- [Andrew] Today's episode is sponsored
by Capital One Shopping.
Capital One Shopping is the extension
that automatically applies coupon codes
for free while you shop.
If you're tired of overpaying on Amazon,
let Capital One Shopping search in the background
for a better price.
It only takes one click and is free for everyone,
Capital One customer or not.
To avoid paying full price,
click the link in the video description
to get Capital One Shopping for free.
Now, let's get down to basics.
- Thanks for coming.
- Of course.
Oh, are we starting?
- Yeah. - Oh!
Hello! - Hi! Welcome.
- We are in the kitchen.
Andrew's not here.
He's on vacation. - No, he's on vacation.
- We broke in, and we thought it'd be fun
to see what's around the house and make some food.
Fried rice.
- And Alvin you're gonna help me out.
We're gonna make a quick, easy leftovers fried rice.
And he's gonna show me the real way to actually do it.
- A different way. Andrew has done fried rice before.
- Mm-hmm. He has.
- But I think it'd be fun
to show how we might do it at home.
- Yup, I'm actually really excited.
This is something that I've actually made before-
Genuinely, I made it by myself.
It was the first week I moved into my apartment,
and I had left over pastrami and I said,
"Let's make it," to myself. And I did.
And it was so good.
So I'm gonna try to recreate that a little bit,
play with what we have.
- And the fun thing about fried rice
is that there are recipes,
but I think the whole point is
that fried rice is just rice with things
that you have left over.
So even though what we're making may not be traditional,
it's still fried rice at the end of the day.
So I'm excited to see you cook.
- Me too.
(Alvin laughs)
It's not stressful at all.
- [Brad] What's the spring mix for?
- [Alvin] What's this?
- [Brad] Yeah, what is this about?
- This man here, he comes over here,
we order staff lunch, whatever.
He always brings a box of spring mix and eats it dry.
Nothing in it. Just dry spring mix.
Now you know what kind of guy this is.
- Maybe you'll see this in action. Maybe you won't.
- So we have sandwiches here. They're pastrami.
And what I'm gonna do is put gloves on, actually,
because I don't wanna get my fingers messy,
which is probably the worst thing
to say when you're cooking.
I've been working here for a long time now
and I find myself here in work
but then also at home doing things.
I mean, like, "That was an Andrew thing to do."
I'm just a sponge for other people's personalities.
- [Brad] Are you gonna start eating spring mix?
- No. No.
- I'm out.
(Kendall laughs)
- I'm going to utilize not only the meat, but the bread.
- Oh, interesting.
I'm curious to see what that's gonna be like.
- No, you'll never know.
- I'm about to know.
Ooh, smells like money.
- [Kendall] Just liberate these bread slices.
Ooh okay, it's cold and sticking.
Why is it wet?
Oh, no. It's ripping up the bread.
So, Alvin, I bet you're wondering,
"Hey, why are you separating these wet breads?"
- Why are you separating these wet breads?
- Great question.
Well, my plan was to take these intact bread slices
and dehydrate them a bit,
make some bread crumbs out of them, pulse it up,
add it to some chili oil,
and make it a little chili crisp to garnish my fried rice.
That's why I wore gloves.
Mm, dry bread, unseasoned.
- Bet Steve's ears are having a great time.
- [Steve] Yeah, ASMR.
- Ooh, actually we do have pickles.
That is a real ASMR thing.
It's the only kind of ASMR I like to listen to.
- Wow, your YouTube history must be amazing.
- It really is. It's actually just "Sims" videos.
So I'm gonna take these,
I'm gonna put them into a 300 degree oven
and wait for them to dry up, you know?
I'm gonna chop up this meat.
I'm really hoping that the oil gets infused
with these pastrami flavors.
'Cause I'm not really gonna add that many seasonings to it.
I really want the pastrami flavor to sing here.
I think I wanna use a little bit of pickle brine
to bring a little acidity, break up that rich, fatty meat.
Do you wanna eat a pickle?
- Do I want to eat a pickle?
- Yeah.
- I'm good for now. Thank you, though.
- I'm gonna eat a pickle.
- [Brad] Just make sure you get it into the microphone.
(pickle crunching)
- [Steve] It is relaxing.
- Now, that's nice.
- Vegetables. We need to cut them.
Ginger. Not a lot.
Garlic, classic. Onion, classic.
Purple cabbage, not classic.
And that's it. Not spring mix over there.
My issue with spring mix is that it tastes like dirt.
Not because it is dirt,
but so oftentimes when I get spring mix,
it's not washed properly.
And then I don't wash it properly.
- [Alvin] Triple washed!
- [Kendall] I know!
- Why y'all hating, man?
- I'm first going to peel my ginger using a spoon.
I like to use a baby spoon because I have small hands.
I know that you usually chop ginger. Why?
- I don't have a grater at home.
- Great answer.
I cook all the time, and I'm still afraid of knives.
- [Brad] Didn't you say you've never cut yourself?
- What? What a crazy thing.
I don't think I have, though,
but I don't think I would've said that.
Did I?
- [Brad] You did. - Whoa.
