$333 vs $20 Fried Rice: Pro Chef & Home Cook Swap Ingredients

How do they do that?

What kind of forearm strength do they have?

[grunts] Oh my God.

[playful music]

Hi, I'm Eric.

I'm a professional chef

and these are my $333 fried rice ingredients.

[playful music]

Hey, I'm Joe.

I'm a home cook and these are my $20 fried rice ingredients.

[playful music]

I don't think the other tray is gonna be as cool.

Aw, that was my grandmother's chicken.

Okay, these are the most basic

building blocks of fried rice,

but from this week we'll do something magical.

Oh, this is like the same dish.

I'm assuming this probably cost about $20 too.

[playful music]

So, I was planning on making a mushroom fried rice

with crispy bone marrow and roasted ribeye cap.

Just like mama used to make.

This meat. Oh.

I had a really beautiful American Wagyu ribeye cap.

Maybe it's deer.

I had some beautiful mushrooms, wood ears and shiitakes.

I don't know what that is.

We were going to smoke some bone marrow

and tempura fry them as a crispy garnish.

Are these bones?

I don't want to touch that.

It's gonna make a really beautiful au poivre sauce.

I had some barrel-aged Kishibori soy sauce,

and we had some small batch bourbon.

What? That's for later.

With Joe's recipe, we have simpler ingredients for sure.

Things that you can find at the grocery store,

but we can definitely do a lot with them.

I would surmise this whole thing cost $21.

[cash register dings]

Yosh! Yes, nice.

$297.

[cash register dings]

Oh my God.

Should have dreamed bigger.

[gentle rhythmic music]

In my hands, I hold Chef Eric's recipe book.

Look how many instructions though.

I've never seen this many instructions.

We are going to make this really great fried rice,

confit the mushroom, stir fry 'em together,

brown butter base this ribeye cap, slice it on top,

and a sauce au poivre, so.

All right, I got a lot to do

and it looks like I'm starting with the rice.

So, let's go.

So Joe, you're gonna be working with jasmine rice today.

Jasmine is a medium to long grain rice.

Has less of the amylopectin that makes it really sticky.

So, this makes it really perfect for fried rice

as long as you do the washing and cooking steps properly.

If you told me this was starch on the rice

that was coming off, I would not believe you.

I know that's a lie.

You're going to wash the rice

and then strain the water out

until the water runs pretty clear.

That way you'll have removed a lot of the excess starch.

Okay. That's it.

I'm not rinsing rice anymore. I'm done.

It seems like Joe is trying to make

some chicken fried rice with peas and carrots.

Delicious obviously, but simple.

I'm gonna do something a little different.

Garlic fried rice with chicken skin crumble,

soy-cured egg yolk,

and grilled chicken paillard as well on top.

So, we're gonna start off with the rice.

This is ready-rice jasmine rice.

I'm going to prepare this rice according to instructions.

Squeeze pouch to separate rice.

And then, 90 seconds in our trusty microwave.

I have a nice little rice cooker.

It's a Neuro Fuzzy, my favorite brand.

You're going to cook it in a ratio of 1 1/4 to 1.

And now, I got some salt.

Now all I have to do is a simple job of hitting cooking.

[rice cooker timer chiming]

And then after it's cooked,

you're going to transfer it to a tray to chill.

I'm just gonna give it a light spray of oil

to keep the grains separate

and from clumping as much as possible.

And then, this is gonna move to the fridge.

You want it to crystallize.

You want the starches to harden.

That's what's going to keep your fried rice

really nice and fluffy later.

So this, I'm going to turn into rice puffs.

So, I'm gonna microwave it according to instruction.

[microwave beeping]

I'm going to overcook it in some more water.

Cook the hell out of it

because we're going to puree it later.

I have very overcooked rice here,

which is exactly what I wanted.

And I'm gonna blend this now.

When you blend hot things, please be careful.

They can explode.

[blender whirring]

I'm going to pour a little bit out onto my Silpat.

You want a thin layer, and then this is a dehydrator.

It basically circulates air at a not too hot temperature.

Generally below 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

I'm gonna let this dehydrate until it turns

into kind of a leathery, starchy,

unappetizing looking thing.

