Today, I’m going back to school. ((Intro Music)) So, whenever anybody asks me where I did my culinary training, I always tell them the culinary school of hard knocks, but I’ve recently found out that that is not an accredited culinary school. It’s just a guy in an alley that I gave 600 bucks to who taught me how to make what he called, street spaghetti. But in the Mythical Kitchen, we have three esteemed culinary school graduates in Lily, Nicole and Trevor and they are all going to put me through the ringer today, they are going to see if I can pass an actual culinary school test and I’m putting my career on the line here, nothing good can come from this episode, right? At best, I prove myself as good as a first year culinary student, at worst, out myself as a complete fraud, but I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is and if all else fails, we’re making street spaghetti. ((Dramatic Music)) Hello, student. Yes, Chef. That’s Chef to you. Okay. You have some knife cuts. That you have to complete. Are you ready? Yes, Chef! You have three carrots. You need to brunoise one. Small dice. Medium dice one. You have an all purpose potato. That’s a potato, Chef! Yes. You have to batonnet it. Do you know what that is, Chef? Yes, Chef! I’m the Chef! Yes, Chef! You have to supreme an orange. You see the orange? Yes, it’s the orange one. That needs to be. But so is carrots. You have a bulb of garlic. You see this? Yes, Chef. Mince a clove. Yes, Chef. Small dice this onion. What kind of onion is this? Normal, Chef. No, no. You have to mince the parsley. That’s one bunch of parsley. Your hat is taller than mine, Chef, so you can fit more rats under it that can tell you how to cook, Chef. Good luck, Chef. Thank you, Chef. Here we have our knife cut demo. You have your medium diced carrots, you have your brunoise carrots, a minced garlic, medium diced onion, supremed orange, small diced carrots, potato batonets, and potato julienne, and then minced parsley. You’re gonna like cut off the little butthole, you’re gonna cut off the little top. What was that bowl for? I thought it was a trash bowl, but it’s filled with water. – [Lily] Figure it out. Okay, we have an onion. I’m gonna lay my hand flat here, and we are medium dicing this, so about half an inch. It’s not the most uniform. But it is what I’ve done. I just put, I just put everything on this. It’s a perfectly, perfectly medium diced onion. Alright, boom, onion, done. Carrots, small diced, medium diced, and brunoise. Okay, okay, okay. We’re gonna peel the carrots. Okay, so, yeah, like, here’s the thing. One of the most commonly searched things about me is Mythical Chef Josh, a real chef. And like, the answer is no. I wouldn’t even consider myself a chef. It’s just kind of a nice branding thing. I’m the storyteller. I’ve worked in media my whole life. I used to interview a lot of chefs and, one opened up a restaurant called Wolf. His name was Marcel Vigneron. And I was interviewing him and he was like, I want to cook how a wolf does. Like, would a wolf peel a carrot if he found it in the wild? And I was like, I don’t think he would. He’s like, exactly. And so, anyways, I don’t like that I’m peeling this carrot, but I believe in culinary school they would want you to do that. You would never want to cut your carrot like this, because it’s unstable. So, you just want to lay this down and make even cuts along all four sides. I’m just gonna like, try and shave this down so we can get like, perfect square edges here. So now you see how I got this like kind of fanned out, but the edges are kept intact. I’m gonna square them off there, and then just a nice fine brunoise here. They’re whispering about me, and I hate it. That’s, that’s the thing about culinary school is it’s not the work that gets you, it’s the cliques. It’s, it’s just, oh, it’s so cliquey there. I’m gonna eat all that. Alright, cool. All right. Brunoise. All right, that’s gonna be the smallest dice. Now I gotta fine dice. And now I have to decide what I think that means. A small dice. That is a quarter of an inch. Square off the carrot. Bang, bang, flavor gang. How often do you just yell bang, bang, flavor gang in culinary school? Like all the time? No? That’s cool. These carrots aren’t differently enough sized. Ah, screw it. Alright. Alright, potaters! Alright, batonnet. We have the batonnet and we have the julienne potato. The batonnet is a quarter of an inch, and then julienne is, eighth of an inch. And they’re both two inches in length. The apple of the earth in