$343 vs $28 Dim Sum: Pro Chef & Home Cook Swap Ingredients

Ugh.

All right, that's done.

Hi, I'm Eric. I'm a professional chef.

And these are my $343 dim sum ingredients.

Hi, I'm Gabi. I'm a home cook.

And these are my $28 dim sum ingredients.

Have fun!

Okay. Basics. We can make this work.

Whoa! Okay. Wow! Okay.

So I was going make three different dim sum dishes.

They're all very different from one another.

他们都是非常困难的。对不起,加比。

I am so stoked.

So first I was gonna make a classic lo bo gao.

Or in Cantonese, lo bak go.

I don't speak Cantonese, sorry to everybody.

So it's savory turnip cake.

We make it with a daikon radish,

From the giant's garden.

And we're gonna use Jamon Iberico,

dried Shiitake mushrooms and a side of oyster sauce.

My second dish was going to be xia jiao,

or in Cantonese, har gow.

So they're delicious shrimp dumplings,

made with fresh shrimp. That's at least familiar.

[Eric] Fatback, bamboo shoots.

I've never cooked with bamboo shoots,

but I like eating them.

A little bit of toasted sesame oil

and some other seasonings as well.

For my last dish, we were going to make a feng zhua.

Or in Cantonese, fung jao.

Braised chicken feet.

This is the star of the show. Right here.

That literally translates to phoenix claws.

Do the chickens have large talons?

So our braised chicken feet are going to be made

with green cowhorn pepper, two types of soy sauce,

and lots of seasonings.

I hope they're spicy.

So dim sum is an immense world of thousands of dishes

和成千上万的技术。

These just happen to be my three favorites.

I think they're very representative of dim sum.

I think Gabi's really gonna enjoy them.

As long as she doesn't [beep] them up.

This is gonna be a very long day. [laughs]

With Gabi's recipe,

we have perhaps more common store-bought things.

These are all things you can find at a Chinese

or Asian market.

But with a little technique here,

I think we can make this really special.

So if I had to guess, I think this would all cost about $25.

[cash register dings]

Okay. All right. So getting better at that.

I would say this is all $178.62.

[cash register dings]

343! Okay! I lowballed that. That's my bad.

So here is Chef Eric's recipe book.

And here's what we are going to be making today.

So Gabi, you're diving into the world of dim sum.

Typically,

most of us would enjoy dim sum in a big Cantonese restaurant

where there's all this stuff going on,

all these people and all these carts and stuff like that.

But once you do it at home,

you're gonna really appreciate how difficult it is

and how much work goes into it.

Let's do this.

So Gabi, you have your chicken feet?

Which I think is actually the dish I'm most excited about.

This is a humble dish,

but there are four cooking techniques involved.

Boil, fry, braise, and then steam.

这一点,让我害怕的一个好方法。

The first thing you're going to do

is give it a very aggressive pedicure.

And you need to cut the nails off.

Obviously, that's not fun to eat.

I feel like you know, when you're in a salon,

do you have a date?

Is that why you're getting your feet done? Hmm?

My chicken feet are prepped and now it's time to boil them.

I'm gonna go ahead and add the maltose

and I'm gonna add the rice vinegar.

Maltose is a lightly sweetened syrup.

Very sticky. Whoop!

The idea here is that you're going

to lightly coat everything and seize up the skin

and remove some of the impurities.

And then the maltose will allow you

to brown them very quickly.

Chicken feet are boiling.

In the meantime, gonna do some veggie prep.

Chop up my scallion.

Then I'll do my ginger and then garlic.

I've never used fermented black beans before,

so this is really cool.

Gabi was going to make siu mai,

vegetable spring rolls, and cha leung,

which is a fried cruller wrapped in rice noodles.

I'm gonna do something pretty different.

I'll do a pork and cabbage dumpling with wings,

or lace skirt.

And then I think I'll do a shrimp-stuffed you tiao,

the Chinese cruller, with sesame sauce.

And finally,

I'm gonna make some fresh rice noodles

with hot scallion oil and garlic.

I think those are some pretty big changes.

Switching things up a lot,

but I think it can be really good.

First off, I'm going to make my own toasted sesame oil.

It's gonna be used as a seasoning

in a couple different dishes.

So I've toasted these sesame seeds quite dark.

I'm gonna blend them with oil

and strain them through a coffee filter.

It's a pretty important flavor.

You just use a little bit.

And the nuttiness and the complexity it adds

is really important to making a great dim sum farce.

So this is gonna take a little bit,

but we have a really nice toasted sesame oil.

Smells great.

