https://www.youtube.com/embed/6XBmfVxvN14
- The question on everybody's minds, including my own is, can she
bounce back from this failure? But for the first time
in "Budget Eats" history, we're dumping this (beep). Hello and welcome back to
another episode of "Budget Eats." The theme this time is, "That's how much?" As I'm sure we've all noticed, inflation has been insane,
and prices are skyrocketing. That being said, we're still keeping this
episode at a $25 budget. And the theme, actually this
time is low FODMAP diet. As you know, we've done
low carb, we've done vegan, we've done gluten-free, and we've gotten enough requests that we think it's time
to do this one now. And if you're one wondering
what exactly FODMAP stands for, fermentable, oligosaccharides,
disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols. Essentially, these are the
different types of sugars that can be hard to break
down for some people's bodies and they get bypassed
in the small intestine, into the large intestine
where our gut bacteria chews on all of those indigestible sugars and then farts, AKA ferments.
And as that fermentation process happens, you get things like bloating and gas. Some people get constipation or the opposite of constipation. It's not this way for everyone, but quite a few of us are affected by it and it just results in very unhappy things on a day-to-day basis. Especially if you suffer
from conditions like IBS and other sensitive stomach issues, this might be a good
elimination diet for you. One thing to note about
the low FODMAP diet, it is a temporary diet. It is meant for you to
diagnose and pinpoint exactly which foods trigger
your unwelcome symptoms and then you slowly
introduce the rest of those that don't bother you back into
your diet for the long term.
Obviously with one week, we won't really have a scientific gauge on what foods are triggering
or not triggering. It's more of an example of
what you can do on this diet, with the budget that you have. Like all our other
episodes, you know (laughs)? Unfortunately for us, there's quite a few "Budget Eats" staples that we won't be able to have this week. A big, big no-no is onions and garlic. Those are absolutely in the
red for us on low FODMAP. Not allowed in any amount,
anywhere in any form. We also can't have my favorite
fruit group, the legumes, which includes peas, beans, lentils. We also can't be using any
wheat, barley or rye products. That includes flours, that includes a lot of
different kinds of noodles. A lot of nuts are off limits, especially pistachios, especially cashews, but the bright spot, peanuts are allowed, even though they're a legume,
they are still allowed.
So you betcha we're gonna
use some peanuts this week. Heck yeah. Some other common foods that you can't have on the low FODMAP diet includes a lot of dairy
that are lactose heavy. You can't have apples. You can't have stone fruits. You can't have mushrooms. There's no avocados. There's no cauliflower, no broccoli, which eliminates really nice, cheap and affordable produce
like cabbage as well. The last group includes a lot
of different kinds of sugars. Agave is a no-no, honey is a no-no and a lot of sugar substitutes
that end in O-L like xylitol. And since this week is supposed to be anti-inflammatory week, we decided that since so many of you asked for a no nightshades episode, we're gonna crash the two diets together and we're gonna be eliminating
that group as well.
This means for us, no potatoes, no tomato, no to eggplants and no to peppers. Thank goodness Aaron isn't home this week because he would hate
this diet (chuckles). For our lineup this
week, we will be starting with some ingredients
I have on hand already that have gone way past their
sell by and best by dates. We have some buckwheat flour I got many moons ago from
Georgia, best market ever. You should go. We have a bag of cornmeal that I got the beginning of the pandemic.
Very expired. We have some mochiko flour as well as a package of
light green rice noodles. I also have a lot of eggs on hand and you guys, egg prices
are outta control, but the cheapest I did manage
to find in my neighborhood, 1.39 for a dozen of mediums. So we'll just go ahead and pretend that I bought
all of these, okay? We also have some newly
purchased low FODMAP items. We have one, $1 bunch of
hairy amaranth AKA huauzontle. I don't think I pronounced that right. We also have a bag of five oranges, three chicken thigh 1/4s
from very sad chickens, one Japanese sweet potato,
three large carrots, one iceberg lettuce, one bag
of bok choy, also a dollar, three turnips, one pineapple
without the fronds on top, I'm not sure what happened there. And one jar of roasted peanuts
with only peanuts and salt. I tried to find peanut butter, a lot of them had added sugars, a lot of the natural ones
were out of our price range so I figured buy peanuts, grind them down, make peanut butter. And in case you're wondering
why she's using sweet potato.
That's because sweet
potatoes are not a nightshade because sweet potatoes are a very different
plant than the potato. The more you know, the more you can eat. Brings us to a grand
total of $25 on the dot. And before y'all go crazy on me saying, "You can't find these
prices where you live." Yes, I know. I live in Queens. If you watch the "Budget
Eats" Q&A episode, you'd know a couple of the spots I hit up. Maybe it's time for a visit. To begin, day one is always prep day. It's really cold outside today. I'm gonna turn my oven up to 375, we're gonna roast some veggies.
Sweet potato, turnip, carrot. We're gonna wash it, we're
gonna poke them with some forks and we're gonna roast them. I find that roasting
veggies often brings out the most sweetness in them and this will eliminate some of the prep that I have to do later
on in the week as well. And since our oven is on, I'm gonna roast some of our peanuts too. Yes, they are already roasted, but roasting them more
brings out more flavor. Just make sure you don't
burn them, obviously. 375, 5 minutes on the peanuts, maybe an hour or so for our veggies. I don't know if you quite recall, but the last time I used
chicken on the show, the skins turned bad. So this time, day one, we're gonna clean and prep our chicken. Learning from our
mistakes little by little. Mom was on the side of wash your chicken
before eating it camp. So I'm gonna wash my chicken. I'm gonna pat it dry. I'm gonna rub it with some salt. Rubbing the salt on them and
letting them sit for a while.
I'm hoping this will
marinate them just a tad bit. And then we'll fill that pot up with water and we're gonna poach our chicken. I'm not looking to fully
cook the chickens here, just enough so that the
meat slips off the bone so we can extract it to make stock. In the meantime, we're gonna wash and dry our huauzontle. When I saw this plant at the store, I actually didn't know what it was. I found in the discount bin for a dollar and I thought, "I need
some greens, why not?" But with the help of le
Google and Wikipedia, I found out that this is
actually an ancient grain.