French, pomme de terre, as many people know. But actually, all potatoes originated in Peru. It was a New World crop. You know, a lot of botanists thought that it’d be a cheap way to feed the world, and they found out that potatoes don’t actually store as well as they could, so grains still. I know a lot about food, it’s just I don’t know how to cook it. My pinky length is exactly like two inches, so I’m just gonna square this off just a little more, and just go like this. A batonnet, it’s a baton, so it’s kind of like a thicky boy french fry shape, right? So like this is a boom, perfect batonnet of a “potrato”, put them in cold water to prevent oxidization, and so they don’t go brown, because I want to impress my new best friend, culinary school instructor. And then I can finally leave this place. Are these even? Like, a little. I think it’s, do you think it’s because my hips are tight? Just, just do it. You know, if they don’t like you, they’re not your real friends. Let’s see if I can get it right. This is not a good orange to supreme, I’ll say that, guys. Say that, whoever bought this orange. Bad job. Alright, so, you can do that. Take my chef’s knife, run it around the skin, cut out all the pith. Actually, a pretty good orange to supreme. Great job, guys. I just want to follow the lines here, follow the lines. Just go like this, and go like that, and it should just come out. You got western grip and butcher grip, and then, oh, what’s that? What’s that? Perfect supreme. Gotta do it 60 more times. Oh, that’s a big boy. Oh, he got a big boy. That’s probably not good, they’re different sizes. ((Laughing)) Hold on, hold on, let me cut this one in half, they’re never gonna know. ((Laughing)) Boom! Got them! Okay, we have our peeled garlic here. I’m actually gonna use my paring knife to use this, because the garlic cloves are small. I exploded the whole thing, I’m sorry, that was a bit. You can start here, as if you were kind of brunoising it. You can flip it, and then you can make incisions like this. I’m just mincing it, right? I’m gonna say that’s perfect. Boom, one clove of garlic, put that right next to the oranges. Perfume each other. And then parsley, I’m gonna roll this up. They are sticklers about stems and parsley. If you’re doing a test for culinary school, make sure you pick your parsley. This is how I do it at home. I do it at home. If somebody washed this was I, wait, was I expected to wash any of this? Parsley’s nice and dry. You always want parsley to be dry when you mince it. And unwashed. And then, just crush the herbs together like that. The least knife cuts that you can do through this, the better. Otherwise, you’re gonna keep hacking at it and then potentially, like, bruise it. So, just little knife cuts, kind of work fast. You want to make sure you’re doing a sort of equal amount of cuts, vertiginously and horizontalizously. And then we can go over it the other way. So, you want to, like, really make sure that you’re striking vertically down. through the parsley. Then you’re going to want to hit them with some of those. They call it a little double tap. You know, they don’t give you style points at culinary school, but they should. Do the cutting board test. There’s really no, like, green marks at all. And this is nice and sprinkleable. Parsley done. Knife, shoot. Knife cuts done. We got, oh, that looks like crap. We got a medium diced onion. We got a medium diced carrot. We got a small diced carrot. We got a brunoise carrot. We got supreme orange, minced garlic, minced parsley, julienne potates, et les bâtonnet. ((Upbeat Music)) Before I out myself as a fraud who doesn’t know how to cook, it’d be really nice if you could preorder the cookbook. No, like right now, like please right now, go to whatever preferred site you use to order cookbooks and then order it. It comes out on March 11th. So, once you finish doing that, I can wait. I can wait for as long as it takes. Once you finish doing that, then I’ll get back to cooking. It’s really cool, we’re very proud of it. Let’s open to a random page, see what’s on it. Yeah, there’s nacho donut holes. They don’t teach that in culinary school, but they do teach that in the Mythical Kitchen. And they are good! Alright. Do you want to? I’m waiting for them to order it. Oh, okay. Yes, Chef! Hello, Josh. Today you will be making eggs Benedict. That will require you to make a hollandaise, poach an egg, make sure your Canadian bacon is warmed through, and you will have to warm up your English muffin and garnish accordingly. Them’s