Here we go. Look at that!

So obviously we're going from boiling to frying.

You need to be careful to dry things off in the middle

so that you don't create a bomb.

Let's fry 'em.

Frying again,

is just a step to kind of break down the tissue

a little bit more.

Separating the skin from the connective tissue.

Some splattering going on. I'm gonna keep my distance.

Okay.

Western cooks,

they find it weird that you're frying something

that's not intended to be crispy.

But it's just a cooking technique.

Time to take the feet out of the oil and let them rest.

They're nice and golden. Ooh hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo!

They look good. My chicken feet are fried!

Dish number one,

Gabi was gonna make a siu mai or shao mai.

It literally translates to cook, sell.

Easy, open face dumpling.

I'm gonna repurpose that a little bit.

所以我克onna take some of these Chinese crullers.

Stuff these with a filling I'm gonna make from shrimp.

And we're gonna wrap these up and fry them,

make them super crispy.

And then I'm gonna glaze it with some sesame sauce.

First things first, I'm gonna clean the shrimp.

Gonna squeeze 'em out here.

Double check there's no stuff.

Clean kitchen towel here.

I'm gonna take my shrimp,

and then I'm going to dry these

in a pretty aggressive manner.

You really wanna squeeze as much moisture as possible

out of the shrimp,

因为它会帮助你的闹剧。

It's gonna make it a little tacky.

It's gonna help the seasonings and the texture.

We're gonna roll this up here.

You are going for some straining, some exertion,

and getting as much out as you can.

Now it's time to braise my chicken feet.

We have quite a medley of ingredients to do that with.

I have my oil heating up now.

I'm gonna put in about a half tablespoon of my bean paste.

Ooh, it smells good.

Adding in my aromatics. Let them cook down for a little bit.

And now it's time to add in my feet. This is fun.

Next, I'm gonna add in my oyster sauce.

My two different soy sauces, Shaoxing wine, ketchup,

and whoo!

Fancy sugar.

When you stir fry them in the wok,

you're breaking down a lot of the gelatin and the collagen

in the chicken feet.

And then you're left with a big, sticky,

messy pile of chicken feet,

which is what makes them so great.

Now I'm gonna go ahead and add in the water

and let this braise for 45 minutes to an hour.

The last step here is you're going to steam them.

Steaming it is kind of a finishing touch.

You're adding the cowhorn pepper, and other aromatics.

I think the peppers at the bottom,

that's gonna give them a little bit more steam,

a little more heat.

And you're just making 'em really hot.

It's really important about eating dim sum.

All the food needs to be super hot.

I've never personally worked with bamboo steam baskets.

When you think about dim sum,

you think about the bamboo steamer basket.

This shrimp here, as you can see,

they look a little worse for wear,

breaking down the protein structure a little bit.

It is what is going to help make it bouncy later,

which is a desirable texture in Chinese cooking,

especially dim sum.

You'll notice that I have two cleavers here.

And this is what we affectionately call

the Chinese food processor.

It's a little bit easier to control.

When you using machinery, it can overheat your mixture,

which is not what you want.

所以我克onna be chopping these up to make a farce.

Farce is just a fancy word for filling or stuffing,

and then I'm gonna season it with scallions,

a little bit of pork.

My toasted sesame oil, soy sauce, sugar, salt.

We're gonna do something that's called a dot technique

or dot, in Cantonese, is I think what they call it.

It's literally mixing this

and slamming it against the bottom of the bowl.

It does make the texture of the filling bouncy,

which is what we want.

And that's the sound you want to hear.

Big part of making dim sum.

It's a pretty violent process, but it does work.

And as you can see, it's starting to get sticky here.

Shrimp farce is ready to go.

And I'm gonna put it in a piping bag.

Kind of tie it down like a guitar string here.

And then you just kind of simply knot it.

Now you're ready to work in a Michelin-starred restaurant.

This is called a you tiao.

Literally translates to oil stick.

Gabi, I think, was gonna use these for zha liang.

It's a cruller, fried up crispy,

和包装ped in a rice noodle and steamed.

Served with some sweet soy sauce.

I'm going to do it a bit differently.

I am going to stuff these with our shrimp filling here.

I'm gonna portion these in half.

We have our standard store-bought spring roll wrapper.

Wrap them, seal them, a little bit of water.

And then when we fry them for a few minutes,

the outside should be a really crispy wrapper.

Inside, it should be hot, chewy,

but really enjoyable cruller.

And then the savory shrimp.

So they're just lightly browned, feeling very crispy.

Okay, our shrimp-stuffed crullers are cooked.

