We’re just gonna scoop that up and that’s classic cookery. Hey welcome to Mythical Kitchen, where dreams become food. I’m wearing my stupid little fun beads that give me confidence again. There you go Nicole. Have fun. All right so recently on GMM, we have achieved one of the greatest culinary accomplishments that we ever have in the Chinese Italian food versus Italian Chinese food episode, and the single greatest culinary accomplishment to come from that slew of culinary accomplishments was Orange Chicken Parmesan, taking the two greatest chicken dishes of all time, of all time, taking two of the top three best chicken dishes of all time, the other one’s Tyler Florence’s Chicken Piccata recipe, that’s just a damn good chicken recipe, and combining them into one, and we’re gonna show you how to do that today. We are empowering you to empower others to empower yourself to pretty much just eat some sugar chicken covered in cheese. It’s pretty dank though. We’ve broken the recipe down into three easy steps. You can snag the time-codes right there. We’ve also got a full written recipe down in the description. That’s how I dance at the club, I’m just here. There you go. Hey what’s up? What’s up? Anyways, uh, we should probably cook it now. This recipe starts with a very simple formula. What if you took all the technique that goes into Orange Chicken, and then you switched out those ingredients, you took out the orange, you threw in tomatoes. You’re taking all the best from that delicious Chinese-American sugar crispy fried chicken, that we all know and love, and then you’re adding all the Italian ingredients, and then you covered your hands in raw chicken juice before you touched any of the other stuff, which is pretty cool. It’s pretty standard. I feel like we’re just re-writing the rule book on cooking over here, you know? You ever think about that? That maybe you should touch your raw meat before you handle any other food. Don’t do that. That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. I’m adding egg white. I’m adding egg white. We’re gonna start marinating the chicken. We’re gonna chop it up into little bits. We’re gonna get some nice flavors and aromatics going on there before we dredge it. I like to take egg white, and I whip it up just a little bit, and then I’m gonna add a little bit of vinegar for the tang, a little bit of soy because that’s gonna make it taste like soy sauce. Soy sauce is in a lot of Panda Express-y things. We add a little bit of sugar just to add that kind of sweetness and some white pepper. We’re just trying to make it a little simple here, you know? Nothing crazy, nothing crazy, and then, there we go. Now we’re gonna start chopping our chicken into little bits. Always use dark meat chicken. Here is the main difference between PF Chang’s and Panda Express, and if you’re wondering who I’m gonna ride or die for in that battle for Americanized Chinese food supremacy, Panda, I always got your back. But no, Panda Express in the Orange Chicken uses thighs and PF Chang’s uses chicken breast, which bums me out, ’cause thighs are the superior product. There’s one meat that I could have for the rest of my life, it would absolutely be chicken thighs. I eat this literally like four nights a week. It’s just always been my go-to, because it’s got all that extra fat in there. You fry it up nice and crispy and then that fat starts to really break down and it’s a delight. When’s the last time you went inside a Panda Express though? That used to be my go-to post-workout meal was a three item plate with double Beijing Beef, Orange Chicken and all Chow Mein, and it averaged out to 3200 calories. That’s called dirty bulking. Look up the idea of dirty bulking. If you’ve ever done it, if you’re trying to put on as much muscle as possible and you don’t care about the rest of your quality of life, do dirty bulking. You feel like crap all the time. I would wake up and just eat six eggs and six sausage links and drink a quart of coffee. It was like some Paul Bunyan type stuff man, where it’s just like- You hear the stories of Andre the Giant, you know? Like he’d drink a barrel of beer, that was like me but with just eggs and Panda