Happy New Years Everyone! 🎉 I hope all of us have a much better! and I hope you will enjoy this video! Be sure to check out My Cooking Course: james-makinson-s-school.teachable.com/
Happy 2023 Chef James! To answer your question about cactus - I live in Texas and do see it in the store. I have never purchased it or cooked with it though. I would imagine it is similar (once cooked) to poblano peppers though and I do love those!
They call it Pico de gallo because you make a beak like shape with your tortilla or other bread when you pick it up, according to Ranveer Brar (the butter chicken chef you had reviewed).
Happy New Year...I love watching these videos, I don't think you have reacted to any of Chef Jean Pierre's videos though, he just hit 1 million subs on youtube and the recopies that I have tried from him are delicious, he is no Jamie Oliver but that's a good thing.
Y'know, I am actually surprised at how well Bianca handled her ingredients. The home chef typically would screw up every step of this recipe, but she actually managed to get like half of it right. Props.
Maybe I was just brought up that way, but all she did was fairly mediocre actions, and at a fairly low level. Of course, if she has never cooked for her family, then this is commendable =)
Chef Saul is a magician. Not just with his cooking but also with his charm. There are like only 4-5 chefs who have stopped me from unsubscribing from that awful channel and he's one of them
I actually sorta disagree here! I mean, I'd watch more of Chef Saul anytime ... but in principle, I feel like the series wouldn't work if the chef also made the expensive dish. I know the conceit is that the novice cooks are only given ingredients and no instructions ... but I feel fairly confident that's not quite true: I suspect what actually happens is that the chefs tell Rose what their techniques would have been, and for w/e reason the series uses Rose to transmit that information to the novices (... the idea that Rose is some super-chef who we never see cook but who is familiar with an absurd variety of techniques and ingredients has never struck me as plausible). So, while the amounts and some tiny specifics might vary ... I think if the chef were to actually make his dish ... it'd just be "oh, there's one person doing basically the right technique ... and another person doing the right technique better."
Yeah, she did fantastic, except for the nopales, which she overcooked. And the chicharrón, which she undercooked. Other than that making everything from scratch is impressive.
Here in Mexico, putting the chiles, tomatoes, onion and garlic to burn on a pan is called ''tatemado'', it is normally used to make sauces to accompany tacos, burritos, tetelas, tostadas, etc., boiled it is generally used for enchiladas and chilaquiles. Greetings from an Argentine studying gastronomy in Mexico!
Reminded me of how I make my Vera Cruz sauce; which I personally also add a thickener to as I like my sauces thick and creamy versus chunky… Thanks, have not made one in a while and am due!
yeah dude, but you don't put dry chiles a tatemar. You put them in very hot water, not boiling as boiling water would make them sour, to the hydrate them. Tatemar dry chiles would actually be worst on the souring them and they would be fiery on the salsa.
@@ChefJamesMakinsonanother thing to note is that the use of ovens is uncommon in Mexican cuisine for historical reasons, so any type of roasting is done over a hot stove instead
Pico de gallo (rooster's beak) has two origins depending on who you ask. The generally accepted reason is because when people used to eat it with their hands they would pick it up pinched between their thumb and forefinger, which gave the hand the appearance of a roosters beak. The other possibility is that it's because the serrano peppers traditionally used to make it look like the beak of a rooster.
Your story about the Chef you worked with eating Jalapenos whole really made me smile because I used to have a Mexican Chef I worked with who when I would bring in my Habanero harvest from my own Habaneros that I grew, he would eat one whole and say, 'These are my vitamins.' He was a really fun guy to work with!
As a chilihead, I have to say that Jalapeños are pretty mild. However, eating Habanero whole is above my level. Sure, I can have one per portion in my food without it being too hot.
I would say burritos are more common to northern Mexico where flour tortillas are more common (Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua). The central and southern areas tend to mainly have corn tortillas, in my experience. I grew up eating burritos, my mom commonly made them for breakfast and send me to school with a couple for lunch. Good for when we were on the road and needed something we could easily pack. We would make an assembly line between my parents and siblings and stack up 20-25 burritos and the roll up the bundle in aluminum foil and pull out from it during road trips. Something to note is that these burritos were not as large as the ones from the video (9 inch/22 centimeter diameter tortilla) and the inside was usually eggs with ham, eggs with potato, eggs with chorizo, eggs w/ fill in the blank. Depending on where those Mexican chefs are from yes it is not surprising they are not familiar with burritos.
So it's pretty common to toast dry chilis in a hot pan / Comal prior to reconstituting them. It did look like she put water in the pan, so she might have did it and they just edited it out. Then for the roasting, it's also common in mexican cuisine to roast ingredients dry to get them to char up really nicely. You can do it in an oven, over a fire, or on a really hot pan, but you never want to add oil.
16:48 "it's actually really good" I've been doing Sriracha over sour cream for more than a decade, it's such a natural combo, glad to see a pro chef complimenting it haha
Hi Chef, I'm out of Texas. We use cactus or nopales all the time. The one simple dish that comforts me is nopalitos con huevos. Cactus and eggs my grandma used to make it for us with some dried beef. Machacada is what we call it
james i'm argetinian married to a mexican woman, in mexico they roast the chilis first before hydrating it. For example in mole you have to toast all the dry spices before hydrating it, they call it "tatemar". Do remember, these would usually and traditionally be done in an open fire, a plancha or a comal, to get that char from the vegetables and spices.
I’m half Mexican, my mother immigrated to the states a long time ago. And her side of the family uses nopales quite a bit. My Abuela has several cactuses in her back yard she harvest from, or we get it in a jar. Using it in salsa is most common. While I’ve never been particularly fond of the texture, it’s very common in her cooking. Love your videos! Keep up the work.
I absolutely LOVE Saul's idea of adding a layer of grilled cheese both inside and out. I used to work in a fast food chain, and would sometimes put some of our shredded cheese onto a sheet of parchment paper, put that in the oven just long enough for the cheese to get extra crispy. That was the best perk of the job.
Man I thought I was a good cook, but I could never make a burrito that good looking with those ingredients like the chef did. That's legit one of the best burritos I've ever seen.
Chef Saul is very fun and his burrito seems delicious 🤤 I'm mexican and I rarely eat burritos and when I do eat them they're simpler than steak and shrimp, they are more like green/red pork stew and other types of meat but not that many ingredients. I also think burritos are a more tex-mex food, all those combinations with rice, cheese, chipotle and beans.
Damn they are both so charming. I know these cooks are probably cherrypicked for shows like this but damn they are awesome! And the supposed worse or less experienced homecook is just doing an almost perfect job with those expensive ingredients
I live in southern California, and until last year I had never tried nopal. But after I had a nopal taco i definitely fell in love. Unfortunately the grocery store near me only has jarred nopalitos but im definitely watching for there to be fresh ones some time.
