so many other amazing flavours
to go with the snoozing dragon, in which case,
you can use a vegetarian stir fry sauce.
- I can't hear my sizzling over your sizzling.
- My sizzling is louder than yours.
I'm adding a little bit of chilli oil here.
- I'm going to put a tiny bit of wok oil in this.
- Right, we're into the last 30 minutes.
- Take the pork out of the wok, put it on a plate.
And then into the same hot wok, with another
little bit of the sesame wok oil,
we're going in with the chopped peppers,
mushroom and garlic.
Add the pork back in around the peppers and mushrooms,
along with a splash of water, your oyster, soy
and cornstarch mix and then heat it to a bubble.
It will thicken it and cook it for a couple of minutes,
that's going to get poured over our snoozing dragon.
- It looks and it smells exactly like
proper Chinese restaurant food.
And you can't smell it anymore.
- When we say Chinese food, we just think it's one.
- It's quite a big place though.
- And the really different regions are so, so different.
- That is probably why I'm not allowed to
put these two together.
- That is absolutely why.
(Jamie coughing)
- That's rude, that is rude.
- [Jamie] No, that was a good cough.
- Very rude.
- Twenty five minutes remaining.
- This is the pork cooking liquid
and it is gonna go straight in there.
This has got the oyster sauce and soy sauce in as well.
- So this is when char siu and Sichuan--
- [James] They meet, they meet.
- And Ben doesn't think it's gonna work.
Do you think it's gonna work?
- I think it's gonna work, yeah!
- Are you sure they're gonna pair together?
- Yes.
- Ooh! (cheering)
- The dragon is no longer snoozing.
- It is woke.
- It is woke!
(laughing)
And that's where the battle was either won or lost.
- It's in, it's in.
- [Jamie] No turning back, it's in!
- [James] We're done.
- For my beer fish dish which is, in this case,
cod, I have deliberately left skin on cod,
I'm going to dry the skin, and then fry it in the wok
with a little bit of the oil, skin side down.
- What are you using, cod?
- Yeah, so I had a firm white fish
when I had it in Yangshuo.
But basically you want something firm,
so you could use hake, you could use monkfish,
you could even use prawns because all of those
white fish have kind of like a meaty sweetness
to them which will work with the lager and the ginger.
So we're not cooking the fish all the way through,
we're just looking for that kind of colour.
- Whatever comes out of Ben's pan,
he'll tell you that that's what he's looking for.
- More of that magic combination of oyster and soy.
This is my beer...
Lager.
- Thank you, I have smelt beer before.
[Mike Laughing]
- Into the wok, ginger, pepper and tomato.
Stir fry for a couple of minutes,
then add in the beer and your oyster, soy mixture.
- Oh.
- So what I'm gonna do now is poach the mushrooms
and the bok choy and literally just gonna give
the bok choy maybe 30 seconds to a minute.
And then I'm ready to go.
- Now the beer is reduced down,
I'm gonna add the spring onions so they steam
and have a slight crunch to them
and the fish back on top to poach in that liquid.
My final wok is smoking so I'm gonna go in
with the last of the sesame wok oil
and then it's gonna be courgette, for a head start
because they're gonna cook a little bit quicker.
Or take a bit longer, rather, than the cabbage.
Cabbage, spring onion, garlic and it's finished
right at then end with a splash of soy,
for seasoning, and some sesame seeds for crunch.
- I can see how this is gonna come together
to be a really great dish.
- If it's worked, the rice should absorb
all of that stock and the shiitake flavor.
- We'll finish it with sweet soy
and some finely sliced spring onions.
- One minute left!
- Twenty seconds left.
- Ten. Nine.
- Eight. Seven.
- Six. Five.
- Four. Three.
- Two.
- One.
- Step away from the kitchen.
- I am happy with that, I am not sure Barry
will be happy with that but we shall see.
(laughing)
- I think it looks fresh and vibrant and inviting.
I am, I'm chuffed.
(dramatic music)
- Barry, you're going to start to your
right hand side, that's that side.
You have a snoozing dragon.
- A beautiful, warmth and that's really like
playing with all the textures as well.
You've got a crunchy yet very soft and gooey aubergine.
- [Jamie] A beer fish.
- The fish is beautiful but
I think my favourite bit about that is the broth.
- That has a really nice tang to it.
- Yeah, it's really fragrant and fresh flavours.
- [Jamie] Sesame wok fried veg.
- Simple, it's simple, like the charring
is where all the flavour is coming from there.
- [Jamie] And clay pot style rice.
- Four outstanding dishes,
this has, this has got a lot to do innit.
- This is Szechuan hot pot broth
and slow cooked char sui pork belly.
- Dive in.
- [Mike] No, I wanna watch you first.
- Mm, that is so sweet and charred.
- [Jamie] Ooh, there it is.
- It is one of those spices that it warms you,
it doesn't ever hurt you, it's a hug.
I mean the fresh is the bok and the mushroom,
it's got that depth as well.
- [Mike] I want it.
- That is delicious.
- I really like that mixture of hot and sweet.
- Five plates of food that I wouldn't expect
from two westerners, like-- - Yeah.
- They are--
- Completely agree.
- Alright mate, you're gonna have to make
a decision, which set of dishes is your favorite.
- The winning dish has to be, the sleeping dragon.
- It was my snoozing dragon, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
(applauding)
- Wow, okay.
- Well played Ebbers.
Well you've heard from our expert judge, Barry.
But we're sure there are plenty of other
experts out there who might know more.
We would love to hear from you, comment down below.
Let us know which chef do you think should've won.
I know you can't taste it, I know you can't smell it.
But you can see it, you've seen the process
they've been through and how they've been described.
Who is your winner?
- [Mike] Well, good job.
- Well done.
(applauding)
- Quite the feast.
- Yeah, so Ben's dish won it for me today
but who do you think should've won?
Comment down below and let us know.
- Also give the video a like and a massive thanks
to Lee Kum Kee for getting involved.
If you wanna know more about them,
you can check them out in the links below.
And they're helping us host an amazing competition
over on Instagram so go and follow us,
and them on there, also links down below,
to find out all you need to know.
- Otherwise, we'll see you in the next one.
Goodbye!
- Goodbye!
- [Mike] As we've mentioned, we don't just make
top quality YouTube videos, we've built
the Sorted Club where we use the best things
we have learnt to create stuff that's hopefully
interesting 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.
- Oh god, I'm so sorry, it's building up
and I have to-- (Barry burping)
(groaning)
Sorry, that was worse than I though it was gonna be.