Cooking With Cloudflare

This is Chaat Butsunturn and Jade Wang, my guest today on Cooking with Cloudflare. I'm in San Francisco.

Jade is already eating because she's in Austin. That's right.

Yeah, so what was I going to say? I appreciate you're joining me today. What are we making today?

Today... What am I making today? Yes, today you are making a bacon fried rice and a sauteed green beans and a fried meat.

I would call this my own type of fusion.

The stuff that I grew up with is basically Chinese-style cooking tradition but made with ingredients that are available in the U.S.

Okay, great. Well, you did give me a list of ingredients to gather.

And while there are, you know, plenty of Asian food stores and Korean markets near where I live, the one thing I don't have as much of is time.

So I did the best I could with grabbing a lot of stuff.

But as we go through, we'll figure out like where my substitutes will be.

Okay. So what I do have is I have my rice here, my leftover rice. I've got a wok where I guess we're going to do it all.

I got my chopping surface right here and a whole bunch of ingredients.

All right. And I know that vegetable prep is going to be the first thing we do.

So yeah. Tell me what to do, where to start. Yeah, since you already have the scallions laid out, I would basically give them a quick rinse so that there's no like, you know, dirt particles or anything.

Okay. And then cut them into like tiny slivers, like rings.

Okay.

And when you say tiny slivers, do you want them like disks or more julienne spear type?

Basically, like, imagine this is the scallion and you go like, Oh yeah. Um, basically have them be like less than a centimeter.

Less than a centimeter. Okay.

Yeah. Um, the way that my mom would do this, that she taught me is you bisect them.

And yep, exactly. That's what my mom taught me too. Efficiency. Exactly. Exactly.

And then you put them all in a little bowl. Okay. I gotta get myself a little bowl.

All right. Chopping is fun. Yeah. Yeah. It's because it's, it's like one of those things where you feel like you have instant results and, you know, they always say like the most dangerous thing in the kitchen is a dull knife.

Yeah.

So you want to keep these sharp. Getting a bowl.

Yeah. Yeah. You could use a smaller bowl than that if you wanted to, but that's fine.

I'll use this one.

Yeah. Marginally smaller. All right. Next, um, you'll want to chop, uh, about half a carrot, I would say.

Only? Into like tiny, into like a tiny bit.

Yeah. Like half that carrot. Really? What's this one for? Um, it's for the fried rice and like, it's basically, it, it makes it visually a lot more interesting.

Okay. Um, and, and it's also like nice nutritionally, but, uh, I mean, really, that's like, you got, once you get some orange color in there with the bacon and the greenness of the scallions, it like, um.

Check out what I do here. Typically when I'm making fried rice, I've always done my carrots.

Like, so. Yeah. Oh, um, make them smaller if you can.

Then, then like, oh, like, uh, now that they're, now that they're sticks, um, like basically chop each of those sticks down, uh, so that they're like dice.

So, and, and why, what is it about the, the, the, the dice?

I mean, like I've always done it in spears. I think they're fun texturally, but you're saying do it smaller, like cut these in half.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, partly it's a efficiency of serving.

Like, so like, as you're, as you're partitioning out in like for the, for the various portions, um, like what I often find is that like a, you know, things being similar in dimension end up making it easier to portion out.

So you don't have like a bunch of care that's kind of sticking out and kind of like falling, flopping over while you're trying to serve.

And so do you, um, is this, that's, that's plenty of carrot already. I like carrots though.

All right. Okay. And I'll just, there we go. Where should this go? Uh, into the scallion bowl.

Same bowl. Okay. Yeah. There we go. Yeah. Let's see. Oh.

Yes.

What I, what I often like to do is like scooch it, scooch the scallions a little off to the side and then, yeah.

There you go. There. Hey. All right. Carrot and scallions.

Yeah. Uh, let's see. Green beans next. You'll want to. Green beans next.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You'll want to, uh, give them a nice wash. If you have a colander, you can just like, uh, rinse them.

Okay. So, um, I'm curious if, if every, if, if my screen is looking fine to you, all right.

Got to note that maybe we're frozen, um, but we're using all fresh ingredients.

So nothing's frozen here.

I mean, it's similarly not frozen to our viewers at home or wherever you're watching.

So I'm going to give these a quick rinse in a colander. All right. All right.

So here we go. Yeah.

Much. Yep. Okay.

And then shall I cut the top off? Yeah. Uh, snip both. Uh, so I recommend snipping both ends and then cutting them so that they are all pretty similar in length.

Um, so what you're saying is take this and I just, I usually just chop the ends off, but you want me to cut these similarly?

Like, no, no, no. Um, so like, uh, so if you can show me like the longest piece and the shortest piece that you have around the longest and the shortest, I mean, they're all pretty uniform, but okay.

Um, in that case, like, let's see, I actually can't really tell how long that is.