I bought a huge bag of dried peppers that I just add 1 or 2 to a stock pot of broth every month. I had no idea you can rehydrate the peppers and cook with them. Thank you so much for mentioning that, I can finally put these spicy peppers to more use.
I'm Mexican and love to eat. One thing I can say is that buriritos are not very popular through the entirety of the country. They're commonly made in the northern states like Sonora, Chihuahua, but not much consumed towards the center or south of México. That's why they're very much used in Tex-Mex cuisine.
@@Duothimir Flour is common in northern Mexico, even tacos are eaten with flour tortillas in Sonora. Corn is the grain of choice further south, thus no burritos. Burritos tend to be just meat in a tortilla, maybe some onions and cilantro.... maybe grated cabbage. Anything else is a condiment. The quality of the burrito is all about the perfect tortilla and the perfect meat. All those other things, rice, beans, avocado, sour cream... they tend to be an American take on the burrito.
I've been lucky to have Mexicans from all over the country share their food with me. The diversity in Mexican cuisine is amazing and just not often readily available in the United States'. Just the variety of tamales alone is great.
@angelachouinard4581 The Mexican cuisine in the US is mostly Tex-Mex, with some New Mexico (Yes they are distinct. Look at the absolute adoration of hatch chiles in NM. Y'all like peppers, but New Mexicans pretty much went "Hold my beer" and took it up to thirty.
Chef Saul seems like a nice guy to be working in the kitchen keeping all his cooks motivated. Chef James! Happy new year! 💚 its been a rough year, I lost my mom in June so everyday is a rollercoaster of emotions. BUT finding your channel is one of the best ways to be happy and learn and forget the sad times for a moment. So I always will be grateful for watching your videos. Muchas gracias Chef James 💚
Burritos are 100% American- specifically Californian. They came from the expansion of larger farming which utilized a Mexican/American labor force, and farmers were looking for cheap ways to feed a lot of workers. The original burritos made for these farmers used corn tortillas, and eventually flour tortillas were adopted because they were easier to roll and keep handy until lunch service.
I was grew up in Fresno CA. Burritos were usually a lunch using leftovers from the night before. The restaurants made them a "thing". I was lucky to be taught how to cook Mexican food from my friend's moms. I'm Irish & mom was not into making Mexican food & preferred going to a restaurant. I still make tamales for Christmas dinners, a tradition in the area I grew up in.
It's always nice to hear your thoughts on these videos, I'd love to see you maybe doing your own take on the cheap version to see what you'd do with the ingredients (I know you already have a lot of cheap recipes in this channel, but it seems like a nice addition to a reaction video)
In all my years in a produce department, I have never stocked cactus. Even when in the Mission district of San Francisco. On the chile front, i was taught to toast them on the stove top prior to rehydrating (like they did in the video). I think I would prefer Saul’s burrito because technique can mask a whole lot of ingredient deficits whereas the opposite is just not true.
The "nopal" is much more common in rural areas in Mexico than in the city (I've met people that they've never tasted nopales) and they are quite common in some areas in Mexico, you can get them even in supermarkets (like Wal-Mart), in local markets or small grocery stores ("verdulerías"). They are difficult to prepare, since the texture vary a lot depending on the cooking method. About the chillies... Well, if the chili is fresh it has a different name once it is dried (i.e. fresh chilli: jalapeño, dried & smoked: chipotle) and the flavor and spiciness change a lot from fresh to dry depending on the type
huh thats odd I sometimes see cactus on the shelves in stores all the way over here in south carolina and can definitely find the canned ones easily even at walmart.
I understand that Epicurious is showing both "extremes," but it really always boils down to "simple and true is the way for you." Chef made simple ingredients look and taste absolutely phenominal. And the $113 burrito just was "too busy" in my own sense. Making your own tortillas is still fantastic though, just not sure about needing cactus haha. I also am a sirloin guy, but thats all just personal preference. Not all the time is more expensive better, or even worth the work. I would love to work with Chef Saul though. What a fun guy.
Living in the Northeast US, it's hard to find poblano and serrano peppers (jalapeno and habanero are common) never mind fresh cacti. But... I do have a few cans of chipotles in adobo sauce in my pantry (~$2 a can) and they are common in grocery stores.
I've never had nopalitos (cactus) but it's extremely common where I live. You can buy fresh, canned, or jarred at places like walmart, or buy it at restaurants.
That's an interesting thing about shredded chicken breasts. Here where I live, most of the recopies that call for shredded chicken are actually chicken floss. So what we do is braise the chicken with all spices an herbs and liquid in a pressure cooker for about 25 minutes. Once it's done we remove the liquid and herbs and spices (could be in a bag), and just shake the pan for about 30 seconds and you've got instant shredded chicken.
Man, those burritos, though they look good, are nothing like the authentic mexican burritos. I'm not a professional chef but I love to cook and I've worked in some mexican restaurants. If you come to México you would never see burritos like the ones in this video. Burritos here don't even cost 10 dollars, I just bought one for breakfast for only 25 pesos, that's a little more than a dollar. That cactus is called nopal here and we do use it a lot in our dishes and also to make some kinds of burritos but nothing like this one, it is usually made with pork and a red sauce made with 3 different kinds of dried chiles like the ones that girl used, but yes, we first rehidrate them by boiling them. In México we don't fill the burrito with too many ingredients like they did in this video, and we never seal the burrito with cheese like he did, that chef looks like he's Mexican because he speaks very good Spanish, has a Mexican accent and he has that great Mexican sense of humour, but I think his cooking is too much influenced by the american style. I don't deny it looks delicious and I'm sure it is, but that is more tex mex than real Mexican. Anyway, man, I just discovered you and your videos and I'm liking them a lot, I've learned many things from you. I made that recipe of carrot soup and it was very delicious. Keep making more of these videos and also more recipes. Hugs from México!
Nah, it's way more Cali-mex than Tex-mex. If you go around San Diego or LA they make burritos like that. Tex-mex burritos are usually very simple, use somewhat smaller and thicker tortillas, and are built on a refried bean base. Also, the cheese has usually got some cheddar or longhorn mixed in. If there is meat, it's usually barbacoa, simmered brisket, or ground beef taco. Mind you, if you're from central Mexico, I imagine any of the northern Mexican states are going to be making burritos that tend towards American tastes from your perspective, because that's the Mexican food most Americans experienced before the last 50 or so years of migration. In my experience they really like their cheese in northern Mexico in a way people down south do not care for.
i really appreciate hearing your explanations of the expensive ingredients, and i doubly appreciate your input on what you would replace those ingredients with if unavailable. providing an approximation to familiar ingredients helps me understand what the replaced ones were meant to be.
Chef Makinson, if your rice sticks to your pan you can deglaze the pan by putting hot water in it and bringing it to a boil before you try cleaning it. It really helps and sometimes you can even just rinse the stuck rice out after you deglaze the pan this way, sometimes.
