Professional chef Eric Huang and home cook Joe are swapping ingredients and hitting the kitchen to make fried rice. We set Joe up with a whopping $333 worth of ingredients for his attempt at Eric's pro recipe. Meanwhile, a modest $20 worth of ingredients was sent back the other way to be elevated into something gourmet by our esteemed pro. Will Joe be able to execute the restaurant-quality fried rice Eric intended to make? Can Eric transform Joe's humble ingredients into something spectacular?
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00How do they do that?
00:01What kind of forearm strength do they have?
00:03Oh my God.
00:06Hi, I'm Eric.
00:07I'm a professional chef,
00:07and these are my $333 fried rice ingredients.
00:13Hey, I'm Joe.
00:14I'm a home cook,
00:15and these are my $20 fried rice ingredients.
00:19I don't think the other tray is gonna be as cool.
00:21Oh, that was my grandmother's chicken.
00:23Okay.
00:24These are the most basic building blocks of fried rice,
00:26but from this group, we'll do something magical.
00:29Oh, this is like the same dish.
00:31I'm assuming this probably costs about $20 too.
00:37So I was planning on making a mushroom fried rice
00:40with crispy bone marrow and roasted ribeye cap.
00:43Just like mama used to make.
00:44This meat, oh.
00:46I had a really beautiful American Wagyu ribeye cap.
00:48Maybe it's deer.
00:50I had some beautiful mushrooms,
00:51wood ears, and shiitakes.
00:53I don't know what that is.
00:54We were going to smoke some bone marrow
00:56and tempura fry them as a crispy garnish.
00:58Are these bones?
01:00I don't want to touch that.
01:00It's going to make a really beautiful op-wop sauce.
01:02I had some barrel-aged Kishibori soy sauce,
01:05and we had some small batch bourbon.
01:07What?
01:08That's for later.
01:09With Joe's recipe, we have simpler ingredients for sure.
01:12Things that you can find at the grocery store,
01:13but we can definitely do a lot with them.
01:15I would surmise this whole thing costs $21.
01:20No, shh, yes.
01:21Nice.
01:22$297.
01:25Oh my God.
01:26Should've dreamed bigger.
01:30In my hands, I hold Chef Eric's recipe book.
01:32Look how many instructions though.
01:34I've never seen this many instructions.
01:35We are going to make this really great fried rice,
01:37confit the mushrooms, stir fry them together,
01:39brown butter base, this ribeye cap,
01:40slice it on top, and a sauce op-wop, so.
01:43All right, I got a lot to do,
01:45and it looks like I'm starting with the rice, so let's go.
01:47So Joe, you're going to be working with jasmine rice today.
01:50Jasmine is a medium to long grain rice,
01:52has less of the amylopectin that makes it really sticky.
01:55So this makes it really perfect for fried rice,
01:57as long as you do the washing and cooking steps properly.
02:00If you told me this was starch on the rice
02:02that was coming off, I would not believe you.
02:04I know that's a lie.
02:05You're going to wash the rice
02:07and then strain the water out
02:08until the water runs pretty clear.
02:10That way you'll have removed a lot of the excess starch.
02:13Okay, that's it.
02:14I'm not rinsing rice anymore, I'm done.
02:16It seems like Joe is trying to make some chicken fried rice
02:19with peas and carrots.
02:20Delicious, obviously, but simple.
02:22I'm gonna do something a little different.
02:23Garlic fried rice with chicken skin crumble,
02:26soy cured egg yolk,
02:27and grilled chicken paillard as well on top.
02:30So we're gonna start off with the rice.
02:32This is ready rice, jasmine rice.
02:35I'm going to prepare this rice according to instructions.
02:37Squeeze pouch to separate rice
02:39and then 90 seconds in our trusty microwave.
02:43I have a nice little rice cooker.
02:45It's a Neuro Fuzzy, my favorite brand.
02:47You're going to cook it in a ratio of one and a quarter
02:51to one.
02:51And now I got some salt.
02:53Now all I have to do is a simple job
02:55of hitting cooking.
