(upbeat music) (silverware clinking)
- Hello everyone and welcome to the channel.
Today, myself and the food team
have pulled together four really interesting cooking methods
or approaches from around the world.
And we're gonna see if we can make our normals go,
"W-T-F, what's this fascinating food?"
- Aw flippin' A.
(upbeat music)
- The first one is under the cloche.
- May I?
- Please do.
- It's empty.
- [Mike] It's a bowl.
There are certain pots you cooking in like tajine
that were unusual to me once upon a time.
Is there a lid to go with it
to make you cook in a certain way?
- Not a lid, but there is a base for it to sit on.
This is a dolsot or a stone pot from Korea.
And we're gonna ask you to create in it, Bibimbap
- This is cool.
- I have no idea what you're talking about.
- You heat it up and put stuff in it,
and it makes the rice go crispy, does it?
Yes! (Mike claps) - Oh.
- So we have eaten them before
and we have done one on the channel before,
but not the proper way so today.
We're gonna do it a bit more proper.
Pop your pot on the hub and we'll bring in some ingredients.
- Oh yeah.
- Okay.
- So what you have in front of you
is a lot of individually prepared items.
You've got some spinach, bean sprouts,
you got some mushrooms, you've got some kimchi,
some watermelon radish, plus some bulgogi,
which is quickly fried beef.
It's got a wonderful marinade,
including pear, and marian and garlic, and ginger.
An egg and bibimbap sauce.
- So I've cooked on stone before.
- [Mike] Yeah.
- [Barry] But never within a bowl.
- So the idea is they would heat up
lots of stone bowls just in an oven.
And then when it's ordered,
they will basically construct it over a heat
and then bring it to the table.
And it's literally sizzling.
And it means you get a crispy bottom
but all of the toppings look beautiful
as well as tasting wonderful.
Brush the inside of your bowl
and then press in some of your cooked short grain rice.
- God, that's, that's hot.
That is melting.
That's quite melty.
- I feel we're being given such bad instructions right now.
- I think I've ruined your brush.
(Mike and Barry laughing)
(uplifting music)
- Brush it around the inside with a bit of kitchen roll.
Rice goes in. (pan sizzling)
- Oh yeah that's what you want.
- If you think about South Korea,
it's a place that has very, very cold winters.
So a dish that comes to the table in a hot stone bowl
that is still hot is a brilliant concept.
Now start to layer in your other bits.
Just the yolk goes in the middle.
And then plenty of your bibimbap sauce.
And bibimbap sauce, it's gochujang with soy,
sesame oil, marian, little bit of sugar, ginger, garlic,
those kind of ingredients.
You'll notice little bit of beef
and an awful lot of wonderful vegetables.
So it's actually a really,
quite a sort of nutritious mix as well.
And bibimbap literally means mixed rice.
So bap being rice and bibim being the mixing.
And so, would you like to see one
that our food team have prepared-
- [Barry] No. - We can combined...
- No, I'm proud of that.
If I see what they've done may realise how badly we've done.
- I imagine it'll look just the same.
- Come on then.
So we're eating this Korean style.
- I have some spoons for you.
- Mixy
- So literally bibimbap, mix it all up.
- It's really satisfying.
- Hopefully it's got a nice crispy base.
It carries on cooking and crisping
at the table for the diner as well.
- [Mike] Look at that crispy bottom!
- [Barry] Nice.
- [Ben] Tuck in, see what you think.
- That's phenomenal.
I've had bibimbap before
but I've never had it with that proper crispy bottom.
And I hadn't realised
how much that the dish needs that crunch.
- The egg yolk makes it so glossy and rich, doesn't it?
I had heard of it.
I've never act actually done it in practise.
And now we've done that, it's so easy.
And I imagine these are relatively affordable.
- Yeah.
- Well, there's no reason why I couldn't do this at home
and why I wouldn't want to.
- What I quite like the throwback to Mike,
was your tahchin not too long ago.
