Yeah, crank it all the way to high heat. Life is too short to cook on medium, a saying that I have always said. Hey, welcome back to Mythical Kitchen, where dreams become food. And also welcome back to the Mythical Kitchen, an old friend of the show, we got Los Angeles Times Food Columnist, Jenn Harris. Come on down, Jenn! Thank you. Jenn, welcome back to Mythical Kitchen. You’re back in the south. Despite my best judgment, yes, I’m back here. Yes. Well, it really means a lot to me because the first time we had you here, listen, I wasn’t as proud of my performance as I could be, but this time I know we’re gonna knock it outta the park. Uh oh. Hmm hmm. Wait, that’s three? That’s three. That’s good luck, sorry. I’m sorry we almost killed you. That’s bad. Hmm hmm. Four. Four’s back to bad luck. No! So was that release I signed in case I died? Now normally under here, there might be a candy, there might be a snack food, one of your favorite gas station surprises. But there is an even better surprise underneath this here handkerchief. Okay, let, let’s see what’s under the handkerchief. Let’s see it hand. It’s pronounced handkerchief. The official Mythical Cookbook. That’s right. We are officially coming out with the Mythical Cookbook. 10 Simple Rules for cooking deliciously, eating happily and living mythically. I am super, super proud of this. Y’all have been asking for this for years and we went deep into the mythical content minds to bring you a hundred recipes, 75 of which we have adapted from all of the best foods that Mythical has ever created. We are talking about the old school Will It era. We are talking about the new school mythical kitchen era. It is a blending of worlds. We got a ton of fantastic photos in there. Me, all the kitcheneers were involved. There’s a picture of Rhett shirtless in there. There might even be two. He might even be putting a deep fried banana in my mouth by the pool. The point is, this is an incredible book. I normally make a joke out of everything, but I am really, really proud of all the effort that we put into this. We didn’t just wanna phone it in and like put all of our YouTube stuff into a book. There’s a lot of incredible original stories in there. A lot of original artwork, some really creative, fun stuff, including a children’s story of Link getting dragged to hell by a robotic vulture. You’ll see when you buy it. Speaking of which, pre-orders are available right now, go to mythical.com/cookbook and then it officially publishes in March. It’s a really fun time, I promise you, you will not regret it. Jenn today I’ll be preparing you three dishes from the Mythical Cookbook because last time, listen, we tried to get a little too fancy with it. We served you a whole bone-in fish that caused some issues. Who could say who’s to blame? Certainly not me, but this is good home style, comfort food adapted for the home chef. I think you’re really gonna love it. I hope so. And if you do love it, would you be willing to lend your name and reputation to the back cover of the book writing a very esteemed blurb? If I survive and I love it, I will write a blurb for you. What if you die and you love it? Can we get a ghost writer? You know, I think you’re outta luck then. Fair enough. Jenn, thank you so much for doing this. You ready to get to it? I am. Let’s do it. Let’s eat. So I take it this is a redemption challenge to see if I make it through alive or not. Since last time I was served many bones, large bones that could have lodged in my throat and killed me. I’m taking a big risk and I think he’s gonna impress me and not kill me this time. All right, Jenn, first up, we actually have our complimentary bread course. Wow. Now this is our house baked, We are calling it the Baconator Pretzel. These are soft pretzels inspired by Wendy’s Baconator. The dipping sauce is a sort of Thousand Island sans pickles plus bacon grease. And then we have a bacon and sharp cheddar with a lot of cheese lace around, of course, a boiled and then baked pretzel. Can I eat it? