This is a… Oh my God. Welcome to Mythical Kitchen, where dreams become food. Today, I’ve challenged myself to make a gourmet meal for $2.65, but before I do that, a portion of today’s episode is sponsored by Lomi. In the US, it’s estimated that 30 to 40% of our food supply goes to waste, making it the largest category of material placed in landfills. Now we’ve all been in the situation where we don’t strategize our grocery trips, guilty and end up tossing a bunch of produce out at the end of the week. This means we’re pouring tons of methane into the atmosphere each year, which is worse than CO2 for the environment. Composting is a simple way to help, but what are you supposed to do if you live in an apartment with no composting program like most Americans, myself included? Well, that’s where Lomi comes in. Lomi is a new kitchen appliance that transforms waste into usable nutrient rich dirt with the press of a button. It’s easy to use, runs quietly, doesn’t smell and it’s just a good looking addition to your kitchen. The process is simple, fill your Lomi with food scraps, coffee grounds and any other Lomi approved bioplastics, push the button and Lomi works its magic to transform your waste into dirt in as little as four hours. No more having to deal with gross smelly trash, Lomi can reduce your garbage footprint by more than 50% and for the first time in over a year, Lomi can be purchased without a wait. Visit the link in the description for more info. Thanks again to Lomi for sponsoring that portion of today’s episode. As I was saying, we’ve all found ourselves wanting something delicious but low on cash, so I’m gonna teach you how to make an extra special meal for $2.65. We’re kicking it back to an old segment we like to call ‘Nickel and Dine’. I think this is, deceptively, one of the most ambitious dishes we’ve ever tried to make in the Mythical Kitchen. We’re calling it pollo ramannesa al tonnato. It’s inspired by a Northern Italian dish. We’re gonna fry this chicken and ramen and then we’re gonna make a sauce out of the can of tuna. God help us all, but it is actually rooted in Italian cooking. There’s a dish called vitello tonnato where you make a sauce outta canned tuna. Today, we’re just adding a little bit more ramen to it. Like I said, all this costs $2.65. We got 10 ounces of boneless, skinless chicken breast right here, is on sale for a $1.99 a pound. You go down at the frozen section, you get it in a bag. It’s super easy to defrost. We got two packets of ramen here at 30 cents each. We’re gonna use that to coat the chicken. We got a single 30 cent egg and then a 60 cent can of tuna. We got the cheapest tuna possible, and honestly, I like it better ’cause you get the cheap tuna, you get the dark meat of the tuna. I don’t know where they find that but I find it really delicious and then of course, we cleaned out our condiment packet drawer. So we got some half and half, some butter, some lemon juice, mayo, salt and pepper and of course, the ramen packets. Let’s get cooking. It’s a throwback day, everybody. I love this, god I’m nostalgic. All right, so another critical element of cooking for not a lot of money is cooking with not a lot of time. So someone time me, I’m gonna see how fast I can slice this knife through my own hand, sorry. All right, so we are just gonna slice through this chicken breast. We’re gonna do a little butterfly and then we’re gonna pound it out. One of the keys to making Milannese right here is to make sure your chicken is as flat as possible. We want, nope, not gonna say the dirty… You ever realize that all the jokes your dad told you when you were a kid are wildly inappropriate and then you start to say one out loud in polite company and then you go, “Oh my God.” Oh, that’s what that word means. Nope, just me? All right. Shout to all those with gross dads. So we’re gonna put ramen in another bag and then I’m going to crush the ramen up, I’m gonna flatten the chicken breast out and we are going to do that by dual wielding pots. You don’t need a meat mallet at home, you can just use pots. You can just kind of gradually do this and then if you’re saving time right here, that leaves you more time for your online coaching business. I dunno what to say, Josh, I didn’t know you’re a life coach. Nope, youth volleyball coach, five and under. I just get kids on Zoom and I just go drop! Drop, you little child! You really wanna crush the heck outta this ramen. You want it to be like, we’re using this as breadcrumbs, that’s what we’re doing, if you couldn’t figure that out by now. I always say you couldn’t figure that out as if it’s not my job to literally tell you as the host of the show, so… Sorry, that’s what my cat does when he sees things on the counter. I’m gonna take these here, ramen crumbles and we’re gonna add that to a bowl. Don’t have any respect for life coaches. All right, so I got that there and then now to our other bowl, we need to do our wet. We are just going to do a wet and dry right here. Gonna crack a little eggy-weg, 30 cents and man, eggs used to be so much cheaper. I remember paying 99 cents for eggs. Now it’s a luxury product. We’re gonna add three half and half creamers. Older brother John used to just rip shots