Some people say it's a super food. It comes from pre-Hispanic
times, native to Mexico. It is related to amaranth and quinoa. And it is very high in minerals,
vitamins, protein even. And I tried to Google this, but I don't know if this is low FODMAP, but quinoa and amaranth both are. So I think we're safe. Mm. Ooh. (upbeat music) You can see it looks a little bit like little broccoli sprouts and it kind of tastes like it too with a slightly soapy bitterness to it and the leaves taste like spinach.
It's like a two-in-one veggie. Yum. This is like the cutest flour bundle ever. I'm gonna pick out some of the
more damaged looking leaves and then we'll strip it from the stems and put it in a plastic container. The stalks can be quite fibrous so we'll be saving that for our stock. The flavor is a little bit like
parsley, cilantro and cream. If they're tender, you can eat it. We got the greener stuff on one side and the yellower stuff on the other. This one will have to go first. After some time, if you see chicken juice collecting at the bottom there, drain it before you boil your chicken. We're going to aim for when all the veggies are knife tender, until their skins kind of
separate from the flesh like this.
Since we're not going to be
having a lot of added sugars, I think caramelizing
your vegetables this way is the best way to get
those sweetness moments in. Once I start to see the
water bubble a little bit, I'm gonna turn the heat down to a low and let it go for about
10 to 15 more minutes. Then we're going to
transfer the chicken out, straight into an ice bath. We're going to let the
chicken cool down a little bit before we start to extract
the bone within the meat. We're gonna keep the skin with the meat.
The bone goes back into the pot and into the pot we're also gonna go with some of our carrot peels and whatever other
caramelized parts that we have from our roasted veggie tray, just to add a little bit more sweetness. (upbeat music) I'll also be prepping our bok choy, which can have grit trapped
in the bottoms of the stalk so I'm gonna cut them
open, I'm gonna rinse them and then these bottoms are
gonna go into our stock. These, containers for
the rest of the week. Now, because our chicken
isn't fully cooked yet, I'm going to drizzle over some soy sauce just to preserve it in the fridge. And yes, soy sauce has
both wheat and soybeans both of which are not low FODMAP, but soy sauce is okay in
one tablespoon amounts.
Something about the fermentation process and what it does to the sugars that actually affect you
on a low FODMAP diet. I don't know, not a food scientist. All right, I think we are
ready to begin on meal one. Even if Erin's not here to taste test, the rules for this episode stay the same. I am still making as many
meals as I can for two people. So here we go with peanut
butter chicken lettuce cups. First thing let's make some peanut butter. When you're making peanut butter at home, there's a high probability
you're gonna burn out your motor, but just keep going. Let the machine rest, scoop it up once in a while
to clean off the walls and put it back on until
it comes into a paste. Just like this. You want some peanut butter chicken, Fred? (June chuckles) I guess he does. Next prep item, iceberg lettuce. We're gonna wash it, we're gonna dry it, we're gonna cut it up.
Drop a comment down below if you always thought iceberg
just tasted like water. No complaints though, because
water can be delicious too. To make the chicken, chop your chicken up. Medium skillet, medium heat, a little bit of oil until it's hot. Put it into the pan, add your spices. Here I'm going in with a little bit of black cardamom, black
pepper, white pepper. For a little bit of golden color I'm going in with a little bit of turmeric and we're just going to stir fry it for about four minutes or so until that chicken is
cooked all the way through. Now that our skillet has all
that nice fond on the bottom, we're gonna go in with a little more oil.
We're gonna go in with our hairy amaranth. We're gonna add a touch of salt to add a little heightened spice to it. Dried oregano is my spice of choice. You do you. And we're gonna stir fry it
until that baby is tender. Look at the cool little grains
that look like quinoa, whoa. For the third component, we're
gonna shred half a carrot. We're gonna toss it with a little bit of salt,
a little bit of vinegar, and we're just gonna let it quick pickle. And finally, for the peanut sauce, we're gonna go very simply, peanut butter, water, maple syrup, which is one of the few
sweeteners you can have on the low FODMAP diet. And we're gonna go in with a
little bit of grated ginger and season it to taste with more salt. Give it a nice mix until
it's smooth and drizzleable and we are set to assemble and eat. (upbeat funk music) Freddy, no trash. Hey, get out of there. No trash, Freddy. Do you want a smell? What do you think? It looks pretty good to me.
Very messy, very good. I gotta say that the
turmeric makes the chicken taste more exotic, whatever that means. It seems to give it more of a creaminess, more of a savoriness and
just more of an intrigue. The pieces of chicken is
just incredibly tender. (cash register dings) And the crisp water
blanket that is the lettuce works really well with
those sauteed greens as well as the crunchy little carrots. There's three layers of creaminess here, creaminess from the taste of the iceberg, creaminess from the peanut sauce and creaminess from the chicken
that is so silky tender.
And you know what? This is gonna be a nine. It's a nine folks. The only thing that I can think of that makes this better is pickled onions. Unfortunately, that's
just not in our diet. Next up it's time to
strain our chicken broth and make some chicken and dumplings. (playful music) After tasting our stock, I would say putting in the
sweet potato peel was a mistake.
There's a little bit of
like soapy astringency off the top of your tongue,
but otherwise pretty flavorful. To make our dumplings in a large bowl, I'm gonna go in with
some cornmeal, mochiko, a little bit of baking
powder and kosher salt along with some spices. I'm going in with dried
oregano, fennel, fenugreek, black pepper and then we're gonna whisk it all together until they're combined. Crack in two eggs, whisk that in. Stream in a little bit of water until that dough comes together.
And then we're going to let
it rest for about 15 minutes until that dough is a
little bit more hydrated, until you can see that it
takes and holds its own shape. While we're waiting, into our pot of chicken
stock we're gonna go in with our roasted carrot. We're going to go in with a
cup of our hairy amaranth. We're going to go in with a little bit of chopped chicken thighs.