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I’d recommend tearing it, submerging it in that sauce, and then kind of biting it and doing a motion to get all of the cheese juice. Oh, you want me to slurp the cheese? If you, if, if you prefer. I’m gonna actually try it without the cheese first, so I can judge your pretzel making. Fair enough. Also, it’s not cheese, it’s mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, and bacon fat. Mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup and bacon fat. To mimic the sauce that is on a Baconator. Hmm hmm. That’s a pretty good pretzel. Thank you. Yeah. And it’s adapted for the home cook as well. Not, oh, okay. You know, Wendy’s is not my favorite restaurant, so. It’s nobody’s favorite restaurant. There’s somebody out there who’s like, Wendy’s is my favorite restaurant. It’s definitely, it definitely tastes like a burger sauce. I love that for us. So, so, you nailed that. I don’t know if it’s the best thing to pair with the pretzel, which is pretty stellar on its own, but I’m not mad at it. You don’t need to eat the sauce, you know? And the good news is you can eat this, you can pair this with any sauce on your home. Yeah. You want some A1? No, I’m good. No, fair enough. No, it is comforting though. And I would like, like this would be good like while you’re watching a game or something. Jenn, thank you so much. Good start everybody. This is the perfect first dish from the cookbook to cook for a food critic for a couple reasons. One, who doesn’t love french toast? Two, who doesn’t love Skittles? But also this is really emblematic of what we did with the entire cookbook. So, long before my time during Will It Cereal, Rhett and Link found out that you put Skittles in milk, the Skittles become kind of inedible, but the Skittle milk is really, really delicious. You can’t just make a whole recipe for Skittle milk. The ingredients are Skittle and milk. So what we decide to do is take the technology of Skittle milk and transform it into french toast ergo, we have the Skittle Milk French Toast and it is really fantastic. We are also making a Skittle syrup. Now, you dump a bunch of Skittles in the water. Yes, that is a recipe. It is in the cookbook. We’re gonna take a whole pack of Skittles, put that into some water that we have boiling, and we’re just gonna let that go. We’re gonna whisk it, it’s gonna come together. And then now we have been steeping Skittles and milk overnight. You don’t have to do it overnight about an hour will do, and you see you just get some white candies that are in there. Fantastic. We’re gonna put that off to the side. And then we are going to whisk up our eggs, mix it into there, and then get our bread dredge. All right. And we’re just gonna whisk that right into our custard there. We’ve been dehydrating this bread because as we found out, do we do all myth munchers on french toast? No. We did busting food network myths. And I never believed Alton Brown, that you need to stale out your bread before we make french toast and then we tested it and turns out, you do. So we got some stale bread right here. Look at her go. We’re gonna reduce that for a couple minutes, let the candies fully dissolve. So we got some stale bread right here. We got some butter and a griddle. Boom, skate that butter away, yeah. Crank it all the way to high heat. Life is too short to cook on medium, a saying that I have always said. Does anybody else have this thing where they only love whisking in giant bowls where there’s no risk of overflow? Feels so good. Oh, you feel like you’re just, it’s like playing, it’s like bowling with bumpers on. There’s just such a massive safety net. Also, I always bowl bumpers on. Alright, we’re gonna let that soak in there. I like to let my toast soak in the custard a little bit. That’s a little Paul Hollywood. You know Paul Hollywood. Alright, we’re gonna start layering on our french toast. We’re only gonna serve Jenn a couple pieces, but I wanna make some for the whole family ’cause the Mythical Cookbook is meant to share. Toast, in there. Yeah, I can get one more piece on, I can get one more piece on. What I like to do with our Skittle syrup is you let it reduce for about five minutes until it thickens up. Then you drop a little bit of butter in there and that’s gonna make it nice and rich. One more. You gotta drag the french toast over, kind of bless it. And that didn’t fit, uh oh. Let that cook in the butter for about three minutes. You’re gonna flip it. Skittle syrup, mount it with butter. Boom. Simple home style cookery. You know, that’s what Mythical has always been about. That and creating abominations of God that we will one day have to pay for but today will not be that day. Skittles are not my favorite. They’ve never been. I know I’m gonna get a lot of hate for this. They’ve never been my favorite candy. I mean, they wouldn’t even be in my top like 30 candies. So Skittles are not, not my favorite. This is an unconventional course number two. I know what you’re saying. We just wanted to cook you fun things in the cookbook. May I add syrup? Yeah, sure. Thank you so much. So if you could sort of waft and get the redolence of the dish and tell me