Can you like hold it with, with against your hand or something? Yeah. There's a, okay.

Here's an iPhone eight. Okay. Um, I would say like, yeah, so I would say bisect them in half.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's pretty good. And then what, then what are we going to do with them?

Um, so like do all of them like that and stick it in a big bowl.

Stick it in a big bowl? Yeah. Okay. Now, one of the things I like, I gotta do though, is that I haven't done in advance is cut all the, all the ends off.

Yeah. You know, this might take a minute here as I do this. It's a good thing to do it in advance.

Yeah. When I, when I was little, sometimes my mom would, um, would have things already cooking.

And so she would, uh, end up making things like she would end up having to, uh, make me go super fast as a sous chef.

Right. So did you, uh, you grew up, uh, everyone cooks in the house every day, or how, how did the meals work at your house growing up?

Well, uh, generally my mom cooked.

Um, my dad, uh, was not very skilled as a chef. And so when it was his turn to cook, he would usually boil, uh, dumplings that were frozen and pre -made that you can pick up at an Asian market.

More than my dad. My mom was definitely the cook in my house.

So my dad's Thai, my mom's Filipino, but we'd have mostly Filipino cooking growing up.

There was some occasional Thai, but my mom was self-conscious about her Thai cooking.

Um, yeah. Cause all my dad's friends, you know, they were in town.

So she had her favorite dishes that, that were like huge hits like lumpia.

Uh-huh. Or pancit. Those were things that were big hits at family parties and the like.

Yeah. For, for a, um, significant period of time in my childhood, uh, my grandparents came to the U.S.

My grandparents on either side took turns coming to the U.S.

to, uh, to take care of me. As a kid while my parents were both working full time.

Um, and so, uh, there was a lot that my, uh, grandmothers would make.

Um, my, my mom's mom, uh, was very well known for her borscht. Borscht? Yes.

It was, it's basically, I would, I would characterize it as a Chinese reinterpretation of borscht.

Uh, that was her style, but made with Chicago available ingredients.

So. Borscht.

That's interesting. So, uh, that's beets. Yeah. Red. Yeah. Except that she actually didn't use beets.

Uh, but there, there was like a lot of tomato and sausage and beef and, um, and the roux that she used to thicken her, uh, her borscht was, um, she was very particular in how she made it.

She would brown the flour first.

Did you, did you have siblings? Nope. Just me. Uh-huh. Yeah, I had siblings.

But you know, the thing is, my mom never liked us in her kitchen and I always wanted to, you know, cook with her and learn her, her dishes.

Um, that didn't happen until much later.

Uh, you know, they could, I'd say a good 10 years after I was out of the house, you know, I had to just ask my mom, Hey, you gotta give me these recipes.

And then even after she gives me the recipes, you know, some of it's just like, yeah, and you put some of this in there and some of that in there.

What does that mean?

Right? Yeah. A handful of this, a pinch of that. Right. Exactly.

There's no, no, a lot of times there isn't any exact measurements. So, um, uh, so, you know, I calibrate it and, and, uh, figure it out over time.

Okay. I'm getting close here.

So all my peas. Yeah.

Yeah. When my, um, my mom never follows recipes, even like, even if she's trying to follow a recipe, she's just sort of allergic to following instructions.

Well, I found that, you know, recipes are great.

Starter tool. Yeah. After you have more experience in the kitchen, you kind of figure out the kinds of things that you want to do and, or that you can do.

And, you know, like, yeah, there's certain, certain like shapes of things.

Um, like, yeah, yeah. Like, uh, you know, like, uh, um, like a bread pudding is a certain like shape of a thing.

Right. And so you can, you can do like a savory reinterpretation of a bread pudding or a, uh, or any kind of stir fry.

It's basically, you know, the same shape of thing. You, you know, you, everything is bite size.

You put things in the order in which, um, from things that take the longest to cook to things that take the least amount of time to cook.

Okay.

So I am done with it. All right. Good, efficient chopping. All right. So next, next, uh, yeah.

Mince a bunch of garlic and put it in a small bowl. Okay. If I'm going to mince it, I think rather than mince or coarsely chop, whatever your, uh, preferences.

Well, you know what I could use is I tell me what you think of this.

I've got a tool. Oh, the garlic presser thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Use that. Use that.

Okay. Yeah. It's efficient. So the two different kinds I got, right. This thing, I mean, whatever you prefer using.

I like this one. All right. I'll show everyone how it works.

Um, so the beans are in a separate bowl. Where's the garlic going to go after I'm done with this?

Uh, most well into a little bowl. Um, about two thirds of it will go into the dish with the beans and, uh, and some of it will go into the, with the meat.

Okay. I'm gonna put in a little bit on the side. So I take this thing typically and I just.

Nice. Oh, right. And it's a pretty, uh, way to do it.

