What if we could take your grocery list and turn it into something completely new? We’ve given three of our subscribers $100 to spend at their local Kroger family store, and we’ve told them to buy exactly what they would to make breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Each subscriber is paired with a Mythical chef who’s going to use those exact groceries to make a days worth of food. Each round will be judged on a scale of 1 to 10, and the chef with the most points at the end wins $1,000 dollars worth of groceries for their subscriber. Each chef will have 30 minutes maximum on the clock per round, because ultimately we know you have busy lives and we’re actually trying to give you some cooking ideas that you can use at home, because let’s be honest, grocery shopping is tough, and then cooking those groceries that you shop for is tough. It’s easy to fall into the same meals week after week, but sometimes one good dish can turn your entire day around. If you have something to look forward to when you’re going home, like if I have chicken adobo and garlic rice in the fridge that I can just whip up in 10 minutes when I get home, the entire day has been saved. So, that is the challenge. Can we take someone else’s grocery list and use our fresh perspective and expertise as professional chefs to teach them and maybe even you how to make something that is easy, comforting, and delicious? And, of course, all the recipes today are linked down to the description. Comment below and let us know which one is gonna help you win your day back. Hi, Drew, how are you? Hi, Lily. Hey, Josh, great to meet you. Jane, great to meet you. That kitten of yours is adorable, I have to say. Total animal geek here. So, my name is Avery. Just turned 18 a couple months ago. Welcome to the club. Yeah, so I am a father of a 2-year-old, and I’m married. I have been in the restaurant industry for almost 20 years. So, I love reading, horseback riding. I kickbox, like to cook. I do like to cook a lot. I bake with my grandma and I cook with my dad a lot. I tend to like the stuff that I can cook a bunch at once, have it ready to go for lunches the next day. My son loves chopping vegetables with me. I’ll hold his hand on the knife. Yep. And we will cut the vegetables together. He gets frustrated if I won’t let him sit on the counter and help me cut the vegetables. Awe. All right, Jane, I gotta get to cooking, but first, I’m gonna go to the grocery store. I’m guaranteeing victory for you. I’m gonna head to the grocery store and try to win this thing, ’cause I have to beat Josh. Do you have any advice for me to beat Josh and Vi? You out of the entire crew I think have the most technical skills. Yes. Out of all the people. Thank you. You are definitely the best cook on the Mythical… Hey, what the ? No, no, no, I know how to cook. Everyone thinks, “Josh the wacky guy, he’s gonna Panko crust some french toast.” You definitely know how to cook, you know how to cook, but Lily’s knife skills are just a little bit better than yours. No, no, not a little bit, it is well established. We had this conversation, Lily is the best cook in the kitchen, we fully understand that. I’m happy occupying the lovable wild card role. Today’s video is possible thanks to our friends at Kroger. We are here because Kroger’s been fueling Mythical Kitchen from the very beginning. When we first built our kitchen set, the very first family meal we cooked was made with Kroger ingredients. I made chicken tenders with fish sauce caramel, and they were awesome. We’ve always been obsessed with food and finding new ways to get creative with ingredients, which makes us obsessed with grocery shopping too. So when we decided to cook our subscribers’ grocery lists, we knew Kroger was the perfect place to shop. And Kroger makes it easy, because they’ve got great deals on the freshest ingredients. Thanks to their partnership, whichever kitchener makes the best dishes today will win their subscriber a $1,000 Kroger gift card. We are grocery heads, and today we’re gonna prove it. Thanks again to Kroger for sponsoring this episode, and may the best grocery head win. Oh my God. Does anyone ever, like, refuse to make trips from their car to get their groceries? ‘Cause, that’s me. I did that in one trip. I exclusively walk to the grocery store, and I carry up to 100 pounds of groceries. I go four times a week. I eat like Paul Bunyan, this is light work for me. Here’s what I do with my groceries when I get home, one, identify the eggs, because I do run through a lot of eggs, and this is important. Set those aside, because what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna unsheathed it like a sword from its scabbard, and that’s the easiest way to get groceries out on your counter. Let’s see what Drew has in here. There’s a lot. I mean, he’s getting a lot of groceries for 100 bucks, so. This looks really similar to things I would buy. I’m not gonna lie, like I would buy chips and stuff. I’m trying to think of even like breakfast first. This immediately to me is screaming french toast. Like, this is arguably the best french toast bread in the game. Chicken, I’ll probably save for dinner. This though, this is my favorite ingredient that we have right now, this is a parsnip. This is a root vegetable that’s like somewhere between a carrot and a potato and it has a little bit of spice, I love this. This is definitely going in some sort of soup. I think I have an idea, ’cause I keep like a big tub of yogurt in my house. Some sauces, some butter. All right, yeah. I think I know exactly what I’m about to do, I’m excited. I need to brainstorm a little bit, but I think I know what I’m gonna cook. Having time to cook breakfast isn’t gonna happen, so overnight oats are great, leftover pancakes or french toast is great. When I was in high school, we always had like, breakfast, like, wraps or burritos, and so I kind of took inspiration from those. Blend up cottage cheese into eggs, and gets him a little extra protein and dairy in his little eggs. Yeah. And I’ll do egg