Even though it looks really dry,

there is still a little bit of water in here

and I'm gonna break it into little pieces.

And then when we fry it, the water's going to expand rapidly

and it should puff up beautifully.

And these are gonna add a really nice

textual component to everything.

Always season food out the fryer.

These look great.

[rice puffs crackling]

Chef Eric says, once the frying starts,

everything happens really quick.

So, I'm gonna get all of my vegetables prepped.

If you are not ready, you're going to,

as we say, Go down.

I'm gonna start with the wood ear mushrooms,

which are these right here.

I've never heard of these.

They don't have a ton of flavor,

but they have this really awesome texture.

They're crispy, crunchy, kind of bouncy as well.

These are shiitake mushrooms.

I'm just gonna cut these into quarters.

I'm putting these in a separate dish

'cause I'm doing something special with them.

We've got some cowhorn peppers here as well.

They're called cowhorn peppers

because they look like cow horns.

A very popular ingredient in Chinese cooking as well.

They're kind of like a medium heat.

[train horn whistling]

That's a lot of spicier.

I was told these were mild, but I'm done, I think.

I think this is enough pepper.

I'm gonna kill somebody with all this.

So, Joe gave me some eggs.

Almost a requirement in fried rice.

But I wanna do something a little more fancy, if you will.

We're gonna garnish our fried rice

with a lovely soy-cured egg yolk.

So, curing and everything from cooking to concrete

means extracting water out of it.

So, what we're gonna do with the egg yolks

is place them into a really salty soy sauce brine.

So, I'm going to separate them, gently lifting,

and then the salt will try to achieve equilibrium.

It'll make the eggs firm up and textured.

That way we can pop it

and it'll run and mix beautifully into our fried rice.

And I'm gonna save the egg whites.

We're gonna scramble these up

and add them to our fried rice.

Egg white fried rice. Really good.

All right, I'm all scrubbed in.

We're gonna be operating on this beautiful hunk of meat.

So Joe, you're gonna be working with ribeye cap,

AKA calotte, AKA beef deckle, AKA spinalis dorsi.

You're going to clean it up,

just some of the excess sinew and some of the excess fat.

If you can get a butcher to get it for you,

this is like the chef's cut.

They call it Butcher's Butter sometimes.

[Joe] But we are saving these hunks of fat

and they're gonna be put into use later on in this dish.

Then, you're gonna cut the calotte

into kind of phone size portions.

I think this would be a Samsung Galaxy 7 Pro.

[phone keys beeping]

[phone ringing]

[Answering Machine] Hi, we can't get to the phone.

All the sinew you clean up, all the excess fat.

We're just gonna grind it up

to increase the surface area by a great deal.

There's something extremely satisfying

about every part of this.

So, you're not going to get a ton of fat,

but it's still worth using.

You can turn it into a crackling of sorts,

which we're gonna garnish the fried rice with.

Oh, hey.

I got my bowl of beef fat and sinew here

that I've ground up.

I'm going to be making some beef cracklings.

In order to do that, I need this beef tallow.

I don't know what this is.

Tallow is rendered beef fat.

It's a wonderful fat to cook with.

It is very high in saturated fat, so eat in moderation.

My tallow is nice and melted,

and that means that it's time to put my fat into there.

You wanna go pretty slow with it because it takes time

to get all the water out of all those little bits.

It's been 25 to 30 minutes.

I've watched a full episode of 2 Broke Girls.

It's ready to go.

You're gonna get beef tallow with extra beefy flavor.

Beef squared. Potentially even cubed.

Okay, we got some fat, fried fat.

That's gonna make my fried rice even better

than it already was gonna be, which is great.

The next step, I'm gonna confit some mushrooms.

I don't know what it means,

but judging by the things in front of me,

it's mushrooms cooked in beef fat.

You're probably like, That's not very healthy.

Don't worry. There we go.

This is thyme and I'm going to add my garlic.

Gotta cover that up.

And then, I'm gonna cook this at 250

for at least an hour until they're nice and tender.

And then, they will be at confit.

All right, so Joe was kind enough to give me scallions.