So you can see over here. I mean, yeah, it's even a thing that can like hold your garlic.

That's nice. So this'll make it faster. Like I often will just get, uh, depending on how much garlic I'm using, I'll usually use a fresh garlic, but my wife and all her wisdom got me this, the pre peeled garlic knowing that I would probably not have time or patience to peel it all.

And she of course was right.

All that garlic is. Fantastic. Now I've got. All right. All right. Now what?

Yeah. Uh, all right. Let's see. Uh, eggs, uh, beat them in a bowl. The eggs in bowl.

Okay. Yep. Let's see here. Oh, I gave it.

Yep. Okay. So I'm gonna take a big, um, let's see. There's that. Now I've always been a fan of just using your old fork.

So yeah, I usually just use chopsticks.

Oh, look at you. Okay. All right.

That's what my mom does too.

The one handed thing. Yeah. Yeah. And also at the same time.

All right. Yeah. She used to run a restaurant. Oh, is that right? Yeah. He was in the family.

Is there anything going? Yeah. It's like fish sauce or anything like that.

Or no, a little bit of salt. Okay. I would say like, um, like I'm talking eggs for breakfast, that kind of thing.

Yeah. Like you're making breakfast. Yeah.

There you go. Give it some elbow grease until, until it's nice and homogenized.

Yeah.

It's a nice little arm workout that, uh, this is like one of the first sous chef tasks that my mom used to give me as a child.

Okay. There we go. All right. There you go.

All right. All right. And you set that aside. Let's see. We we've chopped all the ingredients that you've laid out, right?

Except for bacon. Oh, bacon.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. So let me get my bacon. Where's my bacon. Okay. So depending on how fond you are of bacon, I would say approximately a half a package to one package of bacon.

Okay. Well, how are you doing the bacon? Is the bacon going to get, uh, so I like, I would just start slicing while it's in the package.

Cause it holds it nicely together, uh, into one inch strips.

So like, since they're, since they're all nicely pre -sliced already and you have a nice and sharp knife, just like go one inch down and then you have like a little one inch strips of bacon.

Okay. Well, I'm going to take out how much bacon I need, right. And then I'll just cut.

I just slice it straight into the package because the package holds it in place.

The whole package though. Then I'm like, so I'm going to take about half this bacon here.

Oh, I see. Yeah. Like, so yeah, yeah, sure.

You can do that. I usually end up with like, um, all like half a package of bacon.

We're all where they're all, uh, half length. Right. So you want one inch cuts at about.

Yep. And then when you're done with that, um, lay them on the cold walk, uh, nice and separated and spread them out.

All right.

So now a cold walk, right? Lay them out. Yeah. So that, uh, what you want to do is like spread them out so that they're not like, you know, so you don't have a stack of five bacon.

You want to like separate all of them. So let me just make some room.

All right. All right. So this is the point I mentioned last week. I often like to wear an apron because I like to wipe my hands on myself and I, yeah, that's mostly what it's about.

Save me it using a napkin or always wiping my hands and stuff.

Here we go. It also prevents things from splattering on you. Yeah. Okay.

Yep. Nice and spread out. Single layer. Surface area is key.

Yeah. Yeah. I used to have a walk that was an old, uh, steel walk that had the ring that you put it on top of.

Um, but it, I found it hard to keep seasoned and I, it started to impair a metallic taste to the food.

So I ended up saying like, Oh, you know what?

We're just going to simplify here. And I'm getting a, you know, from Macy's, I'm just going to get myself a, a, um, one of these nonstick ones.

So it's been great. Multi -purpose, you know, it's, um, any walk will do, I suppose.

Yeah. I have a, uh, a regular metal walk. Um, works fine. You have gas also?

No, I, I, uh, I have electric and before that I had induction. Uh, electric is a giant pain to cook with.

I'll tell you that. Yeah. My mom did electric and I don't know how she did it.

Well, you have to recalibrate like all your expectations because the whole thing stays hot, um, after you turn the heat off.

Um, and so you have to either have another place to, like, if I, if I want to turn things off, I would take the entire walk and put it onto a different surface or, uh, or just like, yeah.

Okay. So now I got the, the, I got the bacon set. Excellent.

Uh, put it on the stove and turn it on. All right. Here we go. All right.

Good time to wash your hands.

Okay. Yeah. Why not? Right. And, uh, the next thing you'll want to have ready is your, um, scallion and, uh, and your scallion bowl with the carrots in them.

Okay. That's ready. Yep. Um, and so when the, uh, when the bacon is done to the level of like, you know, it's, it's basically cooked pieces of pork, but they're not crispy.

You know what I mean? When they're, when they look like pieces of meat and not like pieces of, uh, crouton.

Um, that's when you put the, uh, the carrots in, like when there's a decent amount of oil in there, that's, that's the bacon grease.

From the bacon. Yeah, exactly. So I don't have to add any other, anything else, right?