I'd choose Saul's all day! To be fair, the home chef really didn't know what she was working with and still created a delicious looking burrito. There's just levels to this and if she keeps working at it she can be a great chef!
Dried chiles are typically rehydrated by steeping them in boiling hot water for about 10 minutes however before this you need to gently toast them to enhance their flavor , this step is not optional. Burritos are from the northern part of Mexico close to the border. They like their flour tortillas in the north the rest of us prefer corn for the most part.
Im half Mexican and half Spanish. My abuelita loved cooking with nopales. She would add a teaspoon of baking soda to the nopales and bring them to a boil. Then rinse them after to remove all the slime. I miss her and her cooking ❤️. Love your videos Chef James. Saludos 😊
17:20 it's not roasting the vegetables, it's charring them. And that is the exact same way my Mexican flatmate used to make salsa, char the tomato and peppers on a dry pan and then blend, so it's probably the common way to do it in mexico (although I've never seen it done to onions and garlic). It also seems to me to make more sense not to use up the whole oven just for 2 or 3 pieces of vegetables, plus it's a lot quicker.
@@ChefJamesMakinson Oh yes, I've always seen it in a thick pan like a cast iron pan. It still looked quicker and more efficient than using a whole oven for just 1 tomato and 2 jalapenos.
Hello James, i recently stumbled upon you and your videos and i've been binging them for 2 days now lol. Really been enjoying everyone of them so far! Only one problem though, i keep getting more hungry by the hour from watching :')
I have used cactus (nopales) in egg dishes like Nopales con Huevo. However I usually get some already prepared, usually diced or in a salsa. It's not usually sold in the regular supermarkets here in Southern California, but it's in almost every Mexican market I've gone to. Nopales is a tasty addition to shrimp or octopus ceviche in my opinion.
How Saul complained that he didn't have lime and chipotle was hilarious. I think my favorite part was from 14:08 to 14:42. I love how Saul added small things that greatly enhanced his burrito like the crunchy bits of rice and the cheese layers. His work looked stunning and very appetizing. Now I wish I could have seen how his work with the expensive ingredients would have looked like.
Not only have I used nopales before, where I live in Texas they grow natively. We pick nopales paddles when they are young and the spines haven't gotten hard and super spiny, and then fall and winter we also pick the tunas (prickly pears, the fruit of the cactus) and I make homemade preserves, syrups and sauces using the fruit. Really a remarkable plant that grows in abundance in south Texas.
These videos really show that you don't have to spend a ton of money to make amazing food. All you need is creativity. And it also helps if you are a pro chef 😂
I think part of show's concept is more and more outrageously expensive ingredients. I think they shop for the cheap ingredients at Walmart so they get as cheap as possible. One time the expensive list included making pasta in a whole wheel of parm!!
New year new video. Excellent. This one was FUN! Shows that knowledge is more important the ingredients by far. Not even a question which I would eat...... and the order another. BTW, just had 3 days in Barcelona. I'm leaving for El Prat de Llobregat in about an hour....... Watching this in the hotel lobby with a coffee. Wishing you all the best for this year mate 😁😁
Today's discovery: Chipotlacha! Edit 3: Burritos are Mexican, however you will not hear this often in Mexico city, they will say it is Tex-Mex (we can also remember Texas was a part of Mexico too, so the roots of Tex-Mex are also Mexican), but the burrito is actually from the city of Chihuahua up north, center and southern mexicans do not know how to roll a burrito, that is true, it is almost foreign as it is more common to use the maize masa based foods like tlacoyos, sopes, gorditas, while the northern states are the kings of meat and flour tortillas. Edit: after seeing Saul's ingredients, an important point to make, out of those 100+ bucks you get enough to make a ton of tortillas for lotta days! same goes for the salsa, can last you a week or so, and yes, lime is a must for us mexas. "Biancaaaa, I wish we had lime!" hehehe Edit2: what they wanted to do around 17:10 is called "tatemado", it does bring a smokey flavor to things, but she did poorly, if you want to see a good tatemado watch pretty much any video of a channel called "La capital" also even if in spanish he makes so much tasty stuff it would be cool if you reacted to any video from them.
Being from California and eaten over 3000 burritos I have to say the chef's $113 ingredients is way too fancy and complicated for a burrito. Why waste a nice rib-eye in a burrito??? When he was restricted to the $10 ingredients he still made something great!
Chef Saul’s sense of humor about cooking with cheaper ingredients was quite funny, but I’d prefer to make sort of a fusion of the two. I don’t care for cactus and can’t have most fish except pollack, but a blend of chicken and steak would be lovely. As a home cook, if there are too many ingredients, I prefer the quick and easy route. The less time I have to prepare to cook the better. But I could get behind a blend of the two recipes. Matter of fact, I think I’ll try it this weekend. 😊
Burritos are definitely more Tex Mex or at the very least more from northern Mexico. The South/Central Mexico gravitates more to corn tortilla while the north to flour tortillas
In the US here, although I lived 2 years in Guadalajara, MX. I definitely used cactus, although I have never prepared from whole paddles. You can't always find the fresh nopal unless you go to a special Mexican grocery. Sometimes mainstream stores have it, but it's definitely hit or miss. You can also get it (again, most likely in a Mexican grocery) jarred in a brine, so it's sort of pickled. In Guadalajara you could buy fresh whole paddles, with the prickles cut off, or already cut up into rajas (strips), which is just a time saver. It's somewhat like okra in that it can be rather "slimy", so you have to be prepared for that.
@@ericktellez7632 That's really interesting! Never heard that tip before. I actually kind of like the "body" imparted to the dish by that gel. Does the coffee affect the taste?
2:32 this is so true! I've been making Mexican cuisine my whole life, so I was taken by surprise when I found out that Spanish cuisine is a whole different ball game.
Buritos are more common in north mexico. Growing up in Quintana Roo, i never ate a burrito there. I went to juarez once, they had burrito street stalls there. I havent had nopales in a burrito. Generally I see them in grilled style food, as the vegetable extra. I guess that falls into the theme of a surf and terf burrito.
Bianca I think did amazing with all those difficult ingredients and steps (Obviously without tasting). It can be very daunting and she stayed calm, took her time with it and made what looks amazing. I know mine wouldn't have comeout anywhere near as good if it were me.
You mention the availability (or lack thereof) of various ingredients outside Mexico. One of the reasons Mexican food in Europe is usually disappointing is because pinto beans seem impossible to find there, so they use kidney beans, which just aren't the same. Watching her handle the nopales scares me. When I was a little kid my aunt was preparing them, and the fruit (the "tunas") and despite her warning me not to, I touched them and had painful invisible spines stuck in my fingers for days. I learned my lesson, now I buy nopales pre-cut in bags.
@@ChefJamesMakinson Yeah, it's hard to make proper Mexican food without chiles. How about pinto beans? Are those available in Spain? I can never seem to find them in Europe.