Obviously, you could just stir fry them,

but let's do something a little more fun.

I think I'm gonna turn the dark green parts

into a scallion powder,

which we're going to dust on top of our fried rice.

And then, we're gonna quickly dehydrate these in Chef Mike.

So, we're going to microwave in like 20-second intervals.

We're gonna keep doing this until they turn dry.

[microwave door slamming]

[timer beeping]

Okay, so two minutes worth. They're getting papery.

I'm gonna wipe this plate dry

and just microwave them on the plate.

[microwave door slamming]

[timer beeping]

I think it's been about four minutes total.

Can you hear that?

[leaves rustling] Like paper.

All right, I'm gonna make sure this is super dry,

which it is.

Any errant water here is going to drink up

all this scallion powder we worked for.

[blender whirring]

Let's take it home with a mortar and pestle.

[playful upbeat music]

Okay.

It's time to deal with these bones.

They're not just for show.

I'm gonna be using the marrow.

Bone marrow is within the femur.

It has a lot of fat.

Squishy.

You're going to soak the bones as long as you can

in salted ice water.

Just wanna extract a little bit of the impurities

in some of the blood.

All right, those are gonna sit in the fridge and soak

until they are tender enough to take the marrow out.

After that, you're going to pop the marrow out.

It should come out in one piece.

I mean, I think I did it perfect.

All right, this one didn't come out

quite up to my standards.

And you're going to cold smoke it.

Yeah, man.

You ever look at your hands and be like,

I'm controlling these things with my mind, man.

I got my bones all stoned

and now I'm going to bring it over to the fridge

and let it chill out for a minute.

Here we are.

Got some nice looking chilled bone marrow.

It's nice and firm.

And then, after that you're going to dice it.

It's hard to handle unless it's very cold.

All right, bone marrow's chopped up.

I'm getting pretty tired.

And then, you're going to tempura fry it.

[booming music]

Let's go. Here is some flour.

This is corn starch. We're gonna add half a cup.

And this is what the sparkling water was for.

The sparkling water

is going to add effervescence, bubbliness.

It's going to keep your batter really nice and airy.

And there is this a duck egg.

It maybe has more fat.

As much fat as we can put into this fried rice.

That's what we're gonna do.

I'm going to mix up this batter.

I don't wanna overmix it, so I mix it until it's mixed.

And if it's mixed and I'm still mixing, I'm over mixing.

[Producer] Stop, stop.

Stop. [bowl clinking] I'm done.

I'm going to use this perfectly mixed batter

to fry up my bone marrow.

I feel a little nervous about what I'm doing.

Mostly that I feel it's not correct,

but also the fryer is just a scary thing to me.

All right, we're gonna give that a minute

to be dangerously scalding, boiling, bubbling hot.

This scares me.

Okay, here's round one.

I learned what not to do, which I think

is to put 'em all in one big clump in the middle.

I'm just as scared as the first time,

even though I've already been through it.

Now, I gotta shake the basket

so that these don't stick to anything.

And also to increase the splash risk.

All right, let's take a look.

Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho, baby!

I'm gonna season this with lots and lots of salt.

[blows air loudly]

I'm gonna burn my mouth. I don't even care.

[food crunching]

That's so good.

Joe gave me some carrots.

Peas and carrots in fried rice.

Classic Chinese takeout.

I wanna do something different though.

I wanna juice them and I'm gonna reduce it down

with some hot sauce and make a glaze for our chicken later.

And then, I have all this pulp in here.

Carrot pulp normally goes right into your garbage

or right into your compost bin, but much like anything else,

you can pop around in the dehydrator

and make yourself some crispy, crunchy carrot pulp.

[microwave door slamming]

So, I have a chicken breast here with the skin on.

I'm going to take the skin off

and we are not gonna throw it away.

We are gonna make this chicken skin crumble.

Parchment on top.

And then, I'm going to use a wire rack here,

turn upside down just so we get a nice even surface area.

And I'm going to bake it.

All right, I'm gonna butterfly this chicken breast,

opening it up like a book so that it cooks more evenly.

And then, I'm going to pound out a little bit

to make it really thin

for a technique called chicken paillard.