And this is for, this is for the, This is for the fried rice.

Right. Okay. Um, and, uh, have your rice container ready. Um, because when all, when, when you have like the bacon, so you're going to end up with a, basically a mix of, uh, bacon with, uh, with carrots and scallions, and you're going to pour all of that into the rice.

And set that aside. Oh, okay. Into the rice.

Now, how much rice do you, should I have? Um, approximately like, I would say, uh, two cups cooked is plenty, depending on how, it really depends on how many people you're serving.

Um, basically like, No, but I know like when you're frying rice, you want surface area, you know?

So, uh, okay, let me get a bowl for my rice. Okay.

So I'm going to use this bowl.

I'm going to put my, and that's where I'll, I'm going to use it straight from the cooker.

And then in terms of how much to use.

So this is about, So like, think of like two little rice bowls, you know?

Two little, so this is about one rice bowl.

Yeah, maybe one and a half of those is plenty.

Oh, that's a lot. Is it? Okay. So this is how much rice I have. Yeah, that's, that's good.

That's great. Okay, cool. All right. Do I have to break it up or anything like that?

Yeah. Why not? So then once we, I'm just looking at the time here, we got 523.

I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to also get the meat in and the beans.

How's that working? Yeah.

How's the, how's the bacon looking right now? Is it getting? It's the, you want to take a look here?

Yeah. It's not, it's not near, I wouldn't call it anywhere near, uh, cooked yet.

Yeah, I, I would, um, I would start flipping some of them over.

Yeah, because they're going to spend a little bit of time still in the pan while you, while the carrots are cooking, so.

Okay, flipping over. All right. Yeah, they're, it's good that they, they're rendering pretty well.

Um, now you want to, yeah.

Fresh path to render. Otherwise it's a path that's been open. It's not going to render as much.

Yeah. I don't know why. I thought it was fat evaporates, but it just, that's what I've noticed.

Yeah. Okay.

So that's going to continue to cook for a little while. All right. Stick the carrots in, but not the, but not the scallions.

Oh, okay. Already, even though it's not quite yet, uh.

Because the carrots will take a little while. They'll go from like being, you know.

The carrots are like, they're not going to overcook in there.

Everybody. Yep. Yeah, that's a nice, that's a nice view. Let's see the carrots.

There might be a smattering of, uh. That's fine. All right.

Yeah. Give it a nice stir so that every carrot is somewhat greasy. Yeah.

Look at that. Oh, there's a lot of meat and carrot for the amount of rice that I have.

Yeah. That's how I like it. All right. Okay.

That's looking pretty good. All right. So the pre-marinated meat that you have, is that already cooked?

Is that already chopped and stuff? Nope. Okay. Let's, uh, let's, let's chop that.

All right. While this is cooking. Okay. And now I'm going to put my rice aside.

So I have a Italian marinated steak.

Okay. You mentioned any steak will do that's marinated.

So I. Yep. How much is that?

Is that like a pound? Half a pound? This is exactly a pound. All right.

Cool. All right. So I would say chop against the grain to the extent that you can and, uh, and into bite-sized pieces.

Okay, look at that. Where is it? I wonder what, uh, what cut this is?

Bite -sized pieces, right? Yeah. Basically you want it to be, um, something that you can easily, uh, like pick up with a pair of chopsticks.

Right. And, uh, as soon as you're done slicing your first direction, uh, you'll, you'll want to give your bacon a stir just to make sure nothing's, uh, you know, just to make sure things are kind of being even over there.

Yeah. Nice.

Okay, give me a second while I give a stir. Very nice.

Looking good. Not quite crispy yet. Good. Are the carrots looking, uh, like wrinkled on the outside?

Not yet? Quite, not quite. Okay. I just got to cut these into a little smaller pieces here.

Yep. Okay.

Yeah, once the carrots are wrinkly, you should throw the, uh, the scallions in.

Okay.

Not quite.

Yeah, I had a friend of mine who did a cooking show, but man, his show was like, he just did it for friends on Facebook or whatever.

And, um, but they were like hour and a half, two hours, you know, wasn't really a show.

It was more like cook along with Adam.

And, but here we are trying to hustle, get, get this done for the entertainment of our, our viewing audience.

Okay. These are mostly, yeah. What do you think of the size of those?

Yeah. Um, there's a couple of pieces to the right side of the screen that are a little bit larger, but I think you can just bisect those.

Which side is the right side? This side? Yeah, yeah. Let me, uh, put in the scallions now.

All right. Let's see here. Okay.

And let's see, I'm going to give it a stir. Oh, wow.

That's a nice color. Yeah, you should bring the camera there. Oh yeah, you're right.

All right. Yeah. Once the scallions are, uh, are like wilted, um, then you pour the whole thing onto your rice and just set it aside.