is ham coins, Chef! Good luck. Thank you. I don’t know how they teach you to separate egg yolks in school, but most of the time I do this for the first two, and then I just start cracking them through my fingers. Let’s take this off the heat, that burns. I’m warming my ham coins with the bowl. ((Laughing)) The first thing we’re gonna do is we got three egg yolks here that I whisked up. Just to get it going a little bit, you know what I mean? We’re gonna put this on our bain-marie. So, there is hot water at the bottom of this pot, at a quite low temperature. And this is to make sure that the eggs start to cook evenly. It’s really important, whenever you’re doing this, that the water doesn’t boil and doesn’t lick the top of the bowl. Because if it does that, it can possibly singe it, make the temperature skyrocket, and we don’t want that. And crank the heat on this. You want to whip a little bit of air into the egg yolks. And get some agitation into the egg yolks. I’m very, very slowly and meticulously streaming in my butter. The reason why my clarified butter is streaming in slowly is so I don’t break the emulsion. I want to make sure that I’m doing this nice and slow and soft, because I don’t want any accidents to happen. It is a very temperamental thing that we’re dealing with, so slow and steady wins the race. Now we gotta go. Now we gotta go. Now we gotta go. Okay, now we stop. Now we stop. Take off heat. It’s getting nice and fudgy, getting nice and fudgy, getting nice and fudgy. Whisk. I’ve already broken my hollandaise. I broke it. I broke it. I broke the hollandaise. I broke the hollandaise. Water got too hot. Water got too hot. Water got too hot. I broke the hollandaise. No, it’s not broken. Whisk through it. I need a cold. I need a cold water. It’s fine. The hollandaise is just cheese. It looks like nacho cheese now. How hot’s the butter? Butter’s pretty hot. Okay, I’m going over here. Screw it, man. I’m just gonna. Yeah, that’s broken as. Alright, cool. Now I need to start over, straight up. Guys, I need more eggs. – [Nicole] They’re in the fridge. I need more eggs. – [Nicole] Grab your own eggs, they’re in the fridge. I need more eggs. There you go. Alright. You know, at this point, at this point, when things break down, it’s just about getting breakfast served. You know? – [Nicole] He might have to serve it. – [Nicole] It’s hard, huh? No, it’s not hard. It’s super easy and I’m good at it. – [Nicole] Yeah, culinary school’s hard, huh? No, it’s super easy. Culinary school’s easy. I don’t need it. If I reject something before it rejects me, then that keeps me safe. – [Nicole] Uh huh. Uh huh. I’m gonna put some sink water in it. – [Nicole] There’s water, Josh. Nah, I’m putting sink water in it. ((Music)) We’re gonna keep this hollandaise for service. I’m like not mad about it. I’m not happy about it either, but I’m not mad about it. We gotta poach some eggs. Right here we got some water. It’s not exactly at a rolling boil, but it is hot. We’re gonna throw in some vinegar. This is gonna acidulate our water. This is gonna help our egg whites get nice and tight, which is exactly what we want. Vinegar. Splish splash, taking a bath. Two tablespoons of the old Rachael Ray. What you’re gonna do is you’re gonna take a spoon or something just to mix your water, and this is gonna create a vortex. And when I drop my egg in, you’re gonna see, it’s gonna make the egg do a little swirl and come together. This is what I like to do with poached eggs. I like to strain off, strain off the egg whites. I like to crack my eggs into a fine mesh sieve. There we go. That way you don’t get those little, liquid egg white, what I can only call like sperm tails. I’m gonna take the water off the heat. Swirl it with the back of the spoon, even though I don’t, I don’t want to do that, but I’m just trying to get it to calm down. We got our nice round vortex, we go crack, crack, plop. We take this, drop it in, bang, off the heat. Perfect poached egg. Look at those little liquid egg whites coming out. We don’t want that, we don’t want that. Boom, got that in there. Let’s see what happens with that, gonna put that back on the heat a little bit. I warmed my Canadian bacon by just warming it in a sauté pan just for a little bit so it could get a little bit of heat on it. Alright, screw it. – [Nicole] Are you, are you sure? Yeah man, what’s the microwave gonna do to the ham coins that any other cooking vessel couldn’t do? What did they teach you, get a nice sear on the ham coins and butter baste with thyme and