Express. Couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded, but jesus could I throw that stupid ball on a wire. If there’s one thing about being a mild YouTube celebrity that I’m disappointed by, it’s that no one has gone down the rabbit hole of looking up my old hammerthrow videos on my personal YouTube Channel. I want the views, go comment! Go comment on how bad my technique was. I wanna hear it, roast me. Chicken’s in, we’re gonna… That doesn’t make a ton of sense. We’re gonna stir up that chicken. We’re just gonna get it in that marinade. Well how are we supposed to whisk chicken? What is that? You know, what are you accomplishing with it? This is a much better… This looks like a little, like you’d All right, so we’re go ahead and whisk that up and then boom! Chicken’s marinating. We’re gonna let that sit for about an hour, we’re gonna start on our sauce and then we’re gonna fry it up. Now we gotta make the sauce. Like I said, we’re going pretty typical Panda Express here, except for this is the ultimate airplane drink. Anybody else tomato juice on airplanes? Yeah Nicole, that’s what’s up! Or ginger-, yeah gin-, no Ginger-Ale mixed with orange juice. Ugh no it’s so good, but then you’re making more work for the flight attendants and it’s a whole thing. And you can’t even get peanuts anymore! All the kids allergic to peanuts, anyways what I’m saying is we’re gonna make an Orange Chicken sauce except basically we’re subbing out all the orange juice and zest for straight tomato juice, then we’re gonna add stuff like fennel seed and crushed chili flake in there. We’re gonna start with a whole hefty amount of olive oil, also olive oil, why? Per que? Uh… How do you say because in Italian? I took one semester of Italian, then I dropped out. All right, so we’re gonna add a bunch of fennel seed. Fennel seed tastes like Mama Celeste pizzas, also just called Celeste Pizza. That’s where you’re at. We’re gonna get some dried basil in there and now for that kinda Chinese-American flavor, we’re gonna get some ginger in there. We gotta crush up some garlic. I need a nice little runway here for the palm heel strike. Also we don’t have the cutting board for me to actually mince it, so I’m gonna try and just bash it into oblivion. Eitz! Okay. Hold on, gotta peel it. I wanna see if you can mince garlic with a lot of palm heel strikes. Yup, it’s working. This is how you express the allicin inside the garlic with just a series of ground and pound palm heel strikes. And now we got it. We’re just gonna scoop that up, and that’s classic cookery. I’m sorry are we re-writing the rules of cookery? I don’t think so, man. I think some people think we’re an abomination, although there was that one. Shout-out to David Schofield, a New Zealand chef, who said some very nice words about me in a comment on a YouTube video recently that Annaliese sent me. Thank you for not thinking that I’m a joke or thinking that I’m a joke but it’s funny. ‘Cause that’s really what we’re going for is, you know. Like, you know that one person who always comments, “Your cooking’s a joke,” it’s like yes! Yes, it’s for fun. Eating is just a way to distract us from death. I’ve added some sugar into this. And we’re gonna go ahead and just dump in all this here tomato juice. And try and dissolve that sugar with the aromatics that are nicely toasted in that oil, and then we’re gonna get this up to a rolling boil, a rolling boil. We’re gonna add a little bit of Sriracha as well for some heat. Yup, it’s still hot. Give that a nice squirt. Also, anyone who considers themselves too cool for Sriracha, you and I aren’t friends. You and I aren’t frie- You dance with the date what brung ya, and Sriracha got you this far GD it, and you’re gonna respect it. That’s a nice sentiment though, people are like, “Sriracha’s overrated.” You’re overrated! Ya shmuck. All right, we gotta just wait- Oh what’s this? Salt. Salt’s a good thing to have in food. We’re gonna bring this up to a rolling boil and then we’re gonna add a little bit of corn starch to it, we’re gonna get it nice and thickened up, and then we’re gonna fry off that chicken. Oh god, oh jeez. Oh, I’m never washing this hand again. Welcome back to Mythical Kitchen, no frills just food. That’s the new