Uh, the goal is to have everything like done at the same time, uh, when you have all three dishes.

Okay. Well, while you guys watch that, I'm going to finish chopping a few of these meats here.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

What do you usually use for the meat for yourself? Um, sometimes I use, uh, let's see.

Sometimes I have chicken that's like chicken thigh, um, and I use, uh, like Trader Joe packets of taco seasoning, um, and I just use that as like basically a dry marinade.

And, uh, like I just stick all the seasoning in while, uh, while it's frozen.

And as it defrosts, it marinates. And I'm, I'm just lazy like that. Yeah, sometimes, sometimes I bought, I, sometimes I get, um, pre-marinated carne asada.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, TGS has a good selection of, I think, marinating meats and stuff.

I like their, uh, their, their lamb. Mm-hmm. I get lamb from there. Okay, so now I've got my meat set.

I got the green beans set aside. I've got this, uh, this lovely.

Yeah, yeah. Stick all that and pour all of that onto your, uh, rice bowl.

On top of my rice bowl. Yep. That way, when you return it to the, uh, to the wok, it'll, it'll be done super fast.

All right, here we go. Basically what we're doing right now is everything gets, um, gets cooked to the halfway point.

Okay. It gets cooked to the halfway point.

Yeah. Mm -hmm. Dump it all in. Whoa. Yeah, excellent.

All right. Let that drip in. Mm -hmm. Okay. All right, now, while the wok is still hot, add a bunch of oil to it.

A nice big pool of any kind of cooking oil. Any kind of cooking oil.

Okay, are we doing high heat? What, what level? High heat.

Yep. Okay. So my wife likes to use, uh, Any neutral cooking oil, canola, avocado.

Use grape seed oil. Okay, sure. How much? A big pool, like you're gonna, like, you're gonna fry the green beans in here.

Okay. And you're gonna fry them until they're wrinkly.

And then you're gonna scoop out all the green beans. And, uh, and then you're gonna use that entire bottle and then some.

I need to get another one here.

Yeah. And then, and then we're gonna do the eggs after you scoop out the green beans.

Okay. Yeah.

The nice thing about doing that in this order, more than that. Eh, a little more than that.

Wow. Have no fear. Okay, here we go. All right. Now you, uh, high heat.

All set. Yeah. Where's your garlic? Garlic is right here. All right. So, uh, basically what I like to do is to test the temperature of the oil.

Um, it's not very exact.

You take like a tiny bit of garlic, um, like a single garlic particle and you drop.

Just like drop a single particle of garlic. And if it looks like it's frying. Oh yeah.

You see that? Yeah. Is it frying? All right. Cool. Yeah. That's when you know it's ready to, uh, now you're ready to dump in all the green beans.

Dump in all the green beans.

Okay. Maybe half of them at first so that you can kind of see. Okay.

Yeah. Yep. Okay. All right.

Give it a nice stir. I'm all in the oil.

There we go. Yeah. Everyone, every last one of them should, uh, have touched oil.

And you want to get them until their, their skin is wrinkly and just keep them moving.

Okay. Great. Yeah. Oil is hot. And the heat is still hot.

And this thing is, uh, all right. We got it. You know, it's not like swimming in oil, but I would say things are, should it be deeper in the oil?

It should be. Yeah.

You could, you could definitely put some more oil in. We're really deep frying this stuff.

Is that what we're going to do? I mean, like you could arguably, um, but we're, I mean, like all that, like.

Yeah. What happens to the oil? We're going to cook eggs in them afterwards.

So we will not waste any oil. Okay. Yeah. You want to keep them moving so that they, uh, so that they don't, um, so that they are all the same level of doneness.

I see. Okay. Yeah. Keep them moving. This is actually like, you get a pretty, a pretty good bicep workout when, by keeping them moving.

Never stop. I'll work on my other arm here. I actually use, use two.

Yeah. Yeah. Two is a fantastic, uh, idea. Yeah. I'd like to use, uh, wooden spatulas, uh, it's supposed to matter.

I also have a, um, it's actually a wooden spatula.

I have my favorite spatula that we use the most use is this one here.

And I swear, I think this thing is older than, it's definitely older than my son, but we've had it for at least 25 years.

It's slowly, slowly wearing down.

All right. I see the, uh, the oil. Are they getting wrinkly? Not yet.

All right. Yeah. Then, then you got to keep, keep them moving. Okay. The heat's on high.

Yep. Right. And, uh, you'll want to make sure you have a place to put them.

Um, as in scoop them out, like the colander that you brought them in or the bowl that you had them in, that's, that's a totally fine place to put them.

Uh-huh.

So, but putting them in something that actually is, uh, it's okay for me to put them in something that's like a colander's got holes in it.

Right. So you want it in a bowl that doesn't have holes in it.

Um, I mean, if you have like a plate underneath the colander, that's fine.