garlic, Nicole? My ham coins exploded. Alright, I’m going to turn my heat off, do another check on my eggs. That’s good. The white is set. I’m going to set it down on a paper towel. ((Laughing)) No, nothing. You said you weren’t. – [Nicole] What is going? Just rinse it out. I’m just gonna poach like six. But this is the last test, right? I don’t have to do anything after this? – [Nicole] Oh, you’re screwed, bro. You’re so screwed. You guys know the restaurants that like serve food in like a little cast iron skillet? ((Laughing)) Now we’re gonna take our hollandaise. Spoon it lovingly over the top. There we go. Lovingly blanket that. Hollandaise. That’s it. That’s it. Come on now. Come on. We’re having fun. We’re having so much fun. Boom. Just like Mama Denny used to make. We’re gonna add a little bit of paprika over the top. I like to just take a little bit in my hand and just sprinkle like so. Sprinkle like so. – [Nicole] So stupid. Kind of sick. Kind of sick with it though. – [Nicole] I’m so sick. Kind of sick with it though. Kind of sick with it. Alright. Stupid parsley on there. Bam! Perfect eggs Benedict. I hate this. Can I go home? I don’t feel well. I have a stomachache. ((Music)) Why, hello there maggot. My name is Chef Bicep. And today you’re gonna be making pâte à choux and crème pâtissière Good luck. The hell was that? Pâte à choux is, very temperature sensitive. It’s something that you want to make sure isn’t getting too hot or too cold. So, I’m gonna add all of my milk, and we’re gonna get the milk coming up to a scald. Not a boil, a scald. You, butter. Also going in. Gonna get that melted in with the milk. Basically we’re gonna get all of these ingredients other than the flour and the eggs going in. Now we just gotta mash this around so you just. Is it like pancakes where you want your choux dough to be a little lumpy? At this stage in the game here, if your choux dough looks anything like pancake mix, then you might need to step outside, take a breather, cause you, you’ve royally screwed up. I’ve made cream puffs before. They were fine. The frozen ones at Costco are better. I tried making them for home EC class in 7th grade and I bungled it hard. Cheese and rice. Cheese and rice. There it is. You wanna get some nice stretch in there. You know what I mean. I said like several minutes, but this is looking how I want it to look. – [Nicole] You’re doing wonderful, sweetie. You’re doing wonderful, sweetie! – [Trevor] This is not looking good. ((Laughing)) Wait, why? This is what choux’s supposed to look like, right? God. We’re going to slowly add in our eggs to mix. You don’t want to add these all at once, otherwise it could not get mixed together fully, and also, it could just turn to scrambled eggs. I feel like you want some heat on the eggs, right? Cause this needs to be able to mound. Think, Josh, think. ((Belch)) I don’t care. So, the egg is really important here, because it’s adding a lot of structure to the dough. And so, as it bakes, it doesn’t just flatten out. I know I’m supposed to add all these eggs. But if I add all these eggs, it’s not gonna work. That’s not good, that’s not good. Wait, I have an idea. No, where’s the pot? It’s going back in the pot. So, so, so, so, my plan is, my plan is, it’s not firm enough. And so I’m gonna try and cook the eggs in a pot and then put it back in there. Okay, so I’m, I’m, I’m happy with this. I’m happy with this. Only gonna scramble the eggs a little bit more. My body has entered fight or flight. Alright. Check this out. Check this out. Yeah, yeah. So, I’m gonna take this, I’m gonna spread it out on the sheet pan. And then I’m gonna get this in the freezer. For about five minutes. And it’s gonna be cool enough. To where. There we go. Alright. Hold on. Get these in the freezer. Did you want me to make crème pâtissière? We’re adding a mixture of eggs, to a hot liquid, and so we’re gonna do what’s called tempering. So I’m gonna add about half of this here milk there, maybe a little bit less. I’m gonna whisk in and dissolve the cornstarch, cause that’s gonna help thicken our fancy pudding. So, it’s basically you take a bunch of egg yolks, right, then you take a bunch of sugar, and then you got to mix the sugar with the egg yolks. You got to heat your milks and then the milk Is this cornstarch? Cornstarch, yeah, I’m gonna put a little cornstarch in there. So, I’m gonna whisk in, get all this cornstarch dissolved so there’s not any lumps. And then we’re gonna temper the milk into the egg yolks. Do it gently Josh. ((Laughing)) Bunch