of these going to brunch. Nicole also apparently used to rip shots of these. I act like I don’t do that at the convenience store sometimes, you know, you’re getting gas, you just kind of… you ever do that where you just kinda walk in… Ah shoot, I need a whisk. I have so much ADHD that I get really bored when I’m filling my car with gasoline and so I’ll just kinda walk in and peruse and then sometimes I just grab the hazelnut creamer, pop a little shot and it passes the time. All right so we’re gonna whisk that up. We have our oil going right here, I’m gonna crank up the heat on that a little bit. We’re doing a shallow fry right here. If you’re afraid of deep frying home, you’re a coward but I totally understand it because we’ve all seen the accident videos of people deep frying turkeys, then doing a little exploding. It’s the reason I don’t mess with bootleg fireworks anymore. Can you cook with bootleg fireworks? All right, so we got our wet and we got our dry here. That’s looking fantastic. I actually really love if I’m doing Melannese or what’s the other one? The Austrian version… schnitzel! If I’m doing schnitzel or Melannese, I love adding some butter to the oil ’cause I think you get that nice little nuttiness in the butter, all those old dairy solids. So we’re taking the free butter pack from your favorite Pancake House. Oh, this is nice. I don’t think this is real butter, I think it’s margarine but margarine tastes more like butter than butter and so we’re gonna add that to our oil right here and that’s looking nice. Oh yeah, smells like flapjacks, which is what you want your chicken ramannese al tonnato to smell like. I walked out of the frame so CGI me back in. Always dry off your chicken, especially if you’re not doing a flour dredge but the flour dredge can get a little bit cakey. We want this ramen-crusted fried chicken with tuna sauce to be nice, light and bright, just like they do it on the Amalfi coast. I heard they served this when George Clooney married… Malala? Amala. Amala in Lake George? No, that’s his name. What’s the… Lake Como, Lake Como. That’s where they got married. Ah, you want more George Clooney wedding content, let me know if you like that. We got salt and pepper packets. We’re gonna take the free salt, I know what you’re saying, Josh, that’s cheating. You would’ve added at least another 0.2 cents if you used your own salt. Nope, got it for free. Came with the fries and I was like, nope, no more salt in these fries. There it is, now we’re gonna salt the chicken. Always salt your meat directly when you’re frying something ’cause that’s the only time you really get to sort of season the flesh of the bird. Anytime you say flesh, it’s something creepy and apocryphal. Man, these salt packets, they don’t give you a ton of salt. They don’t make salt packets like they used to anymore. Also fast food restaurants, I am convinced, have been putting less sauce in their packets. Anyone? Anyone? No, just me? I’m not crazy, I’m not… you’re crazy, I’ll tell you what. All right, pepper. This is taking longer because I’m using tiny little free packets to prove a point. To whom? Unclear. All right, chicken is nice and dry. Gonna get that into… fudgin’ cruds. All right, you get it nice and wet and we’re gonna go into the ramen. That’s nice. All right. Is that good? Yeah, man, that looks awesome. Do we roll… What? I’m not crazy, you’re crazy, you shut up. Two chicken down. Go in there, that’s nice. You can smell all of that fake butter essence in there and then we’re gonna go ahead and flip that and then we’re gonna make our tonnato sauce. Normal cooking show stuff, you know? A lot of ramen on the ground. Wonder if Rachel Ray has this much ramen on the ground in her studio. Our chicken’s been ramenneseing over in this here pan or so you call it. We’re gonna get that a little flip, that is look… Oh, this is gonna be some of the crispiest, crunchiest fried chicken you’ve ever done had. You’re not gonna have, I mean, you should if you make it, but holy crap, that is golden brown and delicious and crispy and dang dude, I can’t believe this is the first time I’ve ever done this. I mean I know you I’m think I’m an expert and I do this all the time but I’ve never done the ramen thing. That’s gonna be cool. Good job Josh, thanks Josh. If you can’t be your own personal advocate then who can? That’s why if you sign up for my personal youth volleyball coaching service for $39.99 a day… All right, we got about 30 seconds on this and after that comes out, we’re gonna dust it in this here chicken ramen seasoning packet. That’s gonna add some lovely flavor to the outside of that, combined with the beautiful fishiness of our dark meat canned tuna. For real, this is the darkest canned you’ve ever seen and that’s how you know it’s good. All right, so chicken ramennese is done. It’s been frying up for four minutes on each side. Nice hot oil, make sure bottom’s crispy. Yes sir-ino. All right, so we’re gonna grab our ramen seasoning packet. You want to hit this while it’s hot. Yeah, aw girl, you’re dirty, aren’t you? You’re a little dirty little chicken, yeah? Dang, okay, I like the… I forgot how yellow the seasoning packet is and I like where this is going. Give it a quick