What are those animals that have poison spit like a Komodo dragon or a Gila monster? I feel like that right now. Somebody let me spit on them. Just as Victorian England was a hotbed for mustachioed serial killers, the internet has become a hotbed for a different kind of crime. A food crime. That’s right. The web has played host to some downright abominable creations. And today we’re focusing on another one. Nicole, please bring in the pine needle taco. You want to eat it together? No, no, I don’t. Come on, come on. Okay, we have to. So this is one of the original GMM Will it Taco creations. Pine needles, will it taco? And the mustachioed serial killer in this case is none other than Chase Hilt because he was judge, jury, executioner, and food producer back in the day. And now Nicole and I are gonna try it and see what the hell are we gonna do with this? Yeah. Emphasis on try. Yeah. Okay. You take the first bite. I insist, Nicole. I want you to get the most out of it. Yeah. Oh, that’s just the sh. Oh yeah. Come on. No, don’t. It all smells like pine salt. Nicole. What? I challenge you do a food crime face off to see who gets, ’cause we believe every food gets a second chance at life. And so we gotta, we’re gonna cook it. We’ve been here before. We’re gonna do it. Ugh. That’s terrible. Okay. All right. Why does Nicole have a tree? Whose tree did she uproot? Well, what am I gonna do here? I really don’t know, but my intuition says lamb. Why? I’ll tell you why. Pine needles. Christmas. There’s always like a little sheepy sheep like in the manger, right? Am I right? And why not just go with the Christmas-y, December-y vibe and roast a leg of lamb? So we’re going to roast a leg of lamb on a bed of pine needles. Now have I cooked with pine needles before? No. Who am I? René Redzepi from Noma? No, obviously not. I’m not Scandinavian. And you never will be with an attitude like that, Nicole. Also, René Redzepi is Balkan. I’m gonna take some chipotle powder. I’m gonna rub this liberally all over. Also on the bottom. And I’m gonna add some cinnamon for that nice, Chris Cringle feel. As someone who never celebrated Christmas, I always wanted to, and I would ask my parents for a Hanukkah bush and they’d be like, “Toy, no.” So I’m just gonna rub this down with a little bit of our rub. It’s a very simple rub. It’s inspired a little bit by barbacoa. I’m doing kind of like a barbacoa-esque feel. And then I also blended up a little bit of onion and garlic here, kind of as a paste just to shower over the top here. And it’s gonna create this beautiful crust almost. Lamb is actually my number one favorite animal to eat. All time official animal eating rankings: one lamb, two, starfish, three beef, four seahorse, five, let’s go kangaroo. In order for it to roast and braze really nicely, we’re gonna just put a little bit of stock in there and a touch of water. I’m like, oh my God. Oh my God. Whatever. It’s fine. Not the only leak today. Am I right guys? There was a leak on the roof. Yeah, the ceiling collapsed in our office the night before we shot this. Okay, well we’re gonna roast this for about what, six hours at like 275, 300. Make it nice and tender and gorgeous and luscious. And we’ll be back to do some more stuff. It’s time to cook some more. How exciting. Also, we have named the lovely tree Spruce Springsteen like the man, right? So as you can see, our meat is nice and cooked. Yay. Also very fork tender. Look at that. I don’t even, I could do this with my hands if I wanted to. Look at that. So shreddable, so gorgeous. Let’s have a little nibble, shall we? Let’s see if we imparted any pine noodle flavor. Hmm. Wow, that’s really cool. It’s like mentholy a little bit, almost like eating a cigarette. I’m getting nervous about the pine needles of it all, man. I don’t like that we’re doing this. It was my idea, but I don’t like that we’re doing this. I gotta cut some sprigs from the tree. Can you feel this? I hope not. So I have my sprigs and I’m just gonna dry them really, really well because I’m gonna blend them up a little bit because I wanna impart a lot of this flavor into our salsa, where I’m making a salsa matcha. Has she tried this before? So let’s let it roll. I’d be worried about anal lacerations. I always am when I cook. It’s the one thing I avoid. The first thing they tell you in culinary school is don’t lacerate the anus. Well, I’m gonna take a few