02:59And then after it's cooked,
03:00you're going to transfer it to a tray to chill.
03:03I'm just gonna give it a light spray of oil
03:06to keep the grains separate
03:07and from clumping as much as possible.
03:09And then this is gonna move to the fridge.
03:12You want it to crystallize.
03:13You want the starches to harden.
03:15That's what's going to keep your fried rice
03:16really nice and fluffy later.
03:18So this, I'm going to turn into rice puffs.
03:21So I'm gonna microwave it according to instructions.
03:25I'm going to overcook it in some more water.
03:28Cook the hell out of it
03:29because we're going to puree it later.
03:31I have very overcooked rice here,
03:34which is exactly what I wanted.
03:35And I'm gonna blend this now.
03:37When you blend hot things, please be careful.
03:39They can explode.
03:42I'm going to pour a little bit out onto my Silpat.
03:45You want a thin layer.
03:47Then this is a dehydrator.
03:50It basically circulates air at a not too hot temperature,
03:53generally below 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
03:55I'm gonna let this dehydrate
03:57until it turns into kind of a leathery,
04:00starchy, unappetizing looking thing.
04:02Even though it looks really dry,
04:04there is still a little bit of water in here
04:06and I'm going to break it into little pieces.
04:08And then when we fry it,
04:09the water is going to expand rapidly
04:10and it should puff up beautifully.
04:13And these are gonna add a really nice
04:14textural component to everything.
04:16Always season food at the fryer.
04:18These look great.
04:20Chef Eric says once the frying starts,
04:22everything happens really quick.
04:23So I'm gonna get all of my vegetables prepped.
04:26If you are not ready,
04:27you're going to, as we say, go down.
04:29I'm gonna start with the wood ear mushrooms,
04:31which are these right here.
04:31I've never heard of these.
04:32They don't have a ton of flavor,
04:33but they have this really awesome texture.
04:35They're crispy, crunchy, kind of bouncy as well.
04:37These are shiitake mushrooms.
04:39I'm just gonna cut these into quarters.
04:42I'm putting these in a separate dish
04:44because I'm doing something special with them.
04:45We've got some cow horn peppers here as well.
04:47They're called cow horn peppers
04:49because they look like cow horns.
04:50A very popular ingredient in Chinese cooking as well.
04:53They're kind of like a medium heat.
04:57That's a lot spicier.
04:58I was told these were mild, but I'm done, I think.
05:01I think this is enough pepper.
05:03I'm gonna kill somebody with all this.
05:05So Joe gave me some eggs,
05:07almost a requirement in fried rice.
05:09But I want to do something a little more fancy, if you will.
05:12We're gonna garnish our fried rice
05:14with a lovely soy cured egg yolk.
05:16So curing in everything from cooking to concrete
05:18means extracting water out of it.
05:20So what we're gonna do with the egg yolks
05:21is place them into a really salty soy sauce brine.
05:24So I'm going to separate them, gently lifting,
05:28and then the salt will try to achieve equilibrium.
05:30It'll make the eggs firm up and textured.
05:33That way we can pop it and it'll run
05:35and mix beautifully into our fried rice.
05:37And I'm gonna save the egg whites.
05:38We're gonna scramble these up
05:39and add them to our fried rice.
05:40Egg white fried rice, really good.
05:42All right, I'm all scrubbed in.
05:43We're gonna be operating on this beautiful hunk of meat.
05:46So Joe, you're gonna be working with rib eye cap,
05:48AKA calote, AKA beef deckle, AKA spinalis dorsi.
05:53You're going to clean it up,
05:54just some of the excess sinew and some of the excess fat.
05:56If you can get a butcher to get it for you,
05:58this is like the chef's cut.
06:00They call it butcher's butter sometimes.
06:01But we are saving these hunks of fat
06:04and they are gonna be put into use later on in this dish.
06:07Then you're gonna cut the calote
06:08into kind of phone size portions.
06:10I think this would be a Samsung Galaxy 7 Pro.
06:16All right, we can't get to the phone.
06:19All the sinew, you clean up, all the excess fat.
