$88 vs $15 Tacos: Pro Chef & Home Cook Swap Ingredients

Can you hear the like weird gloopy ASMR?

The internet people love that, I hear.

Hi, I'm Danielle, I'm a professional chef.

And in this box are all the ingredients

for some $88 chicken tacos.

Hi, I'm Ross, I'm a home cook.

And in this box are my $15 chicken taco ingredients.

[jaunty music]

No!

Okay!

Okay, let's see what we got inside.

Okay.

Oh, very fancy.

[jaunty music]

Welcome to my home kitchen.

It is very narrow, but very deep that way.

So I was planning on making ancho chicken tacos

with homemade corn tortillas

with heirloom tomato pico de gallo and queso fresco.

I had some nicer ingredients to work with.

Organic chicken thighs, dried ancho and guajillo peppers,

diced tomatoes, yellow onion, garlic.

For keeping the vampires away.

And sea salt.

Now, for my handmade corn tortillas,

I had yellow corn masa harina.

Very worried that I'm going to have

to attempt homemade tortillas for the first time.

So officially scared.

[Danielle] Chicken stock and rendered chicken fat.

Where would one use chicken fat on tacos?

And all my ingredients for my personal twist

on a pico de gallo, heirloom tomatoes.

The prettiest heirloom tomatoes I have ever seen.

[Danielle] Fresh corn, radish, aleppo chili pepper,

red onion, jalapeno.

The number of times that I have almost blinded myself

by touching my eyes after cutting these

is too many to count, honestly.

Lime, garlic, and, of course, cilantro.

It's my least favorite herb.

I'll like you one day.

All topped with a salty and crumbly queso fresco.

This was one of my favorite recipes,

and it was going to be delicious.

With Ross's recipe, I have simpler ingredients,

stuff you're more likely to find in your kitchen

or the local grocery store.

Chicken, flour tortillas, yummy poblanos, cilantro,

sour cream, avocado, lime, and some chili powder.

These ingredients might be simple,

but I think I can use my chef skills

to make them even better.

If I had my guess, I'd say this would cost

probably about maybe $19?

15, oh, I wasn't that far off.

All of this costs around $53.50.

$88, wow, fancy.

There are a ton of ingredients, but there's no recipe.

Ancho chicken tacos with homemade corn tortillas.

I've never made a homemade tortilla.

I have no idea how I'm going to do that.

When it comes to making tortillas,

you're winning because the flavor is like superior.

This chicken fat is really going to boost the flavor.

For the pico de gallo, we have 36 ingredients it seems.

Traditional pico de gallo, tomato, onions,

cilantro, a little bit of jalapeno, lime juice, salt.

I like to add a touch of julienned radish

because the radish adds this fresh kind of bite to it

and then you get the sweetness of fresh corn.

And for this ancho chicken, I would love to know

how the peppers are going to be incorporated.

Are we gonna marinate it, are we gonna simmer it?

Are we going to eat the dried peppers on their own?

I don't know.

So I got Ross guajillo and ancho chilies.

They kind of get this like smokey flavor.

And when you rehydrate them in the tomato with the onion

and garlic, it just really kind of molds together

and you've got this great flavorful sauce.

I need help, can I call Rose now?

Hey, Ross! Hi, Rose.

It's so nice to meet you!

I truly just cannot wait to pick your brain

about all this.

I am terrified of making a homemade corn tortilla.

I do have these four ingredients and I,

quite honestly, have no idea where I even start with those.

Do you have masa harina?

I do, I have a beautiful bag of masa right here.

It's really finely ground corn flour, in essence.

It's really just a matter of managing the ratio,

how much water, you're gonna add a little bit

of fat probably, and how much corn meal

until you get the right consistency.

And give yourself one or two tortillas

and then you're gonna totally

be pressing tortillas all the time.

What I'd like to ask about pico de gallo,

and I'm wondering if it's really just as simple

as chopping everything up

or if there's actually a technique there.

If you have a mandolin, you might wanna use it,

because that way you get some really nice, uniform cuts.

I feel strongly that they are very scary.

And so I try to use a knife wherever I can.

But I have seen people do their fingers like this,

and some people use their palms.

But what happens if you slice off your whole palm?

I feel like given the choice I'd rather cut off

the tips of my fingers.

Okay, we're eliminating both of those choices.

It's definitely something that you want

to use a food guard for.

And your mandolin, you should have a little contraption.

Yeah, perfect, so I don't have to risk

cutting off my entire palm or my fingertips.