of these chilies. We got ancho, we got guajillo. So we’re just gonna let this heat up a little bit. We’re gonna let it warm up. We don’t wanna toast it into oblivion. We just really want the oil to be expressed of those flavors. Yeah, salsa matcha is really dank. It’s one of my favorite things to use. It imparts a ton of flavor. Makes it really, really delicious. She’s right about that. Salsa matcha is really dank. I’ve never made it from scratch before. I don’t think Nicole’s ever made it from scratch before. Okay, add some of our peanuts in here. Let those get nice and toasty. A little bit of sesame seeds and then also some garlic. Great. So these are all gonna cook up and then we’re gonna keep doing this until they’re ready to be put in the blender. So hang tight. I’ll be back in a second. All right. Our chilies have expressed themselves kinda like how Madonna did in the nineties, if you know, you know, so I’m just gonna throw these in here. And then the residual heat is actually gonna help express our pine needles because we don’t wanna cook them the same way that we’re cooking the chilies. We still want them to keep their freshness and keep their beauty, but you know, just a little bit cooked. So we’re just gonna blend this up a little bit with the help of a splash of ACV, also known as apple cider vinegar. And then just let that go a little bit. I don’t think this is gonna work. I like that this is the part that I don’t think is gonna work. Not like blending Christmas trees and putting it on your lamb. Now we want to lightly pulse this part because we do want that crunch and we do want that texture. We don’t wanna overdo it. Do you hear that? That’s the sound of the pine needles getting a little bit toasty. Why do I think that this is the episode that we’ve gone too far? We’ve done a lot of really dumb stuff, but this is a lot. Blend it. Very good. Add a little bit of oil. All righty. That looks awesome. Very good. Look at that. Nice and thick. That’s exactly what we want. Just a little bit blended, but still very crunchy looking. All right, this is good. This is good. I swear it’s good. I’m not panicking or anything. I know how to cook sometimes on the internet, but not all the time. No, it’s going really well. It’s going really well. Sometimes food crimes makes me like wanna throw up and die. No, Nicole’s panicking. She knows she cooked the goose. I know. Nicole, I know you too well at this point. So I’m making a little bit of a crema now with some mint, some lime, some salt, and some crema. And then I’m gonna add some spruce tips to this later and it’s going to be beautiful. And then I’m gonna assemble my taco finally. God, this is so stressful. I’m fine. Oh, can someone throw me a freaking bone here? That’s what we call a bit in the business. This is the lamb bone. This is how clean it came off. Lily didn’t gnaw on it or anything. Lily loves gnawing on bones. Oh my God. You walk into her office, she should be sending emails. She’s gnawing on bones. Despite all factors, we’re ready to assemble. So we have our beautifully shredded lamb here. We have our salsa matcha with pine needles and we have our pine needle mint crema. Sorry. Got so passionate. I almost choked on my own spit. All right. So we have these gorgeous hand fried blue corn tortillas. Not handmade but hand fried. Like we bought the tortillas and we fried them ourselves. We didn’t like make them. I normally fry tortillas with my feet. Okay, so I’m gonna take some of this gorgeous shredded meat. Just fill that right in the centre right in there. You know there isn’t much green on this plate considering the fact that we used a beautiful pine tree. Bless you, Maggie. But it’s shocking how the whole entire tree is green but not a single green thing other than the lime is representing it. Okay, so we’re just gonna fill this up. I like my tacos on the meatier side. And then I’m going to put on, oh frick, I used my meat spoon, whatever. I’m just gonna pour in a little bit of salsa matcha. Make sure you get those crispity crunchity bits. And then a nice little dollopy dollop of crema on the top. Oh, look at that. Hello, Dolly. Ultimately, I’m pretty impressed with this. The salsa matcha, it is gonna be really nice. I think it’s gonna lack acid and her tacos topple. That’s what you get. That’s hubris. I feel like a lot of times in the show we say that we don’t exactly know what