Where you put the rice in, and crisp at the bottom
and then turn out.
To do something like this in a non-stick pan
with similar ingredients you've got there.
You could easily do an open side one of these to share
as opposed to an individual portion,
if you haven't got the stone bowls at home.
The beauty is the crisping of the rice underneath
whilst you begin to layer it.
- I have to get myself in stone bowl.
- Yeah. - Why not?
- They look great as well don't they?
- Yeah.
(uplifting music)
- Are you ready?
- Yeah, I'm...
- Okay, okay.
- It looks more
like something used in textiles than cooking.
- It's more dried.
(crunching)
That's not edible.
- Imagine that was wrapping something
that sort of shape.
- Corn.
- I think they're corn husks.
- They are corn husks.
And they become the perfect vehicle to steam
something like tamales.
So they are in fact cooked in the corn husk,
and inside of that you make a dough from corn,
and then you can put any number of fillings inside.
Do you want to try wrapping some up?
- Ah, yes!
- So what you have in front of you is some masa dough,
which is made from corn
that has gone through an incredible process
that makes it more digestible more malleable,
and more nutritional.
It's a process called nixtamalization.
So basically they take the corn
and they basically cook it in an alkaline solution,
which could simply be with ash.
So ash from the fire goes in and what that does
is break down the hemicellulose around the outside,
some of the pectin,
to make it easier to work with and turn into a dough.
It also makes some of the nutrients in it
more bio available.
So what you can do is spread some out onto your husk
and then fill it with a little bit of pulled pork
down the middle and then roll it up.
So these tradition would've come from Central America.
Thousands of years ago, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua.
Then they can be steamed for well up to an hour.
Would you like to try some
we have been steaming for an hour?
- Yes. - Yes.
- Go on Basil, let's have a look.
- [Barry] Oh they look better than ours.
- Like with any dumpling or kind of food parcel,
and I even put things like ravioli into that category,
the more you do it, the better you get.
And actually it's quite an art, quite a skill
but quite a social one where people would gather 'round
and make these through a over conversation.
You've also got two little salsa there.
One's a red chilli and one is a tomatillos.
- That is fantastic.
That red chilli is so saucy.
How do you do it without the husk?
- You could absolutely, if you can't get hold of the husks,
wrap them up in something like grease proof paper.
You could do it in tin foil even.
- The thing I like about these, as dumpling making goes,
it doesn't have to be perfect.
You can give it a go.
You can mess it up and it'll still taste delicious.
- And do they use the corn husks to steam anything else?
- Bit like banana leaf.
They're great for steaming fish,
but again that could be a filling within this
or it's a separate dish.
- Yeah, it's really cool and it's just, yeah,
another example of amazing sort of home cooking
from around the world.
How hard is it to make the dough?
- Providing somebody else
has done the nixtamalization for you.
Then you can buy this quite easy.
So this is just white masa harina flour
or masa flour, maze flour.
It's the same stuff you'd use to put corn tortillas as well.
Essentially, you just mix it together
with fat, chicken stock, salt, garlic powder,
and you make a kind of dough out of it.
And as long as the lard is soft enough to shape,
like if you're making a cookie dough,
you end up with a cookie dough consistency.
- I'm blown away by the how grease proof it is.
- It's cause it's got lots of lard in it.
- Oh that'll do it.
- If I rubbed you lard, you'd be pretty slippery as well.
(Barry chuckles)
(upbeat rock music)
(exciting funk music)
- What the...
(Barry laughing)
Salted your egg?
- Salt baked egg.
- It's the white of the egg, you're going to need.
- Salty meringue?
- Combined... (Mike laughing)
with the salt to salt bake food.
Now Jamie did a salt baked chicken.
- Which was the best chicken.
- Oh God, it was wasn't it?
- Well, we're not gonna do salt baked chicken today,
we're going one better salt baked carrots.
(bleeping)
- Oh what?
