Who can make the better fried chicken? Do you guys think sometimes that we’ve sort of cheapened a thousands year old form of care, nutrition, love, art, expression, by turning it into a simple competitive spectacle, one where we judge ourselves not by the things we’ve created, but by the amounts we’ve won and lost? Nah. I’m just mad because I’ve lost the most and Lily has won the most, but today we’re gonna see who can come out on top because any given Sunday. Assuming you’re one of our 8 percent of viewers who’s watching on a Sunday, any given Sunday anything can happen. And even some poor schmuck like me who’s lost 16 times can come out on top. Today, we’re doing a fried chicken battle. And Lily and I, we’re teaming up. Yeah! Well, Trevor and I are teaming up because we’re professional cuties. Yeah! That’s what a cutie sounds like. I still think that Lily and I are cute, but we’re in the amateur status of cute, and one day we might be cute enough to go pro. Good luck. Let’s get cooking. Whoa, what was that about? Well, Meggie always counts down three, two, and then it makes me want to like, I don’t know. She makes you nervous? It’s like, it’s like sports, you know, it’s like once the clock’s going, so I gotta lock in. Don’t know nothing about that. Yeah. Alright, well today, Trevor and I are going to be making some awesome Indian inspired fried chicken. We’re going to be doing a really gorgeous brine with tons of buttermilk Indian yogurt and some super special spices, and we’re going to make a butter chicken sauce for dipping, sipping, and sucking. Dipping, sipping, and sucking. Those are my three favorite adjectives. Are they adjectives? No. Verbs, I think. Verbs! Sorry, I was asleep while we were watching School of Rock, clearly. Oh, School of Rock? School of Rock. I think that one’s about verbs, yeah. No, what’s the one? Parts of speech. Cause I unpacked my adjectives. What is that? House of Rock! Schoolhouse Rock! Okay, I’m gonna rapid fire these spices so I don’t have to think about it. Kashmiri chili, okay, turmeric, yep, garam masala, curry powder, coriander powder, and then we’ve got ginger garlic paste, and then, and minced garlic. This is, this is Indian yogurt, buttermilk, and then curry leaves, okay, I don’t have to talk anymore. Wow. I can go nonverbal. If naming spices was an Olympic sport. You would win gold. I don’t know. I feel like that was more of a bronze performance But, I think, you know, at least I’m meddling right? It’s impressive. I think you showed tact, and strength, and resilience. Thank you! Thank you, that means a lot to me. I gotta win, man. I gotta win this one. I know I talked about how food shouldn’t be competition, but like, it is, and we’re here, and I haven’t won in a while. It feels bad, that’s the thing. Yeah. Cooking’s about having fun, but it feels more fun to win. I don’t want you to feel bad, and I want to get this win for us, for you. We’re making al pastor fried chicken. This has roughly nothing to do with al pastor except for the fact that we have chilies and pineapple. Yeah, al pastor is actually, it actually means shepherd style, and. It means of the pasture. It’s the cooking method, so it’s actually on the vertical. Of pasture. Of pasture, that’s what I said. And did you know that it comes from Lebanese people? Yeah, oh my god, the early wave of 19th century Lebanese immigrants to be sheep farmers in the central valleys of Mexico? Herdsmen, if you will. That’s crazy. That’s incredible. I taught you something today. You sure. I didn’t know any of that. That’s. Some would say that some of that history is even debated, although the, shawarma spit, or the gyros, as they would call it in Greek, is called a trompo. Trompo. In Spanish, which is what you see spinning the giant wheels of pork. I thought it was like the, the trom. Yeah, you play the, you play the trompo. Yeah, the trompo. What this actually is, I tried to make a version of an al pastor inspired fried chicken sandwich during an episode of Spice Wars. Please go watch that episode. I put my body on the line. I ruined my week for that. Right, and the ghost pepper, but I had eaten the ghost pepper, so I couldn’t taste any of the stuff that I was making. Yeah. And I was so high on just adrenaline and endorphins by the end that I don’t