And now to make a quick sauce.

And now I'm going to be making a sesame paste.

This, we're making almost what is like a seed

or a nut butter.

For everyone who's had sesame noodles

at a Chinese takeout restaurant,

that's the basis of the sauce,

and a lot of peanut butter, but..

I'm gonna blend toasted sesame seeds oil again

in a slightly different ratio.

And then add salt, sugar, soy sauce, rice vinegar,

just a clove of garlic and a little bit of ginger.

And that should make a really luscious sauce

for our shrimp stuffed cruller.

Our sesame sauce is done.

And once we're ready to plate,

we're just gonna glaze the shrimp-stuffed cruller

with a little bit of this,

and should add a really nice depth of flavor.

Dish one is done!

Dish number two! Okay, dish number two.

Pork and cabbage dumplings with a dumpling skirt.

Those kind of add wings to it,

and this nice crispy lattice work.

Har gow. Steam shrimp dumplings. Let's go.

So first, I'm gonna slice some scallions.

I'm gonna peel the ginger here.

I know there's a spoon trick.

I know there's a lot of Chinese grandmas out there

that love the spoon trick.

I think it's a bit of a waste of time. I'm sorry.

Tr-color coleslaw.

I believe Gabi was going to make veggie spring rolls

with this.

I'm not going to do that.

I'm gonna chop it up and add it to our pork mix.

So this is fatback, which I have never worked with before.

It's frozen, which is gonna help me chop it up smaller too.

I feel like anytime you have a cleaver,

you have to have a little bit of a crazy look in your eye.

Shrimp does not have a lot of fat,

so you need to add it.

Diced fatback.

It obviously adds the kind of richness we need

to make it very delicious and have the right texture.

I have ground pork.

I have the fat finely distributed throughout the meat.

And just so that there's no big chunks.

[Gabi] The fatback is cleaved.

So we have the chopped up pork,

cabbage, ginger, and scallion.

I'm gonna add sugar, a little bit of salt,

sesame oil that I made, and a little bit of soy sauce.

I'm gonna use flour to dust my tray here

for when I fill these dumplings.

Add just like a splash of water.

It kind of cooks a little better.

And I'm going to do that bat technique.

That was a good throw.

Now I'm going to drain out my shrimp.

Okay, I see where this is going.

I'm trying to keep it cool.

And I'm like, Yeah, this is easy.

I'm gonna pop a blood vessel. [laughs]

Chef Eric, is this just me?

Are you struggling too?

Hard to describe, but you do it enough,

and you let out enough frustration,

you make great dumplings.

If you're looking for a new upper body workout,

try shrimp towel.

I like the cleaver, I'm gonna keep the cleaver.

Shrimp's done.

Next, for my filling, I'm going to cut up my bamboo shoots.

So fun! Stop what you're doing and get a cleaver. Haha!

And now I'm going to do basically

the exact same thing I did with the shrimp.

Okay. My bamboo shoots are dried.

And it is time to assemble my filling

for the steam shrimp dumplings.

I have my shrimp and my bamboo shoots and my fatback.

I have some sesame oils, corn starch, MSG,

the white pepper, salt, sugar.

Get this going with the paddle

for between 10 and 14 minutes.

And my farce is done.

My dumpling farce is looking good.

I got some pre-made wrappers here, very convenient.

And I'm gonna fill some dumplings.

Chef Eric gifted me some of this very special dough,

which I'm very thankful for.

There's oil on this towel.

So I'm just using this to make sure

that this surface is nice and oiled up.

I've heard this is the most challenging part

of everything we're doing today, but I am ready for it.

我们会看到有多好我的crimping skills are.

It's very tempting to want

to make them super fat and overstuff them.

It would be a mistake though.

You need to do a little less than you think.

It's gonna cook better. It's gonna eat better.

You just use a touch of water and closing it,

pinching it all around.

Folding, pinch, folding, pinch.

This is my folding pinch song.

It looks more like a pierogi than it does

the last dumpling, but I think it works, right? Okay.

Sit it on this flour tray a little bit,

and then I'm gonna freeze it.

And when you sit it on this tray a little bit,

it will freeze with a flat bottom.

That's gonna be really great for searing later.

My pork and cabbage dumplings are all ready to go.

And next up, we're gonna cook them,

make some dumpling wings.

My dumplings are filled and it's time to steam them.

We got our pork and cabbage dumplings.

Been sitting in the freezer for a little bit.

We're gonna sear them.

Then we're gonna add a starch slurry to make our wings.