whites, and I have these little mini silicone cupcake molds. Yep. And we get little egg bites out of it. Everybody in the kitchen knows that breakfast is my absolute favorite thing, but I’m gonna make it really easy on myself today. So, I decided I’m gonna make some banana oat yogurt pancakes. It’s breakfast time, so I’m going to make, out of these ingredients, shakshuka chilaquiles, and I’m saying it like this because it’s a stretch to call it that, but I think it’s gonna be good. I’m making something a little crazy, we’re doing banana walnut churro French toast, ’cause here’s the thing, Jane already knows how to make normal-ass french toast. She can do that on her own. Jane also knows how to make some fried eggs on pieces of toast. I wanna take these ingredients and transform them into something a little bit different. I’m gonna be very honest with you guys, this is my first time ever doing this. But, I’ve seen Josh put a thousand things in the blender every single morning the last five years. Yeah! And I trust him. The funny thing is, these are all things I have in my house. Like, granola, good blueberries that are probably unwashed, some old bananas, good butter, and then what kind of? Non-fat yogurt? Avery, you know what you’re doing. So, I have oil right here. I’m gonna drop these in, just layer by layer. Okay, these are gonna be some big chips. Okay, I’m gonna fry these off. I don’t wanna overcrowd the pan. I think that’s good, honestly. Normally I’d say buy cinnamon and sugar separately and mix ’em yourself, but also, this is such an easy, convenient thing. It don’t cost very much, so we’re gonna add a little bit of cinnamon sugar. Whisk that up. Custard is whisked, I’m gonna get some butter heating in this pan. I want the butter heating on low. Oh, this is, you know the butter’s good quality when it’s nice and yellow. Get a fair amount of butter in there, then we’re gonna make like a kind of banana caramel sauce to go in there. We’re gonna get the bread soaking. Since this bread is fresh and not stale, it’s gonna disintegrate pretty quickly, so we’re gonna take that and I’m gonna toss that into some Panko breadcrumbs that I should probably bring over here where you can see it. Listen, I’ve had like corn flake-crusted french toast before, why not Panko-crusted french toast? Look at that, dude, that’s gonna be red. All right, I’m gonna add this yogurt. What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? Protein powder. That’s not on the grocery list. You don’t want protein powder? No, what do I need that for? Protein. Get away, no. No. Trying to be healthy. Eat it from the scoop. You don’t have to use pinto beans for refried beans, you can use any type of bean, so I’m gonna add both of them in here. I think it’ll add a nice color, and this will be just like a nice side to the shakshuka chilaquiles. I love, I love bananas. I buy them, I buy just like 12 bananas a week. Again, I told somebody that I probably eat 500 apples a year and they thought that I was exaggerating, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration. Who here saw me eat an apple today? Mindy did. Guys, we have like 16 more hours left in the day, I could eat another 8 apples. What about this morning in the bathroom? No, Colby, you tell ’em. I walked in the bathroom, and then Josh is in there, and he says, “I just dropped my apple on the floor.” Bathroom floor. “Yeah, in my cargo pants.” Yeah. And sure enough, it was, and I don’t know what happened to it. Yeah, so I ate that apple. So, I dropped my apple on the bathroom floor, but I washed it. What I’m doing now is I’m gonna take that butter, I’m gonna add some syrup to it. This might seem decadent, and that’s ’cause it is, baby. Gonna add a little bit of half and half. And this, you know, this is just a fun little way transform the thing that you would normally make if you’re just doing like, you know, maple syrup every single day, get a little sick of it. It’s gonna cook down, it’s gonna thicken up a little bit. I’m gonna make my sauce now, so I don’t have any sort of like salsa, no chiles or anything like that. Oh, I said that really authentically. So, I’m just gonna cut up some onion. I had a lot of onions, so I might use actually all of this. I’ll turn on my stove. I have some jarlic. I’m not, we have a lot of jarlic in the mythical kitchen, I can’t get on board with it. I know it’s an easy ingredient, and it’s its own ingredient. It’s not… You can’t compare it to garlic, but we’re gonna see, we’re gonna see if I can like it today. Okay, last time I made the blender explode. I’m not gonna do that ever again, guys, I promise. There we go. Nice. Yeah, that’s what I’m looking for. Okay, my pans hot. Add a little oil here. Just saute some of the onion. Add some of this jarlic. Then we have some tomato sauce, I’m gonna add all of it. Why not? And then this should simmer for a little bit. Now we’re gonna toss some bananas in there. Hell yeah, dude. Oh, hell yeah, dude. Hell yeah, dude, it’s gonna be so good. Damn. Just throw the walnut pieces in there. I love, East coasters out there, wet walnuts. We don’t know about those on the West coast. We got any East coasters here that know about wet walnuts? Hell yeah. Hell yeah? We got a hell yeah for wet walnuts? Who said that? Gonna like, fully smother it in shakshuka, you would usually have like a nice crusty bread to dip it into, but, I mean, this is my fusion dish, so I think that looks good. I’m gonna add cheese, ’cause why not? And then eggs, staple ingredient in any household, no matter, like, literally all over the world, so, it’s a great way to get protein in throughout the day. Why did you grab the eggs from the opposite ends of the? ‘Cause I’m not very thoughtful of what I’m doing. Okay, so while my pancake is cooking, I’m gonna add some sugar to a pot. Nice little equal part situation, maybe a little bit more sugar. And I’m gonna kind of just whisk that in to vibe it out. But I’m gonna add some brown sugar, it just give it some nice color. It matches my vibe better. It matches my hair, my shirt. So, I