- So from my understanding of salt baking,
it's something that basically
makes sure the moisture all stays within.
- It stops any of the flavour from getting out
but this at the same time seasons,
and the salt crust protects the cooking.
So it takes a while to get through
and when it does, it's more even and gentle cooking.
It does all these wonderful things,
you're about to give it a go.
Add the salt in, egg whites, fennel seeds, and cumin seeds.
(food processor blending)
Now place a layer on the tin foil.
You can just put actually one carrot on top
and then cover it in more slurry
so the whole thing is encased
in about a centimetre thick of your salt crust.
- So how long are we cooking this carrot for?
- 180, 200 degrees Celsius, maybe half an hour, 40 minutes.
- Can I swap this for a cooked one?
Oh, hello.
- Okay, wow all right.
- Find the carrot within.
- Can't believe we're playing find the carrot
with Ebbers. (laughing)
Here's to the best carrot we've ever, ever eaten.
- Ever.
Very salty.
- It's really (bleeping) salty.
- I quite like that.
It tastes very carroty.
- It's more earthy.
- We did one carrot
because it's an easy way to demonstrate the salt bake
and how you lock it in.
What's happened there,
is an awful lot of the salt
has seasoned a little bit of the carrot.
So perhaps it is better when you do bigger things.
A salt baked celeriac, a salt baked beetroot,
we've done salt bake whole flatfish
I've done before in restaurants.
There is one other thing we had to play around with today,
which we'll bring in now.
- Is that a leg?
- That is a salt baked leg of lamb.
- Okay.
- If it's worked correctly,
high temperature doesn't attack the lamb
but it attacks the casing.
So it was seared then in a hot oven for about 40 minutes
and then taken out.
And then that slowly over about an hour of resting,
slowly permeates the lamb.
So you get a much more even cooking all the way through
that's more gentle.
Oh, look at that, yeah.
- Wow, I've never, ever eaten lamb that tender.
- It is absolutely delicious.
- A leg takes...
That sort of large sized leg
would take at least an hour and a half.
- And what you end up doing is overcooking parts of it
in order to cook it all the way through to the bone.
This means you get that temperature kind of trapped in.
The salt crust protects it and seasons it all in one.
- It's amazing.
It doesn't taste salty either.
It just tastes really lammy.
There is no denying that this tastes incredible.
I can imagine ordering
a salt bake leg of lamb from a restaurant.
Cause I could see how that would calf like that,
I'd appreciate it.
For me, I wouldn't do this on a Sunday roast.
- When you cracked into a whole leg of lamb,
did your jaw drop?
- Yeah, yeah.
I was staggered that was the result to be fair.
- I've never seen a leg of lamb like that.
So jaw dropped or drawers dropped.
- That's a very different story.
Should we try number four anyway?
- Oh. - He's not lying.
(all chuckling)
- We have an app!
It's called Sidekick and yet we bang on about it a lot
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It gets three phenomenal, easy to make dinners,
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It also is completely free for 30 days.
And to make the most of that trial
and so that you can really test it out properly,
we've put together the Sidekick challenge.
Three meals is all it takes
and we explain everything
in a full run through demo of the app
and why we think it's so clever.
Click the link below to find out everything.
(lively jazz music)
(cool downtempo music)
Number four, this is a bit of a DIY experiment.
- Oh what?
(Mike laughing)
- What?
Oh it stinks.
- These just for clarity are paperclips.
Vinegar?
- Yep, they are vinegar paperclips.
Before you stick a paperclip
through something you want to make sure it is sterilised
and distilled vinegar will do that for you.
Do you want your next clue?
We are talking about biltong.
Dried- - [Mike] Flat hanging.
- [Ben] Preserved, cured meat.
- [Mike] From South Africa.
- It's like jerky
although it is a slightly different process
and from a different part of the world.
So that chunk of meat in front
of you is something like a topside or silverside,
cut it in half, and then into long thick strips.