little flip, owie. Yeah, no, no, this is the nice side. That’s the nice side. Ow, don’t bring your fingies. Ooh, that’s a nice side too. There’s so much seasoning in this and this is so powerful. Gosh, all right, cool, cool, cool. Fantastic, so we have a ramen seasoned chicken right there and then now we’re gonna go ahead and make our We’re gonna blend the canned tuna with stuff. Just as Beyonce insisted, “You were not ready for this jelly”, I don’t think you’re ready for this blended tuna. That’s the opening that I decided to go with. Let’s blend some damn tuna. All right, so we’re gonna pop this canned tuna. The real good dark meat stuff. Get the liquid in there. Again, this is something that is rooted in culinary cannon. This is ah… oh my God. I hate it, why did we open it? Why did we open it? I’m so sorry. No, you told me it was open. We’re gonna add a little beef to it. Typically the dish is made with veal. Oh God, I am just covered in… oh, it’s… Anywhere I lick on myself, it tastes like beef though, which is pretty cool. I’m just gonna rock this for the rest of the day. It’s in my shoe though and my feet are sweaty so now there is literal soup in my shoe and it’s seeping down, I can feel it. All right, great. Mayonnaise, this is… okay, this is open. Don’t shake the mayo. I’m not gonna shake the mayonnaise. I can’t get mayonnaise in my shoe. I can’t create an emulsification down there. All right, I’m gonna add some mayonnaise in here. God, oh God. All right and yeah, yeah, gurt that mayonnaise in there. That’s the verb. We’re gonna add some lemon juice. I’m gonna start with one packet and then we’re gonna blend it up and then, hey, where’d that last pepper packet go? Where’d that dang… no, I’m gonna find this pepper packet if it’s the last thing I do. So go ahead and take some white pepper. Now the dish is perfect and then I’m gonna thin it out with a little bit of water. Let’s see how much water we need to blend this tuna. I kind of like just the dusting on there as a bit of a garnish. This is gonna taste good. I don’t know if any of you are disgusted by this, I hope some of you at least make this ’cause this is gonna be really dank. Yep, needs more water. The last time I blended fish it’s because I had a dental issue and I wasn’t allowed to chew food but I still wanted protein and so I would blend fish in chickpeas into a protein shake and drink it with a boba straw and everyone was real disgusted. Tonnato’s done. Let’s check out where we’re at here. Let’s see our consistency. Get a nice… okay. Uh, listen, this isn’t the prettiest dish but you know, sauce looks good. Let’s give her a taste. I mean, it tastes really… Tonnato, even the best tonnato, right? The best Italian restaurant, it still kind of gives school lunch tuna salad vibes but in a really good way. Drop a little bit more lemon in there. It’s a nice acidity to cut through all that fat and then we’re gonna kind of just do nice little rustic spoon swipes on here. Beautiful rustic plating and now we’re gonna take our chicken and we’re just gonna serve that on top of the tonnato sauce. Hold on, hold on, hold on on. One more little… one more little swipe. There you go. Beautiful chicken ramennese al tonnato with a little accidental beef ramen crumble. Bon appetito. Well, our pollo ramennese al whatever the hell I said earlier is done. Let’s dig in, get yourself a nice little beveragino, cheers. That’s a good sauce. That is a good sauce. All right, dig in. You know what? It actually kind of gives dashi vibes with the seaweed flavor, you know? That’s good. Chickens cooked nicely, sauce is good. That little ramen dust that we bounced off of my chest. I mean, hot diggity. That is a good, good dish. Dang, if I had an extra 8 cents, I’d put that in a bun, just make a nice chicken sandwich. A lot of the flavor lifting is being done by the canned tuna and then the ramen seasoning packets but that’s not necessarily a bad thing ’cause you know what? I really like canned tuna, I really do. I’m actually eating it for dinner tonight with a half a leftover salad that’s in my fridge. So that’s gonna be a delight. It’s super easy to make, it’s super cheap. If you’re cool shallow frying, I mean, it is a delight. I hope you make this, I really do. Thank you so much for stopping by the Mythical Kitchen. We got new episodes for you every week. We got new episodes of our podcast, ‘A Hot Dog is a Sandwich’ every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts and right now Nicole and I are finally ending the debate of is a hot dog a sandwich? It is a very, very special series that we’re doing. Go over there, check it out, hit us up on Instagram and TikTok under #DreamsBecomeFood. Just like Rachel McTavish did, they’re from Manitoba, Canada and that’s not even a Canadian accent and they said that they made the protein waffles which are the first thing they’ve ever made from the Mythical Kitchen and they said they were delicious and fluffy and they got a new way to use protein powder. So be like Rachel, go get jacked off of waffles. Don’t jack off a waffle. See you next time. You sloppy son of a biscuit! Get as messy as you want in your own kitchen when you have the Mythical Kitchen towels, available now at mythical.com.