So, I'm going to add my fresh carrot juice, soy sauce,

some of this sriracha, a bit of salt,

black pepper, and little bit of oil.

That'll help with sticking

because we're gonna grill this later.

Maybe you've been waiting for fried rice,

but that's not what time it is.

It's steak time.

And I got that right here. Look at this beauty.

We got some salt on there, some pepper.

I need to do both sides.

So, you're gonna bring up carbon steel pan

to medium high heat, sear it on each side

just for a couple minutes until you get some light browning.

So, I'm gonna add this nice little chunk of butter in.

That butter is going to brown.

It's going to get really foamy and nutty and aromatic.

Then you're going to add some thyme and garlic to that.

Now I'm gonna baste my steak.

This is what you see I'm doing on fancy cooking shows.

As you brown butter base, you're gonna watch it

turn into this beautiful mahogany color,

and it's gonna be infused with all those herbs

and garlic and brown butter.

And now, we're gonna put

the most beautiful steak I've ever made.

[pan sizzling]

Look at that thing. Oh my God.

So, to make this chicken skin crumble,

we have our crispy chicken skin.

This really nice, beautiful golden brown glass chip.

Oh, shatters like glass.

I'm gonna add garlic chips, crispy rice puffs,

and crispy, dehydrated carrot pulp.

And I'm gonna season this up with a little bit of salt.

And that's pretty much it.

Look at that. Huh?

That looks nice.

It's the moment I've all been waiting for.

I'm gonna make something called an au poivre sauce.

So, steak au poivre, a very classic French recipe.

You would coat steaks in black peppercorns

and make a really intense peppery sauce.

The key thing to remember here

is that black pepper plus beef is magic.

First thing I'm gonna do is get rid of this butter

from the steak that I just made perfectly.

That pan that you cooked the steak in,

it has lots of little brown, tasty, beefy bits in there.

So, you're going to deglaze the pan with your bourbon.

So turn your burner off first,

add the bourbon to it, then turn the flame back on.

There is going to be some fire. Please be careful.

Get ready for this.

[hollers happily]

Now I'm a chef.

Wow! All right, It's not on fire anymore.

I'll be honest. I'm kind of losing interest.

This is $100,000 worth of soy sauce just right there.

I've got some butter right here.

And I'm going to use, it's an eight peppercorn blend.

If you are using seven peppercorns, six peppercorns,

why don't you get outta here?

I'm just gonna mash 'em up. Get 'em nice and fine.

All right. God damn, this smells good.

So, I have my butterflied chicken paillard breast here.

[breast sizzling]

So I'm gonna let it mark on one side, cook, flip it. Oh!

I probably pounded it too hard.

Brush the grilled side with some glaze,

and then I'm gonna continue to flip it continuously,

and to allow that glaze to caramelize

'cause there's a lot of sugar in here

and it's very flavorsome.

All right. That'll do.

This is it, baby.

Home stretch. Look at this.

I got my big wok.

I got a bunch of vegetables. I got my rice.

I'm ready to fry some rice.

This is fried rice that we're doing.

First, I'm gonna start off with a little bit

of beef tallow that I cooked my mushrooms in.

Gonna get the pan hot.

Chef Eric said this part is gonna be quick and intense,

so I'm ready.

First up, these are duck eggs.

Quick scramble. They should be just barely set.

Then you're going to add

your wood ear mushrooms, your scallions.

Toss, toss, toss, Corn.

Just a touch of these insanely hot peppers.

Here go my mushrooms.

Mm. Just a little bit of salt.

Don't forget, this is fried rice we're making.

So, I'm gonna put some rice in there.

Gonna hit it with a little MSG.

Don't be scared of this stuff.

MSG is your friend, especially for fried rice.

Last step, we're gonna put

some very expensive soy sauce in there.

And we mix, mix, mix.

You're constantly tossing it.

Making dramatic leaps of rice and ingredients in the air.

[grunts] Oh my God!

I don't know how they do that. This is way too heavy.

If you've seen pros make fried rice,

it is almost non-stop motion.

That is the key to great fried rice.