06:22We're just gonna grind it up
06:23to increase the surface area by a great deal.
06:25There's something extremely satisfying
06:27about every part of this.
06:29So you're not going to get a ton of fat,
06:31but it's still worth using.
06:32You can turn it into a crackling of sorts,
06:33which we're gonna garnish the fried rice with.
06:36Oh, hey, I got my bowl of beef fat and sinew here
06:41that I've ground up.
06:42I'm going to be making some beef cracklings.
06:45In order to do that, I need this beef tallow.
06:49I don't know what this is.
06:51Tallow is rendered beef fat.
06:53It's a wonderful fat to cook with.
06:55It is very high in saturated fat, so eat in moderation.
06:58My tallow is nice and melted
07:01and that means that it's time to put my fat into there.
07:04You wanna go pretty slow with it
07:06because it takes time to get all the water
07:07out of all those little bits.
07:09It's been 25 to 30 minutes.
07:11I've watched a full episode of Two Broke Girls.
07:13It's ready to go.
07:15You're gonna get beef tallow with extra beefy flavor.
07:18Beef squared, potentially even cubed.
07:21Okay, we got some fat fried fat.
07:23That's gonna make my fried rice even better
07:26than it already was gonna be, which is great.
07:28Next up, I'm gonna confit some mushrooms.
07:31I don't know what it means,
07:33but judging by the things in front of me,
07:35it's mushrooms cooked in beef fat.
07:37You're probably like, that's not very healthy.
07:39Don't worry.
07:40There we go.
07:41This is thyme and I'm going to add my garlic.
07:45You gotta cover that up.
07:46And then I'm gonna cook this at 250 for at least an hour
07:49until they're nice and tender
07:51and then they will be a confit.
07:53All right, so Joe was kind enough to give me scallions.
07:56Obviously you could just stir fry them,
07:58but let's do something a little more fun.
07:59I think I'm gonna turn the dark green parts
08:01into a scallion powder,
08:03which we're going to dust on top of our fried rice
08:05and then we're gonna quickly dehydrate these in Chef Mike.
08:09So we're going to microwave in like 20 second intervals.
08:12We're gonna keep doing this until they turn dry.
08:16Okay, so two minutes worth, they're getting papery.
08:20I'm gonna wipe this plate dry
08:22and just microwave them on the plate.
08:26I think it's been about four minutes total
08:28and you hear that, like paper.
08:30All right, I'm gonna make sure this is super dry,
08:33which it is.
08:34Any errant water here is going to drink up
08:36all this scallion powder we worked for.
08:40Let's take it home with a mortar and pestle.
08:44Okay.
08:45It's time to deal with these bones.
08:47They're not just for show.
08:48I'm gonna be using the marrow.
08:50Bone marrow is within the femur.
08:53It has a lot of fat.
08:55This is squishy.
08:56You're going to soak the bones as long as you can
08:58in salted ice water.
08:59Just wanna extract a little bit of the impurities
09:01and some of the blood.
09:02All right, those are gonna sit in the fridge and soak
09:04until they are tender enough to take the marrow out.
09:08After that, you're going to pop the marrow out.
09:10It should come out in one piece.
09:12I mean, I think I did it perfect.
09:14All right, this one didn't come out
09:15quite up to my standards.
09:17Then you're going to cold smoke it.
09:19Yeah, man.
09:20You ever look at your hands and be like,
09:22I'm controlling these things with my mind, man.
09:25I got my bones all stoned
09:27and now I'm going to bring it over to the fridge
09:29and let it chill out for a minute.
09:31Here we are.
09:32Got some nice looking chilled bone marrow.
09:34It's nice and firm.
09:35And then after that, you're going to dice it.
09:37It's hard to handle unless it's very cold.
09:40All right, bone marrow's chopped up.
09:41I'm getting pretty tired.
09:43And then you're going to tempura fry it.
09:46Let's go.
09:47Here is some flour.
09:48This is corn starch.
09:49We're gonna add half a cup.
09:51And this is what the sparkling water is for.