Then we're going to start
dropping in our dumplings. I'm gonna use two tablespoons
to shape rough balls and just drop it in as gently as I can. We're going to try to not stir it too much otherwise the balls might fall apart. Unfortunately for me though,
the balls fell apart anyway. I think this is because our balls aren't made of all-purpose flour. There's no gluten holding them together. And even the mochiko isn't enough to really keep it in that ball shape. To remedy this I'm gonna
try to shape the balls and drop them into a
medium cast iron skillet, over medium heat with a little
bit of oil underneath it to get that kind of fried exterior. I'm thinking once we set
the outside of the balls, maybe they'll hold their
shape a little bit better once we drop them into that broth.
I'm letting the corn balls kind of cook until all sides are golden, until you can have a little
shell to keep it all inside. Then bring your dumpling
mixture back to a boil, drop in those golden balls
and just let them cook all the way through until done. Hopefully, they stay. I can tell you right now
that it smells really good, whether or not it tastes
really good, I don't know. Mm. Okay. Broth is good. Hot. First impression, this is actually not bad for how sad it looks. The polenta, the cornmeal has kind of turned into
this creamy porridge texture in with the chicken broth. So you get a little bit of
marriage between the two and it's still somehow distinct. Very interesting, highly enjoyable. Our huauzontle keeps giving us
that kind of quinoa texture. Really nice, a little tiny bounce, a little tiny pocket of surprise. The carrots, sweet,
creamy, perfectly salty. Nice, just nice, nice. Everything is seasoned so perfectly. I think I'm just really giddy because I thought this
was a major failure, but it's actually quite edible.
The dried oregano inside the
dumplings was really good move. It marries with that chicken broth flavor, it brings out the umami
savoriness of the chicken. And overall, I'm gonna
give this another nine. I just think, this is really good guys. What can I say? I succeeded against all
odds of my own disbelief. Any day where I can lower my expectations is a good day indeed. I will see you guys tomorrow. (eraser scratching) Hello and welcome to day two. Let's get cooking, shall we? Because we had two back-to-back
chicken recipes yesterday, I'm thinking we go vegetarian
for our first meal of the day.
This open package of rice vermicelli that expired in May, 2021 has been staring at me
face all day yesterday and I think we're gonna
start our day with this one. I'm thinking we boil some eggs and make a vermicelli noodle bowl. First up, soft boiled eggs. I like to take a little prick to the bottom of each egg very carefully, and then just bring a pot
of water up to a boil, drop them in gently and simmer them for about 6 minutes to 6 1/2.
Because these are medium eggs, I think they're gonna go
for a little bit shorter, maybe around 5 1/2, we'll see. The beauty of soft boiled
eggs is you never know what you're gonna get until you crack that shell open
and meet your demise. Meanwhile, in another pot we're gonna bring some water up to a boil, salt it lightly and blanch
our bok choy leaves. As soon as they look
bright green and tender, we're gonna fish them out
and we're gonna toss them in a little bit of sesame oil
and a little bit of soy sauce.
(energetic jazz music) Once you think your eggs are done, drain them immediately,
put them into an ice bath. Wait five minutes and
then crack it all over, put it back in the ice bath
and wait 10 more minutes. I find that this two stage cooling really helps that shell release cleanly. I'm going to go ahead, slice up our roasted
veggies from yesterday, warm them in the microwave
until they're nice and hot, and then take them out and season them with a little bit of salt.
Finally, we're to gonna
make a little peanut sauce to go on top of all of this, In a bowl I'm gonna stir together some peanut butter, soy sauce, water, orange zest, orange juice,
and a little bit of vinegar. Go ahead and stir it until
it's nice and smooth. Kind of smells like peanut butter and orange marmalade toast, yum. And then I'll that's left to
do is to cook the rice noodles. I'm gonna use our bok choy
cooking liquid from earlier and just submerge the noodles in that hot liquid until they soften. These noodles are extremely thin, they don't need to cook for that long. And of course I save the bok
choy pandan rice noodle water. We're gonna rinse them in a little bit of cold
water to chill them and then we're gonna toss them in a little bit of
sesame oil and soy sauce. For a little pop of color, I'm gonna take 1/2 a carrot, shred it, we're gonna put it in a bowl,
mix it with some condiments, give it a stir, let it pickle.
Maybe if you can't have pickled onions, pickled carrots is the next best thing. Okay, so I guess my pin prick method didn't really work this time
around, but you know what? Once we cut them open, nobody will know. (upbeat funk music) A little bit of salt on top of our eggs. Oh yeah. Are we ready? Look at those eggs. They may not have been the
prettiest ones to peel, but man, they are gorgeous on the inside. Springy noodles. Let's try a bite with the bok choy first. If I could get it on my chopstick. Maybe I'm imagining it, but
the orange and the peanut sauce and the pandan noodles kind
of taste like mayonnaise. I'm gonna go ahead and just
give this a nice little stir so that we get all the
flavors melting together, including the egg yolks
inside this noodle bite.
(cash register dings) Also gonna go a bite on
the sweet potato here. Mm, mm. The noodles are gentle, delicate, bouncy. The sweet potato is super creamy with that soy sauce umaminess running through that sweetness. I don't even know what to make of it. It almost tastes like fermented
bean paste crossed with miso crossed with bonito flakes. This dish, flavor profile
wise, is giving me very fusion, Chinese, Japanese,
Thai mix and I love it. The turnip is reading very
summery, springy, parsnip. Very fresh. I can't get over how
bouncy these noodles are. This feels very much like
a peanut version of japchae with a lot of hearty
vegetables and creamy egg and I'm gonna give it a 9.2. Even though it's so simple,
it's so fresh and it's so hearty and it's very filling
without weighing you down. I mean, I'm eating this for breakfast and I might do it again. I'm gonna pack some up for Aaron's lunch and we're gonna move on to the next meal.
I think today is the day we're gonna cook up some pineapple folks. Smells ready. For some reason, this dollar
pineapple that I bought came without that little hair top. But my friend tells me that
if those leaves come off with a simple pluck, it's ready. However, you can also smell the bottom and this smells nice
and sweet and fragrant. One thing that I've always wanted to make that I've never tried is
tepache, which uses the outside and the rind and the core of the pineapple to ferment into a little bubbly, slightly alcoholic boozy drink. Usually you do it with organic pineapples, but I'm pretty sure
this dollar one is not. And the reason why you
want organic pineapple is because most people don't
even wash the pineapple because of the naturally occurring yeasts on top of the surface. But just for my sake, you
know, in the time of pandemic, we're gonna wash this baby. To make this drink we're also
gonna do a bit of a rule break because we're gonna be
adding some piloncillo which is this unadulterated,
pure cane sugar.