Burritos are from the northern region in Mexico. Then you have the Tex-Mex gringo appropriation (which is not bad, I like it. But it’s not the real deal). First thing, tortillas are freshly made with Manteca and they’re huge (you usually can ask for a 1/2 meter burrito). We keep it SIMPLE, no rice, no salad ffsake. The only thing you always put in first it’s a bed of refried beans. asadero cheese as an option and a stew (chicharrón in green sauce, pulled beef in chile colorado sauce, carne asada, etc. but just one stew) the salsa of your choice and just roll it and seal on the pan. No envelope wrapping, that comes from the gringo version, cause they stuff it up with a thousand ingredients and need to close it somehow. Sorry for the long comment. Love your channel Chef !
The poblanos make really delicious fajitas. I’ve gotten them that way at the On Border restaurant chains. They sliced them and charred them a little along with colored bell peppers and onions. So delicious. I love them with a mix of guacamole, their roasted tomato house salsa, sour cream (it cheaper and easier to buy in bulk than actual crema), and pico de gallo. I also love Ina Garten’s guacamole. It’s a creamy guacamole with more onions and diced tomatoes. Like a mix of guacamole and pico de gallo. It’s so good on tortilla chips or fajitas because it has all the fresh vegetables you want in your Mexican cuisine.
Have eaten prickly pear cactus. Not my favorite, but it's not bad on really hot days. I remember it being sticky and tacky in my mouth. Liked watermelon more. Pico de gallo is not because it's hot, but because it's sharp with the lime. That's what I was told. My mom made it without avocado, but with cayenne powder sprinkled over it, after the lime was squeezed over everything.
Hey chef! Good to see you! I'm mexican, burritos are very usual eaten in the north of mexico, i'm from sonora which is in the north, we usually make flour tortillas with pork lard, butter, milk powder, and flour. We love to eat carne asada, with guacamole, pico de gallo, salsa tatemada and a whole bunch of more different salsas, we have something called burros longos which are made with tortilla sobaquera which is a huge flour tortilla, thinner, talking about mexican gastronomy is very complicated because each state has it's own traditional dishes, like moles in puebla, pinole in oaxaca, even tamales are different in each part of mexico, not even tinga is the same thing in the north and the south, in the north tinga is something we call "Choripollo" which has chorizo in it, in the south tinga is made with chipotle. We have burros percherones, filled with carne asada, we have chimichangas which were originated in tucson arizona and we eat a lot of chimichangas in sonora
Happy New Year Chef! I'm from a state in Northern Mexico and no we do not make that type of burrito. Our burritos in my hometown are made with flour tortilla but the filling is only of one "guisado." No rice, no beans, no pico de gallo, no cheese; nothing else in it but just a "guisado." Guisado could be made of picadillo, papas con chorizo, refried beans...etc. I enjoy your videos so much! Thank you!
You can get (pickled) nopales in Czech Republic. Even nopal flour - which is great neutral (but green) thickener for sauces. I was initially ignoring them because my colleague used to teach in Mexico and hated nopales used as a side dish in school cafeteria.
Chef, so one of the reasons we blister the tomatoes, onion and garlic instead of roasting is because it adds a different flavor from roasting. There are sauces where we roast the vegetables of course, but they have a VERY different flavor. Some sauces are just boiled, some are blistered and some are roasted. They all have a different flavor due to the level of cooking and charring. I'd recommend trying it yourself to see the flavor of roasted vs blistered veggies. Also the toasted dried chiles is very common, but you want to remove the stem and be very careful with the toasting of the dried peppers without burning them. Burritos are much more common in northern Mexico. Central and Southern Mexican cooks/chefs usually don't like considering Northern Mexican as Mexican food lol.
Yes, I use cactus (nopales)...in fact, I wanted to grow some in my yard, so I just planted a nice big paddle of cactus many years ago that I picked up at the grocerys store. Sadly, after over 20 years, I had to have the huge cactus plant removed due to disease; however, those years provided lots of nice cactus paddles for myself and my neighbors (in Los Angeles County area) and WONDERFUL ripe fruit which you can mix in equal parts with sugar and make jam that tastes EXACTLY like honey. Sure do miss it.
Hi James, so I asked my husband about burritos; he's from Merida Yucatan and he said they don't make burritos, tacos with hand made corn tortillas. He said the first time he ate a burrito was when he came here to the US to live.
I've lived in Utah/Colorado, and I use nopales often when I make relevant Mexican dishes, put it in a soup mmmhmmm. Very easy to find ingredient, especially if you go to a Mexican market.
I lived in Mexico for awhile and learned how to cook nopales. In Mexico I never had to clean as that work was already done in the store or market. They way I was taught to cook it was to first slice them into strips and boil them a short time, just to get the slime out. Then I drained and rinsed them. In a frying pan I cooked some chopped onion in a little oil and then added crumbled fresh chorizo or loganiza and cooked that. Then I added chopped tomatoes and when that had cooked down a little I put in the nopales and heated them through. Sometimes I added chopped serranos to the mix. Finally, I put them in corn tortillas and ate them.
Congrats for 100k 🎉 Feels like it was just last week I found your channel with under 50k subs hope to see more recipes, especially simple dish, on your channel more Enjoyed the react videos as well, keep it up!
For the sauce at 17:00 here in México it is called salsa tatemada So basically you put the tomatoes, tomatillos, chiles, garlic and onion on a comal or a pan, no oil on it, so you kind to let it burn a bit, then put everything on a blender So it is a common practice here, "burning" the vegetables with no oil is called tatemar And for the burrito thing, it is a BIG thing but at the north of the country, like chihuahua and monterrey, the taco is most a all country thing
Loved this! My boyfriend’s parents are like Chef Saul’s. His mother was Dominican and his father was Mexican. Sucks both passed away and I didn’t get the chance to meet them. I’d love to try some recipes when we inevitably move in together when he relocates next year. He really likes Mexican style tacos. He never mentions burritos. I want to check out Chef Saul’s recipes if he has videos. I want to try making Menudo someday for him. Wonder if Chef Saul has a recipe for that. As for the burritos, I’d try both!
My way to check spice on a pepper is to cut of the end and taste the stem end i cut. The pith will give you a good idea on whether or not to remove the seeds to accommodate your desired spice level
If you see Chef Saul's first video in Epicurious he was so awkward but funny at the same time. But as he appeared in more videos, we can see his character shine through in the vids
Chipotles are one of my favorite ingredients to use in Mexican food - our "secret ingredient". From the rice to the protein, they just make everything so much better. They're only $1.18 a can here.
Happy New Years Everyone! 🎉 I hope all of us have a much better! and I hope you will enjoy this video!
Be sure to check out My Cooking Course: james-makinson-s-school.teachable.com/
Happy 2023 Chef James! To answer your question about cactus - I live in Texas and do see it in the store. I have never purchased it or cooked with it though. I would imagine it is similar (once cooked) to poblano peppers though and I do love those!