No, no.

You might want to julienne your radishes.

It'll be absolutely beautiful.

And a julienne is like a match stick.

It's like a small, elongated rectangle, if you will.

I think that would impress Danielle quite a lot.

With the ancho chicken itself,

two of the ingredients are dried peppers.

We've got a dried ancho pepper and a dried guajillo pepper.

When you have a dried chili,

you have to rehydrate them in water first.

You actually need the water interaction

with the capsaicinoids in order

for that spiciness to be expressed.

I am wondering how we go from those rehydrated peppers

to an ancho pepper sauce.

Oh, you're going to be really happy

with this answer I think.

When you cook your sauce, everything goes in one pot.

It's a water-based sauce, so it's a really nice

fresh-tasting sauce that's not going to be sauteed anything

or anything like that, it's gonna be fantastic.

And I know you're gonna do a great job at it.

Thank you, Rose.

As long as I don't get it all over these white walls

because I am renting and I will never see

that security deposit again.

I'm feeling, one, confident that I should be able

to make a homemade corn tortilla.

I'm feeling, two, very confident

that I am not going to julienne my fingers off.

And I think I'm ready to make some chicken tacos now.

I'm going to start with these homemade corn tortillas.

So this is my beautiful tortilla press

that Danielle sent me.

It weighs around a thousand pounds.

Rose mentioned to use parchment on either side like this,

just so my tortillas don't stick to the top

and the bottom and make a giant masa mess.

Ross sent me some flour tortillas.

Now, these are perfectly fine, and don't worry,

I'm gonna to use them in something else.

For this recipe I'm going to make my own flour tortilla.

So I went to my pantry, got a touch of flour, oil.

And to be honest, I encourage you all

to make your own flour tortillas.

Now don't be intimidated, it's actually very simple.

I'm going to make my flour tortillas just a little special

by adding cilantro that Ross sent me.

Put it in a bowl and put it on the side.

So in this bowl, I have a cup and three quarters

of masa harina.

I'll say it smells really good, too, so fresh.

I'm going to add my salt into there.

Add my chicken stock in.

I'm going to add three tablespoons

of this warmed chicken fat.

I actually don't know what it's supposed to feel like,

so I'm just going to go for like, sort of moist,

but not wet and not dry either.

Let me just do a little test and see

if it's gonna hold together a little bit more.

I feel that this is sort of the texture that I'm after.

I'm just gonna roughly form these into little balls.

I'm not exactly sure how large or how small,

but I'm imagining that these are gonna

get pressed out pretty thin and I don't want it

to hang off the edge of the press.

That seems right to me.

Maybe it's not gonna work.

We're not gonna know until it happens.

Time to make our dough.

Grab my flour, and you want to fill up your measuring cup.

And you know you're gonna get some on the counter.

That's why we clean up after.

Back into the bag.

So now it's flush, I'm gonna add that in there

and add another cup.

Now I'm gonna get my salt.

And then, this ingredient I usually like

to keep in my refrigerator, lard.

You can make tortillas, obviously, with just oil.

By adding half lard, half vegetable oil,

you kind of get this like super flaky

and crunchy tortillas.

When I see lard in somebody's kitchen,

I'm like, yeah, you cook a lot,

In my lard goes.

And having a rubber spatula

is your best friend in the kitchen.

I always tell people this all the time,

rubber spatulas are like lifesavers.

Lard is going to melt very easily, right?

So you can use one of these, which is a pastry cutter.

We're just going to take this in here like this,

evenly distribute it in here.

And it's nice and kind of crumbly.

So you see that it looks like coarse sand.

Add my oil and my warm water.

I'm gonna knead my dough until it's nice and elastic.

I don't know, about four minutes or so.

When you make that at home, you're gonna notice

that it's really kind of like tough,

but really allowing it to rest for about an hour is

what just makes the gluten in it just relax and go ahhh.

So now my dough is a lot smoother.

And because I'm adding the cilantro in it,

I'm gonna add it in now.

And I'm not adding like a ton.

This is not crazy, crazy.

There we go.

So now you can see throughout our little pieces of cilantro.

We're just going to let our dough rest

before we roll out individual tortillas.

What am I gonna do with these?

I'm going to end up making my own tortilla chips.

If I can get it open.

I'm going to cut them into little strips

and I'm just gonna use it as garnish.

So we got something, a little soft, a little crunchy.

We'll get to these later when I put them in oil

and make them nice and crispy.