we’re doing and we kind of do. We did like Peeps pizza, right? We know what a marshmallow is. You know what a pizza is. New variable. New variable has entered the frame. And so I guess I’m just gonna go cut, so I’m gonna prune some. Can I cut off a whole branch? Am I gonna kill the tree? I did it. My strategy in this is to infuse as much pine flavor into a chorizo and then we’re doing a , like a crispy ground beef. We’re gonna fill the shells raw. What the hell? What the hell are we doing? I got lamb under my nails. I have nothing but respect for Chase who came before us, who made the original taco. He was just following orders. And I know Mythical Kitchen ruined all the Will Its by making them very complicated. So I’m gonna simplify this by making my little chorizo spice blend, by putting all the, it doesn’t smell like something you should eat. It smells like gin, which is actually kind of the inspiration behind this. Tacos and gin, a classic combination for a person really at the end of their rope. Tacos and gin was my screen name back in the day. Just kidding. I’ve been instructed by my legal advisor to tell you that pine needles are indeed safe to eat. But also you should not do this. Was that good? Yeah, I feel like that’s good enough. Also, don’t do most of these. We need some sort of border on the screen on whether or not it’s something people should do or shouldn’t do. If the screen lights up green, this is something you should do, like busting ham myths or whatever we’ve done. Do that. But then if it’s like, we’re deep frying something dangerous, it just glows red. I feel like that’d be pretty simple. Putting some wet pine needles into the spice grinder’s is gonna gum it up, but whatever. Juniper berries. Juniper berries are an aromatic and gin. I like to drink gin. I hope my tacos taste like gin. We’re gonna figure that out. Ooh, little coriander gonna go in there. I’m gonna try and distract. He always distracts the spices. He’s afraid. He puts a little bit of a Mexican spice blend and calls it a day. One trick pony. What I know I can’t do is, I can deep fry the hell out of a taco because the original Will It taco was all crispy taco shells. I’m gonna add a hefty amount of salt to that chorizo. I’m also gonna add some lard in there ’cause we have a bit of a leaner ground pork. And this is all gonna get deep fried. I’m gonna smear the raw meat into this tortilla. Pan’s heating up. I wanna get those tortillas nice and toasty. Okay, no I need a thing. There’s another part to this. Where? No way. Hey, if we have any neurologists out there in the Mythical Beastdom, tell me what’s wrong with me. Tell me what’s wrong with my brain. So many things. I’m not a neurologist but I can tell you he got some issues. It sounds like it’s working. I don’t know if it actually is. Okay. Oh, okay. So it kinda looks like sand with a bunch of thorns in it. I heard that through the other room. If you ever wanna know what a spice blend tastes like when you’re cooking, take a little bit of salt is what I do. And I put a little bit of salt in my palm ’cause you can’t really taste spices without salt. I mean you can, but it’s gonna be a lot of smell. And then you rub the spice blend into the salt and then you lick your finger and then golly, oh no, oh no. Oh yeah. Wait a tick. Gosh, he’s nuts. He’s lost his damn mind. He washed the pine needles, right? He might have pine poisoning. I’m dumping a lot. I’m dumping a lot. We’re hitting them heavy. We’re hitting them heavy with this pine right now. That woke me up. That reignited my love for cooking. I haven’t loved cooking in about six months. Damn. We’re gonna add a little bit of vinegar to that. This is an aged habanero vinegar ’cause vinegar is one of those flavors that you associate with chorizo. And now I’m just gonna mash the hell out of this real quick. You really want to get a fair amount of agitation there. Is that enough? No. More, more, more, more, more. Yes, yes. I’m out. I’m out. I need more spice. I need more spice. Oh my god. He is gonna kill Chase. You see that, Nicole? That’s how you cook. Pure aggression. You intimidated, Brock Lesner? Ground and pound. Is Josh threatening to hit me right now? I’m gonna punch him back in the face. Do we have any soap? Where? Use that spray. It’s for dishes. Why did that stop you before? I’m a human man. All right. So we’re gonna heat up these tortillas. I’m gonna