They call it Pico de gallo because you make a beak like shape with your tortilla or other bread when you pick it up, according to Ranveer Brar (the butter chicken chef you had reviewed).
Happy New Year...I love watching these videos, I don't think you have reacted to any of Chef Jean Pierre's videos though, he just hit 1 million subs on youtube and the recopies that I have tried from him are delicious, he is no Jamie Oliver but that's a good thing.
Happy New Year ❤️
@@trishah4785 happy new year!!
Chef Saul's got an excellent sense of humour.
yes he does!
He's the best
love the guy.
Uncle Roger and Chef Saul would be fun together.
Y'know, I am actually surprised at how well Bianca handled her ingredients. The home chef typically would screw up every step of this recipe, but she actually managed to get like half of it right. Props.
Maybe I was just brought up that way, but all she did was fairly mediocre actions, and at a fairly low level. Of course, if she has never cooked for her family, then this is commendable =)
@@nixhalla3uk27 🙄🙄🙄🙄
Her knife "skills" made me very nervous.
@@ThisisCitrushome cooks don’t really have them. Home chefs do though
Chef Saul is a magician. Not just with his cooking but also with his charm. There are like only 4-5 chefs who have stopped me from unsubscribing from that awful channel and he's one of them
I love watching him! he is brilliant! haha 🤣
Chef Saul is a treasure and if I could watch him anywhere else I'd unsub from Epicurious in an instant
@@Twisted_Logic He has his own channel. www.youtube.com/@ChefSaulMontiel :)
You like dudes who joke around while they cook? (Winks to James. haha)
Chef Gabby cause she too pretty 😅
Man… I still kinda want to see the chef make his burrito with his ingredients. That would have been incredible.
Same. I wish they did an after show where the professional chef got to use their remaining expensive ingredients.
Totally.
Search “chef Saul burrito” on RUclips, you’ll find a few videos of him making burritos… another one for Epicurious and a few on his own channel
I actually sorta disagree here! I mean, I'd watch more of Chef Saul anytime ... but in principle, I feel like the series wouldn't work if the chef also made the expensive dish. I know the conceit is that the novice cooks are only given ingredients and no instructions ... but I feel fairly confident that's not quite true: I suspect what actually happens is that the chefs tell Rose what their techniques would have been, and for w/e reason the series uses Rose to transmit that information to the novices (... the idea that Rose is some super-chef who we never see cook but who is familiar with an absurd variety of techniques and ingredients has never struck me as plausible). So, while the amounts and some tiny specifics might vary ... I think if the chef were to actually make his dish ... it'd just be "oh, there's one person doing basically the right technique ... and another person doing the right technique better."
@@DanielFolsom What? You went off into multiple directions. So would it not work because Rosie isn't real? What are you trying to say?
hats off to that girl. she got thrown a bunch of ingredients shes never used before and worked through it
Yeah, she did fantastic, except for the nopales, which she overcooked. And the chicharrón, which she undercooked. Other than that making everything from scratch is impressive.
I love everytime Chef Saul is invited to Epicurious, he is very creative and fun.
yes he is!
Here in Mexico, putting the chiles, tomatoes, onion and garlic to burn on a pan is called ''tatemado'', it is normally used to make sauces to accompany tacos, burritos, tetelas, tostadas, etc., boiled it is generally used for enchiladas and chilaquiles.
Greetings from an Argentine studying gastronomy in Mexico!
Gracias! My issue was adding dieced onions with whole tomatoes
Reminded me of how I make my Vera Cruz sauce; which I personally also add a thickener to as I like my sauces thick and creamy versus chunky… Thanks, have not made one in a while and am due!
yeah dude, but you don't put dry chiles a tatemar. You put them in very hot water, not boiling as boiling water would make them sour, to the hydrate them. Tatemar dry chiles would actually be worst on the souring them and they would be fiery on the salsa.
@@ChefJamesMakinsonanother thing to note is that the use of ovens is uncommon in Mexican cuisine for historical reasons, so any type of roasting is done over a hot stove instead
Pico de gallo (rooster's beak) has two origins depending on who you ask. The generally accepted reason is because when people used to eat it with their hands they would pick it up pinched between their thumb and forefinger, which gave the hand the appearance of a roosters beak. The other possibility is that it's because the serrano peppers traditionally used to make it look like the beak of a rooster.
Interesting!
To be fair the lack of lime is bothering me too 🤣😂, the lime is such an important flavour boost.
Yes it is!
@@baconoftheark Isn't lime fruit?
@@baconoftheark It is indeed a fruit
@@SasquatchTheMighty it is a fruit, and lots of vegetables are fruits. But not all fruits are vegetables
@@baconoftheark It has seeds, so it's a fruit.
It would be fun to see them both cook their own dishes as well. Should be a 2 part series.
😉
Your story about the Chef you worked with eating Jalapenos whole really made me smile because I used to have a Mexican Chef I worked with who when I would bring in my Habanero harvest from my own Habaneros that I grew, he would eat one whole and say, 'These are my vitamins.' He was a really fun guy to work with!
😂
As a chilihead, I have to say that Jalapeños are pretty mild. However, eating Habanero whole is above my level. Sure, I can have one per portion in my food without it being too hot.
My husband eats all peppers for snacks. He love habaneros
I love jalapeños for their flavor, especially roasted. But I can't eat em whole.
Chef Saul's charisma is through the roof and I'm loving it.
me too!
I would say burritos are more common to northern Mexico where flour tortillas are more common (Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua). The central and southern areas tend to mainly have corn tortillas, in my experience. I grew up eating burritos, my mom commonly made them for breakfast and send me to school with a couple for lunch. Good for when we were on the road and needed something we could easily pack. We would make an assembly line between my parents and siblings and stack up 20-25 burritos and the roll up the bundle in aluminum foil and pull out from it during road trips. Something to note is that these burritos were not as large as the ones from the video (9 inch/22 centimeter diameter tortilla) and the inside was usually eggs with ham, eggs with potato, eggs with chorizo, eggs w/ fill in the blank. Depending on where those Mexican chefs are from yes it is not surprising they are not familiar with burritos.
So it's pretty common to toast dry chilis in a hot pan / Comal prior to reconstituting them. It did look like she put water in the pan, so she might have did it and they just edited it out.
Then for the roasting, it's also common in mexican cuisine to roast ingredients dry to get them to char up really nicely. You can do it in an oven, over a fire, or on a really hot pan, but you never want to add oil.
16:48 "it's actually really good"
I've been doing Sriracha over sour cream for more than a decade, it's such a natural combo, glad to see a pro chef complimenting it haha
Hi Chef, I'm out of Texas. We use cactus or nopales all the time. The one simple dish that comforts me is nopalitos con huevos. Cactus and eggs my grandma used to make it for us with some dried beef. Machacada is what we call it
james i'm argetinian married to a mexican woman, in mexico they roast the chilis first before hydrating it. For example in mole you have to toast all the dry spices before hydrating it, they call it "tatemar". Do remember, these would usually and traditionally be done in an open fire, a plancha or a comal, to get that char from the vegetables and spices.