It is now time for me to make my very first

little baby corn tortilla.

I'm gonna open this press up,

put down one sheet of parchment,

put down one little dough ball.

Put one more parchment.

And now I am going to slowly press while I pray.

It's happening.

Let's see.

[gasps] Look at it!

I'm very, very impressed with myself,

and this actually was very easy.

So there's the first.

And now I'm just going to repeat.

I'm feeling very good about myself.

And I'm going to cover them with this dish towel

just to keep them from drying out.

Now that it's rested for an hour,

it's gonna be a lot easier to work with.

I'm gonna take some of the dough that I have already.

I just love the cilantro in there, it looks so nice.

I want to add just a touch of flour to the surface.

And look, this doesn't have to be perfect.

I don't think anybody is gonna be judging you

because they're going to be too busy stuffing their face

with these yummy tortillas.

There you have it.

And I'm just gonna stick it in between some parchment

so it doesn't dry out.

Now onto the next one.

If you had to ask me which is better,

I'm definitely gonna have to say the corn.

So Ross, you can thank me later.

These are my two ancho chili peppers.

They're beautiful and look sort of like raisins.

But I'm sure it tastes lovely.

And this is my guajillo chili pepper.

Gonna take these stems off, dump out the seeds,

pop that into the pot.

Repeat for my ancho chilies.

I'm touching all the seeds right now.

So into the pot it goes.

And I am going to wash my hands

because I have been burned before

and it will not happen again.

Peel and quarter this onion, into the pot.

And let me be fancy, made it.

Smash and peel two garlic cloves.

Last couple things, I'm going to add one can

of diced tomatoes and I'm also going to add some salt.

The last thing is water.

And this is me standing at my sink,

which I would wager is the slowest sink

in all of New York City.

Making pasta in this apartment is nearly impossible.

So I've got this on the stove.

I'm just gonna let this simmer for 10-ish minutes,

just until it starts to smell good.

Ross sent me over some chili powder that has a kick.

It definitely has a smokey flavor.

But I always feel like it needs other things

to kind of just really round it out.

I wanted to use some spices that most people have

in their kitchen cabinet, oregano, onion

and garlic powder, and then some whole cumin and coriander.

And here I like to do something a little special,

and I'm gonna toast them really to bring out the oils

and the flavors, but I'm also going to bring in

one other ingredient and that is dried chilies.

We have the chili powder, but you know, hey,

I've got them whole, why not try these?

I'm gonna start off by toasting these two first.

And then I'm just gonna add the chili towards the end

to bring that just a touch back to life.

I'm only going to use one.

And I'm also gonna remove the top, break it in half.

Gonna heat this, I'm gonna toast this,

I'm gonna start to smell that cumin and coriander.

That's when I know that we're almost there.

Add my chili.

Listen, if you've got chili powder at home

and that's all you got, that's perfect, it works great.

I just have these things here in my cupboard

and I wanted to just give it a little boost.

Smells like spices [laughs].

Now I have my toasted spices.

I'm going to actually grind them up

with my mortar and pestle here.

This is what we're going to use to grind up my spices.

If you can see here, we definitely have our chili

with our cumin seed, and now you can barely tell

that they were whole seeds.

A little touch of oregano in here.

Onion powder, garlic powder, a touch of salt,

and a little bit of fresh cracked pepper.

Grab my chicken, and then we're just gonna season away.

And then, of course, you know, I have a spatula

so I can go ahead and give it a quick toss.

Oh gosh, it smells so good.

I'm telling you, toasting your spices

makes all the difference in the world.

Oh, I got this little bit of chili, hit my nose.

I will attempt to pour it into this blender

without getting any on myself or my kitchen.

Please don't get on me.

So now it's time for me to blend this up.

I'm gonna take this lid off and just cover it

with a dish towel so I don't get it everywhere.

I'm slowly gonna crank this up.

Carefully take this lid off.

Mmm, wow.

Pour this back into the pot that it came from.

And then I'm just gonna go ahead

and put my chicken into the pot.

Bring that back up to a simmer, and I'm probably going

to let it cook for 30, 45 minutes

until that chicken is beautifully cooked through.

I've let my spices kind of just sit on that chicken

and give it a good marinade.

Now I've got a cast iron skillet

with a touch of oil in here.

I'm gonna sear it, I like to get color on the chicken.

Color equals flavor, right?

Once we got a nice golden brown color on one side,

I'm going to flip it, cook it through,

and we're rocking and rolling.