have more time than I thought. I’m gonna do some dinner prep. I have this whole chicken. I love a whole chicken, I love making like a chicken soup. I am gonna break this down and use the bones for stock, and then I’m going to use the chicken to make like a peanutty chicken dish over rice for dinner. Just go down here. I think, similar to Drew, I’m excited to teach my kids how to cook. Oh, yeah! Josh? What’s up? You know how your knife skills aren’t as good? Yeah, I’ve been told. I can show you. Come here. I can’t be a thinly veiled metaphor for your future children, I’ve said that before. Do the other breast. Okay, so what I… Okay, yeah. What’s going on? Okay, so you- You have to sit on the counter. I don’t want to do that. I don’t wanna do that. Sit on the counter. Can I call you mom? It might do some healing for me too. As long as you don’t put a “my” at the end. Okay. Did I do it right, m-m-m-mom? Very good, son. Okay, I am gonna attempt my first flip. All right, ready? One, two, three, go. Ah, there we go. That’s a nice looking little protein pancake. Churro equals crispy thing plus cinnamon sugar, that’s what society’s kind of agreed on. All right, check this out. Bang. Bang. Bang. Cut this in little triangles. Did you know that Earth is not a sphere, but rather a pear-shaped oblate spheroid? So, I’m gonna add some yogurt to this. Yogurt’s such a good source of protein as well. I’m gonna add some jarlic. We have a lot of jarlic in the Mythical Kitchen. I can’t get on board with it. I’m going to get this like, banana walnut caramel sauce all of it. Dude, if I don’t win breakfast, I know this isn’t like, supposed to be the most competitive thing, you know what I mean? But like, we’re playing for a thousand dollars, I wanna win this, and I think I got, I think I got what it takes. Here we have our Panko-crusted churro french toast with banana walnut caramel sauce. Hot damn, I wanna eat that. Look at all these breakfasts. Yum! Yum! Yum! This does look really good, actually. So, this is the way it’s gonna work, we’re all gonna give each other a score out of 10, and then the winner is the person with the most points at the end. You are not going to score your own dish. You want to judge them accurately, because we’re sitting next to you, so you tank my dish, I’m tanking yours, we don’t want that. We’re playing for realsies here. Okay. Okay. I think we should start with savory, I think we should go in on Lily’s. With a spoon too? Okay, wait, can I just do a tableside bean? I just wanna put it on top. I’m just gonna do- Tableside bean? Are you doing that to obscure the fact that your egg yolks are overcooked? Why are you telling them? No they’re not! Ooh, he snitched. No they’re not! Put the beans on top of the egg yolks! Ooh, he’s stealing. Drew, I’m not letting you down! Don’t look into it. What do I do? The eggs there. No! That’s how you eat! Stop going at it. Fine, I just avoid the yolk. Okay, avoid the yolk. Lily, this looks wonderful, thank you for making me breakfast, Lily, I appreciate you. So sloppy. Have you ever used like a flour tortilla for a chilaquiles before? No. No, I mean, I usually just get like, chips that are made. Yeah. I got some yolk. Mm! Mm. 10 out of 10. You’re not supposed to rate yours, Lily. I will say, the fried tortilla is kind of almost giving a pasta texture, because it is wheat flour. Yeah. What I was going for. I’m gonna have to give it a six. Damn! Okay. A solid seven. Thanks, Vi. Okay. A solid seven, Lily. I appreciate that, I’ll take it. If the eggs were runny, I would’ve gave it a eight. No one- But, but the beans and the, I like the texture of the tortilla, so that makes up for it, so I’ll give you a seven, Lily. I’ve never had a texture like this tortilla before, it’s crazy. Here’s my Panko-crusted churro French toast with banana walnut salted caramel. Yum, this looks good. Yeah, okay. Damn it, Josh. This is my first time having Panko on French toast. and that crunchiness is lovely. Yeah, I like it a lot. Yeah, man. Hey, I don’t wanna lose. What do you give it out of 10? A nine. Nine. I’ll take it. You did good. That sauce helped a lot. I’ll take it. These are my healthy pancakes. Okay, so this is like yogurt, banana, egg. Oats. Oats. No, the granola, yeah. Granola. And blueberries. And then I put extra on top just for fun. You really can pancake anything. Wow. Is it weird? No, it’s good. I surprised my damn self. The flavors are nice. There is a textural issue. They’re so rubbery. If not for a couple nuts and bolts on the Titanic, it would’ve been a nice cruise trip, but. That’s a terrible comparison. I don’t know, man. I’m gonna give it a six. Yeah. I’m gonna give it a five. Okay, I’ll die, whatever. One of the things I’ve been doing recently is I will blend up sweet potatoes and carrots into the milk that I’ll put into his mac and cheese, and it makes it like the neon orange. That’s so smart. And, he loves it. So, I just kept it simple with some mac and cheese and chicken and a salad. Easy lunch would be taking that orzo, celery, the carrots, the onions, throw that in with some chicken, and you’ve got kind of a quick chicken stew. Nothing that I’m about to do makes sense, but I wanna tell you how I got here. So, what I did, right, is I made the breakfast and I knew what I wanted to make, and then I looked at all the ingredients and I saw something I really wanted to make for dinner, and then here’s what I had left over, and now I have to make this. The potatoes, I feel like, were obviously, Jane talked about, you know, making kind of soups and stews, stuff that she can reheat. We’ll get to that for dinner, but I didn’t want to put these in my dinner stew, ’cause it didn’t really fit the vibe. So, she seemed to really set me up to make some sort of delightful pizza, ’cause we got this pre-made pizza crust. It’s fun, it’s better than just buying the stuff that’s like, fully already cooked. I’m not gonna make pizza. I’m gonna make a calzone, and I’m gonna put potatoes in it. I’m gonna put canned mushrooms in it, and the celery, which is maybe my least