do it like, do it two, do it three at a time. Give ’em a minute. You heat ’em up. We’re gonna get ’em pliable. We’re gonna film ’em with the chorizo and then we’re going to deep fry. Make some pickled onions. It’s simple. That spice blend is killing me right now. Mm. It gets in the back of your jaw. It activates the salivary glands. What are those animals that have poison spit? Like a Komodo dragon or a Gila monster? I feel like that right now. Somebody let me spit on them. Josh is talking about his kinks at work again. Someone call the police. This is a technique that a lot of people use to make crispy tacos or . This is also the technique that Jack in the Box uses to get that unique dog food like consistency in their tacos. Jack in the Box, former sponsor of Mythical Kitchen. I only use that in the complimentary sense. Nothing says compliments like dog food. Oh, God. It’s so hot. That’s fine. You can see the steam coming off of the tortilla. And this hurts me. All right, I’m gonna start frying up my tacos right now. They’re looking nice and flat. That chorizo’s gonna cook up. It’s gonna be ultra fresh. We’re probably gonna get a fair amount of oil splatter in there. We’ll figure that out. And in the meantime, Nicole, I know you think you have twin telepathy with me. So on three, shout out the thing that we are both thinking right now. We gotta get it right. You ready? One, two, three. MMMBop. Why is polar bears fur clear but it actually appears white with the refraction off the snow? No. Did she say the same thing? Not even close. She did? Oh my god. Crazy. I’m gonna make a little juniper salsa here. This is not actually a salsa . I just wanted to say it cause it’s a fun word. And this is a late addition, so I’m just vibing with it right now. We got some soaked guajillo, ancho, and arbol chilies in there. I’m gonna add a little bit of tomato paste just to give it some sweetness. Bunch of juniper berries in there ’cause I want everything to taste like gin right now. And then I have some dill pickled onions. We’re gonna figure that out. Boom. I’m gonna drop in a little bit of cider vin. Hit that yup. I love crispy foods with wet on top is my favorite thing in the entire world. And we’re gonna hit that really, really hard with this. Hell yes. We’re gonna really crank this on high. I wanna come clean with y’all. I know a lot of Food Network productions, they might kind of fudge the books, producers step in. But what happened is I was talking about how the salsa was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life and I was doing a weird little dance. Everybody wanted to taste it. And then everybody, whole peanut gallery over here, Trevor, Vi, and Lily, they all had their suggestions for what to add to the sauce. Trevor thought it needed garlic, Vi thought it needed lime, Lily was like, “Throw in a pinch of sugar in there to neutralize any of the offensiveness.” So we added all of those things and it made it not better, not worse, just more, it made it more. This salsa tastes more than anything we’ve ever made in this kitchen, which is nuts. So I’m excited for our judge to try it. I’m gonna take my crispy tacos. These looking fantastish. I’m just gonna lay ’em out on the plate right there. Take this. Oh my god, I forgot. No, I was gonna do something here. I’m doing something even dumber now. I’m gonna take. This isn’t gonna do anything, but I wanna do it. Okay. We’re taking pine needles and we have the tacos underneath there and I’m gonna try and arrange them out and I’m gonna try and torch the pine needles to perfume the tacos. I’m gonna throw a towel over it. Josh, be careful. Oh! Please be careful. You know the ceremonial burning of the pine? This is what we do at Christmas, Nicole. I say this as just a Jew who wants presents. That’s great. And suffocate the flames. Get some of the ash in there. Beautiful. Now our tacos are ready to go. I love this show, man. I hope we get to keep making it. Who gave this guy a show? Gosh, embarrassing. No, exactly know what the game plan is with this. I’m just gonna kind of do this. This is how a lot of are served though with a delicious, thin, watery salsa, I think. Yeah, kind of rustic plating. Oh my god, I can taste it from here. Ugh. Got some pickled onions on there. Drape these artfully over it. Stupid tweezers don’t work. Stupid tweezers. Now I gotta go like a bear fishing for salmon. My