- [Ben] Any of you guys ever tried raw blood before?
- Blood! You don't see it on many restaurant menus,
but not only is it important to use the whole animal,
blood can also taste really, really good.
- It can, but you can also ask,
why the [beep] is this actually in my food.
So our friend Hugue, from the anti-steakhouse M. Wells,
is going to teach us everything about blood.
- Where I'm from, in Quebec, growing up,
I would eat blood sausage for breakfast.
But it was terrible, I remember, growing up,
the blood was like, too cooked, crumbly.
- Oh yeah.
- It was not something very enjoyable.
You know, I found out that it's possible to
have it good and creamy.
I've been fascinated by that, and it's also,
a great way to take in sauce, sauces.
If you think about that, you can use blood
just as you would use egg yolks.
- If it's not in a sausage I don't
know how to cook with blood.
- But just giving the, kind of tip of treat it like
an egg yolk makes it a lot more accessible,
just kind of automatically.
I guess it's how you approach it.
This has a culture and a history.
- [Hugue] It's been around, right?
- [Ben] It's not like you're just making
buttermilk pancakes with blood in them,
just because you can, or anything like that.
This was created for a reason,
it's like you were saying, like you have the whole animal,
it's the first thing you get to have,
because it's the freshest and it doesn't last long.
- The freshest, and also you had to
because the blood doesn't last forever, and stuff.
It would go. You had to..
- [Brent] Use it right away, yeah.
- Most importantly, we're gonna drink, okay,
because it's also my day off.
(all laughing)
- [Hugue] Cheers. I'm very happy here.
- [Ben/Brent] Cheers.
- [Ben] Thank you.
- [Hugue] We're gonna get the rabbit cooking.
This time being we're gonna use pork blood.
Which is like, perhaps the creamiest you can get.
- [Ben] Okay.
- You know when you go with cow blood or, even goat.
Goat is very delicious as well but, it's drier.
(upbeat music)
Ready?
- Ahh.
- [Brent] Nice.
- [Hugue] And the sauce is-
- [Brent] Oh perfect.
- [Hugue] Pretty good already.
We're just gonna make a little mix of blood.
A little bit of cream,
I said Cognac, but we'll go with Armagnac.
(upbeat music)
(cork squeak)
- It's just a blood Hollandaise.
- Hollandaise, it's more like a hot mayonnaise.
- [Brent] Okay.
- [Hugue] That would be more, I mean it's closer to
a crème anglaise.
- Okay.
(upbeat music)
- [Hugue] Now we're gonna do the blood sausage.
We'll do the Korean version of it.
The French version I'm doing in stuff,
there's so many steps I would have spent the night.
We figured it out, my former sous chef and I,
cause he's Korean.
We came up with a version that's quite good.
But for that, if you guys wanna help me,
I have lard here like julienne it and dice it.
I like making you work.
- So now you get to just drink wine.
- [Hugue] Yeah.
- [Ben] Okay, great.
- [Hugue] Oh this is perfect.
Just go like this, I mean seriously it's all
gonna be mixed in the blood.
- Chef says it's perfect, Brent.
- It's perf-
(Hugue laughs)
- He's being nice.
Being nice.
He's a gentleman, Ben.
(upbeat music)
- Where did you get this blood?
- Let me see on the label.
(laughing)
- [Hugue] We work with Debragga.
It's from the slaughterhouse,
I mean it's a little bit of a mystery.
I trust them, and cause I've been supplied with
this blood for a long time now,
I know that it's good blood.
- [Brent] A lot of customers ask for blood,
depending where they're from,
they're often horrified that we can't get
these parts of the animal.
- Blood's one of those few things that you can't
find where it's from, and if you ask somebody,
like, "No I need to know where it's from,"
they would just be like "Why the [beep] do you care?"
You always have to kind of fight that uphill battle,
like, no, it matters.
- It does matter.
- It matters to me, it matters
to my customers when they ask,
and I always have to have an answer for my customers.
You can never say to your customer,
"I don't know."
- Yeah, no, totally.
Just like I did just now.
(Ben and Brent laughing)
- [Hugue] So these are Korean chili flakes.
Sesame oil, the fermented bean paste,
the glass noodle.
- [Ben] Garlic, ginger, scallions?
Fat?
- And then we're gonna need blood at some point.
- [Ben] Eventually, yeah.
- And then we're gonna encase the whole thing.
So I don't know, did you guys wanna work on that?
- I can do that.
You want me to do this?
- Yeah, hey, and you know what?
We don't wanna go too long.
- The stinkiest job.
- Yeah.
- In the kitchen.
- [Ben] Brent, please don't embarrass me
and [beep] with the casings.
- Maybe I will.