favorite product in the entire world, that’s also gonna go in it, and it’s gonna kind of taste like Thanksgiving. Check this out, we’re gonna go ahead. What am I calling, like cheesy mushroom and potato calzone? That sounds… right. Mommy’s busy. She’s back at it again for lunch, so I’m going to make a meatball soup and a apple cheddar grilled cheese. I’m gonna start with this 80/20 ground beef. I love ground beef, I feel like it’s super versatile. I’m going to add an onion. Usually for like meatballs I would saute the onion a little bit, but because it’s going into a soup and it has time to cook all the way through, I’m just going straight in. I can’t wait to have kids, honestly. if I have picky eaters, I don’t know, I’m giving them up for adoption. Just like I was. All right, I’m making lunch. I’m making a fajita mac and cheese burger with chips and salsa on the side. Do chips and salsa match with a burger? You know, it’s like eating a torta with chips and beans. It makes sense, right? We’re gonna start with the mac and cheese, we have the mac and cheese box from earlier. I love box mac and cheese. It’s super easy to make, super simple. There’s something funny about the noodle shape. It’s not an elbow. I don’t know what that’s called, really. Josh, do you know what that, I feel like you know everything. No, the Italian- What shape is this? I actually don’t know. I was laughing, ’cause I was thinking about that. It’s like, cut up bucatini. Oh. Okay, yeah, that’s a good one. But in Italian, elbows are called . Mm, mm, mm-hmm, mm. I’m gonna agree like I know what you’re talking about, but I don’t. All right, we’re gonna chop up this onion, get that sauteing in some butter with some celery. There’s gonna be some cheese in there, and then boom, poultry seasoning. When I was a kid, I thought that if you bought something called poultry seasoning, if it didn’t go on poultry, I thought something like terrible would happen. And turns out, it’s mostly just herbs and spices, and you can put them in whatever you want. So, resealable package, that’s cool. The resealable package has never worked, man, I don’t know how to explain it. Just make one clean cut down the pipeline. Shoot. Two clean cuts down the pipeline. Onions, celery, that’s sauteing. Poultry seasoning, this is just, this is a lot finer ground. Add that in there. It’s really just like marjoram, thyme, black pepper, a little bit of garlic. Gold potatoes are my favorite, a little Yukon Gold action. So taking the potatoes with the aromatics, you know, adding that to the pizza crust, that’s way too big. I think this is kind of a fun way to change it up. Make sure none of your potatoes are the same size, that way they won’t cook evenly. All right, so you’re not really gonna get a cook on the potatoes by adding ’em to the pan right now, but what you are gonna do is you’re gonna keep cooking those aromatics, and that’s enough. I’m going to add some jarlic. I talked, you know, not very great about this, but I keep adding it to everything, so. I can’t get on board with it. Okay, cottage cheese, also a really good source of protein. I love cottage cheese. So, instead of adding like a parm or something like that, I think this will be good. If you’ve been watching the Mythical Kitchen for a while, you know that we’re very into panade. So, I’m not skipping this step. We’re making a tender meatball. I’m going to just take this slice of bread and I’m gonna mash it. I don’t have milk, so I’m just gonna add some water. Taking the canned mushrooms, draining some of the mushroom liquid. I’ll take that as a shot later. Get a little bit of browning on it, really get to know each other in there. And then to actually make sure the potatoes get cooked through, hold on, check this out. Big fan of running stuff under the sink. You ever see rich people that have a sink above their, above their stove? Dude, that’s the level of “MTV Cribs” that I’ve aspired to. So, fajitas, right? What is a fajita? It is just, it’s just a fajita. It’s a fajita. Fajita means belt in Spanish. I was gonna get there, Josh, I knew that. Sorry. I actually knew this one. Sorry, you asked me about stuff, and I keep yelling. I actually knew that. Onions and bell pepper is great to keep in your house. I personally add it to everything, my breakfast burritos, like, I put it on sandwiches. Onions also is just like, why wouldn’t you have onions, right? I’m gonna start sauteing my bell peppers first, ’cause I like to throw my onions in there real last minute. We’ve got some nice sourdough bread here. We have some of the shredded cheese that we had from breakfast already ready to go, and then apple. Drew talked about sneaking in vegetables into some of his dishes that he makes for his toddler. I’m gonna put apples in there, which I don’t know if it’s like sneaking it, ’cause you’re definitely gonna know that it’s in there. But, what kid doesn’t like apples? I think the key is putting cheese on both sides so it really sticks to the bread. It’s a crust. I’ve never used this particular product, so we’re about to find out what it is. It seems to be a square. It seems to be a sort of proto Detroit-style pizza in there, which is a great, Detroit, great city. There’s a great podcast about the Detroit house music scene, and how it affected the techno music of East Berlin after the wall fell. How do I open this? It’s called “Tanz Tanz Revolution,” if you wanna listen to it. It’s one of my favorite podcast episodes of all time. You guys know about that, right? Like, all house music is invented in like Detroit and Chicago in like the 80s, house parties. Now and then a, and then- Oi, what the fff- What the hell happened, dude? All right, we got our log of pizza dough. This is cool. I guess the pizza just sort of goes on top of it. That’s something. I’m gonna just get a little browning on the meatballs, and because I don’t have time to form all of them, I’m using a little scooper to just drop it in, and it doesn’t have to be perfect. Ball drop soup. Oh no! My panade! It’s too late! You know what? I’m using the rest