Sugar is needed for
fermentation to take place. Otherwise, the yeasts
will have nothing to eat and if they don't eat, they won't fart and if they don't fart,
you won't get bubblies. (upbeat music) I'm just gonna take a large clean jar, I'm gonna put all of my
pineapple discard in there, fill it up with nice cold
water and drop in piloncillo. As with most fermentation, all you have have to do now is wait, cover it with a coffee filter so it can breathe a little
without any debris getting in and just give it a little shake and agitation every now and then. Wait 3, 5, 7 days. Just keep waiting until it bubbles. Go ahead and trim out the little eyes and you'll have a beautiful
pineapple ready to eat. As for the rest of the pineapple. I'm thinking pineapple orange chicken. There was one end of
the pineapple that was a little bit more tart and astringent and there was another part
that was sweeter and more ripe.
We're gonna use a sweeter
part for this stir fry. A lot of people find the core a little bit fibrous and tough so we're gonna cut it away and
save it for another recipe. We're going to zest a couple of oranges and juice them as well. And then in a medium
skillet over medium heat, we're gonna drop in some oil. We're going to go ahead
and bloom some spices. That includes fennel seeds, nigella seeds, fenugreek, white pepper,
asafoetida AKA hing and we're gonna go in with
our juices and our pineapple, and we're just gonna cook it until that syrupiness comes out. Last thing to go in is our
chicken cubed from yesterday.
To add a touch of color to our dish I'm gonna go in with a
little bit of oyster sauce. This will flavor it too. And a touch of vinegar for acidity. When your chicken is
cooked all the way through, and that sauce is hugging all around it, go ahead, take it off the heat, throw in a pinch of that
citrus zest and fold it in. Next up, we're gonna fry up some greens. First batch is gonna be bok choy, we're seasoning with just oil, salt. Keeping it simple. Second batch is gonna
be our hairy amaranth. Again, oil, salt, maybe a
little bit of soy sauce. And finally, iceberg. Now sauteed iceberg is one of those things that my dad did when I was in
high school and I hated it. But recently a couple of people
told me that they love it and it's like a very Cantonese
thing so I figure why not? I'm 32, let's give it another try.
I think for the iceberg, in addition to the oil
and the salt and the soy, I'm gonna hit it with a little
bit of white pepper as well. (upbeat jazz music) Never did I ever think I would voluntarily eat stir fried lettuce
again, but here goes. Cheers mates. It needs a little more salt but I gotta say not terrible. Hmm. I don't know who I am anymore, but I don't hate stir
fried iceberg anymore. The texture is a little bit more crisp than your fried cabbage, but
the flavor is a lot creamier. The white pepper gives
it a hint of smokiness and it just makes a very
mature tasting, in a good way. Time for pineapple. (cash register dings) Sweet, delicious. This combination is pretty bomb. All of the Indian spices that we used makes this dish very snacky tasting, is the best way to describe it.
It has a little hint of MSG
running through the whole thing, a little bit of soy running
through the whole thing and overall it is just
like you called takeout and they knew how to season it perfectly. Pineapple is super juicy. The meat is still tender, not too tough because we used dark meat. Mm. The nigella gives it a little
oniony kick without any onions and the hing, I think that's
what's the magic here. Let's take a moment to give
thanks to the almighty hing for its very farty pungent flavor. The bok choy tastes pretty
traditional stir fried veg. This, this hairy amaranth, this is rocking my world right now. It is taking on a different
flavor every time we cook it.
This has absorbed a lot of the
wok hei that we had in there. Very smoky, very soy based. It almost tastes like water
spinach in flavor right now. Still with that little
kind of bubbly texture, I'm gonna give this dish a 9.5. This is perfect. I don't even know why it's not a 10, probably because we don't
have rice right now. Just, just look at that. Look at that silkiness. Leftovers packed, onto meal three. You know what I just realized? We haven't used the buckwheat yet. Let's make some blinis. In a bowl we're gonna pour
in some lukewarm water. We're gonna go in with some yeast, a little bit of maple
syrup to bloom that yeast. We're going to go with a
little bit of our peanut butter and a little pinch of our orange zest. Then we're going to dissolve that and make sure everything's
nice and whisked together before we go in with our
buckwheat flour and our mochiko.
Give it a nice stir and then
we're gonna crack in two eggs. Go ahead and whisk it until it's nice and smooth and incorporated. Isn't that right, Fred? (upbeat jazz music) Oh, no. Okay (chuckles). A tiny pinch of salt, a little stir to make
sure everything's combined and we cover and let it sit
until it kind of starts to poof. And in the meantime, how
about some pineapple curry? If we're gonna make curry,
we gotta make curry powder, but this time without any
onion powder or garlic. In their place, I'm just
gonna add some nigella seeds for that oniony kick. We already have a curry
powder mix recipe for you, we'll link it in the
description box below. Into our large pot I'm gonna
dump in all of our spices and we're gonna let it toast over low heat until you smell them. We're gonna drop in some oil
and let them bloom in there. Once our curry powder is
fully bloomed in the oil, I'm gonna go in with our
leftover orange zest, give that a stir.
We're gonna go in with our roasted turnips that we cut into cubes,
our carrot, some bok choy, some of that pineapple core. That is going to take a while to cook, I think it's gonna be perfect in here. We're also going to pour in a
little bit of chicken stock, as well as our leftover
bok choy braising liquid from this morning. To help thicken our curry
up, I'm going to shape our leftover corn
dumplings from yesterday, I'm gonna give them a sear
in our cast iron skillet until they're nice and golden
and crusty on the outside and then I'm gonna plop
them into our curry, see if that starch does
any thickening wonders. We're just gonna let it all bubble away until it looks nice and luscious. Towards the end of your cooking process when it looks nice and silky smooth, go ahead and season to taste. Salt, MSG, whatever you want, just no onion and no garlic To cook the blinis, go ahead, wait for that
batter to get nice and bubbly, mix it in a little bit
so that it's smooth.
