- Guys, today we are at The Meat Hook.
We use hocks and trotters in only a couple of ways.
Trotters we mostly just sell to ramen shops,
and hocks we smoke mostly for soups.
- Hock, shank, same thing.
Today we're going to Fish Cheeks.
We're going to have a pork shank stew cooked in Diet Coke?
- Why wouldn't you do that?
- I don't know, it sounds delicious and refreshing.
- Yeah.
- Let's go.
- What are we making today?
- We're making khao ka moo.
It's pork leg stew over rice.
- Traditional Thai dish?
- Sort of traditional.
It's been around for a long time.
- He says you can eat it every day.
If you're in Thailand, you can eat this
once a week, and he usually does.
- It is just like, pretty much a part of you.
It's like pizza.
It's a very ubiquitous-- - Yes.
(electric guitar picking)
- What are the steps we're gonna need to take
to make this dish happen?
- Who's good on grill?
- Oh yeah, I'll do grill.
(Jennifer laughs)
- [Brent] Why are we grilling something
that we're going to stew?
- Grilling it will burn all the hair,
and actually tighten the skin.
- Gotcha, oh, that is really hot.
That's already making a little dent there.
Ooh!
Why these pieces of pork for the dish?
Why the trotters and the hocks?
- So the feet has tendon, and it has other parts,
cartilage and stuff like that.
Some people prefer that sort of texture
rather than just straight up meat.
- That's so you get all the gelatin,
but you also get the texture difference then.
- [Brent] Yeah, it's like a bit of a sell to get
people to try something that has real texture to it.
- Right. - You're like,
this isn't tender, but it's delicious.
- [Ben] I mean, they already look like
they're gonna taste good.
- All right, so we're gonna wok roast all of the seasonings.
Crushed garlic, cilantro stems, star anise.
Chinese yam, cinnamon.
- Everyone has their own little recipe, or little twist
that they think, oh, this is gonna make it
an amazing dish, or something like that.
- Yeah, so everyone in Thailand is making this dish
and they're just kind of like, whatever they're like,
how they make it special to them is
how they make it. - Right, yeah.
- [Ben] We already have the savory with the pork,
we have all the floral elements,
and we have sweetness from the sugar.
- We're gonna put Diet Coke.
- [Ben] Why Diet?
- [Jennifer] 'Cause there's already palm sugar.
- [Ben] Oh okay.
This took a real strong left turn
when we introduced Diet Coke.
Now I'm just like, I don't know where we're going anymore.
- [Ben} Right.
- (beep) smells so good.
- So, what we pulling out?
- So you throw in the Chinese brocolli,
and the hard boiled egg at the end.
Yummy. - This is mine.
- That's you?
That's yours?
- [Brent] Oh my god, the color on that.
- [Ben] It smells so, so good.
- All the, all those spices that you toasted earlier,
they didn't die down at all.
There's so many aroma's coming off of this.
- [Jennifer] So that's pickled mustard green.
- [Brent] Pickled mustard green, awesome.
- So we're really like, now with everything else,
we started with sweet from the palm sugar
and savory from the pork,
and all of those aromatics, so we're like,
now we're bringing in sour,
we're really kind of building this out.
- [Jennifer] Okay, dig in.
- Oh, thank you!
- Here we go, go ahead.
- Oh man, I'll cook pork hocks at home
and I love picking them apart,
but I've never thought about just making it it's own dish.
So cool.
You tried this? - No.
- Yeah.
- Dammit. - Yeah.
- I'm glad you guys like it. - So good.
- Wanna talk about the stock.
Diet Coke stock. - Yeah.
- It's so freaking good.
I mean, it's worth mentioning that it is really sweet,
but sweet in a good way.
And also something that we usually never cook with,
but the sweet and super spicy works really well together.
- It kind of like, falls into the five flavors
that Thai people usually use.
The saltiness, the sweetness, the citrus,
the bitter and umami, right?
I feel like you can probably find this
in all the flavors in this dish.
- You've really opened up, I think, at least
my thinking on what we can, and probably should,
be doing with some of these parts
that I just haven't done before because I'm American.
So, split pea soup with a smoked trotter is like,
that's what my family has done.
- Right. - Yeah.
- But this is way more interesting and way more flavorful,
and I think it utilizes it in a much better way.
- I mean it's so cool, Ben's right.
It's like the only way that we really sell hocks
is for people to put in soup.
That's really the only access point that we have.
Also, kind of the passive cooking aspect.
Grill it, and let this master stock kind of do
it's own thing. - It's own thing.
- Then you can turn it into whatever type of dish,
or salad, or soup that you want to.
I feel kind of stupid for just not
thinking of this stuff before but it's like
a whole new horizon. - Yeah.
Guys, thank you so much for showing us
how to make this dish.
It's incredible.
I'm so impressed and I'm still trying to find the words.
That's such a great dish,
I'm really excited. - That's such a compliment,
thank you so much.
- But I could definitely eat this every day.
- Yeah, I see why you eat this once a week.