of this, half of it is gonna have the panade. I’m a tired mom. You know that we’re very into panades, so, I’m not skipping this step. I used to have, okay wait, quick story time. So, check this out. In college, I had a lot of wrist issues from throwing shot put and trying to strengthen my wrist. I filled a Home Depot bucket filled with rice. You kind of dig through the rice, and it strengthens your wrist and your hand meat like that. But then when I had no food in the house, this open bucket of rice that I had dug through with the shot put rusted hands for probably eight months, I would just take a half cup of that rice and put it in a pan and eat it. Yeah, a lot of people were pretty disgusted by that, not me. I’m gonna make some egg wash. Do you need to make egg wash? Absolutely not. I think it makes calzones look so pretty, and like, treat yourself to a garnish at home. You know? Buy some chives, make it classy. A little bit of half and half. There we go. Nice little egg wash, potatoes are creaming up nice. So, I have some breaded chicken that was frozen. I’ve seen it in the pile, and I was like, “Hmm, what can I do with this?” But we’re gonna add that to our fajita mix. Okay, ooh yeah. Chicken tendies. That was hotter than I expected. The veggies are good to go. I’m gonna add ’em to the mac and cheese. We’re just adding everything to the mac and cheese. Oh, this is gonna be good. I’m gonna let that vibe while I make my burg. I’m gonna add this to my soup pot. Some of them are super tender from the panade, and some are not. So, I just have onion, garlic, and then these. I kind of like that they’re not like perfectly circular. Also, that browning I think is a really important step, ’cause it adds just a little more depth of flavor than just like, adding it in raw. I’m gonna add the chicken stock that I made. Ooh, it’s hot. Yeah. This was the salad kit from earlier. It said “burger salad kit,” so in my brain, it says, “Put it on a burger, don’t eat it as a salad.” I’m gonna put the patty on top of it. I gotta make sure I get a little bit of everything when I put the mac and cheese on top, so we gotta make sure we get chicken in there, peppers, to protein burger. This is so silly. And then you grab your chips, and we’re just gonna throw ’em on the plate ’cause they’re bigger than my sandwich. And then add some nice salsa, and voila, you have your lunch. Fajita mac and cheeseburger. I cook a soup probably every other week, and then I will freeze it in like quart containers, and it’ll be good if you just want like a lazy dinner and don’t want to cook. Okay, this can go in the pot. And then, I’m gonna add the broccoli a little bit later, as well as the spinach. And then we have some penne pasta that I’ll add later so I don’t overcook it, but I want all of this to kind of simmer together. So, we got the sort of tube-shaped calzones down here. I’m gonna take some of this filling, you can see delicious and cheesy and mushroomy and potatoey and vegetabley. You got protein in the cheese. There’s actually a lot of protein in bread. You know, you can eat a vegetarian meal and still be fine, and then you can also like make that up for dinner. So, what I would do here, what do you mean what I would do? What you are, you are you, man! You gotta do it! Who else but you? All right. What I would do here if I were me, something like that. I’ve never per se done this before, and then I would just merely roll that over. Kinda looks like a sand worm from “Dune.” But, this is I guess all odds what I did want. And then now, if I were me, and if I had, if I had freedom of will and choice, I would egg wash it. This is gonna make it look pretty. Then, check this one out, I’d grab a knife in the knife wall. Hey? That’s it, that’s going to the oven at 425 degrees. I got your cheesy mushroom calzone. I don’t know, man, I’m gonna make this other one. We’re gonna win this back at dinner. Look at us ladies who lunch. Where are we- Ladies luncheon. Where are we starting? Let’s go yours. Yeah, I’m interested. So, this is the creamy potato and mushroom calzone. Please dip it in the sauce. Is there meat in it at all? No, no meat. The only meat that I had in my basket was the chicken thigh. Mm. Okay. Does it taste like thanksgiving? Tastes like somethin’. It tastes like what you described it. Yeah, like literally what you described. There’s celery in there, because I didn’t know where to put the celery, I didn’t want it in my dinner. Ah. I took all the leftovers that I didn’t want to use in my dinner and put ’em into a calzone. I think I would’ve liked it more if it either had one, a protein in it, like a different one, or if the potatoes were like, creamier. It’s a good idea. Hey. Hey. Okay, I’m gonna give it a solid, a solid six. Damn. I’m gonna give it a… six as well, yeah. She almost did five. Yeah, I did. Shoot. I wanna try Lily’s, I’ve been staring at that soup. It’s my meat, it’s not meatball, it’s like meat drop soup. It reminds me of . Don’t look at the shape. It needs a better PR campaign. Meat drop soup. Meat drop soup. And some of the meatballs have a panade, and some of them don’t, which is really, so you get to find out, you know, as you eat it. Okay. I like this meat drop. Dude, the meat drop’s good. And like, the broth, this chicken stock, was this made from scratch, or this started with box stock? Yeah, this is good. The whole chicken. The whole chicken. Dude, that’s- That’s really nice, Lily. Like, you taste all the veggies too. That’s good, man. Here you go. Damn. And I was in a hurry, ’cause I had to get them to school, you know? Yeah. I’ll give you a nine. I don’t know if I’m feeling like really generous, or just feeling emotional because of your children, but like, I’m giving this a 10. Yeah! Thank you! This is, it’s really awesome, it’s really inventive. It uses, like, every part of the chicken that you got. It’s just like, it’s so homey and comforting. Dude, this is awesome. Yeah. I’m obsessed. Thank you. Be less impressed by mine now. This is my college K lunch. Oh, damn, cheese. Here, I’ll split this one with you, Lily. This is a college burger. Just kidding, you might have to bite it. This something that would put at a, serve at a pub. You know what the first thing I taste is? Is the green bell pepper. Which sells the like fajita of it all. This would be a really fun late night food. This is really fun, and also Avery’s, what? Like, 18? 