And in your cast iron skillet, over medium heat, drop in some oil. Coat the bottom then
drop in big tablespoons of that batter to make mini pancakes. Go until you see bubbles rise
to the top of the surface then give it a gentle old flip. Wait until both sides are lightly golden and you are set to eat. I'm not quite sure if there's a difference between pancakes and blinis but man, these are cute
blinis and pancakes, whatever you wanna call them. And they smell good too. Definitely could benefit
from a little extra sugar and a little extra salt, but we have more batter
we can play with tomorrow. As is, very earthy. Reminds me of munching on stones. Not that I've ever done that before. Obviously the texture is very plush, very soft, very cloud-like but the taste, I don't
know how to describe it. Maybe it'll be better with our curry. Might be too late, but
just sprinkle on some salt, hope it dissolves. It's a little brown on brown, but I think it'll be delicious.
Let's give a try on our
corn dumpling version two. The flavor of the corn dumplings
is so heavy on the chicken. Delicious. Mm. Let's get blini bite, a
little bit of everything. How do I say this without
being mean to myself? The flavor isn't bad. It's also not great. The pineapple's acidity is
a little bit distracting. If you are a fan of mango chutney, you might actually like
this dish, but for me, I've never been a huge fan.
Carrots however, perfectly creamy tender. The bok choy and the
turnip, pleasant enough. I would say the star of this
dish is yesterday's leftover. These corn dumplings that we
made for the chicken broth, still so good. Might be even better today. There's just something so buttery about that flavor inside the dumplings that I'm not getting from
the buckwheat or the curry. While the consistency and the color and everything really looks fantastic, I think I can only give this dish a 6.5. Oh well, we were always
bound to hit a wall sometime. And with that, I'll see you tomorrow. (eraser scratching) Good morning. Welcome to day three. Let's make some noodles. We still have a lot of
this buckwheat flour. So naturally I'm thinking soba. One thing to note though, soba is a noodle that is buckwheat and all-purpose for the most part. It's gonna be extremely hard for me to make a cohesive dough out
of this very branny buckwheat so we gotta sift it first. To get out the little flecks of bran, I'm gonna need a fine mesh strainer.
And I'm just gonna tap that flour until all the bran is
captured inside here. (upbeat funk music) So we got the bran in one bowl and the less branny flour in another bowl. The magic of sifting your flour, it gives you more flour. I'm also not sure why, but this buckwheat flour
smells like burnt rubber tires. To give our buckwheat
dough a little bit of glue, I'm gonna be taking some mochiko, adding some salt and water
to it in a small pot, and we're going to cook it until it turns into the
sticky, sticky roux. Keep stirring it until it comes together and this is your literal glue. We're gonna plop that hot ball of dough into our buckwheat flour and we're going to gently
roll that buckwheat flour into that rice dough. I'm aiming for a fairly
tough, hard dough here so that it's easier to roll out and cut.
Keep kneading that dough
until it's nice and smooth and until your fingers can sink into it without sticking to it. Put it back in your bowl, cover it, let it rest while you prep your veggies. Soba noodles, soba noodle soup, we're gonna go heavy on the veggies but we're also gonna add
a little bit of chicken. I'm gonna cut up some of our roasted turnip and our bok choy and we're gonna carve little
tiny carrot flowers too. Since it's so bare bones, I figured put a little flourish on it to make it look prettier. Chop your chicken up, put it into a pot, add some chicken stock and let it simmer until the veggies are soft. Go ahead and give that broth a taste and if it needs seasoning,
you know what to do. If you wanna give your
broth a little more body, I hope you saved that mochiko water, because that's gonna come in handy. Stream in a little bit of
that to thicken that soup up.
To make our noodles, take
your buckwheat dough, split it in 1/2 or 1/3s,
whatever is more manageable and roll it out thin with a rolling pin. As you're rolling, we're gonna
dust it with a combination of buckwheat and mochiko, just so that the layers are distinct, just so that it's not sticking
anywhere to your board or to your rolling pin. Once you have it out thin, dust it again with some more flour, roll it up a little bit and then cut through with a sharp knife. The problem with a
gluten-free dough like this is it really doesn't have holding power. So once your knife stamps
through the layers, it might be hard to pull them apart. If they break, don't worry, there's always a way to fix things. I basically just scrunch
them back into a dough ball and I roll them in between my palms until they turn into a little snake. Just another kind of noodle, you know? Might even be chewier this way. If you don't wanna take any chances with breaking noodles though, it's best to keep your
dough in a single layer and slice through in one fell swoop.
Once you have your noodles, whatever shape they may be in, bring a pot of water up to a
boil, add a little bit of salt and boil them for just about one minute until it's soft and al dente. Fresh noodles, especially
thin ones like this, never take that long to boil. Once they're done, take them immediately and
plop them into an ice bath. Okay, maybe there isn't always a fix. Sadly it looks like all of our noodles broke apart in the cooking process. Yikes. Wow. What a spectacular fail. Okay. Folks. Well, Wednesday's not
off to so a good start. Mm. Taste is pretty good though. I'm gonna try to give
our snaky boys a cook and see if they fare any better. I don't think so. I think they did a tiny bit better, but they are still quite broken.
This might be one of the biggest fails on "Budget Eats" ever. I'm not quite sure what happened. I've never seen any dough do this before, where it retains the shape of the noodle, but falls completely apart
in the cooking process. But I'm gonna say there's just still too much bran in the buckwheat
and not enough gluten. I'm gonna try one last ditch effort. I'm going to steam them. Then you add in the
agitation of boiling water, just too much for it to handle. I suppose two things I
could have done differently was to work the dough a little bit more and to make them thicker.
Maybe they would've held
more structurally intact. A little better, huh? (upbeat disco music) It looks kind of pretty, but to be honest, I'm so stressed I have a
stomach ache right now. Oh boy. What a day. Truly a hump day. Mm. The flavor of the broth is excellent. The vegetables have sat
in that broth for so long, it's soaked up all the flavors. Everything's nicely melded together, but damn those noodles suck. The texture is very pasty. There's no real bounce. It's kind of dead and honestly, I still taste some of
that burnt rubber tire. Sounds like that sound outside right now. But at least there was a
vegetable soup with the chicken. And that is delicious.