of vanilla extract, cheap stuff. Alright, that’s good. Let’s see how, how the stuff I threw in the freezer is doing. So, I have a perfect choux dough here. And I put it in the freezer so it can mound. Because what you want is a moundable choux dough. And, hold on, where’s like a, yeah, here we go. Are we, are we selling these to people? Alright, cool, buy them. Great. I’m gonna take like a thing, like a little, take this guy. Perfect. ((Laughing)) We’re gonna schloop this up. I think this turned out pretty good. This is, uh oh, uh oh. When you’re piping Pâte à choux, you want them to be very neat, little kind of spheres. And you don’t want to give them tips. Because then in the oven, those will burn first. So, if it has a little tip on it. You really want to kind of swirl that off. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t care. This is what’s happening. I’m not even going to say what I think you’re supposed to do or what it should do, because I don’t know. Straight up, don’t know what a cream puff is. And I’m going to bake those at 400, until they’re nice and golden brown and fluffy! Crank it to like 450, man. Crank that oven to 450, you’re not gonna let it preheat ((Laughing)) Back to the crème pâtissière. I’m just gonna take a little bit of this and I’m gonna pour it. So, I have the ice bath you want to have a constant movement, so you’re agitating it so that it’s, the temperature is dropping quickly, you definitely don’t want to add the eggs straight into the milk, cause again, that’s what’s gonna cause the scrambling. I know what you’re supposed to do, is you take the hot milk and you temperate into all this, but then it’s just gonna go back into there, so like. – [Trevor] Dude, what? Why not? Oh, what? Oh, what? Oh, what? I’m done, alright? Alright, I’m done with what you guys think I should do. Right? Cause that hasn’t been working at all. Boom, tempered. I’m gonna whisk it as, no, don’t, don’t stop rolling the cameras! The cameras stay on until I’m done! If I have to be here, so do you! I’m so sorry, I lost my head. Check back in five minutes, and we’ll see how these cream puffs baked up. ((Timer Ringing)) You may have seen me make more mounds than things there is. Those are gone. Those don’t, those don’t exist anymore. These are my three best. That’s all I need. My elite, my super soldiers, my myrmidons storming the beach at Troy. We’re gonna go in. And you’re gonna squeeze it, squeeze it, and you don’t have to put too much pressure, you don’t want it to spill out the sides. And, yeah, what the hell, it’s just like a life raft that’s barely inflating. So, knife these other ones, see what happens. Yep. There is a pocket, like, he’s gonna have something edible to eat, and I think that’s a blessing. That’s a mitzvah, right? Got food in his belly. You know, it’s a nice day. That’s big. You know what? It’s, it’s God. Well, there you go. Three perfect cream puffs. – [Crew Member] Don’t clap. Clap for me! – [Crew Member] Don’t clap. ((Music)) Chef Alan Kang, welcome to the Mythical Kitchen, and I humble myself before you, and I stand by all of my dishes. Thank you for judging, Chef. Thank you for having me. Of course, of course. Now, you were Lily’s culinary instructor at ICE. Yeah. How was she as a student? She was, honestly she was a good student. Yeah, she would always come in early because she rode her bike to school. And she would always come in with this big helmet and she’s the only one wearing this big helmet in class. If Lily had fears that people thought she was a teacher’s pet suck up, do you think that’s accurate? No, I don’t think that’s accurate. I mean, I think it was more, there were other, other classmates that she had that were in her group that were more suck ups. But she was always in that group. So she, that was the clique that she was in, you could say. I would say she was in, she was in one of those cliques for sure, yeah. That’s good. There are definitely cliques in culinary school. Alright, Chef. So, looking at your brunoise, we’re looking for nice squares. Like this guy is good. You can see how, like, that one’s a little bit smaller. Some would say that variety is the spice of life. Is there any room for that in culinary school? In culinary school, not really, because we want things to be perfect, because we’re trying to teach them the right things right off the bat. Maybe a little farther down the line, you’ll be able to, customize a little bit of your knife cuts. Yes, Chef! For your brunoise, I’d probably give you, maybe like a six out