18, mm-hmm. And so like, yeah, this is awesome, dude. It makes sense. She’s growing, she needs the protein. Growing girl. Yeah. I’m giving it eight. Hell yeah. I give it a seven. I’ll take it. And then dinner, I use the same ingredients. It’s either, it’s usually a chicken, sometimes I’ll roast a whole chicken if I’m feeling like I got time that day. Yeah, you do anything with the chicken thigh. You can roast it, you can bread it in a pan and put it with pasta or potatoes or whatever, or you can take some of those same ingredients and then do like a, you know, Thai chili sauce or a hoisin. Jane, you should be hosting the show. I’ll fly, what do you do for work? I’ll do your job, you come here. I do have a recipe for dinner that my dad made. It’s a, like a crunchy taco hamburger helper. He printed it out for me. And he put in a little sleeve, I love that. My dad’s actually in the kitchen over there, so he’s- Oh, hi dad! Dad, Vi says hi. Hi! He says hi back. I told you that there was something I really wanted to make for dinner, but now it seems weird, because we are indeed making cran-apple braised chicken. That’s right, cranberry. Cran coming from nothing, it’s actually called a cranberry phoneme because no one knows where cran came from. That’s a fun fact, look up cranberry phoneme. But, yeah, apple coming from apple, ’cause we’re braising some chicken with cranberries and apples. I’ve been making something like this a lot at home. We’re gonna start this pan heating a little bit. I love braised dried fruit with meat. You actually, this is kind of crazy, but doing a lot of historical recipes here, you see that so much in like the middle ages, and frankly, a lot of it coming from North African cuisine, which they sort of did influence each other in a lot of ways. I love that Jane had the cooking sherry in there, that’s gonna be really fun. That’s gonna go so well with the fruit. We’re actually gonna like really burn and caramelize these apples and onions. It’s gonna be sick, you’ll see. So, chicken thighs, when you get ’em, what I like to do is sort of unfurl them, ’cause you’ll get this kind of extra layer of skin here. Also, a lot of feathers on this chicken thigh, that’s super normal. I’m just gonna go ahead circumcise that a little bit. And then what I do, circumcised just means to cut in a circle, it’s not weird. Learned Latin. Anyway, so what I’m gonna do now, these are kind of thicker at one end than the other, so what I like to do is put my palm in the middle of it. You’re gonna wash your hands after this, you can bear hands some chicken, then you just go, breathe in, in. Good. And then you kind of flatten your chicken thigh, and then you get some extra surface area on that. You see the difference? Come on, we’re learnin’ how to cook here folks. So, because I’m pregnant, I’ve been craving a lot of peanut butter, and I’m gonna make a- What? Why can’t I be? No one’s gonna believe you if you’re actually pregnant now. I downloaded this AI baby app and put our faces together to see what our babies would look like, and I’m telling you this because we are expecting- Expecting. To have a really good time. To have a good time. Put it down, babe! I’m adding oil to the pan, and I’m gonna make my peanut chicken. This chicken has been marinating all day when the kids were at school. I did it in the morning, so, it’s great. I’m gonna go skin side down on these. Oh yeah, nice little sizzle. And I just wanna get, it’s a lot of sizzle, I just wanna get like a little browning on each side. I’m going to make a buffalo chicken roulade with alfredo rice and some creamy pasta. This is gonna be the most random combination, but it’s inspired by girl dinner. But we’re gonna start with the roulade, and normally a lot of people kind of stuff it with spinach, cheese, some prosciutto. I didn’t have all that in my bag, so, we’re gonna make it work, and I’m just gonna put a crap ton of cheese in this chicken with some grilled onions. We have this pounded-out chicken. I’m gonna take my chicken out and just kind of prep it for when I’m gonna stuff it. All right. Move that out the way. We’re gonna grab our mozzarella cheese. That’s what big teeth are for, opening cheese bags. We get a little oil in the pan, I know you guys said you could go dry. You also don’t want your pan very hot, and I did let it get quite hot, so that’s a bummer. The chicken will cool it down. You want a little bit of sizzle. All this helps if you sort of hold the chicken down. If you have a, like a steak weight, that helps you get a nice sear, but we are braising this, so we’re not trying to get crispy chicken thighs, ’cause ultimately, we are gonna be like cooking this in a sort of sauce. Okay, so now what I’m gonna start doing is building the sort of base elements of this. So, a lot of cuisines start with something like a mirepoix or a sofrito or a trinity, or whatever. I’ve seen a lot of Middle Eastern dishes that actually really inspired me, even thinking about like koshari from Egypt that start with like hella burnt onions. Makes it so delicious, so I’m actually gonna caramelize apples with the onions, and that’s gonna be like, the base of this flavor. I think it’s gonna be awesome. I’m gonna make a little side veggie dish. I make this in the kitchen a lot, because we use a lot of green cabbage, but we only have to use like a little bit of it. So, I ended up braising it, and that’s what I’m gonna do today. So, just cut this in half, in quarters. And then, just take out the core right here. And I don’t use a lot of ingredients. And then my carrot, I’m just adding a little shredded carrot on top for some garnish, as well as some cilantro later. Earlier, after I cooked lunch, I put the rice on for dinner, so