09:53The sparkling water is going to add effervescence,
09:56bubbliness.
09:57It's going to keep your batter really nice and airy.
10:00Is this a duck egg?
10:01It maybe has more fat.
10:02As much fat as we can put into this fried rice,
10:04that's what we're going to do.
10:05I'm going to mix up this batter.
10:07I don't want to overmix it.
10:09So I mix it until it's mixed.
10:11And if it's mixed and I'm still mixing, I'm overmixing.
10:14Stop. Stop.
10:15Stop.
10:16I'm done.
10:17I'm going to use this perfectly mixed batter
10:19to fry up my bone marrow.
10:21I feel a little nervous about what I'm doing.
10:24Mostly that I feel it's not correct,
10:26but also the fryer is just a scary thing to me.
10:30All right, we're going to give that a minute
10:31to be dangerously scalding, boiling, bubbling hot.
10:35This scares me.
10:37Okay, here's a round one.
10:40I learned what not to do,
10:41which I think is to put them all
10:42in one big clump in the middle.
10:44I'm just as scared as the first time,
10:45even though I've already been through it.
10:47Now I got to shake the basket
10:49so that these don't stick to anything
10:51and also to increase the splash risk.
10:54Let's take a look.
10:55Oh, baby.
10:58I'm going to season this with lots and lots of salt.
11:03I'm going to burn my mouth, but I don't even care.
11:08That is so good.
11:09Jill gave me some carrots,
11:11peas and carrots and fried rice, classic Chinese takeout.
11:13I want to do something different though.
11:14I want to juice them and I'm going to reduce it down
11:16with some hot sauce to make a glaze for our chicken later.
11:19And then I have all this pulp in here.
11:21Carrot pulp normally goes right into your garbage,
11:23right into your compost bin,
11:24but much like anything else,
11:25you can pop it right in the dehydrator
11:26and make yourself some crispy, crunchy carrot pulp.
11:29So I have a chicken breast here with the skin on.
11:31I'm going to take the skin off
11:33and we are not going to throw it away.
11:34We're going to make this chicken skin crumble.
11:37Parchment on top.
11:39And then I'm going to use a wire rack here,
11:41turned upside down,
11:42just so we get a nice even surface area
11:44and I'm going to bake it.
11:46All right, I'm going to butterfly this chicken breast,
11:48opening it up like a book so that it cooks more evenly.
11:52And then I'm going to pound it out a little bit
11:53to make it really thin
11:54for a technique called chicken paillard.
11:56So I'm going to add my fresh carrot juice,
11:59soy sauce, some of this sriracha,
12:01bit of salt, black pepper,
12:04and a little bit of oil.
12:05That'll help with sticking
12:07because we're going to grill this later.
12:09Maybe you've been waiting for fried rice,
12:10but that's not what time it is.
12:11It's steak time.
12:12And I got that right here.
12:14Look at this beauty.
12:15You got some salt on there, some pepper.
12:17I need to do both sides.
12:19So you're going to bring up a carbon steel pan
12:21to medium high heat.
12:24Sear it on each side just for a couple minutes
12:25until you get some light browning.
12:27So I'm going to add this nice little chunk of butter in.
12:30That butter is going to brown.
12:31It's going to get really foamy and nutty and aromatic.
12:34Then you're going to add some thyme and garlic to that.
12:36Now I'm going to baste my steak.
12:38This is what you see them doing on fancy cooking shows.
12:41As you brown butter baste it,
12:42you're going to watch it turn
12:43into this beautiful mahogany color.
12:46And it's going to be infused with all those herbs
12:48and garlic and brown butter.
12:49And now we're going to put the most beautiful steak
12:52I've ever made.
12:54Look at that thing.
12:55Oh my God.
12:57So to make this chicken skin crumble,
12:58we have our crispy chicken skin,
13:00this really nice, beautiful golden brown glass chip.
13:05Shatters like glass.
13:07I'm going to add garlic chips, crispy rice puffs,
13:11and crispy dehydrated carrot pulp.
13:13And I'm going to season this up with a little bit of salt.