hands are washed. Juice the onions a little bit. Drape some of these across. Yeah, that’s good stuff. And Nicole, she just laughing right now? What’s she doing? Oh, you know, just hanging out watching you absolutely massacre this dish. Cilantro. Cilantro is another flavor that is neither gonna make this better nor worse. Merely different. Good bad is a false binary. All we want is to feel. And that’s what this taco is going to make you do. It will make you feel. I need more cilantro. This dish is just a reflection of Josh’s inner demons and they are confused. Some cilantro on fire. Righty tighty? Lefty Lucy. Righty tighty? It’s meant to shoot flames out of it. That’s its job. I’m pretty stoked with that. I got a plate of food that looks like that. I’m pretty jazzed. Hold on. I’m gonna cut off another little branch here. Kinda just pop that right on the side. And there you have it. We got our pine needle tacos. Chase, man. I love the foundation that you laid, but I think Nicole and I really took this over the top and I’m excited to see who wins. Hi. Ooh. One of these looks real bad, but I’m excited about the others. I kind of feel like I need to taste this guy. This. I regret saying that ’cause I said it on camera so now I got to. Ugh. Brings him back. We were there once. Okay. These taco shells are. Really bad. Bad, right? The taco shells are abhorrent taco shells. This one’s already looking more appealing to me. Maybe it’s just that there’s more and I’m hungrier. Maybe it’s just the salsa on top kinda look like tacos dorados. All right, let’s see what we got. This looks way better already. I’m gonna add some lime. It still smells very piney. It reeks. It’s, I mean, truly this is the most offensive thing I’ve ever made. Not bad. Okay. Okay. That’s something. Do you taste the pine? He can’t hear you, Josh. I will say, the blended whatever I think is being well concealed by the rest of the package. I wouldn’t say I would just have this thing and fry it up myself and then do something beautiful with it. I think everything around it, like Christmas, it’s the wrapping. It’s all of the presentation that makes this so amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He gets me. Come on. Taco feels more metal. The black taco shell. I think that there’s some crema. Okay. I have been listening to a lot of metal recently. Thought you said you’ve been listening to Lil Wayne. That’s an impressive noise. Big mouth. Not really getting much pine at all. Wait, there’s something. There’s something coming at the end there. I don’t mean this in a bad way, but a little, a little foot, just a tiny. It’s a lamb. Lamb is gamey. Both of these streets ahead of this guy. Just this has nothing on these two. But where this is like an Arbor Day, maybe a best deal day, this is Christmas. So I gotta say the execution of both of these, this one wins. Yeah. This is the better dish. Let’s unhook. Hold on, don’t run away. Wait, are we still hooked? Oh, my head hit the boom. I’m the winner. I win again. We did it. We did it. Eat it. Oh God, he’s so strong. We did it. We did it. Ow! You kicked me. Typical. I apologize. Wait. I wanna try this because I was saying this is the most offensive thing I’ve ever made. And it’s still good. Nicole, try it. I’m scared. You really get hit with the pine. You get hit with a lot pine. With a lot of pine. Yeah. But I don’t know. There was something about it that I liked more and I think it is just like, like I said, it’s pine is like a Christmas tree. And you did great with just wrapping it and decorating it and making everything else taste really good. Chase, thank you. And also thank you for laying the incredible groundwork as the original culinary producer of Mythical. Everybody, give it up for Chase. I think I got a pine needle. And who ruined Will Its? We did. For real, thank you so much for judging. Nicole, I think you did awesome. I’m gonna take your lamb home so I don’t have to cook dinner tonight. No problem. No problem. Jules, we’re eating leftovers again, baby. Hi, Jules. And also check out the next episode of Aprons Off. We’re very excited for it. We are ranking, not ranking, we are telling you how we’d cook and eat all 151 original Pokemon and Trevor is traumatized by it. You’re never gonna believe what we do with Dratini. Hey, you! Cook up your own feast while wearing the Mythical Kitchen apron. Available now at mythical.com.