what you think it is. Well, there’s definitely french toast. But I don’t know. Yeah. This is red. So it’s either spicy like chili or you put strawberries in there. Yeah. Give it, give it a nice, we’re getting anything familiar? I don’t, I’m not smelling anything. Am I supposed to? I have no idea. I don’t even know if it smells. I’m gonna try it by itself. Yeah, please. Did you melt candy? We did. So this is our house made Skittles Milk French Toast. Ah, okay. We found that if you dissolve Skittles in milk, it is a wonderful culinary creation. But we needed a recipe to fit that into, so we turned it into a custard, made french toast, and then that is a house made Skittle syrup, simply Skittles, water, and mounted with a little bit of butter to finish. Awesome, so aren’t Skittles illegal now in the? Yeah. No, we got a guy though. Oh, okay. Yeah. Alright. So the first time I came, you tried to kill me with the bones. Yeah. Now you’re feeding me a… That’s not the first illegal substance that’s been in your meal today, Jenn. Get outta here! Just kidding. Okay. This does look good though. Yeah actually. I was wondering, I was like this, this has no smell. It just, just tastes a little like candy. It didn’t smell like anything. Oh yeah. That hardly smells. Yeah. There is a whole bag of Skittles melted just into the syrup. A whole bag into just this much? Yup. I don’t what, I don’t know whether it’d be proud of you or scared. It’s not. What you did. We were really taste the the Skittles. But if you say that with like a, you really taste the Skittles, then it’s like a happy. Yeah. You know, I think the actual French toast is really good. I don’t know if I’m feeling the Skittles just because, or maybe it’s just because I was expecting like maple syrup. It’s like crunchy on the outside. It’s like not too eggy. And then yeah, you just have this whopper of a sweet. You know, the good news is you can add any syrup you want. Yeah. Okay. This fresh toast, you know what I mean? Yes, yes. We are here to provide inspiration. Got it. For other people. If you saw this on a diner menu, would you order it? You know what, if I saw Skittle syrup, I’d probably say syrup on the side and I would give it a try. So I would still order this. That’s still a win in my book. There you go. This is my single favorite recipe in the cookbook. I just wanted to shout it to you guys. This is one of the original recipes. Don’t slap your hand near a knife. This is one of the original recipes that you’ve never seen before but I’m showing to you now. This is the Lomo Saltado Cheese Steak. I made Lomo Saltado on the show before as part of meal prep that I eat ’cause it’s just one of my favorite things. Basically stir fried beef with potatoes, onions, tomatoes, a little bit of soy sauce, vinegar, but a cheese steak is one of my favorite sandwiches. Longtime Eagles fan, Jason Kelce, friend of the show, go birds baby. Family’s from Allentown so we decided to merge two cultures that famously hate each other, Peru and Philadelphia. If you didn’t know about the Peruvian Philadelphian Wars of 1896, Google it. It’ll come up. But we’re merging them together and this is one of my favorite things. It tastes incredible. We’re gonna start with a rib eye and we are going to slice it as thin as possible. When I say as thin as possible, I mean as thin as you’re willing to get it. Also, if you freeze your rib eye for about like 15 minutes maybe, maybe more, maybe even 20, it will come out better. You want a nice sharp knife and a nice cold steak. Also, we got hoagie rolls from our local grocery store bakery, if you can, if you had a grocery store that bakes off hoagie rolls are generally better than the stuff you can find in like the bag section. Oh, also french fries are going in there. Peru birthplace of potatoes in the history of the world, by the way. And every time somebody’s like, mashed potatoes are Irish guacamole, it’s like mashed potatoes are Peruvian guacamole. Perfect. So we’re gonna get this working in a pan. You don’t even need to put any lube in the pan because there’s so much fat in a rib eye that’s get out there. And now I’m gonna start slicing up the aromatics. You don’t want too much browning on a cheese steak. I found a lot of people kinda over brown their meat my reaction isn’t everything, you know, I don’t want that crispy beef in there. I can touch raw vegetables after I touch the raw meat because these are all getting cooked with the raw meat. That’s the rules. Slice some red onion here. Perfect. All right. Meat’s off and brown in. We’re just gonna chuck the onions right in there. Ain’t nothing to