I love how you can give an experienced chef basic ingredients and they can turn it into something fantastic
The beauty of knowledge and technique.
Yeah me too. Suspense is involved!
He did want a lime, though. ;)
I’m half Mexican, my mother immigrated to the states a long time ago. And her side of the family uses nopales quite a bit. My Abuela has several cactuses in her back yard she harvest from, or we get it in a jar. Using it in salsa is most common. While I’ve never been particularly fond of the texture, it’s very common in her cooking.
Love your videos! Keep up the work.
Muchas Gracias! :) Happy New year!
Haha I’m glad you reacted to chef Saúl, his videos on Epicurious definitely inspired me to try cooking Mexican food. Happy new year!
Thank you! Happy new years!
I absolutely LOVE Saul's idea of adding a layer of grilled cheese both inside and out. I used to work in a fast food chain, and would sometimes put some of our shredded cheese onto a sheet of parchment paper, put that in the oven just long enough for the cheese to get extra crispy. That was the best perk of the job.
Man I thought I was a good cook, but I could never make a burrito that good looking with those ingredients like the chef did. That's legit one of the best burritos I've ever seen.
2:55 I'm reminded of the British Bake Off video when they made tacos for "Mexican Week" and used Feta.
Chef Saul is very fun and his burrito seems delicious 🤤
I'm mexican and I rarely eat burritos and when I do eat them they're simpler than steak and shrimp, they are more like green/red pork stew and other types of meat but not that many ingredients.
I also think burritos are a more tex-mex food, all those combinations with rice, cheese, chipotle and beans.
"If you don't learn new things, it gets boring." honestly that's a fantastic quote to live by, very tattoo worthy
Damn they are both so charming. I know these cooks are probably cherrypicked for shows like this but damn they are awesome! And the supposed worse or less experienced homecook is just doing an almost perfect job with those expensive ingredients
I live in southern California, and until last year I had never tried nopal. But after I had a nopal taco i definitely fell in love. Unfortunately the grocery store near me only has jarred nopalitos but im definitely watching for there to be fresh ones some time.
I bought a huge bag of dried peppers that I just add 1 or 2 to a stock pot of broth every month. I had no idea you can rehydrate the peppers and cook with them. Thank you so much for mentioning that, I can finally put these spicy peppers to more use.
I'm Mexican and love to eat. One thing I can say is that buriritos are not very popular through the entirety of the country. They're commonly made in the northern states like Sonora, Chihuahua, but not much consumed towards the center or south of México. That's why they're very much used in Tex-Mex cuisine.
What's popular in center and south Mexico?
@@DuothimirTacos, tlayudas, tetelas, sopes are some more things common down south
@@Duothimir Flour is common in northern Mexico, even tacos are eaten with flour tortillas in Sonora. Corn is the grain of choice further south, thus no burritos. Burritos tend to be just meat in a tortilla, maybe some onions and cilantro.... maybe grated cabbage. Anything else is a condiment. The quality of the burrito is all about the perfect tortilla and the perfect meat. All those other things, rice, beans, avocado, sour cream... they tend to be an American take on the burrito.
I've been lucky to have Mexicans from all over the country share their food with me. The diversity in Mexican cuisine is amazing and just not often readily available in the United States'. Just the variety of tamales alone is great.
@angelachouinard4581 The Mexican cuisine in the US is mostly Tex-Mex, with some New Mexico (Yes they are distinct. Look at the absolute adoration of hatch chiles in NM. Y'all like peppers, but New Mexicans pretty much went "Hold my beer" and took it up to thirty.
Chef Saul seems like a nice guy to be working in the kitchen keeping all his cooks motivated. Chef James! Happy new year! 💚 its been a rough year, I lost my mom in June so everyday is a rollercoaster of emotions. BUT finding your channel is one of the best ways to be happy and learn and forget the sad times for a moment. So I always will be grateful for watching your videos. Muchas gracias Chef James 💚
Happy new year!
Burritos are 100% American- specifically Californian.
They came from the expansion of larger farming which utilized a Mexican/American labor force, and farmers were looking for cheap ways to feed a lot of workers. The original burritos made for these farmers used corn tortillas, and eventually flour tortillas were adopted because they were easier to roll and keep handy until lunch service.
I was grew up in Fresno CA. Burritos were usually a lunch using leftovers from the night before. The restaurants made them a "thing". I was lucky to be taught how to cook Mexican food from my friend's moms. I'm Irish & mom was not into making Mexican food & preferred going to a restaurant. I still make tamales for Christmas dinners, a tradition in the area I grew up in.
It's always nice to hear your thoughts on these videos, I'd love to see you maybe doing your own take on the cheap version to see what you'd do with the ingredients (I know you already have a lot of cheap recipes in this channel, but it seems like a nice addition to a reaction video)
I have a Mexican mother. Nopales and Eggs was a common breakfast in our home growing up.
In all my years in a produce department, I have never stocked cactus. Even when in the Mission district of San Francisco. On the chile front, i was taught to toast them on the stove top prior to rehydrating (like they did in the video). I think I would prefer Saul’s burrito because technique can mask a whole lot of ingredient deficits whereas the opposite is just not true.
Happy new year Faux!
The "nopal" is much more common in rural areas in Mexico than in the city (I've met people that they've never tasted nopales) and they are quite common in some areas in Mexico, you can get them even in supermarkets (like Wal-Mart), in local markets or small grocery stores ("verdulerías"). They are difficult to prepare, since the texture vary a lot depending on the cooking method.
About the chillies... Well, if the chili is fresh it has a different name once it is dried (i.e. fresh chilli: jalapeño, dried & smoked: chipotle) and the flavor and spiciness change a lot from fresh to dry depending on the type
huh thats odd I sometimes see cactus on the shelves in stores all the way over here in south carolina and can definitely find the canned ones easily even at walmart.
They're common in southern california markets.
@@inapickle806Yeah, here in the almost Southwest(Colorado) too. I see cactus stocked in many regular grocery stores here.
I understand that Epicurious is showing both "extremes," but it really always boils down to "simple and true is the way for you." Chef made simple ingredients look and taste absolutely phenominal. And the $113 burrito just was "too busy" in my own sense. Making your own tortillas is still fantastic though, just not sure about needing cactus haha. I also am a sirloin guy, but thats all just personal preference.
Not all the time is more expensive better, or even worth the work. I would love to work with Chef Saul though. What a fun guy.
Living in the Northeast US, it's hard to find poblano and serrano peppers (jalapeno and habanero are common) never mind fresh cacti. But... I do have a few cans of chipotles in adobo sauce in my pantry (~$2 a can) and they are common in grocery stores.
never seen James laugh this hard at a react video before haha
i have a cactus plant here in australia, you cant buy it at the store.
i use it occasionally but mostly i juice the cactus fruit.