You can also put it in a bowl that doesn't have holes in it.

It's whatever you have around that's convenient and close by.

All right.

Sounds good. Yeah. Good. Keep them moving. Keep them moving. So that's interesting.

You got to keep them moving. Because I always felt like you need to let things sit and cook and then move.

No, well, like for different kinds of cooking, right?

Like if it's, if this were a piece of meat that you're trying to brown and get the Maillard reaction, then, then you want to do that.

But for this, this, you will want to just keep it moving.

Um, because you, what you want is for all of them to have the same level of doneness and inherently the ones that are touching the pan that are closer to the middle are getting more heat than the ones that are on top.

And so you want to keep them moving constantly. Yep.

Keep them moving. So what did you have for dinner today? Did you make this? Uh, no, I had, um, I rehashed a leftover beef stew into a pasta sauce.

Um, so I, I added a bunch of, I basically fried up a bunch of, uh, ground beef in garlic.

Um, added some herbs and slowly added a bunch of the leftover beef stew that had a bunch of vegetables in them, like a stewed carrots and whatnot.

Um, I had a separate pot boiling with a pasta.

And when the pasta was done to about half of its recommended cooking time, I started throwing it into directly into the sauce.

And that's usually my favorite way to, uh, mix pasta with sauce is cook it for half of its recommended cooking time in saltwater.

And then keep it moving, keep it moving.

Um, and then, uh, and then transfer it to the sauce so that it can thicken the sauce, uh, in its place.

All right, all right.

Are any of them, uh, are they looking wrinkly on the outside yet?

Uh, starting to a little bit. All right, keep it going. I got a couple here. I need to cut the ends off.

I didn't initially. My wife will get on me if I didn't do that.

Yeah, these are starting to wrinkle a little bit.

A little bit. Good, good. So green beans are tricky. Sometimes they're, they're too, too ripe and they can be very thick and then get mealy.

Um, there's a place that we like to get our produce here in Berkeley called Monterey Market.

And that's a great place for fresh produce.

We got everything there. Nice. All right, so now they are starting to get wrinkly.

I see it. All right, good. Uh, you want, you want like, you want like almost all of, you want them to be like 80% wrinkled.

Like you, you want it so that when you're looking at the green beans, there aren't, like almost all of them are, uh, are, have wrinkly skin.

Should they split open or doesn't matter or what?

Doesn't matter. Uh-huh. So I suppose when you're doing this, you have to do things one at a time.

Because if you're constantly stirring this, it's not like you can just let it go.

Nope. Oh yeah.

How wrinkly do they need to be? Um, you can take one of them out and like eat it.

Does it feel cooked on the inside? Mm -hmm. So after the green beans, we take the green beans out and then what's that happen?

And then it's the eggs? Yep. Um, you put the eggs directly into the oil that's already hot.

Uh-huh. And it'll start puffing up. And, uh, and that's when you start like moving things in towards the edge and basically make scrambled eggs.

Um, and, uh, and as soon as the eggs are like not liquid, uh, you dump everything from the rice bowl in.

Ooh. And that ends up being your fried rice. I see. And then you'll have the beans that you just throw on this, on the side.

Mm-hmm. But you're using the same oil for both dishes.

Yep. Um, and after you move all of the fried rice back out to a bowl, uh, you put in a little more oil, um, and you fry up the garlic, about two-thirds of it.

And then you throw all the beans back in with the, with the garlic.

It's like you're frying the garlic at the end. Yeah. Interesting.

Otherwise, like if you cook the garlic alongside the green beans right now, um, they would get all like burnt to charred.

Yeah, absolutely. I would have thought maybe you throw them in with the eggs or with the rice.

But, um, I'm going to try one of these here.

Mm-hmm. And on this, by the way, is my strainer ladle. Nice.

Let's see here. Hmm.

Yeah. All right. Scoop them out. Scoop them into the bowl. Okay. You can turn the heat to low if you want, if you're worried about things, but it should be fine.

I'll just get a little more action shot here.

Yeah, you don't have to be too careful about straining out all the oil because you'll, you'll just throw it back in anyway.

Ah, the beans don't go in the fried rice though, do they? Nope. They are their own dish.

Mm. And so is the meat the last thing that you do?

Yep. And then the meat, you can just serve directly in the wok itself.

Oh, wow. Wow, this is looking good. Almost done here.

I'm breaking a sweat by the oven here. Hey, what's the weather like in Austin?

You guys like? It's super hot here. Yeah. It's some days are 90 something.

Some days are 80 something. You know, 80 somethings are the cooler days. Actually, do you have a small bowl around?

Yeah. Yeah. Like, sure. If you can pour about maybe half of that oil out into the small bowl.

Okay. Let's see here. Or if you want to ladle it or use whatever means, but I would just pour about half of it.

And then we'll use that for the meat. There we go. Excellent. All right. All right, high heat.