catchphrase that Annaliese just came up with, and we’re very proud of her. Everyone clap for Annaliese, good job! We found our catch phrase! We found our… Yeah! Our catch phrase is normally like ah! But no we got a much more eloquent one, also we are like 85% frills, 15% food. I’m gonna add- that’s the way I like it. I’m gonna add equal parts wheat flour, also known as flour, and corn starch to this. Some people go pure cornstarch, I don’t know man. I like the wheat flour, I like the American fried chicken. We’re just gonna add that directly to this wet marinade. We’re just gonna add it up, I’m gonna add it, add it up. We’re just gonna kinda mash at it a little bit, and then we’re gonna try and separate it with our hands a little bit, get a little bit more, a little bit more. This is what gives Panda Express chicken its very unique coating, is taking all that wet marinade and then… You know I’m gonna separate it with my fingers, who am I trying to impress you using a spoon? Now you know, you know what the deal is. You’ve been here long enough. There we go, there we go, this is looking good. And I’m just gonna throw it all higglety-pigglety, to quote the great Keith Habersberger. Him introducing higglety-pigglety into my vocabulary, that was the best move. I loved cooking with him, I loved all that, but higglety-pigglety is what I’m gonna remember. Beautiful, kinda separate these a little bit. Make sure they’re all nice and coated. Kinda just drop some of that in there, and eh, eh… Sauce looks nice, you guys see the sauce? Maggie, show them. Show the people the sauce. Looks nice huh? It does. It’s nice? It’s nice? It’s good? Okay. And now we’re just dropping all that higglety-pigglety chicken in there. We can always go in and separate- ow! Oh gosh! Uh oh, ruh roh. Sometimes higglety-pigglety and deep fryers don’t go together, it’s like what? Beautiful beautiful, we’re just gonna fry. I’m frying at 375. I’m gonna fry it nice and hot for about five minutes. There we go, there we go. And then you’re gonna kinda do one of these. Now poke it. You don’t overfill you’re deep fryers. Oo, they’ll be fine, they’ll be fine. All right, now we’re just gonna wait. Probably gonna wash my hands. I’m gonna say that for legal purposes now, in case any national salmonella outbreaks start in Burbank, no one’s gonna look at me. They’re gonna look at the Burger King. While we wait for this to fry, do you think we should give people Burbank recommendations? Do you think the people would like that? Yeah! All right great. Go down to Handy Market, and you’re gonna go ahead and buy yourself a couple cans of soup. Drive around the city, trying to see Caesar Milan, Jay Leno and or Andy Richter, that’s the Burbank Big Three. If you see all of them in a day, you get a gold star from the mayor of Burbank. Oh, Castaway’s a cool restaurant! It’s like, everything’s wildly expensive, but it’s kinda up in the mountain and it gives you weird vibes. Ah, go to the top of the parking garage by the AMC Downtown, and sit in your car. That’s a good one, all right chicken’s almost done. That was your official Burbank Tourism Board sponsored portion, thank them for sponsoring today’s episode. I was driving down Olive the other day, passing the Safari Inn, which is a cool googey architecture thing, and I saw the mountains. For the first time, I felt true love for a place in my life and it was Burbank freaking California. I watched Back to the Future and he skateboards out on Victory and you see the Burger King, and I was with Julian and I was like, “Hey it’s that Burger King where a guy got stabbed.” All right chicken’s done. Ew! Chicken’s almost done. Ain’t no good way to know if your chicken’s done. You could temp check it, that probably isn’t gonna work. It’s such a small little bit. You kinda just gotta have intuition on it, and I don’t have it, so what I like to do is bite into raw chicken. You shouldn’t do that. Have someone else bite into your raw chicken. That should-, that’s a good move, ’cause then you don’t assume any of the risk. Okay, here’s the thing with chicken thighs though. You cannot overcook a chicken thigh. People have done tests. It’s technically cooked at 160 degrees, but it only gets better once it