remember what the chicken sandwich tastes like. So now I really want to make just like an al pastor inspired fried chicken that’s really good because I didn’t have time to do at home. So that’s what we’re doing. I like that. I’m adding guajillo chilies to the blender and we have some ancho chilies here that have been soaked in some hot water, yum, yum. I’m cutting up a pineapple because we’re making a little pineapple escabeche. Escabeche is that like Mexican, the taqueria pickle? Yeah. It’s typically a mixture of carrot, onion, and jalapeño. It’s a really cool pickling technique though because you actually kind of scorch it in some oil and then when you pickle it you get a little bit of that oil in there and it kind of perfumes everything and it’s nice. This looks like a good pineapple, too. This is a really good pineapple. I don’t like that you can’t say that you eat a lot of pineapple without somebody saying something dirty anymore. Oh, you know, what they say about pineapple. What’s that, Lily? It has bromelain. It does, it absolutely does. And what does that do? It, pineapple eats you. You don’t eat pineapple. It basically attacks your taste buds. And it, it’s, there’s like, it’s an enzyme and it breaks down your tongue. So pineapple eats you. I did my research. Like a Venus flytrap? I, basically. Building some flavors. I got some GG paste, also known as ginger garlic paste. Should I just salt this bad boy up? Just a little salt and P? Yeah, add some S&P in there, why not? What the junk is this? We got a little goober in our salt lid. That’s Jordan Morris’ chili! No! Jordan Morris left a little piece of like a Horcrux in here. I’m not gonna lick it, that would be weird. Don’t lick his Horcrux. I’m not gonna lick it. All right, so I got my tomato passata in here. I added some fenugreek. I added some Kashmiri chili, some garlic, some cumin seeds. I’m gonna let this cook down just a little bit, and I’m gonna blend it the F up. You’re gonna blend it the F up? Yeah. I’m kind of massaging these chickens. That’s really nice. Yeah, no reason other than it feels nice. That’s kind of you to do. Boneless, skinless chicken thighs. And I believe this guy here is a drum. They’re both bone in, skin on. Boneless skin? Did I say boneless skinless? I think you did. Dude, it’s opposite day everyone. These are bone in skin on. As I’m gripping the bone. This is boneless. Guys, I just got a new dog, okay? I got five hours of sleep last night, okay? Oh, you guys! I’m like a tired new dad. That’s right. Having a dog is the same as having a baby, basically. It really is. It really is. They don’t tell you that. Oh my god. In the delivery room. All right, I got this here, I got this here cream and this here butter. I’m gonna strain this a little bit too. And our chicken, our chicken sauce at least is done and our chicken brine is done. I think this thigh needs to be circumcised. Not a sound. That’s the. Okay. That’s the quietest this kitchen has ever been. Wow. It’s not even that quiet for room temp. That was the quiet, yeah, not even that quiet for. Even the oven, even the ambient sounds turned off. I know, right? That was, wow. Yeah. That’s tough. We’re back, 15 hours later. Yeah. We talked a lot about dogs and Ring cameras. It was nice, it was nice. This is my baby. A little black box. So cute. Cute. This is our Ring camera that I’ve got pointed at him. His name is Napkin. – Okay. – Yeah, so. Cutest, most unique puppy name I’ve heard in a long time. Yeah, he’s pretty awesome. Well, I sent Annaliese a picture, so probably put the picture in the video so I don’t need to pull it up on my phone. – Sweetie. – He’s awesome. He’s great. Love him. I slept in these clothes. I’m going to scorch our little veggies here. I’m going to drop some onions in there. You got to get the oil rip roaring hot. The jalapeños are going to start fuming real quick. We’re going to toss the garlic in there. What are you doing, man? I’m blending all of, we got some allspice, we got some cumin, we got some achiote, achiote? Why do I keep forgetting? Achiote! Achiote powder. Which is a mixture of? Annatto seeds. Yeah! And annatto seeds were used in the? Trees! Textiles! I’m going to have the most annoying kids ever. They’re going up to every teacher, grades one through nine, and