I thought I'd plate up our snaky boys and see how they taste, but they kind of disintegrated even more as soon as they sat in that broth. So this recipe, I do not recommend you
try to replicate at home. It is a failure. That being said, I think the soup kind of
redeems it a little bit. I'm gonna give it a 6.3. Which is a shame because
without the noodles, this would've been a solid 7.8 (sighs).
The question on everybody's
minds including my own is, can she bounce back from this failure? I guess you'll have to stay tuned and see but for the first time
in "Budget Eats" history, we're dumping this (beep). If I weren't too tired to,
I would be crying right now, but onwards we go. All right, y'all, let's
take a break from buckwheat and let's head on over to cornmeal land. I'm thinking for our next meal, we can make a cornbread based sandwich. I'm going to preheat
our oven to 400 degrees. I'm going to toast our remaining peanuts and we're gonna get started
on a cornbread batter. To make the cornbread in a bowl, we're gonna combine our
cornmeal along with mochiko, as well as baking powder, baking soda, one teaspoon of pumpkin spice salt. If you know, you know.
Along with some oregano,
fennel seed, and coriander, as well as black pepper. For our moisture, I'm going to crack in two medium eggs. I'm gonna go in with the remainder of our mochiko water from this morning, as well as a little bit of
vinegar and chicken stock. Give it all a nice mix
until everything's cohesive and then go ahead and grease your pan. I'm using an 8x8 cake pan, you can use whatever size you want. The shallower the batter sits, the shallower and crispier your bread. Smooth it out, slide it in, let it bake. While the cornbread bakes, we're gonna make another
batch of peanut butter. Bake until you see the sides start to pull away from your pan and a toothpick comes out mighty clean.
I'm gonna let this cornbread cool off and then we can slice it,
have it and sandwich it. What's going in the sandwich, you ask? I'm thinking a little bit of sweet potato, peanut butter obviously, crunchy iceberg and some pickled carrots. Carrots, you know the deal. Shred it, vinegar it, salt it. For a little touch of sweetness, we're gonna squeeze in a little
bit of orange juice as well, mix it all up and let it sit. As for the sweet potato, I think we're going to turn
it into a creamy paste. We're gonna go ahead and mash it up with a little bit of orange zest as well as maple syrup,
pumpkin spice salt, and black pepper, as well as cinnamon. Oh, and nutmeg. Once you have all your components, all that's left to do is
to spread it on thick. Slice your cornbread in half, peanut butter on all the slices. One side gets carrot, the
other gets sweet potato.
And one of my first jobs working in food was at a sandwich shop and
the best piece of advice, thank you, Joey, was even
layers, even coverage for the best sandwiches of your life. Lettuce goes in the middle
and then slap them shut. It's a little thick (clears throat). This sandwich leans into the fall neutrals and it tastes like it
too, except for the carrot that is bright and perky
with vinegar and orange juice and that crunchy fresh iceberg. Peanut butter and the sweet potato mash are really, really thick
so get a drink ready.
This definitely treads
that really delicious line between sweet and salty and
I can just feel this working so well with hot chili oil,
but we can't do peppers. Otherwise this is probably a sandwich that I can return to again and again. The cornbread is well
spiced with specs of spices, like fennel seeds and
you know, just overall, texturally very exciting. I think I'm gonna give
this one like an eight. Eight sounds good. Up next, I think we're
gonna make some pad thai. There's a lot of variations on pad thai and I don't have shrimp,
but I do have belacan which is shrimp paste so close enough.
What do you think? Is it gonna taste good?
It's gonna taste good. To start we're gonna place
our skillet over medium heat, drop in some oil, and we're
gonna fry up that belacan to really warm up that flavor. Crush it with our wooden spatula and then we're gonna go in with our shredded carrot,
a little bok choy, we're going to go in and season that with white pepper, orange
juice, fish sauce, soy sauce. And we're gonna stir fry that all together until that sauce looks nice and thickened. We're going to go in with our chicken just until it's cooked
all the way through, and we're gonna transfer
it out of the skillet.
Back on the medium heat,
we're gonna drop in some more oil to stir fry our huauzontle. Am I saying it right? I don't know, but hairy
amaranth with soy sauce. It was delicious yesterday so we're gonna do it again today. Go until it's nice and dark
foresty, green, tender, a little bit limp and
really shiny and slick. Transfer that out of the skillet, a little bit of oil, and we're gonna crack our last
two eggs into the skillet. Turn down your heat immediately. Scramble it with a little bit of salt, season your eggs with a
little bit of white pepper. (laid-back music) And then put everything
back in the skillet and move it off the heat.
We're going to go ahead and crush up some peanuts for topping, and then we're going to boil our noodles. Again, when you're cooking
these tiny vermicelli noodles, you're not really boiling them as you are submerging
them in boiling water for about one to two minutes, draining and then
soaking in your ice bath. Drain completely, put those
noodles into your skillet, give everything a nice little tossy-toss, taste for seasoning. Add more if you wish, whatever you want. And then plate.
Top with peanuts, ready to eat. Well this looks like a better noodle dish than the one we started out with today. Let's hope it tastes as good as it looks. Oh, it smells really good. Twirling it like spaghetti, which apparently you're not
supposed to twirl either. Mm-mm-mm? That bite was too big but it is a delicious bite. All the layers of smokiness and the layers of umami and
salt from the shrimp paste and the fish sauce and the soy sauce and just char, toasted peanuts. Silky, bouncy, pandan vermicelli. Sweetness from the carrots,
sweetness from the chicken, sweetness from the noodles themselves.
And the peanuts, nutty as ever. I added some rice wine vinegar at the end to really pique up that
acidity that's missing 'cause we're not using limes. I really miss the lime juice here. There's really no sugariness
from the orange juice either, it's a very mild natural one. So as far as whether
or not this reminds me of pad thai I've had before and loved? Mm, not quite. But in terms of "Budget Eats" meal, I'm gonna give this one a 10. Wednesday, started from the
bottom and now we're here. Okey-doke, I guess I'll
see you guys tomorrow.