13:15And that's pretty much it.
13:17Look at that, huh?
13:18That looks nice.
13:19It's the moment I've all been waiting for.
13:21I'm going to make something called an au poivre sauce.
13:25So steak au poivre, a very classic French recipe.
13:28You would coat steaks in black peppercorns
13:30and make a really intense peppery sauce.
13:33The key thing to remember here
13:34is that black pepper plus beef is magic.
13:37First thing I'm going to do is get rid of this butter
13:40from the steak that I just made perfectly.
13:43That pan that you cooked the steak in,
13:45it has lots of little brown, tasty, beefy bits in there.
13:49So you're going to deglaze the pan with your bourbon.
13:52So turn your burner off first, add the bourbon to it,
13:55then turn the flame back on.
13:57There is going to be some fire.
13:59Please be careful.
14:00Get ready for this.
14:02Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!
14:04Now I'm a chef.
14:05Wow.
14:06All right, it's not on fire anymore.
14:08I'll be honest, I'm kind of losing interest.
14:10This is $100,000 worth of soy sauce just right there.
14:13I've got some butter right here.
14:15And I'm going to use, it's an eight peppercorn blend.
14:19If you're using seven peppercorns, six peppercorns,
14:21why don't you get out of here?
14:22I'm just going to mash them up, get them nice and fine.
14:26All right.
14:28Damn, this smells good.
14:29So I have my butterflied chicken paillard breast here.
14:34So I'm going to let it mark on one side, cook, flip it.
14:37Oh, I probably pounded it too hard.
14:40Brush the grilled side with some glaze.
14:42And then I'm going to continue to flip it continuously
14:45and to allow that glaze to caramelize
14:47because there's a lot of sugar in here
14:49and it's very flavorsome.
14:50All right.
14:52That'll do.
14:53This is it, baby, home stretch.
14:54Look at this.
14:55I got my big wok.
14:56I got a bunch of vegetables.
14:57I got my rice.
14:58I'm ready to fry some rice.
15:00This is fried rice that we're doing.
15:02First, I'm going to start off with a little bit
15:04of beef tallow that I cooked my mushrooms in.
15:08Going to get the pan hot.
15:09Chef Eric said this part is going to be quick and intense.
15:12So I'm ready.
15:13First up, these are duck eggs.
15:15Quick scramble.
15:16They should be just barely set.
15:18Then you're going to add your wood ear mushrooms,
15:20your scallions.
15:21Toss, toss, toss.
15:22Corn.
15:23Just a touch of these insanely hot peppers.
15:26Here go my mushrooms.
15:29Just a little bit of salt.
15:31Don't forget, this is fried rice we're making.
15:33So I'm going to put some rice in there.
15:35Going to hit it with a little MSG.
15:36Don't be scared of this stuff.
15:38MSG is your friend, especially for fried rice.
15:40Last step.
15:41We're going to put some very expensive soy sauce in there.
15:45And we mix, mix, mix.
15:46You're constantly tossing it,
15:47making dramatic leaps of rice and ingredients in the air.
15:51Oh my God.
15:53I don't know how they do that.
15:54This is way too heavy.
15:55If you've seen pros make fried rice,
15:58it is almost nonstop motion.
16:00That is the key to great fried rice.
16:02You're constantly tossing it,
16:03emulsifying the ingredients together,
16:05distributing seasoning and heat throughout.
16:07Don't tell Chef Eric about this.
16:09I think I'm done.
16:11So I'm going to cook in this pan.
16:14Looks like a Teflon nonstick pan.
16:16Probably something you would have at home.
16:18And then this is garlic fried rice.
16:19So a lot of garlic.
16:21My light green scallion and whites.
16:24Then we're going egg whites.
16:26I like egg whites in fried rice.
16:28This ready rice, ready to go into the pot.
16:33I think I need a little bit more oil here.
16:36You want to be able to see a shine on the rice.
16:38And some salt.
16:40If I was using a wok,
16:41I would be tossing this constantly over high heat,
16:44but I need to keep returning this pan to the burner
16:47because it's not quite hot enough.