going, oh, did you, did you know that, did you, you know, they’re going to be sticky from whatever I cooked them for breakfast. And they’re gonna be like, what’s that on you? And they’ll be like, my dad made frittata. Did you know that at cookery in ancient. All right, we got a nice little browning on that. I’m gonna toss some of the napple in there. That’s what I call it, I always call them napples. We were talking about this yesterday, about like when you’re marinating your chicken, but a good tip is to like salt your marinade, lightly salt it, but also salt directly on your chicken and really work it into the chicken. You know how much salt you’re putting in there. You’re also getting like direct salt contacts, so. What’s really happening is like none of these flavors are actually gonna penetrate the chicken. The only thing that penetrates is going to be salt and sugar, but that said, you might as well put it all in one place Like there’s no point in just letting it be salted and then adding this later. Yeah, this is gonna be a really good chicken dish. It smells good. For indulging my wishes and my failures from when I couldn’t make it. You’re welcome. So, I am making a little bit of a chaat masala, super flavorful, intense, cute dusting powder to go on our chicken. And I’m using some ingredients that I’ve never used before. We got some, what is this? We got some anardana whole, which means pomegranate seeds. These are dried pomegranate seeds that are gonna impart a really nice sour tang to our spice mixture. Oh my god, that knife is very sharp. I love that. That never happens. I know, right? So, we’re gonna add some of that in here. We’re gonna add some amchur powder, which is a dried mango powder. Very delicious. Here is some hing powder, also known as asafoetida. Asafoetida is actually used a lot in Indian cooking and a lot of people that have allergies to onions and garlic and allium and stuff like that. It has almost like an oniony smell to it, right? Isn’t that funky? Yeah, that’s really funky. Funky fresh. So, it’s actually the resin of a tree. It’s very cool. And then we got some fenugreek leaves, some MSG’s. I’m just gonna start like tinkering around in here and try to find the perfect balance of the perfect spice blend. And Trevor’s doing some stuff over there. What you doing, buddy? Making powder. No, so there’s AP flour, rice flour, chickpea flour, and some salt and turmeric. And I’m just gonna take these chickens. Oh, yeah, there’s not even anything to like, like off. It’s just stuck on there. So, I’m just going to fry these up. I’m just going to roll them. Sick! I’m excited to try this. This was, this was one of those recipes that I made in my head. And I’m like, this has to work. These are all flavors that we both really, really like, so. It’s like, what if we took spices that we liked and put them on a food? Right, right. Wouldn’t that be crazy? Everybody plug your ears if you’re sensitive to loud noises! I did a fake scream because people are like, Trevor’s just loud now. I love how loud you are. Trevor joined Smosh and now he’s just loud. Like, go back and tell me I wasn’t loud before. What the? What is there? – What is it? – The drums! Dude, there’s like 15 french fries back there. Oh, my arm is stuck! Oh shoot, get the butter. Annaliese has asked what we think Josh and Lily are gonna do. As the only person who actually probably doesn’t know what they’re doing, I think everybody else does know what they’re doing, I gotta say Josh and Lily, gotta be fish saucing. Yeah, I was gonna say, if there’s no fish sauce, I’m gonna be shocked. Because a recipe without fish sauce for Lily and Josh is impossible. Yeah. Well, I tinkered, I tinkered a little. You wanna taste the tinkering? Maybe it needs more tinkering? You like it? I think it’s good. Oh, okay, cool. I think that means he likes it. Alright, so we’re gonna let this chicken cook through. We’re gonna, fry off some more pieces. And by the time you’re back, we’re gonna get to plating. And it’s gonna be a home run. They’re gonna probably put fish sauce in theirs. That’s. And I think that’s a little racist. Racist. You know? As two, you know, Vietnamese American, well, you know, adjacent, you know? That’s messed up. Yeah. Fresh off the boat. All right, let’s try this chicken. Tell me what you got going on over there. I have some, achiote powder, which we used earlier on. We have some masa. It’s cause like, you know, like tacos, al pastor tacos, yeah. A little bit of corn in there. This is nixtamalized ground corn flour. Lily, tell them about nixtamalization. Yeah, it’s just a classic. It goes back to, you know, 2001 or something. 