It's been about 10 minutes

and our chicken thighs are cooked.

Remove them from the heat and make sure that you put them

on a plate or somewhere, and then we'll chop them up later.

So I've got my chicken slowly simmering away

in this pot right here.

Ooh, my God, it smells so good.

And there my glasses go getting very fogged up.

I'm gonna go ahead and get started on the pico.

People have tips and tricks, but really you just want

to grab as much of the husk as you can, pull and repeat.

Cut the kernels right off that way.

And corn doesn't go all over your kitchen.

Saute these quickly for like four to five minutes.

Hit this with salt.

And now we wait.

This corn is now nicely sauteed and cooked through.

Oops, I lost one.

That's the corn.

Ross sent me over some great poblanos,

so I'm going to actually blister them on the stove top

using my gas stove.

If you have an outdoor grill, obviously that is ideal,

but this is New York City and I'm working with what I got.

High heat, you hear it?

It's starting to do a little bit of that

snap, crackle, and pop.

That's what you should hear.

Once my peppers have blistered nice and evenly all around,

I'm gonna place them in a bowl

and cover them with plastic wrap

and make sure that the skin comes off nice and easy.

Got all my beautiful little dough disks ready to go in.

Got my cast iron skillet.

Moment of truth, I'm just going to see what happens.

I rolled out my tortillas, now we have to cook them.

So I've got a cast iron skillet heated and ready to go.

Just gonna peel off one of these.

So let me go ahead and add that in there.

So far, so good.

My gut tells me that as soon as I start

to see the sides turning a little bit more golden

in color, then it's ready to flip.

But I'd imagine you'd sort of want

to get a few little charry spots.

You'll start to notice there's little bubbles that arise

giving me signals that, oh, we're almost ready

to do a flip-a-roo.

Now, you can do it the old fashioned way,

which is, of course, hot, and you use your hands

and you just flip it, or obviously,

there's a spatula, right?

There we go.

Yay!

Put that on to a plate.

And there it is, beautiful homemade corn tortilla.

And I cannot wait to eat it.

Great, that looks pretty good.

So my next step is to crumble

this lovely block of queso fresco.

Maybe this way so I don't get cheese juice

all over the kitchen.

I'm not a fan of cheese juice,

but if that's your thing, I won't judge you for it.

You do you.

Crumble into my bowl.

And I imagine it will be a great complement

to my spicy chicken tacos.

I've got my sliced tortillas and I am ready to fry.

I got oil, this is going to be a perfect crunchy addition

to our tacos just to add on top.

Alrighty, so here it's looking GB and D,

also known as golden brown and delicious.

So let me take these out then grab a little salt.

I always salt it when it's hot, sprinkle from on high.

And voila!

It is pico de gallo time.

I'm going to go ahead and use all my wisdom from Rose

to julienne these beautiful radishes.

I'm going to do exactly as she said, cut one flat edge.

Here is my mandolin death trap.

So now I'm just gonna go ahead and put, hmm...

Let me figure this out.

I think I'm gonna slice the top off as well.

And I just stabbed it in there.

Nope [laughs].

I mean, I need to use the guard, right?

Yeah, she told me to use the guard.

I'm gonna slice this in half the other way

so there's more surface area.

[laughing]

Yay, it sort of worked!

But I do have some julienned radishes.

Now I understand.

Whoo, radish now!

I'm gonna dice up some of these beautiful heirloom tomatoes.

Cut it in half.

This is a rustic chop, they like to call it.

One red onion, I mince garlic clove pretty finely.

I'm gonna add in the juice of one lime.

Vaguely starting to cry from the red onion, late.

I don't know why it's just hitting me now,

but whoo, the tears are coming.

And then the cilantro.

As I mentioned before, it's not my favorite.

This seems like a healthy amount.

Mmm, the smell of cilantro that I love so, so, so much.

It's just wafting up right now.

Jalapeno pepper, carefully cut those seeds out.

[coughing] Whoa!

All right, this is gonna be an intense jalapeno I can tell.

Just gonna give it a little bit more of a finer chop.

Might be really spicy, we'll see.

Just sprinkle in a little bit of salt.

The last thing I'm going to put in

is a little bit of this aleppo pepper.

I'm just gonna eyeball, little sprinkling of it.

And then I can always taste and adjust later.

And I honestly forgot there was corn in it,

so what a pleasant surprise.

Poblanos, right?

So what exactly am I gonna do

with these lovely peppers that Ross sent my way?