of ten? That’s almost passing depending on what grading system you use. It’s, you know, it’s really hard to fail culinary school, so. Your small dice, also we’re looking for consistency. That’s kind of the main thing when it comes to knife cuts, right? But you’re actually, your small dice are a lot better than your brunoise. I’d probably give you a eight. These medium dice, again, we have, one’s like that, one’s like this, I mean you can kind of see the inconsistencies in those. I also don’t like what I’ve done here, Chef. These I’d probably give you back down to, they’re not as bad as your brunoise, so I’d probably give you a 7. Normally when I look at onion cuts, I look at the inconsistent ones like that. So, yeah, go ahead, you can cut some. ((Laughing)) We’re really looking for consistency here. And so whether, even if they’re the right size, if they’re not consistent, that’s kind of what we think you want. So, I’d probably give your onions maybe a five? ((Laughing)) Yeah, like I would say a five. A solid five. Your minced parsley, quite good. It’s not bruised. We’re looking for, like, nice and dry. Almost dust like, so this is kind of nice. Your minced garlic is also good, I’d give both of them a 9. We’re, we’re, we’re heating up. We’re eating, we’re Steph Curry over here. If anything, they always, students always struggle on these, and they do really well on this stuff. These are the free points, yeah. For your supremes, they look pretty good. We’re looking for nice and even, not really a lot of pith. You’ve got a little bit of pith right there. And, for me, supremes are either, you either do really well and get no pith, or you get some pith. So, with that I’d probably give you a seven. One little bit of pith there. I like that you kept them in water. Thank you. Yeah, it does keep them from oxidizing. So, for knife cuts again, we look at consistency. I like to do the french fry trick where you kind of just grab them like a french fry and look at them. And we’re looking for squares, right? So, you can see right off the bat. – That one’s a good one. – This one, this is a good one. Yeah, okay, so, that’s like half a point. So, just tally them up. Here’s two. That’s about it. ((Laughing)) Julienne’s maybe a six or so. You’ve got some good ones in there. Your batonnets are quite nice. I’d give them an eight. Thank you for the honest feedback and not sugarcoating anything. I definitely wasn’t hoping that you’d sugarcoat it a little bit. Do we have a, do we have a final score on that? – [Crew Member] That’s 72%. That’s a 72 out of 100 on the first test. Not bad. That is better than my GPA in, college. A solid C. So I will take that. All right, Chef, for test number two, I’ve made a perfect eggs Benedict. That’s a nice break on that yolk. Both of them, too. Flavor’s good. And the rest of it? It’s nice and eggy. No, honestly, I think you did a really good job. Hollandaise is a little bit tight. I would say 8 out of 10. I’ll take it. Yeah, I think one of the bigger compliments we give students in culinary school is, I would buy it, or I would eat it. So, I would eat it. He’s taking a second, well he almost took a second bite. Saving room for the dessert. Yeah, you’re probably going to want to go back to that. ((Laughing)) All right, what do we got here? Perfect, profiteroles. Now, some say, yeah, you should probably just eat it. So, your pâte à choux dough, it’s, okay, so you didn’t get enough height on it, it’s very flat. Your pastry cream’s pretty good. Thank you, Chef. Yeah, yeah, good consistency. Unfortunately your pâte à choux dough is really kind of like a glaring mistake. I would say, probably more of like a 4 out of 10. Maybe next time. But it’s okay. Chef, I very much appreciate you. Do we have a final score tallied up? – [Crew Member] Average of 64%! 64! That’s a B! I’ll take it, Chef! Yeah, there you go! Thank you so much! Yay! Wow! You did just fine! I appreciate that. Chef Alan, do you think I have a future in this industry? You know, I think with enough help around you, I think you can do something. So, I think you got something. Chef Bicep disagrees! And I have the best help around me. They’re crutches, they really prop me up. But no, Chef, man, thank you so much for doing this. – Thank you so much. – I appreciate you. Do you want us to box any of this up for you to go? I’ll be okay. – [Josh] We are finally releasing a cookbook! Featuring fan favorite dishes from GMM and Mythical Kitchen and tons of completely new, original recipes! Preorder now at mythical.com/cookbook