You're then going to cure it in a mixture
of five tablespoons of balsamic vinegar,
three tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce,
two tablespoons of corse salt,
two tablespoons of cracked black pepper,
three tablespoons of cracked coriander seed,
one tablespoon of brown sugar,
and to limit the bacterial growth,
half a teaspoon of bi-carb.
When they make it commercially, they use curing salt.
Anyway, this is a way of doing it at home
but basically you are creating an environment
where- - It's fizzing.
- Bacteria on beef can't live.
Now you might wanna wash your hands, Mike.
- Yeah.
- And we'll swap out some.
That's already had that process.
Now up until now,
this is a process we're quite familiar with.
That has been marinating overnight.
So obviously you've sterilised the paperclips,
make sure you sterilise your fingers too,
and then hook a paper clip between each one
and you're going to hang it in the oven.
The oven is gonna be on but without temperature.
In the bottom of the oven, there is a tray of salt.
The salt helps take the humidity out of the air
but also any dripping juices from the beef
as it does dry
will catch on the salt
and prevent damaging the bottom of your oven.
For four or five days,
you're going to air dry that beef in the oven.
- So we did DIY chorizo.
And I in my flat was hanging bits of chorizo
in the spare bedroom.
- Oh, I remember that one!
- And I had to sterilise the hook.
And they stunk out the spare room for about five days.
- You could have put 'em in the oven.
- Yeah, it turns out I could've put 'em in the oven
and gone hung for five days.
This isn't homemade is it?
- No, this is stuff we have bought
from a South African butcher.
However, once you've got it hanging in there it can take,
depending on the size of the beef strips,
and the temperature and the humidity of the room,
anywhere between two days and a week to dry.
You've got two long examples there.
One is particularly dry and is what they would call wet.
And it's just soft, it hasn't been dried as much.
If you're talking about technicalities,
EHO class it to be safe
once it's lost 30% of its weight in water by drying out.
Means that's what this is at.
And it's been done with a similar spice blend
to the one you just made.
- So what you are saying is as well,
don't try try this at home.
- I wouldn't recommend people give this a go at home
unless they've done a lot of additional research.
Kush has.
- Oh, it's good isn't it.
- Proper chewy.
- Then there come the flavours.
Whoa.
(clever slicing)
Think I might leave it there lads.
- Treat it like chewing gum.
It's not the kind of thing you quickly chew and swallow.
What they would do
is take slices of this really dry biltong
and literally throw it in a rucksack or a pocket.
And then when you're out in the ranch,
you can throw a piece in and chew it like chewing gum.
And it slowly releases the flavour,
and the spice, and the funk, and the energy.
- Wow that is-
A lot of salty, beefy beautiness, beautifulness
coming from a bit chew gum.
- And the final nod here is if you've got lots of off cuts,
you can mince all the off cuts
and put it into some form of intestine,
this is probably a sheep's intestine or something
and then dry it the same way.
And you end up with the sausage.
- I love my cured meats,
but I start losing it when and it gets a bit too funky.
And for me, that wet one straight away
was the funkiest of them all.
And they got steadily sweeter as you went along.
I think that's why I prefer the sausage.
- Don't think I'd try it myself.
It's just really cool
knowing how something I'm quite familiar with
and I've tried, is made.
- I feel like we've done a real or mixture today
from stone bowl cooking to steaming in husk,
salt baking, and dehydrating.
But comment down below,
have you tried or do you use any of those methods regularly
and as always keep your suggestions coming in
for more cooking approaches or methods or techniques
that we can look at next time.
(upbeat funk music)
(romantic jazz music)
(glass shattering)
(crowd screaming)
(beeping)
Steaming and husk, salt baking, and hydrating.
- You said hydrating, not dehydrating, sorry.
- Unusual for me to forget the D.
(Mike laughing) (Barry clapping)
- Yes! (Mike and Barry clapping)
- Oh very good, very good.