So basically what it'll look like when it's done

is there's this network of crispy starch

that's connecting all the dumplings together.

It's just really beautiful presentation.

And visuals are very important to enjoying food.

Nice little wheel pattern. Keep them together.

We'll let these sear until they're brown and crispy

on the bottom.

This is my steamer basket.

We're gonna go ahead and steam these babies up.

We'll add a slurry of flour and water.

Covering it so that they steam.

These will be ready in seven to eight minutes.

Once all the water's cooked off,

the dumpling should be cooked.

And then what should be left is this layer of starch

on the bottom that's gonna get really crispy.

Dumpling should be cooked on the inside,

and then we'll invert it.

And we should have this really nice crust on the top

with a really beautiful lattice pattern.

So these are looking good.

We're gonna let 'em cool for a second,

then arrange them nicely.

And we're gonna make some dumpling sauce.

Every restaurant has either house recipe,

but the building blocks are pretty much the same.

Fun thing about cleavers. You can just smash stuff.

[cleaver smashing]

And it's a very quick way to chop things.

Mince ginger and garlic.

Soy sauce, little bit of vinegar,

bit of sugar, just a splash of water.

Bring this to a boil just to mellow out the pungency

in the ginger and the garlic.

Add some fresh sliced scallion greens,

toasted sesame oil, to make kind of a broken vinaigrette.

And then you're ready to dip your dumplings.

Dish number three, my turnip cakes.

All right, so you're gonna use a daikon,

or a Chinese radish.

Those are those big white turnips.

We're going to grate this,

and it's gonna sear up into a really nice cake.

I like using a box grater this way

because I learned it from Chef Frank.

So from here, we're gonna add the radish into the wok.

I'm winded. [laughs]

Now I'm going to add in some water

and then let it simmer for about 10 minutes.

Dice up my Iberico jamon. You know, it's been a long day.

We're on the third dish.

I think it's time for maybe like a little snack?

Mmm! It's just so good.

My radish is done. In goes my canola.

We're going to put in the jamon,

the Shiitake mushroom, the scallions.

Return in my daikon radish.

This is my rice flour, corn starch.

Been about four minutes.

Now it's time to add in the seasonings.

Pinch of salt, white pepper, MSG.

And then we have our fancy sugar. Okay!

I think my turnip cake is looking pretty good.

Put my mixture into this dish.

Put the parchment on, put this into the fridge,

and let it cool down for as much as possible

before I cut it up.

Dish number three.

Fresh rice noodles with hot scallion oil and garlic.

所以我克onna make a scallion oil here.

We got our scallions.

We got some neutral oil, room temperature.

And we're just just gonna bring it up

and we're gonna boil it.

We're gonna fry it until they're nice and brown and roasty,

and smell delicious and strain it out.

My turnip cake is cooled down now.

And now I'm gonna slice it up and get it ready to fry.

So while my scallion oil's ticking away here,

it's gonna take a little bit to completely caramelize.

I'm gonna prepare all the rest of my ingredients.

It's a really simple dish. Rice noodles.

They behave very differently than noodles made from wheat

because there's no gluten.

It's very delicate.

They need to be eaten right away to be enjoyable.

So we'll reserve this,

and then we'll prepare the rest of the aromatics.

There, garlic, and mince this very finely.

And then we'll also slice some scallions up.

So my scallion noodles getting close here.

It's starting to brown, starting to caramelize.

Scallion oil.

Lo bak go. Turnip cakes. Fry 'em up, finish 'em.

Bring it home.

Wow, they smell really good. I'm really excited.

This is a super simple dish.

So we're gonna add a bit of soy sauce

at the bottom of bowl here.

A little bit of sugar, salt. Love oyster sauce.

So I'm adding also a splash of rice vinegar.

Nothing too crazy. This is the basis of the sauce.

Three recipes in one day is no joke.

I think my turnip cakes are ready to go.

Prep is done. Got everything heated up, ready to go here.

We're gonna finish our fresh rice noodles

with hot scallion oil.

Put the hot noodles on top.

We'll put sliced scallions and raw garlic on top.

And then we're gonna take this really hot scallion oil

[oil sizzling]

and just ladle it over.

It's gonna create this big, dramatic kind of explosion.

The idea there is you're taking the rawness

off the scallion and the garlic just by a touch.

And then that oil is permeating throughout the noodles

and then reaching the bottom, where all that seasoning is,

and you're mixing it all up.

And then it becomes kind of like a vinaigrette in that way.

It's time to plate all three of our dishes.

Here's the thing.

We're pretty much already plated

in our beautiful bamboo steamer baskets.