High heat. High heat. Have your eggs ready. All right. Have your eggs and your rice bowl ready.

Rice bowl. Yes, rice bowl right there. All right. Have your eggs ready.

Eggs ready. All right. I'll give them one last stir and. Should I just test it with a drop of egg in there?

Yeah. Yep. Needs a little bit more.

A little more heat. Yep. Nice and hot.

All right.

Put it in? Yep. Go for it. All right.

All right. Yeah. So it's just like an egg floating in oil right now. Well, bring in some of the edges because it's going to puff up pretty fast.

Yeah, and just like give it some good elbow grease stirring.

Oh, go ahead and stir it around?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do I flip it or do I? No, just like break it up. It's going to be scrambled eggs in the rice.

Okay. Yeah, be as violent as you want. Okay, that helps.

That's good to know. Yeah. It seems like a lot of oil for this, but I guess it's all going to be.

The egg is going to be, the egg is going to like take up a lot.

The more exposure you give the egg to that. Yeah. Is the egg basically cooked?

All right. I got to do a flip here. Yeah. Okay. All right, dump in all the rice.

The rice bowl with all the stuff in it. Oh, okay. Got it. There it goes.

There you go. Excellent.

Okay.

Yeah, now you can use your dual building spatula. Break up the rice pieces.

You can push the rice down against the edge of the wok to help break it out more.

But yeah, give it a. Okay.

So yeah, some of those big rice chunks you could just like push down with the flat edge of the spatula.

So do you, do you put any thing like soy sauce or fish sauce or anything like that in here?

Sometimes I put soy sauce in there. Yeah. I'm curious.

I'm not suggesting it. I'm just curious. Yeah. Basically it depends on how salty your bacon is.

You always want to recalibrate it depending on how salty your bacon is.

So I, if I were you, I would sample it. See if it, you know, like if you want it a little more salty than add a splash of soy sauce.

Yeah, you want to, you definitely want to keep it moving.

Keep it moving? Yeah, keep it moving.

All right. Move it. Movement is the key here. It sounds like. Yeah. Oh, the thing is like the middle of the wok, the flat part is always, the middle of the wok is always hotter than the edges.

And you can use that very intentionally. For instance, like, you know, one shortcut.

If you were only making a fried rice and that was the entire meal, then you would push everything up against the edges and then pour the egg in the middle.

And then you can, you know, utilize the fact that there's, it's hotter in the middle than in the edges.

But if you want everything to cook at the same time, then you got to keep it moving.

See, okay. Wow. All right. So we are, we have the fried rice cooking here.

We got. Do you want to sample a little taste and tell me about its perceived saltiness for you?

Yeah, let me see here.

I will take.

Try a little.

Yeah, when you have a piece of bacon in it, it's pretty good.

Let me try it with the egg here.

Don't forget to keep it moving. I suppose it could use a little more salt. All right.

Then, uh, then like give it one little splash of soy sauce. Keeping it moving here.

Yeah. And if you see like clumps of rice that are not, that are stuck together, then you want to break them up and, um, with the flat side of the spatula.

Good. That's a, that's a good splash. Mm-hmm.

Wow. Look at this. Okay. Oh, you know what I didn't do though? We haven't made peas.

Are we going to put peas in here or? Oh, do you have them out? Yeah. All right.

Stick them in. Hold on a second here. I like peas for color and they're just kind of fun.

So I'll put in my.

Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Can you tilt the camera down a little so we can see?

Oh yeah. Yeah. There we go. Yeah.

All right. Oh, it's really starting to pop. Oh yeah.

Do you have an oven preheated to keep everything warm? No, I don't. Oh, uh, yeah, just like to heat it to like the lowest temperature that the oven lets you.

All right.

I'll do 200. I also have a, like a warming section in my oven. Oh yeah.

Warming is good. Yeah. You, yeah, put it in the warm. Okay. All right. That looks about done.

I think you should put it in the oven. Put it into, uh, the bowl that you're going to serve it in.

All right. Dump it all out.

And then it's time for, uh, for garlic and green beans. Dump it all in.

All right. Oh yeah.

Okay. All right. Dump all the green beans in there. Dump all the green beans in there?

Yep. And like two thirds of your garlic. Two thirds. Okay. And the heat should be on?

Yep. On high. Dump in your garlic. You said about two thirds? Yep.

Okay. And give it a good stir. All right. I see. Okay. And there's no new oil because there's oil already in the, uh.

Efficiency.

Smell that. Yeah. Smell it too. Great. All right. Now, uh, like about a teaspoon of the five spice powder.

Okay. I know you'd mentioned usually use like a four spice powder.

Yeah. There's four different choices.

It's not like I just use less than whatever I got. No. So roughly.

Okay.

That's about a teaspoon. Yep. Dump it in. Give it a good stir. Interesting.