- [Brad] And it makes me nervous every time you cut
because I feel like you're due.
- I'm due?
- [Brad] You're due, and I just-
- Wow. Why would you say that, Brad?
- [Brad] I just, I don't want it to happen,
but I wish you'd never told. - Sounds like you do.
What a rude thing for me to say to you.
- Brad, you did-
- I've never cut myself.
I was thinking of instead dicing this,
keeping them in strips.
- It's your fried rice. You can make it however you want.
- You're right. I'm gonna dice it.
Can't handle your disapproval.
- [Alvin] Mm. Yup.
- So now-
- [Brad] What's happening?
- [Steve] She's crying.
- I don't want Kendall to cry.
(Alvin blowing air)
- Thank you.
- I'm lightheaded.
- That was a lot. That was a lot.
- [Alvin] I like all the different vegetables
you're using in yours.
- I want a lot of color.
(mellow jazz music)
- Nice.
- Oh my God, that was so bad.
- I got worried. I got worried.
- Yes.
- So we need this to grind some bread.
Ooh, this smells pastrami-y.
Careful.
- Ooh. - It's 300 degrees.
I've been told that's hot.
- Almost as hot as my mixtape.
- Crispy. - Mm.
(bread crunching) (mellow jazz music)
- It's good. It's good.
Let's make some crumbs.
(mellow jazz music)
Let's pulse. - Crush.
- That's about good.
We're gonna make some chili crisp now.
We're gonna need our breadcrumbs,
and then we're gonna add some chili crisp.
This is homemade chili crisp, courtesy of Kenji.
So I'm just gonna heat up and crisp these breadcrumbs
a little bit in the pan with some oil.
And then I'm gonna fold in the chili crisp
and call it a day.
- [Alvin] That's a nice color. I like that.
So fragrant.
- Ooh. I got a little bit heat at the end.
All right, so I guess all that's left is I need
to beat those eggs.
- [Alvin] Yeah. Beat 'em.
- [Kendall] Stop playing with my eggs.
- [Alvin] It makes them feel happy.
(mellow jazz music)
- All right, I think I'm ready.
- [Brad] Kendall, why are you so nervous? Why?
Is it because your friendship
with Alvin hangs in the balance?
- He told me that if this is bad,
he will not speak to me again,
which is really hard because we will be working together
in the future.
- We're gonna have to learn sign language.
Time to make some rice.
- Yeah, let's make some fried rice.
We should turn on the fan because I'm gonna sweat.
So a good amount of oil to start.
That might be kind of crazy.
- No, it's not. - But we're doing it.
And high heat, if there was ever a moment.
- [Alvin] Rip it all the way up.
- Now, when I add the egg,
because this is not customary to me,
am I gonna wanna stir it or just let it-
- Yeah, you beat the crap out of it,
like it owes you money.
- Okay, cool, cool, cool.
Yeah, I do that all the time.
- [Alvin] Beat up for money?
- Yeah.
- Yeah!
- Okay, that wasn't the reaction I thought was gonna happen,
so that's okay. - [Alvin] Woo!
- Ahh, not scary, not scary, not scary,
All right, I'm gonna add these now.
Yeah, let me do it myself. - Is this all of it?
Oh, look at that! There you go.
- [Kendall] Vegetables.
Cabbage.
(mellow jazz music)
- [Alvin] Yeah, flick of the wrist.
- So I like to make a little well here
because I want most of the heat to be on the rice.
So the rice Alvin very kindly spread out on a sheet tray
and put it in the fridge so that it would really dry out.
- [Alvin] Restaurant trick taught to me, again, by Eric.
He was like, he dries his rice out on tray.
So the rice uses for his fried rice
in the restaurant has literally been dried the day before.
- All right, I think that's about good.
I'm gonna mix this in.
- Everybody's fried rice is gonna be different.
But the best thing about this
is that it's not steaming or water pooling at the bottom.
It's clearly very dry
and it's what's gonna make it taste really good.
- Little bit of sesame oil and a little bit of soy sauce.
Ooh. Okay. All right. All right. Okay.
- Oh, dairy.
Ooh. That's the color.
- [Kendall] Yeah, I'm gonna taste it.
(mellow jazz music)
Yeah. - Yeah?
- Mm-hmm. - All right.
- [Kendall] Let's eat it.
Crispies. It happened. It's done.
Pastrami fried rice. Pastrami for the pastrami part.
Got some cabbage in there to kind emulate the coleslaw.
Some pickle brine for the pickle.
Onion, obviously rice, green onion, whites and greens,
ginger, garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil.
The egg's in there.
I'm sure I'm gonna like it.
I'm really more worried about if you're gonna like it.
- I mean, it's an unorthodox fried rice
but the thing is you made it
with whatever you had lying around,
so it's your fried rice.
So even though I haven't seen anything like it,
it still looks pretty good.
- [Kendall] All right, let's go.
Don't forget to get the crispy.
- [Alvin] Never.
- It's so hot.
It's so hot.
- Mm. It's good.
- Mm. It's so fricking hot.
I can't taste anymore.
- I like the different textures.
But you see how the grains are kind of separate?