Man imagine having Tapas and drinks with Saul on a warm summer evening.
I've never had nopalitos (cactus) but it's extremely common where I live. You can buy fresh, canned, or jarred at places like walmart, or buy it at restaurants.
Now I am very intrigued what Chef Saul would do with his original ingredients :o
That's an interesting thing about shredded chicken breasts. Here where I live, most of the recopies that call for shredded chicken are actually chicken floss. So what we do is braise the chicken with all spices an herbs and liquid in a pressure cooker for about 25 minutes. Once it's done we remove the liquid and herbs and spices (could be in a bag), and just shake the pan for about 30 seconds and you've got instant shredded chicken.
Man, those burritos, though they look good, are nothing like the authentic mexican burritos. I'm not a professional chef but I love to cook and I've worked in some mexican restaurants. If you come to México you would never see burritos like the ones in this video. Burritos here don't even cost 10 dollars, I just bought one for breakfast for only 25 pesos, that's a little more than a dollar.
That cactus is called nopal here and we do use it a lot in our dishes and also to make some kinds of burritos but nothing like this one, it is usually made with pork and a red sauce made with 3 different kinds of dried chiles like the ones that girl used, but yes, we first rehidrate them by boiling them. In México we don't fill the burrito with too many ingredients like they did in this video, and we never seal the burrito with cheese like he did, that chef looks like he's Mexican because he speaks very good Spanish, has a Mexican accent and he has that great Mexican sense of humour, but I think his cooking is too much influenced by the american style.
I don't deny it looks delicious and I'm sure it is, but that is more tex mex than real Mexican. Anyway, man, I just discovered you and your videos and I'm liking them a lot, I've learned many things from you. I made that recipe of carrot soup and it was very delicious. Keep making more of these videos and also more recipes. Hugs from México!
Muchas Gracias!
Nah, it's way more Cali-mex than Tex-mex. If you go around San Diego or LA they make burritos like that. Tex-mex burritos are usually very simple, use somewhat smaller and thicker tortillas, and are built on a refried bean base. Also, the cheese has usually got some cheddar or longhorn mixed in. If there is meat, it's usually barbacoa, simmered brisket, or ground beef taco.
Mind you, if you're from central Mexico, I imagine any of the northern Mexican states are going to be making burritos that tend towards American tastes from your perspective, because that's the Mexican food most Americans experienced before the last 50 or so years of migration. In my experience they really like their cheese in northern Mexico in a way people down south do not care for.
i really appreciate hearing your explanations of the expensive ingredients, and i doubly appreciate your input on what you would replace those ingredients with if unavailable. providing an approximation to familiar ingredients helps me understand what the replaced ones were meant to be.
Thank you!
i love her energy. really makes me want to start cooking for myself.
I love her energy, too. Maybe try a simple burrito!
Chef Makinson, if your rice sticks to your pan you can deglaze the pan by putting hot water in it and bringing it to a boil before you try cleaning it. It really helps and sometimes you can even just rinse the stuck rice out after you deglaze the pan this way, sometimes.
I'd choose Saul's all day! To be fair, the home chef really didn't know what she was working with and still created a delicious looking burrito. There's just levels to this and if she keeps working at it she can be a great chef!
Dried chiles are typically rehydrated by steeping them in boiling hot water for about 10 minutes however before this you need to gently toast them to enhance their flavor , this step is not optional.
Burritos are from the northern part of Mexico close to the border. They like their flour tortillas in the north the rest of us prefer corn for the most part.
I don’t usually eat burritos, so seeing that trick to seal them was a nice touch!
Im half Mexican and half Spanish. My abuelita loved cooking with nopales. She would add a teaspoon of baking soda to the nopales and bring them to a boil. Then rinse them after to remove all the slime. I miss her and her cooking ❤️. Love your videos Chef James. Saludos 😊
Thanks for sharing!
Happy new year James! Definitely the best channel I've found this year. Wishing you all the best! ❤
Happy new year!
I just found you! I have watched two so far and I'm loving them! Thank You so very much for making my day!
I'm so glad to hear that! :) thank you!
18:23 Quality reaction👌
Great and informative video as always :)
Glad you enjoyed!
17:20 it's not roasting the vegetables, it's charring them. And that is the exact same way my Mexican flatmate used to make salsa, char the tomato and peppers on a dry pan and then blend, so it's probably the common way to do it in mexico (although I've never seen it done to onions and garlic).
It also seems to me to make more sense not to use up the whole oven just for 2 or 3 pieces of vegetables, plus it's a lot quicker.
You can still do that on broil in the oven or you can use the grill but not a saute pan, but the chili stems should have been removed
@@ChefJamesMakinson Oh yes, I've always seen it in a thick pan like a cast iron pan. It still looked quicker and more efficient than using a whole oven for just 1 tomato and 2 jalapenos.
Hello James, i recently stumbled upon you and your videos and i've been binging them for 2 days now lol. Really been enjoying everyone of them so far! Only one problem though, i keep getting more hungry by the hour from watching :')
😂 Glad you like them!
I have used cactus (nopales) in egg dishes like Nopales con Huevo. However I usually get some already prepared, usually diced or in a salsa.
It's not usually sold in the regular supermarkets here in Southern California, but it's in almost every Mexican market I've gone to.
Nopales is a tasty addition to shrimp or octopus ceviche in my opinion.
How Saul complained that he didn't have lime and chipotle was hilarious. I think my favorite part was from 14:08 to 14:42.
I love how Saul added small things that greatly enhanced his burrito like the crunchy bits of rice and the cheese layers. His work looked stunning and very appetizing. Now I wish I could have seen how his work with the expensive ingredients would have looked like.
Mine too! Haha 😂 he is great!
Not only have I used nopales before, where I live in Texas they grow natively. We pick nopales paddles when they are young and the spines haven't gotten hard and super spiny, and then fall and winter we also pick the tunas (prickly pears, the fruit of the cactus) and I make homemade preserves, syrups and sauces using the fruit. Really a remarkable plant that grows in abundance in south Texas.
These videos really show that you don't have to spend a ton of money to make amazing food. All you need is creativity. And it also helps if you are a pro chef 😂
I think part of show's concept is more and more outrageously expensive ingredients. I think they shop for the cheap ingredients at Walmart so they get as cheap as possible. One time the expensive list included making pasta in a whole wheel of parm!!
New year new video. Excellent. This one was FUN! Shows that knowledge is more important the ingredients by far. Not even a question which I would eat...... and the order another. BTW, just had 3 days in Barcelona. I'm leaving for
El Prat de Llobregat in about an hour....... Watching this in the hotel lobby with a coffee. Wishing you all the best for this year mate 😁😁
Happy new year!