10,000 years ago. 10,000 years ago. And Yeah, Jesus Christ used it, it’s just great. I don’t know why I put that much, I don’t know why I put that much. No, I think you can leave it, you can rock it, rock it. Okay, okay, okay. Okay, here, mix it up, mix it up. I wanna, because I wanna do something. I got a, I got a bit of a theory here. Okay. Alright, so you know how all of the best bits of fried chicken are the ones that have a bunch of like craggly, kind of crummy coatings on it? Sí, señor. And that comes from moisture being in there. That’s like when you’re dredging the end of the chicken and like the buttermilk has got in there, whatever. I have an idea. Dump a bunch of Valentina Hot Sauce in there and then you’re gonna rub it around with your hands. Why is it a bad idea? What? There, we literally, look how like much marinade is on here. That is creating the craggly bits. Yeah, but we got Valentina Hot Sauce. Why are you ruining, I. You ask me. Look at how much of this gigantic bottle we’ve drank. You asked me off camera if I trusted you, and I said yes, and now I don’t trust you. Why? I think I’ve engendered trust. Okay, fine, we should use the marinade. I mean, it’s gonna get to the same place. If you wanna put the Valentina, put the Valentina. Use your gloved hands to create a stop. No, no, no, we need to get that going, because Yeah, just get some of the juice. Everything was fine. Just the juice. Okay, everything was fine. I think you’re the one causing the fight. I think I’m doing great. Now what do you want? Josh screams at his therapist. Just take that and just like rub it all through your hands. Like so? Yeah. How about them Olympics? You knew the fish sauce. Yeah, it came out. It’s a little racist. Racist. You know? So, we’re doing, I found some, red chilies in the fridge. I thought they were Fresnos. I believe they’re fresh cayenne chilies. Could be, Holland Long Hots. I’m gonna take some of the juice from our escabeche cause this has, some of that pineapple juice. You’re gonna get sweetness. We’re taking the marinade in there. You know what my biggest pet peeve when I went to South Africa was? What? Not a single person come up to me and said, do you play rugby? Not one. And I think it’s because I got these little chicken legs. They look like they couldn’t push a scrum. Don’t say that about yourself. You think I could push a scrum? Yeah, I think you, I don’t know what that is, but I’m sure you could push it. Become a scrum dumpster? A scrum dumpster? Let me go ahead and blend this up. I’m gonna crank it, man. I’m gonna crank it and see what happens. You really want to push the flour in there, because that helps generate some of the craggly bits as well. And if you, you put, you push the flour craggly bits in there. You gotta mash it! You mash it! What do you think it’s gonna taste like? Damien, not 20 seconds ago, you did the slate for this shot, but now you find yourself judging the fried chicken. Welcome. Thank you, I made it big time. Absolutely did. And you have fried chicken in your blood, I’ve heard. Yeah, so I kind of grew up in a fried chicken family. My parents have a fried chicken store in New York, called 375 Chicken, so check it out. And the note you made before about cooking chicken at 375 degrees, they actually don’t do that anymore, so. Hey! Yeah, yeah. I don’t remember what the actual number is, but I know it’s not that. We’ll figure out the industry secrets. Yeah. You could be an expert witness in any fried chicken related crimes. Right. Indeed. Well, today, the only crime is what, see what Lily and I did. You have two plates of fried chicken before you. You swear to tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help you God? Yes, sir. Absolutely. Which one do you want to eat first? This one’s calling to me more. Okay. – I get it. – Chill. The problem is he watched the entire process. Yeah. Well, Damien, for you today, Trevor and I have made