gets to like 195, so literally, unless you’re really freaking hammering it, go over on chicken thigh. Chicken breast will get dry, chicken thigh will never dry. You know what they say, “Once you go thigh, you’ll never- Dry. “Go dry.” Is this done yet? Yeah, it’s done. Well we’re gonna throw it in the oven. Chicken thighs are done. I don’t know why I did that, man. I’m gonna take some chicken thighs and I’m gonna dump that directly into the sauce. See I didn’t need that at all huh? The sauce has been on low heat, we’ve added a little bit of cornstarch to it. We’re just gonna get it nice and coated with all that, yeah buddy. That’s looking fine, I know what you’re saying. Do you usually toss this in a wok, or at least a pan that you can toss something in. Yeah, I dunno, it’s here though, and just kinda like chill man. Oh, go to the Pavilions in Burbank and say hi to Bob. Bob, we love you man. Bob’s a huge fan who works at the Pavilions, also at that Pavilions I thought I saw Brad Pitt, but I just saw a guy that looked a little bit like Brad Pitt. Because we were in a meeting and I said I saw Brad Pitt at Pavilions and then Zack Rezowalli just goes, “No I know the guy you’re talking about. “He looks like Brad Pitt a little.” And so you can go see that guy as well as Bob at Pavilions. All right, so we got this tossed. We’re gonna let it hang out in the sauce for just one second and then we’re gonna top it in a thing and then put it in the oven, and then that’s how food is done. Hey, welcome back to Mythical Kitchen, no riffs just triffs. No frills, just food, that’s what it was. Wow, a lot of staying power on that Annaliese, great branding. We’re gonna finish this damn thing. So we got all the chicken that’s been hanging out in the sauce, it’s soaked it up really beautifully. We’re gonna add all that to this cast iron pan. Why are we serving this in a cast iron pan? It’s fun! You know, you get the sizzling fajitas in the thing, that’s fun, people love Chili’s. John Goblikon, he loves Chili’s. Shout-out out to Nekrogoblikon. I’m in a video with… Okay, so yeah. They’re a fun- They do metal music that I like and other people don’t often and then you tell people that you like it and they’re like, “Oh, he’s one of those guys.” All right, cool, cool, cool. So we’ve got all the chicken kind of spread across there and now what we’re gonna do, we’ll take some nice little cheese cubes. It’s low moisture mozzarella, you could use fresh. You could use fresh on your Orange Chicken Parm. Low moisture though is gonna melt a lot more better-er, and that’s why we’re doing it, because fresh mozzarella it weeps, it weeps because it’s sad that it was ripped away from its mother and the young that were trying to feed on it, because that’s what milk is for. So we’re just gonna go ahead and just keep adding some cheese. I wanna get some nice little crusty cheese corners over here. I’m just gonna bake this in the oven at 500. You could broil it, but I dunno man. Sometimes I want the cheese to just get nice and melty. Yeah and then we’re also gonna take a couple cherry tomatoes, just so we get some freshness in there, you know? ‘Cause we’re eating fried chicken covered in sugar sauce topped with cheese. That’s been a big thing, like cheese with east Asian food, like a lot of places in Korea are just wrapping cheese around their Korean fried chicken wings, that’s a big thing. Go to my favorite spot, Sun Nong Dan, you get the Galbi Jjim, just topped with cheese and blow-torched, that’s a fun thing. So, there is precedent for this and it’s gonna be delicious. Where does the last one go? There! Okay, so now we’re gonna- more cheese. Never satisfied, always grinding. Cheese, cheese, cheese! Okay, oven. Hi, bye, see ya. 500 degrees, oven, fi-, mm, seven minutes ish. Just when the cheese is done, you’ll know, just use your- figure it out, for once. Please, thank you. And then the best Taco Bell in Burbank, it’s on Magnolia, but not the one on Magnolia by the CVS, the one on Magnolia by the dry cleaners. All right, Orange Chicken Parmesan’s done! Yes, ma’am. That is looking leopard-spotted and freaking delicious right there. Now we gotta finish it up with some- we gotta gussy it, we’re gonna do a little bit