16:48I'm going to go in with peas.
16:50I'm going to add some soy sauce for color, umami.
16:53And I'm just looking for a light brown, even color.
16:55I'm going to keep tossing it.
16:56And the finishing touch, blowtorch.
17:00This looks crazy and stupid and totally excessive,
17:03but it does serve a purpose.
17:04Great fried rice has that wok hay flavor,
17:06which literally translates to breath of the wok.
17:08What it really is,
17:09is such high heat that all the fats are combusting.
17:12And it has that kind of light charred, smoky flavor.
17:15That's really difficult to replicate at home,
17:17unless you have a supersized rocket ship burner,
17:20but you can replicate it a little bit with a blowtorch.
17:24All right.
17:26Let's plate.
17:28We got to plate this right now
17:29because fried rice is best as soon as it comes out of the pan.
17:32Oh, look at that steak.
17:34My goodness.
17:35All right.
17:36I'm going to put on my au revoir sauce.
17:40Soy cured egg yolk.
17:42I'm just going to sprinkle a little horseradish on there.
17:45All this work, this chicken skin crumble.
17:47Now these are my cracklings.
17:49Then I got my tempura battered bone marrow.
17:54How'd these come out?
17:55I'm the greatest chef alive.
17:57Finally, scallion powder.
17:59Are we ready?
18:00Look at that nicely curled scallion.
18:03All right, here it is.
18:04Mushroom fried rice with crispy bone marrow and a ribeye cap.
18:07This is my fried rice.
18:09I hope Joe likes it.
18:10I'm very excited to see how he did with my recipe.
18:17Chef Eric.
18:18What's up, man?
18:19How you doing?
18:20How's it going?
18:21It's great.
18:22Good day?
18:22Yeah, it was so fun.
18:23What about you?
18:24Yeah, it was good, man.
18:25Was it complicated?
18:26I would have liked if the tray was a little more complicated.
18:29I think it came out pretty interesting.
18:30Okay.
18:31I want to see it.
18:32All right, let's do it.
18:33Oh, nice.
18:34Oh, wow.
18:35Okay.
18:35All right.
18:36Wow.
18:37I didn't, none of this is my stuff.
18:38All of these are like different color schemes here.
18:40Yeah.
18:41It was a very man-tastic fried rice.
18:42It was, yeah.
18:43With the whiskey, the beef, and-
18:44A little bit of everything.
18:45I'm going to try the steak on its own.
18:46Hmm.
18:48That's really good.
18:49Yeah?
18:49Yeah, man.
18:50All right.
18:51The sauce is great.
18:52Cooked very nicely.
18:53You nailed it.
18:54The mushrooms came out really well.
18:54Mm-hmm.
18:55A lot of beef fat in there.
18:56There's beef fat in there.
18:57Yeah, there's beef fat all over the place.
18:58Yeah, I'm almost like nervous
18:59to eat a piece of bone marrow this big,
19:01but let's do it.
19:02I'm not going to lie,
19:02I've been snacking on the bone marrow since I made it.
19:04The tempura came out really well.
19:06I'm really happy with this rice.
19:07I can't believe I made this.
19:08It was really great.
19:09I got to try this.
19:10All right, let's do it.
19:11I'm very excited for this.
19:11All right.
19:12We're going to break this yolk up,
19:13get the crispy bits, get some peas.
19:17The chicken crumble came out nice.
19:18That's fantastic.
19:19The chicken's perfectly cooked.
19:21Just everything is,
19:22like all the flavors go together really well.
19:23The fried rice base on it
19:25is something that's very approachable,
19:26but like all the texture.
19:27It feels fancy,
19:28but it also feels like home cooking.
19:30It doesn't feel inaccessible.
19:31It's recognizable as fried rice.
19:32Yeah.
19:33Which is important.
19:34That's almost exactly what I was going to do also.
19:36Oh yeah.
19:37Oh damn.
19:37We were having that.
19:39Same, same.
19:40I love juice and carrots.
19:41Great minds.