You're constantly tossing it,

emulsifying the ingredients together,

distributing seasoning and heat throughout.

Don't tell Chef Eric about this.

[wok sizzling]

I think I'm done.

So, I'm gonna cook in this pan.

Looks like a Teflon non-stick pan.

Probably something you would have at home.

And then, this is garlic fried rice, so a lot of garlic.

My light green scallion and whites.

Then, we're going egg whites.

I like egg whites in fried rice.

This ready-rice ready to go into the pot.

I think I need a little bit more oil here.

You wanna be able to see it shine on the rice,

and some salt.

If I was using a wok,

I would be tossing this constantly over high heat.

But I need to keep returning this pan to the burner

'cause it's not quite hot enough.

I'm gonna go in with peas.

I'm gonna add some soy sauce for color, umami.

And I'm just looking for a light brown even color.

I'm gonna keep tossing it.

And the finishing touch, blow torch.

This looks crazy and stupid and totally excessive,

but it does serve a purpose.

Great fried rice has that Wok Hei flavor,

which literally translates the breath of the wok.

What it really is, is such high heat

that all the fats are combusting

and it has that kinda light charred smokey flavor.

That's really difficult to replicate at home

unless you have a supersized rocket ship burner.

But you can replicate it a little bit with blow torch.

All right. Let's plate.

We gotta plate this right now because fried rice is best

as soon as it comes outta the pan.

Well, look at that steak. My goodness.

All right, I'm gonna put on my au poivre sauce.

[Eric] Soy-cured egg yolk.

[Joe] I'm just gonna sprinkle

a little horseradish on there.

All this work, this chicken skin crumble.

Now, these are my cracklings.

Then, I got my tempura-battered bone marrow.

How'd these come out?

[food crunching]

I'm the greatest chef alive.

Finally, scallion powder. Are we ready?

Look at that nicely curled scallion.

All right. Here it is.

Mushroom fried rice with crispy bone marrow

and a ribeye cap.

This is my fried rice. I hope Joe likes it.

I'm very excited to see how he did with my recipe.

[phone camera clicking]

[playful music]

Chef Eric. What's up, man?

How you doing? How you doing?

How's it going?

It was great. Good day?

Yeah, it was so fun.

What about you? You? Yeah, it was good, man.

I mean, you know? Was it complicated?

I would've liked if the tray was a little more complicated,

but you know?

I think it came out pretty interesting.

Okay. Yeah. I wanna see it.

All right. Let's do it.

Oh, nice. Oh.

[Eric] Oh, wow. Okay, all right.

Wow! [Eric laughs]

None of this is my stuff.

[Eric] Different color schemes here.

[Joe] Yeah.

It was a very mantastic fried rice.

It was, yeah. The whiskey, the beef.

[Joe] A little bit of everything.

I'm gonna try the steak on its own.

Hmm. That's really good.

Yeah? Yeah, man.

All right. The sauce is great.

Cooked very nicely. You nailed it.

The mushrooms came out really well.

A lot of beef fat in there.

Oh, there's beef fat in there.

Yeah, there's beef fat all over the-

Yeah. I'm almost like nervous to eat a piece

of bone marrow this big, but let's do it.

I'm not gonna lie, I've been snacking on the bone marrow.

Yeah? Since I made it.

The tempura came out really well.

I'm really happy with this rice.

I can't believe

I made this. It's really great.

I gotta try this now. All right, let's do it.

I'm very excited for this. All right.

We're gonna break this yolk up.

Get the crispy bits, get some peas.

[utensils clinking]

The chicken crumble

came out great. Oh, that's fantastic.

[Eric laughs]

The chicken's perfectly cooked. Just everything.

It is like, all the flavors go together really well.

The fried rice base on it

is something that's very approachable,

but like all the texture.

It feels fancy, but it also feels like home cooking.

It doesn't feel inaccessible.

It's recognizable as fried rice.

Yeah. Which is important.

Oh, this is almost exactly what I was gonna do also, so.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh damn.

Carrot pulp. We were... [laughs]

Same, same, you know?

I love juicing carrot too. Great minds. Great minds.

[Eric] [laughs] Ooh-ho-ho-ho.