it, but to do it, crank that heat a little bit. Tomatoes, I’m gonna wait a little bit to throw in. I’m just gonna go ahead and take the core out. This isn’t the safest way to do it. We do have though a Mythical kitchen guide to food safety in the cookbook. So do as I have written, not as I am currently doing, I suppose. Take out the seeds, boom. You want your tomatoes look like this. This is how I’ve typically had it in Lomo Saltado, which means I believe it means jumping beef, cool. Got some tomatoes going, but we are also gonna hit it with some soy sauce and vinegar. I’m gonna take some garlic, two cloves, I’m gonna strike it. Yeah, so last time Jenn was here, we almost killed her with fish bones. And the good thing is we don’t have a single bone in fish recipe in this entire cookbook. Look at us. That is the official mythical kitchen guide to food safety. Awesome, garlic going to the pan. Thank you very much. Beef is almost cooked, fast than tomato. And then this is kinda wet right now. You got some steam from the beef. But in comes the innovation of Peru with throwing french fries right in there. We’re gonna get some little, oh, these all stuck together like a brick. Okay, we’re gonna throw in the french fries. And the french fries are gonna add in one french fry ability, french fry-tatiousness, french fry-acity if you will. But also they’re gonna absorb some of that liquid and then that’s gonna leave you a nice melty sandwich. So start by that until the french fries absorb some of the beef juice. That’s looking awesome. I’m gonna wash my hands now. Now seems the appropriate time. I seasoned it, yeah, what we need is a little bit of cilantro that I’m just gonna tear off. I like nice big pieces of cilantro. So I’m gonna add some of that in there, yes. So now we’re gonna mound all that up and we’re gonna take three slices of American cheese. And we’re just gonna let that sit. Let that steam. Now I wanna take some of this and put it on top of there to help influence melting the cheese. Okay, perfect. And then now hoagie roll. So a lot of, a lot of hoagie places here. Here’s what you do. You gotta hollow it out a little bit, keep that for later. That’s gonna be a fun time. Take that, put it directly over the top and you just gotta go huck it. You just gotta go hug it, chug it football. Woo. Just like that. There you go. There you go. Put some of the french fry on top. And now you’re gonna take this beagle slop witch and you’re gonna come follow me. You’re gonna put that, aw, oh my god. It’s so hot. But the steam is what makes it, if the steam is what makes it, you wanna tuck it. Hold on, grab this. Yeah, take that out. Boom, boom, back. Tuck that in. Roll it up and foil, tuck the edges. Look at this beautiful cheese steak. You ever see anything like that? Ooh, scraps. I have actually only written one blurb for the back of a cookbook because I feel like it takes, it’s gonna take a lot for me to throw my weight and reputation behind someone’s cookbook. And they’re not all great and there’s a lot out there. So if this one is good, if the food is really good and I believe in it, I’ll write a blurb. I’m excited for this because this is my single favorite recipe in the cookbook. This is an original, never before been featured in the Mythical universe. This is the Lomo Saltado Cheese Steak. Ooh. I love cheese steaks. But for me, especially growing up in LA, eating such vibrant cuisines, there’s just not enough acid and complexity in there. And so I figured Lomo Saltado you get the vinegar, you get the soy sauce, you get the cilantro, the tomato, all the garlic in there. And so we put some American cheese on it. Shaved rib eye and a nice hoagie roll Lomo Saltado Cheese Steak was born. This looks great and it smells fantastic. Yes. Can I, I’m gonna actually cut it in half. Oh please, cut it in half. Yeah, yeah. I feel like the best part of the sandwich will, yes, will be the. All right. We got a nice soft squishy roll. Gotta be squishy. Just enough to absorb the grease. And there’s a french fries in there of course. Just to sort of trap all that. Oh wow. Should I? Look at that. That looks amazing. And I love that there’s like french fries sticking out the butt of the sandwich. Oh, all those french fries sticking out the butt. Oh, that’s kind of ridiculous. Wow. Yes. There’s good flavor on the meat, you get the herbs. I love the fresh cilantro. Onions are really great. You get that Lomo salt, like the essence of Lomo Saltado too. Yeah. With that like soy. But what does it for me are the little french fries. Because. It’s, I’m being serious. Yeah. No, I’m being serious. If