- This is like the one part of this process
you and I are supposed to actually know how to do this.
- [Brent] So I feel like we would be remiss to
not mention the sound of the babbling brook,
next to us.
- [Hugue] Even getting it fresh in the morning,
they wouldn't be enough.
It needs to be alive a few minutes before.
We just knock him dead.
gut them, without trying to rub the skin.
We rinse it a little bit in fat,
and then dip it in white vinegar.
It turns electric blue.
(running water)
(water splash)
- Hey Ben! Hey Ben.
- [Ben] Hey!
(laughing)
- We're gonna put the blood in.
- [Ben] So really, this is 90 percent,
maybe even more, blood.
(upbeat music)
- [Hugue] We have the blood sausage that's also ready.
(sizzling)
We'll need pears for the
maple syrup.
- [Ben] So some aromatics, a little bit of fennel,
a little bit of szechuan peppercorn,
a little bit of cinnamon.
(upbeat music)
- Now we're gonna make the sanguette.
Sanguette is a little crepe.
Traditionally, made out of chicken blood,
or goat blood.
And I mean it's a pancake, made with blood.
- I have a tattoo of pancakes on me so I am very into this.
Mah dog. Pancakes.
- So we're talking about a blood,
not as fatty, generally.
I use chicken blood over goat blood.
They kill chicken every day,
so collecting the blood is easy.
As opposed to, but that's mostly the reason why.
I would have loved to be able to get goat blood.
I think most people could never find raw chicken blood.
I happen to have a friend that has the halal slaughterhouse.
This is it.
So you have a part that's coagulated.
And you have a part that it's almost like water,
so it separates like this.
I'm gonna blend it again so we can work
the garnish better and stuff, we can pour it more evenly.
I'm just gonna put in a little vinegar.
- [Brent] Okay.
Red wine vinegar, right?
- [Hugue] Red wine vinegar, right.
- [Ben] And that vinegar is what uncoagulates it, right?
(upbeat music)
That color is amazing.
(upbeat music)
- [Ben] Oh, can we try that a little bit?
- [Hugue] Yeah, and so in there you'll see it's,
it's not the same-
- That tastes like blood.
- [Brent] Yep.
That is funky.
- [Hugue] So just pour it over, right?
(upbeat music)
And pah!
(laughter)
- [Ben] We're gonna eat all of this now.
You cut the biggest pieces of sausage for people.
- [Brent] You gotta commit.
Oh my God.
(upbeat music)
- I mean I have to say this might be my favorite to date.
- [Ben] Yeah, this is exactly the opposite
of what you were saying you grew up with
when you were eating blood sausage,
or it was just crumbly and over-cooked.
- [Hugue] Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I can tell you that
like all the blood around, it's cooked perfectly.
And it's creamy and stuff.
- That chili paste comes through.
It's well seasoned.
A little spicy.
- I mean you can feel the blood, right?
It almost like on the verge of being the stringent
of something, it's there.
It's like coating your mouth.
- I think it's the pears and that bean curd
coming together.
You want something to start brunch with?
There you go.
(upbeat music)
- [Ben] I mean do we even need-
- [Hugue] It's nothing, we can just dig in it.
- [Ben] Yeah, let's just get in there.
(upbeat music)
- In this one, you don't even really
taste the blood, it's more of a texture thing.
It brings it together, like a pudding.
- And you kind of had elements of juxtaposition
with the blood sausage.
This is like a fastball right down the middle.
Everything is like working in partnership
and amping every other element up together.
They all just compliment each other.
- The rabbit braised perfectly.
Beautiful, tender, but the sauce is what makes it.
And that it coats absolutely everything perfectly.
Once again, the blood just kind of
brings everything together.
- The blood is the thing.
(upbeat music)
I think the chicken blood pancake is something
that might be the most accessible,
of like, in these three dishes.
- I am shocked.
- Yeah. It's like really mild.
- The chicken blood is actually really light.
It has a different mouth-feel than the pork.
- That thing we were talking about earlier
about how the pork, it kind of lingers,
you can feel it texturally.
This one is just there and then it's gone.
You never hear like "chicken blood pancake,"
and you're like, "that's definitely gonna
be the dish for me."
But that is outrageously good.
Hugue we came here with the question,
how do we use blood?
Like is it worth using?
How to use it in the best way?
I think you just gave us like three shining examples
of how to use blood that is not just like,
a part of the dish or an element of the dish,
it's what makes the dish.
These are all fantastic.
Thank you so much for having us.
- And now that we've been working with blood like that,
I say, thank you brothers.
(laughing)
(upbeat music)
- [Ben] You would go to an Outback Steakhouse
and see a steak that big on the menu
but with the amount of fat that's in that steak,
that's probably enough for three or-