I smell star anise. I smell, uh, cinnamon or something.

Trying to think, what are the, what are the, what are the flavors in a five spice?

There's some star anise and cinnamon. Those, those are some of them.

Ginger might be. All right. All right. Give it a good stir, um, and bring out that chili crunch stuff that you have and give it like a heaping tablespoon and then give it another good stir.

All right. Um, your screen is frozen for me.

I don't know if it is. Oh, it's frozen for me too. Hold on.

This is how I, I stopped the video and then started up again. How's that?

All right. Yeah. All good. All right. Thanks for letting me know that. All right.

So now. Yep. Excellent. How's, how are the garlic? Are the garlic pieces looking good?

Yeah, they're good. They're good. Okay. Yeah. Dump it all into the serving dish and stick both of them into the, uh, warm oven.

And, uh, and in the interest, huh?

All right. Let me see here. Dump it out. And in the interest of efficiency, immediately put the, the, uh, the small bowl of oil in and put the heat on high.

There we go.

Okay. We're back on. All right. So put those two finished dishes in the warm, in the warmer warmer.

Okay. Here. That way they don't get cold while we make the last dish.

All right. And so we have seven minutes here.

Yeah. Let's see how we do in seven minutes. Yeah. Now we just have, uh, last thing is pretty simple.

It's just the meat. Um, and we're going to use a whole bunch of the chili crunch stuff.

All right. So like put it in now or wait for it to heat up.

Looks pretty hot. All right. Put it in. Okay. All right. Yeah.

There we go. Yeah. And I, you should spread them out so that they all make contact and then, and then give it a chance to sit.

So this is one where you want them to have a chance to. Yeah.

Okay. They are all in a bit of oil and they're all sitting there. All right. I want you to have the chili crunch at the ready.

Ready. All right. And also the garlic.

Ready. Make sure that they are nearby and at hand. All right. Cool. I like here.

All right. And the, and the heat is at the max. Yes, it is. All right. Good.

Good. Good. Looking good. Yeah. Cool. It smells good. Wow. It is a lot of pressure though, to try to get all this done in an hour.

Should I give it a stir?

Yep. Okay.

It's a good time to put the garlic in. Okay. Here we go. Okay.

Yep. Give it a good stir. Hey.

Great. It's very nice. Yep. Okay. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, I, I would say wait just another second.

Um, when the, when the pink bits aren't so pink, uh, then add in like three or four heaping tablespoons of the chili crunch stuff.

What about the grease that's at the bottom?

Is that, is that all that oil? Okay. Yeah, that's fine.

All right. I'm going to make the assumption that the chili crunch behaves very similar to the, uh, sauce that I usually use.

All right. So these are looking, um, outside pink is, uh, pretty much brown.

All right. So go ahead and put some of this in there.

Yeah. All right. Here it goes. Yeah, definitely scoop yours.

Make sure you get a bunch of the stuff at the bottom. Yeah. It's like a chili oil.

Okay. Here we go. Yeah.

Look at that. Okay. Looking good.

Yeah. How long is that cooked for?

Uh, as long as you feel like, actually, as, as long as it's done in the middle.

Um, my backup question is like, depending on how greasy you want it or not, um, do you have like, uh, do you happen to have like fresh spinach at home that's already washed?

I have it. Yes. Oh, okay. Cool. Uh, yeah. Like grab a couple handfuls and throw it in there.

Yeah. Yeah. I hope my wife didn't have plans for this.

I'm going to put in a couple handfuls of spinach.

Yep. And immediately give it a good stir. All right.

Let me show you all what we're looking at here because we are going to be.

Yeah.

Let's add some more chili crunch. And more chili crunch. Yeah. Okay.

All right.

You can turn the heat off. There's enough residual heat in the wok now that.

Yep. And that is your, uh, your finished dish. The finished dish. All right.

All right. Hey, thank you so much. So before we sign off, which is in two minutes, I'm just going to show everybody the different dishes.

All right. We have here.

Let's see. Okay. I'll see that.

There's that one. Okay. Fried rice.

With bacon. With bacon. Green beans. All right. All right. You should sample them while we still have two minutes left.

Time for you to get eating. All right.

Let me try this. All right.

I'm so interested to see what the difference is between these, the five spice and the four spice.

Because I think the five spice, I'm used to tasting this on a chicken.

Then really on bacon. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I just remembered. You probably need a little, uh, salt in that because the four spice powder usually already has salt in it.

Mmm. I see. Okay. Yeah. And then here's the fried rice. Let me try that.

Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, I'll try. I have 30 seconds left. So thank you so much, Jade, for helping me make dinner for the family.

Thank you for, for cooking my type of food.

Great. Can't wait to serve the family. Until next time. All right. 10 seconds.

We're out. We'll see you later. Thanks so much. Have fun eating. Bon appetit.

Ciao. Bye.