they were crunchy, it would not go. Like it would not work. These are, they are so perfect. And they just become a sandwich filling and they help soak up the grease and some of the other flavors in here too. I’m so glad. It’s great. That you see the, not only that you see the vision, that you’re tasting the vision, because we all tasted this when we first made it. And we were like, this is something, like this is the thing that we did and we’re really proud of. And now you can do it at home. I would order this at a restaurant. Yeah? A hundred percent, yes. I. This would make it in my column actually. That a promise? That is a promise, yeah. We gotta do the pop-up. You let me know when, I’ll be there. I promise you I’ll do that. This really means a lot to me, thank you. Very good. Now when I think of food critics and really the cutting edge of food, especially in such a metropolitan area like Los Angeles, I think of two things. I think of one, Taco Bell. They were the first to ever make a hexagon shaped taco adjacent product. Two, I think meatloaf. Because meatloaf really is a food of possibility. You know it’s not only a loaf of meat, it’s a loaf of hope, I think. Also, yeah. So we’re making a Taco Bell Meatloaf. This is in the book. This is also literally the first food I ever made for Good Mythical Morning for the Will It meatloaf. And in that one I blended a bunch of Taco Bell burritos into a slop and then mixed that with meat. And it wasn’t nearly as good as this. So what we’ve done is we’ve been inspired by the Doritos Locos Taco, and we are infusing all those flavors into this meatloaf. And we’re cooking it in a bundt pan. Gonna start sweating some onions off. Always sweat your aromatics for a meatloaf, for any sort of meat adjacent product. There we go. Salt the onions, that’s gonna help bring out some of the moisture. Why make a meat bundt cake? That’s a heck of a question, I’ll give you the honest answer. This is supposed to be a normal meatloaf and then we were talking to our food stylist for the cookbook shoot, Lauren Anderson, who actually has worked with Taco Bell a lot and got Taco Bell to send me a gift box. Lauren, you freaking rule. She goes, you know what’d be hilarious? If this was just a meat bundt. And we’re like, that is hilarious. So now we’re doing it in this, but you can also free bake this, put it on, just make it a lump and then put it on a big old sheet pan and do that. We got some oregano. Oregano is grown in Mexico. Mexican oregano, you’ve heard the term. So we’re gonna add that in there. I’d like to put all my spices and stuff into the onions as they’re sweating ’cause it’s all gonna get in there. It’s gonna toast up the spice a little bit. So we’re gonna start making our big old lump mashing meat 80/20 ground beef from the grocery store. We’re gonna dump in a bunch of Doritos. These are gonna partially act as our breadcrumbs. We initially tried this recipe with only Doritos and no breadcrumbs. Turns out there’s a lot of grease in Doritos thus negating the point of breadcrumbs in its entirety. So you gotta add both. That’s the level of recipe testing that we have done here. And then we’re gonna add two whisked eggs to that. I love just mash and meatloaf with my hands. Talk about fire sauce. This is optional. You can add any hot sauce that you’d like. But they sell Taco Bell Fire Sauce in a big old glass bottle. And I just think that’s fun. So we’re gonna add maybe a tablespoon to that. We’re also gonna brush down the bundt pan with the Taco Bell Fire Sauce. This rules, dude. This is fun. This is just a fun time. All right, we’re gonna paint this up the sides. It’s gonna slightly caramelize. Give it a whole lot of color and texture. Pre-made taco seasoning. A lot of people crap on pre-made taco seasoning, but the one thing that it really tastes like is Taco Bell. Really cumin forward, there’s some MSG, which again MSG, there’s just good and safe, a little bit of citric acid, some chili powder like dump a fair, yeah, dump a fair amount of that in there. That’s awesome. It’s all measured out in the cookbook. You’ll, you’ll see, you’ll see when you get there. Alright, the onions are almost done sweating. I’m gonna take the other half my taco seasoning packet. You can put them all on the onions. You can put it in there. You know, cooking, it’s, it’s like jazz. I don’t understand it. All right, we’re gonna add the onions. Here’s the thing, I would typically tell you to cool down the onions, we’ll let sit there for 10 minutes, we got stuff to do. You are cooking in a home. You’ve got a lot of stuff to do. So I’m gonna teach you a