They're not super clumped together.
That's really important. - I didn't even know
that was something to look for.
- It's a big thing.
That way, you're kind of cooking and crisping up each piece
of rice as if it were its own steak.
So even though I have never had a fried rice like this,
the basics of a fried rice, to me, are there.
- Thank you so much.
(upbeat music)
- Okay, so this is how I like to make fried rice.
This is kind of Taiwanese, Chinese.
Eggs, a lot of scallion, and then this,
which is a Chinese-style dried sausage.
It is a kind of a cured, dried sausage that has sugar in it,
which makes it a little sweeter, which is why I like it.
And honestly, this is just, like,
I'm pretty sure this is the exact same one I grew up eating.
Very nostalgic.
You wanna try some?
- [Kendall] Yeah, I do.
I eat? - Try it. Yeah.
- At first, it's like, oh wow.
Kind of like a breakfast sausage experience.
But then it's very savory finish. I quite like that.
- Yeah. Scallions. So here's how I cut them.
Do sections first.
- [Kendall] Now, why do you put it in sections?
- So you stack 'em up.
So then you can have more to go through.
I wanna cook the whites,
and I'm going to actually cook some
of the greens with the white so
that you get more deeply cooked greens flavor.
And I'm gonna save this half for right at the end,
so it has the fresh flavor.
When I make fried rice,
it's relatively simple 'cause I'm lazy.
So it's just eggs, sausage, scallions, and other scallions.
My friend, Eric, he's a Taiwanese chef,
he also taught me the basics of how to do this,
he said that his test to interview
or test a line cook or a cook,
he just asks them to make egg scallion fried rice.
That's it.
He gives them eggs, he gives them scallions,
he gives them rice, and if they can make it, they pass.
So that's good enough for me.
All right, I'm done.
So I'm gonna go cook on a wok outside with a big flame
'cause that's what I wanna do.
- Awesome. - And I love fire.
Oh, (beep).
Wait, don't, don't-
(Kendall shouts)
- [Brad] Back up the cameras, so that they don't get-
- [Kendall] Should I get the fire extinguisher?
- It's going down. It's going down.
- [Kendall] This is fun.
- Now, we're using a different kind of wok
and a lot less heat 'cause I got a little too excited.
- [Kendall] A Babish wok, perhaps?
- [Alvin] A Babish wok, yeah.
- You got it. You got it. You got it.
- Just gonna do three.
You gotta keep things moving.
Heat's pretty good.
- [Kendall] Ooh, yours looks so much more pebbly
than mine did.
It looks good. - Yeah, I kind of like
to break it up into little shards.
And once the eggs are pebbly, throw in the sausage.
Oh, it smell-
There's a little bit of that smoky flavor.
I think that's the wok hay.
- I'm getting the wakame, though. Wakame?
- Wok hay.
- Wok hay. Not close.
It looks really good.
- Yeah. The oil from the sausage is coming out a little bit.
This is really nice.
And now, scallions. Yeah.
- Wow.
I'm smelling that- There's no rice in there yet.
- Yeah. There's no rice.
- And I'm smelling the smell of fried rice.
- Yep, that's all from the eggs, actually.
Rice is gonna go in 'cause it's short grain.
Koshihikari rice dried in the same method
that we did the other stuff with.
Now, this part, I'm gonna add a little more oil.
- What does the flattening do?
- The flattening breaks up the clumps of the rice.
I wanna coat each grain individually.
Hey, seasoning time.
One-to-one-to-half salt. That's sugar, I think.
- It was sugar, yeah. - This is salt.
And then MSG. Two of these.
All right, turn the heat off. This is done.
The last second, throw in the scallion greens
just for a little bit.
This breaks the rawness.
Just not trying to cook it.
We're just trying to get some heat into it.
- [Kendall] It smells incredible.
- Let me see if I can do it.
They do it on the- they get it onto the thing.
- That was so fast. That's gorgeous.
- That's how they would serve it.
Well, this is my version of it.
I think we're gonna take it inside and eat it now. Woo!
So what I look for the most
that I've been taught to look for
is how separate each grain of rice is.
Ideally, when you do this,
it kind of falls off like pebbles, like sand.
- Dude, this looks so good.
- Yeah, you wanna eat it?
- I very much wanna eat it.
I wanted to eat it as soon
as you started. - Go. Eat It.
- It's everything I want fried rice to be.
It's onion-y without having onion.
It's rich without being overly saturated in oil.
It's just such a complex flavor.
- [Alvin] Do you get any of that smokiness?
- [Kendall] Yeah, for sure.
- Yeah, not bad.
- Mmm!
Mm-hmm.
- You guys want some?
- Yes. - Yeah.
- [Andrew] Thanks again to Capital One Shopping
for sponsoring today's episode.
With Capital One Shopping,
one click is all it takes to snag exclusive savings
from the stores you care about.
As you browse online,
you'll see a handy little pop-up if a better offer is found,
including tax and shipping details.
It's an easy way to save
while you shop like you normally would.
Plus, it's free for everyone to use.
Get Capital One Shopping now for free using the link
in the video description.
(mellow music)