So the only thing I really need to plate is my turnip cake.

Oyster sauce right here. Maneuver my turnip cake.

Kabam。第二,大爆炸。

Beautiful, beautiful.

My scallions that I cut and just let 'em roam free.

Beautiful phoenix claws.

And then our steamed shrimp dumplings.

And I'm pretty proud of those!

We got our shrimp-stuffed cruller,

wrapped in our spring roll

and served with our sesame sauce.

We have our pork and cabbage dumpling with wings

and our dumpling sauce here.

And then we have our fresh rice noodles

with hot scallion oil.

Three separate dishes, one plate for each,

and kind of eat everything in concert.

So first things first,

we're gonna cut these on a bias

and serve it with our sesame sauce on the side.

Dish number two.

We're gonna take our dumpling wings.

We're actually gonna break these apart a little bit.

All these extra crispy textures are great

with our dumpling sauce.

Nice and crispy and delicious.

And then dish number three, finally,

our fresh rice noodles with hot scallion oil and garlic.

These have been mixed up in the bowl,

so they've absorbed the oyster sauce and the soy sauce

and the scallion oil.

We're gonna replate it and add some fresh scallions on top.

And this is my dim sum remix of Gabi's dishes.

I'm looking forward to see how she fared with my recipe.

It was a very tiring day. I really hope he likes it.

This is my take on Chef Eric's dim sum recipe.

Too many dishes for a selfie. This is challenging.

Okay.

Hello. Hi!

Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too!

How did it go?

All right. It was a tough day.

The amount of physical labor that went into these dishes

Okay. Is top tier.

Cool.

I'm really excited to see what you did with my dishes.

[Gabi] Ooh! That looks lovely.

Look at this. It looks like a tiara!

Oh, that's really nice!

What did you do with my ingredients?

I don't even recognize some of these.

There was a lot of alchemy here to get to this point.

As you know, dim sim needs to be enjoyed with tea.

So I brought some. Jasmine tea, that's my personal favorite.

[Gabi] Oh, I love jasmine tea.

[Eric] Yeah.

So I'm dying to try what you made.

Let's start with the hot fried one.

Okay.

There's a cruller with shrimp stuffing

和包装ped in spring roll and sesame sauce.

Got some weight to it.

Mm. Mm.

It's exploding everywhere,

but it's a good sign of flakiness.

What did you use of mine in this?

The crullers. So you cut it open.

I stuffed it with some chopped shrimp,

scallions and seasonings.

Then wrapped in a spring roll.

And we fried the whole thing. Like a deep-fried Twinkie.

Oh my God. All right. Next on the tour.

We're moving to the dumplings with wings.

Yay! This is a pork and cabbage dumping.

[Gabi] That coleslaw mix you gave me? Oh!

[Both] Boop!

Mm. That's good. We're rolling.

[Eric] Noodle time. This is great.

Mm. That might be my favorite.

Yeah? I mean, you know, noodles.

I'm also a big noodle person.

Mm. They were like perfectly seasoned. Wow.

I can't believe you made all this

with the little dinky tray that I gave you.

I'm very excited to try what you made.

So let's pivot to a vegetable.

Turnip cakes look great. Super crispy. Delicious.

[Gabi] Yes.

[Eric] This is like a favorite of mine growing up.

Oh no. Oh, you went what?

Mm.

That's good! The texture is right on point.

I mean, this is like one of my favorite things.

谢谢you so much for crushing it.

Aww.

I really wanna go for these lovely steam shrimp dumplings.

There's a nice translucence to the shrimp dumpling.

That's the hardest part. Mm.

That seasoning is so good. Dough is great.

I mean, you know, good old fashioned MSG never hurt.

Yes. That's just delicious. Mm.

Last but not least, phoenix claws.

It can be an intimidating dish, but it looks great.

This is not a super attractive thing to eat on camera.

Nailed it.

I love that. Yeah.

I love that. I love that too.

I feel like we're a dangerous team.

I don't know. Agents of chaos.

You did a great job. Thank you!

And I was a little worried. This is challenging.

This was a great day! How fun.

谢谢you. I will say,

this has to be one of the most complex episodes.

So that's part of the mission.

Yeah.

Is next time you go to dim sum, you're like,

you have no idea how much hard this is.

Next time I'm there,

It's $4. It's so much exertion and pain.

So much. Spread the gospel.

Oh, I will. Let the people know.

Cheers! Cheers. Thank you.

很棒的工作。谢谢you, Chef!

Phoenix claws.

[Both] Mew!

It's more catlike, but, Yeah.