of- you’re gonna do a little- what is in this? This is salt? Here, throw me the pepper one. Throw it, throw it. Be an athlete. Nailed it. Crack some pepper on it, why? I forgot to put it in earlier, when I wanted to, and so we did that, and now we’re just gonna take a little drizzle of olive oil, get that all over that, and then now we’re just gonna take a couple little leaves of basilic, make it nice, and a little what-, now-, and one more leaf. And that’s it, that’s what we did. This is Orange Chicken Parmesan, I cannot wait to dig into it. It’s molten hot, it’s gonna just destroy my mouth. I haven’t stared at a plate of food this sexy in a long time and it’s making me feel some things. I wanna get right in. Look at that cheese pull, yes sir. Okay, well I want a cherry tomato. I want a basil. Sometimes I feel like we’re cursed. We’re cursed in this kitchen. We take these dumb ideas and just make some of the best food I’ve ever had. Like the sensation of the basil and the cherry tomato and the mozzarella going in your mouth reads fully Italian, and then you just get this sweetness, and that hacked up higglety-pigglety cornstarch delicious fried chicken going in your mouth reads pure Panda Express. We’ve been bestowed with a curse and a gift to just take two disparate ideas and mash them together and just create an absolute freaking delicious dish. This is stupid good! God dang it! Nicole! Yeah. Come get sporked! Okay. Aw dude, some of the sugar caramelized on top. I’ma get you a good bite. Okay, get me a really good bite. I’m so excited to see this incredible rendition, Yeah yeah. ’cause it looks gorgeous. Gimme a lot of cheese please. Yeah, yeah. I like cheese. Loaded up on cheese. There we go. Hairband, oh my god. Aw dude, this is nuts I need a hai- It’s too hot! It’s too hot! This is nuts Nicole! It’s not too hot! I’m gonna burn. I’m gonna die! It’s not too hot. Just wait, just wait, just wait, just wait. Just blow on it, from afar. Not too much, not too much, not too much. Here, do you want me to go in with the cheese down? I guess. You don’t have to do anything you don’t wanna do. Are you sure?! I mean if I can kinda wing it around. Yeah, yeah. Wow! Wow, it’s like that game with the ball. Here it is. Yeah yeah. Uh, what’s it called? Kotoke? Uh, Ken- I don’t know. That’s a really big bite. Kendama! Kendama, Kendama. Thank you Maggie, all right. That’s a really big bite. Wait are you ready for it? I’m gonna choke. God, just stop. Monkey business, all of you. I need to keep eating this, this is… Nicole, are you okay? Mm mm. What’s going on with you? I’m choking. You’re fine? Are you hurt or are you scared? Know the difference. I choked on the cheese. You put the food in your mouth and then it slides down your throat hole. Oh, uh huh? Yeah, this is really good wow. You’re the one who made the original dish. It was a collaborative effort. A collaborative effort with the team, but yeah! What a phenomenal thing. Can you give me one more? Yeah, okay. Smaller. Oh, wait, it’s so hot. Oh my god. More delicate bite please. Oh, ow, it’s hot, it’s- It is incredible. Under the cherry tomatoes is a heat cage. Like I just need the people at home to know that this is one of the most incredible things. Okay, do the little swing, do the little game. Uh huh, good job. Mhmm. Yeah! Hey Maggie, what do you yell during Kendama? Mmm! That’s good. Yeah, we’re not leaving until we finish this whole damn thing. Um, you should probably say bye. All right, Nicole thank you so much for stopping by the Mythical Kitchen. You work here, you live here basically. I do. Thank y’all so much for stopping by the Mythical Kitchen. We uh-, wait do I do it to Nicole’s camera? Usually, yeah. Yeah Nicole! Thanks so much for dropping by Mythical Kitchen. Got a new video for you every week. And an episode of the podcast A Hot Dog is A Sandwich every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. And this is on my Mythical Kitchen Instagram, on the Instagram app. You know where you see photos of people you hate from high school? Go to that one, @mythicalkitchen under #dreamsbecomefood See y’all next time. Hey you! Cook up your own feast while wearing the Mythical Kitchen apron, available now at Mythical.com