I'm assuming that the sour cream you meant

to just kind of dollop on top.

I'm going to actually make this beautiful crema

with the sour cream, the poblanos,

a little bit of avocado, lime and cilantro.

So now we've got a nice little sauce to jazz it up.

I like to use a paper towel because it just helps

that skin come right off.

You just want to make sure that you get

all this like char flavor, the peel off,

and you're left with this wonderful toasted poblano.

Kind of cut it down the middle.

I like to cut around the top.

I'm gonna remove any of the seeds.

Give them a quick slice to use as garnish on top.

And now I don't need much of this poblano,

I just really am using it to add

another little flavor component.

I'm gonna use a little bit of avocado.

Look at that, isn't that beautiful?

Don't you get just so happy

when you get the right inside of an avocado?

Squeeze just like half a lime in here.

I'll add a touch of cilantro and then our sour cream.

I'm gonna also add a touch of salt.

Oh my gosh, that was, yeah, that's good.

You just get a hint of that smokiness,

that touch of the poblano at the end.

If everybody doesn't have a rubber spatula

by the end of this, you're not paying attention.

Gonna clean up here in a minute and assemble away.

Without further ado, chicken reveal.

I am very excited about it.

So I'm just gonna carefully bring this over

to my cutting board and then I'm just going to shred it.

Oh, it looks so good.

Oh, sorry, floor.

It shreds so easily.

I'm gonna cheat.

Wow, Danielle, really nailed this.

I'm just gonna dump this back into that pot

so it can bathe in that good, amazing chili sauce.

And then I'm gonna set it aside until I'm ready to eat.

The main reason I let my chicken rest is

so that all those juices can stay in the chicken.

I want my chicken to be nice and moist.

You can see [sniffs], cumin, coriander.

And definitely the chili.

Alrighty, I got my chicken, so let's plate this up.

I'm so excited to finally be plating

my beautiful chicken tacos.

First thing, oh, look at that nice tortilla.

Oh yeah, wonderful.

And then add our chicken.

On my plate I've got three corn tortillas,

so a little bit of chicken on each taco.

I'm gonna try and not drown them in the sauce,

even though I sort of want to.

Then we're gonna add a little bit of poblanos on here.

Dollop of our crema.

Our tortilla chips for that extra crunch.

Add a little bit of pico.

I'm gonna give it a mix.

Generous crumble of my queso fresco.

I chose to leave my cilantro whole.

You know, sometimes it just looks nice, right?

Isn't that beautiful?

But listen, anybody in their right mind knows

you're not just gonna have one.

You're gonna have at least two.

And I think I'm going to finish it off

with just a little squeeze of lime.

And this is my take on Danielle's recipe.

And that is my take on Ross's tacos.

I hope he likes it.

My fingers are crossed that Danielle approves

and that I did this justice.

Hi, it's so nice to meet you.

You too, how you doin'?

I'm doing great, how are you doing?

How was your taco adventure?

It was great, I'm more concerned, how was yours?

I must say I was petrified

about making a homemade corn tortilla

as that's not something I've ever done.

But now that I've done it, I don't know

how I can ever go back to store bought.

Right, I'm telling you-- They're so good.

You sent me some flour tortillas and I ended up

doing something a little different with those.

I did use them, I made little chips with those

to put in my tacos, but I ended up making my own tortillas.

So I made my own flour tortillas.

I took some of your cilantro and I actually put that

in the dough of the tortilla.

Ooh, wow.

So here, see it? Wow.

Oh my God, they look beautiful.

Those tortillas are stunning.

Thank you, yes.

And, of course, you always add a little squeezed lime

on the side, 'cause everybody--

Well, I also did the same thing.

Let me see, let me see.

This feels like the perfect segue.

I'm gonna make them like not slide.

I hope they don't fall!

Yeah, I know.

Hey, that looks great!

Thank you.

Try it and let me know what you think.

Okay, I'm gonna try not to get ancho chili sauce

all over myself and my counter.

Hey, it happens.

[Ross] Mmm. It's good?

That is insane.

It's just so like spicy and it's sweet

from those beautiful, beautiful heirlooms tomatoes.

So well balanced, it's a beautiful married dish.

So now I'm like jealous because I've been looking

at these tacos for a minute now, so I'm gonna try mine.

It looks incredible.

The crema does everything for it.

Oh my gosh, I can only imagine.

All right, cheers!

All right, cheers.

[jaunty music]