(eraser scratching) Freddy decided that the first
thing he was gonna do today was to eat his breakfast
and throw it back up all over his scratching post,
so my day is going great. Welcome to Thursday y'all. It's a really nice spring day outside and I'm thinking first things first, let's try to get some snacks going. Take it easy, breathe, drink water. I'm gonna heat up my oven and we're gonna try to roll out that leftover buckwheat
dough into crackers. Maybe smush some crushed
peanuts and salt on top. And then for our blini batter, I'm thinking maybe we can try to make some sort of a
popover situation happen. Don't know, we're just gonna bake it. Oven to 400 degrees. We're gonna grease our muffin tin. I remember this being under salted, so we're gonna add a little bit of salt and let's try to jazz it
up with some spices too.
A little cumin, a little
fennel, a little allspice. (lively music) Top it off with a little
extra salt, and we wait. We're just gonna slide it in until hopefully they bake into something. Not quite popovers, but I
do believe they are done. Aaron, you want to try a
really weird buckwheat muffin. - [Aaron] It wouldn't be "Budget Eats" without you prefacing
it with really weird. Is goat butter FODMAP, June? - [June] I have no idea, but just don't exceed over a tablespoon. That seems like the magical amount. - [Aaron] But I always eat a
tablespoon of butter per bite. - [June] Ew, that's disgusting. That is so much butter. Can... Okay. Jesus Christ. So this muffin is made from
a pancakey kind of batter. So for your last one, you can put butter and
maple on it if you want. - [Aaron] I'm trying to figure out what the flavor in that is. It tastes almost like a curry muffin. - [June] Mm. Yes. - [Aaron] Are there spices in the there? - [June] Yes. - This has the chew of something that tastes like it should be sweet, but it has the flavor of a savory muffin.
So every time you taste something
in June's "Budget Eats," it's like going to a Michelin, three star Michelin restaurant where everything's not
quite what you expect. So I have to sort of
let my preconceptions go and just enjoy it for what it is. - [June] So you don't like
it is what you're saying. - I do like it. I just have to let my
preconceptions go first. - [June] Let them go folks. Let them go. Freddy, are your preconceptions gone? - [Aaron] My rating is,
preconceptions blown. - Oh my God, go away. Goodbye, have a good day.
- Bye. - So folks, next time you
have leftover pancake batter and you just don't want any more pancakes. Why not go ahead and give them a bake? Mm. Salty. With a touch of butter, flavor is perfect. The butter really rounds
out that kind of harshness and earthiness of the buckwheat and in addition it makes that cumin pop. So good. I would say without butter
these are maybe like a 6.9, but with butter 7.8. (upbeat jazzy music) In the meantime, I baked our crackers at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes or so.
Nice and golden on the edges, dry and snappy when it comes
out and we are ready to taste. We already know this did
not make noodles at all. It was horrible, but maybe,
maybe it makes good crackers. It almost smells a little
bit almond extracty. Mm. Mm, I like it. Fred, what do you think? Is it better than yesterday? Licky boy? Mm, Okay. That's a maybe. I like how much peanuts we added on there. The salt is a really nice touch. Really picks up the flavors and could have gone a little bit thinner but at this stage, I'll take it. Super enjoyable. I'm gonna give this one an 8.1.
Mm. For our first proper meal of the day, I'm thinking some stuffed corn cakes. To make our masa dough in a small pot, we're gonna combine some cornmeal with an equal amount of our chicken stock and we're gonna stir and
cook it until it gelatinizes. It forms this dough that really
rolls itself into a ball. And that's when you know
it can come off the heat and be transferred into a bowl.
Into that bowl you are going
to let it cool a little bit before adding in an equal
amount of corn flour and then just working
it in with your hands. Be careful, this is hot. Once the dough comes together, add in a little bit of salt, knead it in. Add in a little bit of
baking powder, knead that in and keep kneading until that dough can form into a round ball. Dimple your finger into it. If it doesn't stick too
much, it's ready to go and we can let it rest. To make the filling for
our stuffed corn cakes, we're gonna stir fry together all the remaining vegetable
ingredients that we have along with our chicken. We're gonna be chopping
up real fine our bok choy, our hairy amaranth, our carrots, and we're gonna stir fry
it in a little bit of oil. Our cooked vermicelli,
along with the chicken. Season it with some oyster sauce, maybe a little bit of white pepper and just go until
everything's nice and tender.
Give it a taste and if you
don't like it, add more spices. (upbeat funk music) Let your filling and cool off a little. And in the meantime, divide
your corn dough into 10 pieces. Roll them into little balls, squish them flat between parchment and then go ahead and roll them out to about 3 1/2, 4 inches. It's okay if you have
some big, some small. In fact that's gonna help you because if you put the
small on the bottom, the top one being bigger, you can fold them in without
cracking the surface too much.
Either way it's fine. Some of them will look
more rustic than others. I wouldn't go more than two tablespoons of filling at one go. It'll just explode. You wanna make sure you're doing your best smushing the edges shut so that
you get a nice little seal. I don't know how these are gonna fry, but hopefully they won't
fall completely apart on me. Please. Skillet or griddle,
medium heat, splash of oil and let them go. If they do crack, don't worry. The dough is fairly malleable. Just pinch off a little bit from the edge, patch it right on top, hope it stays. (driving electronic music) (June gasps) They smell so corny. In the best way possible. Hot (chuckles). - That toastiness from the
burnt golden bits of the masa. Oh yeah. The filling inside reminds me
of little tiny steamed buns my grandma used to make
when I was younger.
It used to have just all
sorts of veggies inside, cabbage, carrots, tofu, vermicelli. And this is kind of very nostalgic for me. Outside is crunchy,
inside is hot and gooey. And you know what? I kind of love this (crunches). I mean, are you hearing that crunch? (cash register dings) I would say this is nutritious, it's kind of beautiful in a rustic way and it's very colorful. I'm gonna give this one an eight. I think if we had any sort
of hot sauce, chilies, a little bit of condiment, creamy dips, this would've automatically
been like a 9.2, but we don't. I do have this almost dead
bottle of Kewpie though so we're really gonna just milk it. Ah. But if you don't wanna
break rules like I just did, peanut butter I think
would also go really well. Yes. Believe it or not, Peanut
butter actually tastes better than mayo on this.