Indian fried chicken with a chicken chop masala dry spice and a butter chicken dipping sauce. Please enjoy. Sweet. Do we recommend I go for a drum or a thigh? I think you should take a thigh and I think you can sprinkle a little bit of the chaat, take a bite, and then dip in the sauce and take a bite. – Okay. – Make sense? Yes. Enjoy. Making sense, yes. Enjoy, enjoy. Okay, cool. So a little bit of the, what is this called? It’s a chopped masala, so it’s kind of like a savory sour spice blend. Cool. Oh, it’s so raw. It’s really crunchy. Dude, what the heck? It looks like it has parasites in it, yeah. Okay, the only person who knows about cooking with parasites is Lily Cousins, okay? On record, unfortunately. There’s a comment that just goes, I can’t believe she admitted that on camera. Honestly, I can’t either. They were dead. Wait, I missed something. What happened? I’ll tell you later. Okay. You probably ate it too, Trevor. Let Damien talk. Okay, sorry, sorry. So first thing I have to note is, yeah, crispiness. Perfect. Like, it’s not too crispy. You know, sometimes fried chicken can be kind of, you know, it cracks too much. It has too much give. This just kind of folds to the chicken really nicely. It’s really perfectly cooked. It’s very juicy. I’m going to give it a second try with the sauce. He really is an expert. Yes, he is. Apple don’t fall far, huh? That sauce is incredible. Let’s go. Okay. Alright. So, what I got here? You want me to take it? Yeah. Here we have the best fried chicken in the world. This is the al pastor inspired fried chicken. We did a wet brine in an al pastor marinade with a bunch of chilies, a little bit of pineapple juice to tenderize it, blend it up in there. We then dredged it in AP flour with no masa in there if we’re being dead honest because we decided to 86 that. We added a dry spice blend on top with some achiote, some salt, and a little bit of citric acid and chili powder. And then we have a pineapple escabeche with a sauce made from the same ingredients. All right, so am I squeezing lime on it? Yeah. Yeah, squeeze a little lime on it. Take the big one. Take that one. Only the best, only the best. Yeah, don’t take any of the others. Have you guys ever thought about not using a lime wedge in a dish? No. Has that ever crossed your mind? Am I saucing first or am I going dry? Sauce. No, dry. Dry, dry, dry. Okay, all right. Send it. That’s pretty damn juicy. You have to add the sauce now. Yeah, I gotta do the sauce now. You got a fruit salad on the side? Yeah. Why, you want some? No. A little cottage cheese? No. No. You okay? We have this too, if you want to cleanse your palate, if you will. Yeah, have one of the pineapples. Yeah. That’s gonna secure, secure the victory for them. Yeah, just eat the pineapple. That’s gonna get us the win. That’s gonna push you across the finish line. It’s good pineapple. You want me to go find a fruit in the fridge for you to eat for ours? Yeah. Get a little banana on the side. Alright, so, crispiness is great. I actually kind of like the crispiness off of that better It was a bit juicier as well. Now, I’m talking overall flavor. The sauce for me had a nice tang to it. I really do prefer a butter chicken flavor And this really did hit. Damien, do you feel that you have all the information you need to make a decision today? I do. I’m gonna give you a 3, 2, 1 countdown on 1 you’re gonna put your hand over the winning dish in 3, 2, 1. Oh, yes. Whatever. Good job! Oh, yeah. I needed this. I needed the loss. Are you guys gonna be okay? Loser has to squeeze the lime in their eye. Okay, go over. Damien, thank you for your honesty. What was the deciding factor? I think for me, yeah, I do prefer the Indian flavors over traditional al pastor. I mean, I do. So you don’t like Mexican flavors? You know, I wouldn’t put it like that. What did we say the one thing you can’t do on camera is? We had one rule. I’d like to make a formal apology. Nicole and Trevor, very well deserved win. Lily, I’m proud of us for triaging this dish. We tried, we tried. Good game. Damien, you rule. Everyone check out 375 Chicken in New York. Tell them Damien sent you. Cool. We’ll see you all next time. See you. Whisk up your next fire meal with the Mythical Kitchen Utensil Set. Available now at mythical.com