that the rice is in the keep warm and ready to go. I totally forgot about the orzo. I totally forgot we’re making a side dish, and now it’s the part of the episode where I do that. So, orzo, we’re not gonna reinvent the wheel here, but what I am doing is making a little bit of what I’m gonna call orzotto, which is where I’m just gonna cook the orzo slowly in broth as opposed to kind of boiling and straining it, ’cause orzo is technically a type of pasta, but we’re just going bone broth in there. Dump an indiscriminate amount of orzo in, and then as that cooks, we’re just gonna stir it with this guy. Keep going until all the liquid’s done. If it’s still undercooked, just add some more liquid. That’s gonna be running. Chicken, nice and browned. Look at that. Plastic wrap. I keep plastic wrap at home, I really hope you do too. It’s actually the most, like the best thing you can have in your crib. Put my guy over here. I’m gonna add my nice onions. Hopefully it doesn’t melt my cheese too much. All right, you’re gonna kind of like, turn over your chicken, and then just keep going. I might have overstuffed it just a little bit, and tuck it. Roll and tuck. Basically making like a nice chicken log. Tuck this in so it’s just like a nice meat log, and we’re just gonna do one of these. Oh no! Oh no! Oh no! Sorry, I’m gonna go ahead and pull these chicken thighs. They’re nice and brown, got some good browning in the bottom. Browning equals flavor. That’s rad, I feel like I’m at home, like, this is kind of what I’m doing every night. Now I’m gonna take all this stuff, the onions and the apples, screaming hot pan with the chicken fat. It’s gonna absorb the chicken fat, then what’s gonna happen, check this out, I’m gonna salt it, and then when I salt it, it’s actually gonna draw the apple juice outta the apples, and then that juice is going to caramelize into the onions. I’m gonna chop up my parsnips and my carrots because those are gonna go in there along with the dried cranberries. Meat fruit is what’s for dinner. I am putting more jarlic in, even though this is like the only thing I hated on. We should just finish the jar. Honestly, I’m just gonna finish it. I can’t get on board with it. I’m gonna add some jarlic. I’m going to add some jarlic. I’m going back in for that jarlic again. I’ll just add some of the jarlic juice. Peanut butter is going in. I don’t wanna go too crazy with it. Just a scoop. Mm. Pregnancy craving, I’m telling you. Okay, we had a oopsy-poopsy. Yeah, that was pretty bad, but, we fixed it and we got a nice one. If you can’t see it, it’s like this. I also toothpick it so it can stay together. Most people kind of keep it in the plastic and they poach it, or they freeze it and then they fry it after. There’s different ways to do it, but I’m just doing it the super quick and easy way. And I have some flour here, some egg. And then we had a bag of lime-hinted tortilla chips that I basically crushed up, put it in this tray, and we are gonna to use that instead of breadcrumbs. And I’m gonna put it on this, ’cause I’m scared I’m gonna splash myself, and then I’ll kind of just roll it in there. And we’re gonna just let that chill in there and fry up until we get like a nice golden brown color, and then we can take it out and pop it in the oven. All right, if you look at this orzo, it’s getting nice and creamy. Shut off the heat. Top that with the lid that was totally meant for that pan. If you can see the onions and apples, they’re getting some nice burn on ’em, I wanna take it even farther though. First, create a well. Taking the pizza sauce. Mostly I would use tomato paste in this, but the only, the main ingredients in this are tomato puree, diced tomatoes, olive oil, salt, onion. Those are all things that I want in this braise, so why not take some pizza sauce, drop that in the middle. I’m gonna kind of effectively cook this until it would be tomato paste. Give that a nice stir in there. Let that kind of dehydrate what you’re doing now before you deglaze everything is you’re just like building layers of flavor. I’ll take my dried cranberries, sprinkle those in there. It’s just gonna give you a nice pop of acid. Listen, it’s gonna be sweet, it’s gonna be funky. I’m Jewish, I grew up on brisket braised with prunes, and it’s really delightful. Perfect, and this is gonna absorb all of the savoriness from the chicken. This chicken is raw in the middle, so a lot of the liquid is going to evaporate in the oven, so I wanna make sure that I have quite a bit of sauce in here. So, yeah, I’m gonna add, oh, my mouth is like sticking from the peanut butter, a little bit of the chicken stock that I made during breakfast, it’s really coming in handy, just to loosen it up even more. Okay, this is gonna come to a simmer. I’m going to add the chicken back in and then just pop it in the oven. Oh my goodness, I’m cooking. Drew, I’m cooking. So we have some Minute Rice here, and I’m about to do something so ignorant, but I’m basically gonna add just this alfredo sauce onto my rice directly. Not too much, not too crazy, and then just mix it up so it just becomes like this nice creamy, salty rice. Deglaze, you can use water, you can use some sort of alcohol. Deglazing is just scraping up all those little flavorful bits in the bottom of the pan. You got some cooking sherry, which is really fun. I would advocate just buying normal sherry, and it’s not even any more expensive than cooking sherry. Gotta try it though. Definitely just buy a normal bottle of sherry. Still gonna add some nice acid complexity. Boom. And you wanna let the alcohol sort of cook outta this. There we go, and we wanna get a nice dark color here. Look at that. See that? That’s just a flavor paste right there. Gonna add in all the root veg. Bang bang. And then, they have multiple sides, so I wanna make sure I char on all sides. We’re just gonna put three in here, because that’s what fits. At home, I just like usually overcrowd the pan and not care, but this is a cooking show. Okay, I have a little bit more chicken stock, so I’m gonna use this