very valuable technique. Many would say that you should use a spoon or something to mix the meat, I’m gonna use my hands. Use the coldness of the beef to insulate you from the heat of the onions. What other cookbook are you gonna get tips like that from? None. None. You effectively make cold beef mittens to put around your hands to protect you from hot onions. And now this is my technique. I’m gonna throw balls of meat there. You’re gonna mash it into the grooves of the bundt pan, but I just wanna get even balls stationed around there. Perfect. Also, hey, you can take this mixture. You can make Taco Bell, you can make little meatballs. You can make little sliders out of it. You know, you don’t have to put it in the bundt pan. You can make, oh my God, cupcakes. You put some whipped nacho cheese on top. What a fun time. Kids love this. Kids love Mythical Kitchen. This is going into a 325 degree oven for about 75 minutes. You just wanna make sure the internal temperature reads above 150 when you take it out. But 165 as it rests. But this will get a lot of carry on cooking because it’s about four pounds of Dorito meat. Product bread shoved into a bundt. I feel like I have an interesting relationship with Taco Bell. It’s sometimes it’s like an after, well, most of the time it’s like an after drinking food. I don’t actually know if I’ve eaten Taco Bell sober before and I’m not drunk right now. So I guess I’m going to eat some Taco Bell sober probably, maybe. For your main course, Jenn. This is our showstopper. This is our. My God, Doritos Locos Taco Bell Meatloaf. Now we subbed out half the breadcrumbs for actual Doritos. There is real life Taco Bell Fire Sauce within the meat. It is crowned with cheese and then garnished like a Dorito’s Locos Taco Supreme with sour cream and tomatoes. The sides are mashed potatoes with nacho cheese instead of gravy and normal peas. The sides are superfluous. Don’t judge us by them but you can’t eat them. Why? Why are the peas normal? You don’t wanna stick something in there? Ah you know, we thought about just dumping a bunch of M&Ms in there, but we decided to. Great. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, I will try this first. Oh, let’s make sure we get enough cheese on here. This is meant to feed a family of 26 to 27. There’s something so familiar about this. I know that what it’s supposed to taste like, but my mom actually made this like meat and corn casserole when I was little. And this to this totally tastes like it. No, that’s beautiful. This is the Ratatouille moment. You are the mean food critic who eats like a strawberry. No, no. Hey, just, I’m saying in the movie, not in real life, but in the movie he was mean. But also misunderstood. But also mean. Also so mean. Oh my God. All right. Hmm. Okay. It has an interesting texture. Probably because of the Doritos. Correct, yeah. That’s the really getting in there and doing its work. Yeah. But it, but it also gives it a flavor. Like a corn flavor. Yeah. Versus just breadcrumbs, which is nice. Doritos have like a lovely toast on them too, so you should be getting some of those toastiness notes coming in. Yeah. No, but I actually think this is, this is very, I think mission accomplished with this, and I do like the texture of it and that corn flavor that you get from it. And it really does remind me of my mom’s, we just call it Mimi and Corn Casserole. Jenn, thank you so much. So you will officially approve and write a blurb on the back of the Mythical Kitchen cookbook? I will. Thank you so much. I really appreciate everyone, give it up for Jenn Harris. Thank you. Coming back despite us almost killing her the first time. And jury is still out on how you’re gonna feel after eating all this, I suppose. Yeah, I don’t know. I’m gonna be here for a while, but I’ll make a valiant effort. You can’t leave until you clean the plate. Great. But for real, thank you so much. And thank you for the kind words, I really appreciate it. Everyone, make sure to follow Jenn Harris on socials. Tell them where you’re at. @Jenn_Harris_, and you can go to latimes.com/food. And yeah, thank you all so much for stopping by. Go ahead and pre-order the Mythical Cookbook, out right now. We are super, super proud of the work that we put into it. We’re super proud of Jenn Harris’s blurb on the back. We got new episodes coming out every week. You know where we are. We’re here. Come find us. Let’s see you y’all next time. We’re finally releasing a cookbook featuring fan favorite dishes from GMM and Mythical Kitchen and tons of completely new original recipes. Pre-order now at mythical.com/cookbook.