I know, mind blown. All right, folks. I think we're starting to wind down our long and winding journey. In terms of ingredients that we have left, we have pineapple,
peanuts and peanut butter, iceberg lettuce, mochiko, as well as buckwheat
flour and buckwheat bran, uncooked pandan rice noodles, two oranges, leftover cornbread, leftover
mashed sweet potato, and leftover pandan noodle cooking liquid. It's gonna be some weird meals, y'all. My brain is screaming salad, cook me. Or don't cook me 'cause it's a salad. I think I wanna cube up this cornbread and fry it until it's nice and golden and we'll use them as kind of
like hefty panzanella pieces. I'm also gonna see if we can fry this into crispy little thingies. For the toasted cornbread,
cast iron skillet, coconut oil, heat it up,
throw in your cubed cornbread and let its sear on all sides until nicely golden brown and delicious.
When they're done,
obviously they're golden, but you should also be smelling
a lot of toasty corn aromas. For our rice crackers, in a
small skillet, coconut oil. We're gonna slide in our pandan noodles and see if kind of bloom. (playful music) Unfortunately it took
me until my last batch to discover that they crisp up way better if you break them up. Because we're not really deep frying them, there wasn't enough oil to go around to really crisp up every single
piece of that big plank but, (crunching) still crispy.
While they're nice and hot
hit them with some salt. (crunches) Oh man. If you want a deep crunch,
go with a shallow fry. If you want a light wispy, airy
crunch, go with a deep fry. To assemble your salad, go
ahead and chop up your iceberg, throw it in a large bowl,
throw in your bread cubes. Go ahead and make a salad dressing. We're just gonna go
with some peanut butter, a little bit of vinegar,
a little bit of salt and a little bit of orange juice just to loosen it to desired consistency.
For a little extra flavor in our dressing, I'm gonna add in a little
bit of pineapple juice as well as our pandan cooking liquid. And this is looking pretty good. Perky. I'm going to go ahead and cut
up the rest of our oranges and slide them into the salad as well for a little bit of sweetness. Go ahead, drizzle that dressing all over. Give that bowl a nice big toss until everything's nicely coated and then plate and top with
your crispy rice noodles. This smells really good. (June crunches) This slaps (laughs). Gosh darn it, it works. The juicy fleshiness of the oranges with the crunch and the
wateriness of the lettuce, with the crunch of the cornbread and the spices in the cornbread. The fragrance that is exploding with the moisture that is soaking into it and then you have the rice cracker.
Y'all what is this bite even? It's like a multidimensional experience of texture transcendence. Mm (chuckles). Don't forget that the
noodles are pandan flavored and we fried everything in coconut oil. So there is that completeness of creamy, tropical, heavenly. Just, heavenly what? I don't know, heavenly (laughs). No words. Again, this might be because I was expecting a pure trash meal out of all the ingredients that we had and I had no idea that all the flavors and the textures could
come together like this, but I am pleasantly surprised. And what is there to do, but to eat everything with vigor. It is fresh and oily. It is soft and crunchy. It is all the paradoxes
of life in one bowl. And I'm gonna give this a 9.9. Why is it missing a 0.1 you ask? I don't know, scores are arbitrary. Don't ask me why. All I know is if you've never
made cornbread panzanella, now's the time guys.
All right, y'all. I think the time has
come for one final dish and this time I'm thinking
it's gonna be dessert. We have some rice flour so why not make some tang yuan again? But this time inside it'll be peanuts, sweet potato and maybe pineapple jam. (Fred meows) Yeah, Fred (chuckles). Everybody has an opinion these days. What do you think? Do you think it'll be good? Yeah, I think it'll be weird too.
We got our sweet pineapples. I'm gonna cut half of them
up into tiny little cubes and then I'm going to cook the other half down into a jammy compote. In the meantime, to make
our tang yuan dough, I'm going to set the pandan
cooking liquid to a boil. We're going to dump all of
the mochiko flour into a bowl and we're gonna stream in enough of that boiling pandan liquid, just until that dough comes together.
You don't wanna go too
heavy with the water because you will be kneading this dough. It will come together, even though it looks very dry right now. Set that dough aside to
rest while we mash up our sweet potatoes, our
peanuts and our peanut butter. If you're wondering at this point, what she's gonna do with that
buckwheat flour and bran, she's not, I'm giving up on it. You get to live another day. Once you you've got your paste, go ahead and shape it into small balls. We're going to freeze it so that the shaping process is easier. (energetic music) Periodically, if you notice
your pineapple is running dry, go ahead and pour in some
of that pandan liquid, just to help ease that burning.
Hopefully this will infuse the pineapple with a little more fragrance as well. Once your and apples are
darkly golden and caramelized, go ahead, use a potato
masher and just mash them up. Crush through the remaining
structure to help it jamify. To shape the tang yuan, take your dough, cut it in half, roll
each half into a rope, and then cut each rope
into one inch pieces. Smush it flat between your
hands, palms and fingers. Plop your ball of frozen
filling in the middle, and then meet all the
edges together at the top, pinch away any excess
dough and roll it smooth.
It will really help you to have damp hands throughout this entire
process to avoid sticking. All that's left to do right now is to bring our pandan liquid back to a boil and let these cook. Smells so lovely. Mm. Soothing. I wish the peanut butter taste
were a little bit stronger, but most of it was actually
just sweet potato mash. The fresh pineapple gives
it a tart sweetness, kind of like cranberry. And then the cooked jammy pineapples taste a bit like apricot jam. Each bite is just so luxuriously soft. So comforting. It smells almost like a
buttery shortbread cookie. I mean, pineapple is
really tropical to the max, but somehow in this warm soupy context, it reads very holiday to me.
I'm gonna give this an 8.5. If we upped the peanut butter and actually added apricot jam to this, I might lose my mind, but
as is, not too shabby. Well y'all, thus ends
another week of "Budget Eats" and I believe this is
our first four day week. You're welcome, Zach. A very big thank you to all of you who recommended the FODMAP diet.
And if you have any other
dietary restrictions that you wanna see on the
next episode of "Budget Eats," drop us a comment down below, won't ya? Until next time get boozed. Oh, and can you tell me why my buckwheat soba noodles failed so bad? Thank you. (upbeat disco music).