to finish off my cabbage, and then I’ll flip these. See the little browning? Kind of nice. Kinda nice. All right, so we cooked off this pasta, we drained it, we oiled it so it won’t stick together, and then we popped it in the fridge so it can get nice and cold. And we’re just gonna make a little, a little quick… pasta salad. This is my favorite easy way to make pasta salad is just use mayo and sour cream. Most of the time, I would actually add mustard to it as well. I have the green pepper from earlier that I was cutting up. I’m gonna add some of that. Add some onions. Then like a little splash of vinegar, just like a little splash. Boop. Oh, crap! That’s fine. We have one more thing, we got some oats here. Typically thought of as a breakfast food, but I’m gonna show you a little trick here. We got this cooking for a sec. Take these oats, I’m gonna grab a plastic bag. Don’t look at my bum! Don’t you dare, I can sense it when you do. So, I want a way to thicken this stew, and as opposed to just using a flour roux or cornstarch, what you can do is make a little oat flower by yourself. Do I actually advocate that you do this? Not really, I just thought it was fun. You can also throw whole oats in there, but what I’m gonna do, all right. I find one of them hammers. Guys, where’s those hammers that we got? Hell yeah. Check it out, you can take a hammer. Don’t do this at home. I mean, do this at home, it’s a cool little thing. But you bash the oats until you turn it into oat flour, and then you can use that to thicken your stew. But, see, now you got fine ground oat flour. Did you find that to be a helpful tip? Comment below. Oh, this is stupid. Now we’re just gonna sprinkle this. Yep. You don’t know if the things that you’re doing are like, crazy until sort of you’re confronted with them with other people, and I’m just gonna nestle it in there. Lemme scrape the oats off the chicken. Guys, I guaranteed victory earlier, and I stand by it. Welcome back to our cooking show, 50 shades of chicken and rice. And brown! And a lot of brown. It all comes down to this, it comes down to dinner. Whoever has the highest point total after this wins $1,000 dollars for their subscriber. Vi, I wanna try yours first, ’cause that fried chicken, what’s going on here? It’s a roulade? It’s a roulade. It’s like a bootleg. That’s crazy, dude. Remind me what’s in creamy pasta salad? It’s mayo, sour cream, some green onions, a little eyelash. I like the buffalo. And then coating’s tortilla chip? Yes it is. Oh. I will say, it feels a little bit disjointed as a dish. I’m gonna give this a solid seven. I’m gonna give this a seven too. Okay. This is still boiling hot, let’s try yours. All right, mine’s a two-parter. You have a peanut chicken, jasmine rice, carrots on top, a little veg. Crap, crabbage. Crabbage. What some crabbage? And how much real crab is in this crabbage, or is it imitation crabbage? It’s imitation, we don’t have the budget for real. Whole roasted crabbage is like, one of my favorite things to eat. Is there any sort of dressing on this, or just a whole roast? I put a little vin, I put a little salt, I put a little pepper. What are the ingredients in the peanut sauce? Peanut butter. And? A little bit of vinegar, little bit of sugar, jarlic. Jarlic. I can’t get on board with it. I almost feel like it’s missing like, a sweetness to it. Like, I like the peanut butter, but it’s not, like, I want it more. It’s just not giving me enough like seasoning, enough acid, enough brightness. All right, all right, all right. It really tastes, no, it’s like a really good idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m gonna make, I am giving you honest feedback! Okay, don’t have any more. Let’s go to yours. I’m giving it a seven, because it’s a good, it’s like a well-cooked dish with what you had. But, no part of me wants to take another bite. Okay. I’ll give it a six. I’m sorry. Not as brutally as he said it, but I do feel similar. Even with my cabbage? It needs peanut butter. It needs peanut butter, right? The cabbage needs peanut butter. It needs peanut butter. You all suck. The cabbage needs- What is this, Josh? We have or… We have orzo cooked in bone broth kind of risotto style, and then we have quick braised chicken thighs with parsnips, carrots, cranberry, dried cranberries, apples, and onion, so it should be kinda like sweet and savory. This tastes like Thanksgiving. This tastes like Thanksgiving? Well yeah, there’s the cranberries in there. I like it more than I wanted to. This is like exactly how I wanted this to turn out. And also, this is the closest to something that I would make at home. I probably made something very similar to this dish like three days ago in my house. Yeah, it’s really nice. It has a good sweetness to it. Mm-hmm. I gave it a eight. I’ll give it eight too, that’s actually very good. What does that leave our point total at? The winner by one point- Oh my gosh. Is Josh. That’s what’s up! Jane. Jane, I did this for you! One point. Jane, this has always been for you. You know what took it over the top? One, your shining personality and your relationship with others. Two, parsnips, baby! This win’s brought you by parsnips. You guys did awesome. The fact that we were able to just take these random grocery lists from people and turn them into all this. And to our subscribers who participated in this, thank you, thank you so much for doing that. I hope we, I don’t know, made you just look at ingredients in a new way possibly. Now you know how to roulade a chicken, which is pretty cool. You can eat whole quarters of cabbage, don’t even gotta cut it up that much, and it’s really nice. Jane, Avery, drew, you are all truly awesome. Thank you again so much, and thank you so much to all of you out there for watching. If you want to cook the recipes, we got them down in the description below. Oh, God. I’ll see y’all next time. Sporked is your guide through the grocery aisle. Head over to the Sporked YouTube channel to watch the Sporked team’s live taste test, food rankings, food reviews, and more.