Today's discovery: Chipotlacha!
Edit 3: Burritos are Mexican, however you will not hear this often in Mexico city, they will say it is Tex-Mex (we can also remember Texas was a part of Mexico too, so the roots of Tex-Mex are also Mexican), but the burrito is actually from the city of Chihuahua up north, center and southern mexicans do not know how to roll a burrito, that is true, it is almost foreign as it is more common to use the maize masa based foods like tlacoyos, sopes, gorditas, while the northern states are the kings of meat and flour tortillas.
Edit: after seeing Saul's ingredients, an important point to make, out of those 100+ bucks you get enough to make a ton of tortillas for lotta days! same goes for the salsa, can last you a week or so, and yes, lime is a must for us mexas. "Biancaaaa, I wish we had lime!" hehehe
Edit2: what they wanted to do around 17:10 is called "tatemado", it does bring a smokey flavor to things, but she did poorly, if you want to see a good tatemado watch pretty much any video of a channel called "La capital" also even if in spanish he makes so much tasty stuff it would be cool if you reacted to any video from them.
Chef James. I wonder if it is not too much trouble, whether you can make a video on how to make a flan. Thank you.
Being from California and eaten over 3000 burritos I have to say the chef's $113 ingredients is way too fancy and complicated for a burrito. Why waste a nice rib-eye in a burrito??? When he was restricted to the $10 ingredients he still made something great!
I have been recently binging this channel and I absolutely am entertained with Chef James' commentary
I'm so glad to hear that!!
Chef Saul would make a great teacher. The best teachers have fun sharing knowledge with others.
omg your view count is going up so much higher every week. i'm so happy for you :D good job!!! i love your videos
Thank you so much!! :)
Chef Saul’s sense of humor about cooking with cheaper ingredients was quite funny, but I’d prefer to make sort of a fusion of the two. I don’t care for cactus and can’t have most fish except pollack, but a blend of chicken and steak would be lovely. As a home cook, if there are too many ingredients, I prefer the quick and easy route. The less time I have to prepare to cook the better. But I could get behind a blend of the two recipes. Matter of fact, I think I’ll try it this weekend. 😊
I’ve been watching your videos for a long time, and love seeing how you have so many views now. One day I will eat at your restaurant.
Me too!
Burritos are definitely more Tex Mex or at the very least more from northern Mexico. The South/Central Mexico gravitates more to corn tortilla while the north to flour tortillas
Congrats on a 100K subs! Really love your videos, well deserved!
Thank you so much 😀
In the US here, although I lived 2 years in Guadalajara, MX. I definitely used cactus, although I have never prepared from whole paddles. You can't always find the fresh nopal unless you go to a special Mexican grocery. Sometimes mainstream stores have it, but it's definitely hit or miss. You can also get it (again, most likely in a Mexican grocery) jarred in a brine, so it's sort of pickled. In Guadalajara you could buy fresh whole paddles, with the prickles cut off, or already cut up into rajas (strips), which is just a time saver. It's somewhat like okra in that it can be rather "slimy", so you have to be prepared for that.
In Baja California we buy the whole paddles and use instant coffee with water and boíl the nopales it removes the slime
@@ericktellez7632 That's really interesting! Never heard that tip before. I actually kind of like the "body" imparted to the dish by that gel. Does the coffee affect the taste?
I am growing okra and nopales. Slimy but yummy.
2:32 this is so true! I've been making Mexican cuisine my whole life, so I was taken by surprise when I found out that Spanish cuisine is a whole different ball game.
Buritos are more common in north mexico. Growing up in Quintana Roo, i never ate a burrito there.
I went to juarez once, they had burrito street stalls there.
I havent had nopales in a burrito. Generally I see them in grilled style food, as the vegetable extra. I guess that falls into the theme of a surf and terf burrito.
Bianca I think did amazing with all those difficult ingredients and steps (Obviously without tasting). It can be very daunting and she stayed calm, took her time with it and made what looks amazing. I know mine wouldn't have comeout anywhere near as good if it were me.
You mention the availability (or lack thereof) of various ingredients outside Mexico. One of the reasons Mexican food in Europe is usually disappointing is because pinto beans seem impossible to find there, so they use kidney beans, which just aren't the same.
Watching her handle the nopales scares me. When I was a little kid my aunt was preparing them, and the fruit (the "tunas") and despite her warning me not to, I touched them and had painful invisible spines stuck in my fingers for days. I learned my lesson, now I buy nopales pre-cut in bags.
I mean the lack of Mexican ingredients in Spain. I can't get most chilies.
@@ChefJamesMakinson Yeah, it's hard to make proper Mexican food without chiles. How about pinto beans? Are those available in Spain? I can never seem to find them in Europe.
Burritos are from the northern region in Mexico. Then you have the Tex-Mex gringo appropriation (which is not bad, I like it. But it’s not the real deal). First thing, tortillas are freshly made with Manteca and they’re huge (you usually can ask for a 1/2 meter burrito). We keep it SIMPLE, no rice, no salad ffsake. The only thing you always put in first it’s a bed of refried beans. asadero cheese as an option and a stew (chicharrón in green sauce, pulled beef in chile colorado sauce, carne asada, etc. but just one stew) the salsa of your choice and just roll it and seal on the pan. No envelope wrapping, that comes from the gringo version, cause they stuff it up with a thousand ingredients and need to close it somehow. Sorry for the long comment.
Love your channel Chef !
The poblanos make really delicious fajitas. I’ve gotten them that way at the On Border restaurant chains. They sliced them and charred them a little along with colored bell peppers and onions. So delicious. I love them with a mix of guacamole, their roasted tomato house
salsa, sour cream (it cheaper and easier to buy in bulk than actual crema), and pico de gallo.
I also love Ina Garten’s guacamole. It’s a creamy guacamole with more onions and diced tomatoes. Like a mix of guacamole and pico de gallo. It’s so good on tortilla chips or fajitas because it has all the fresh vegetables you want in your Mexican cuisine.
Have eaten prickly pear cactus. Not my favorite, but it's not bad on really hot days. I remember it being sticky and tacky in my mouth. Liked watermelon more. Pico de gallo is not because it's hot, but because it's sharp with the lime. That's what I was told. My mom made it without avocado, but with cayenne powder sprinkled over it, after the lime was squeezed over everything.
Hey chef! Good to see you! I'm mexican, burritos are very usual eaten in the north of mexico, i'm from sonora which is in the north, we usually make flour tortillas with pork lard, butter, milk powder, and flour. We love to eat carne asada, with guacamole, pico de gallo, salsa tatemada and a whole bunch of more different salsas, we have something called burros longos which are made with tortilla sobaquera which is a huge flour tortilla, thinner, talking about mexican gastronomy is very complicated because each state has it's own traditional dishes, like moles in puebla, pinole in oaxaca, even tamales are different in each part of mexico, not even tinga is the same thing in the north and the south, in the north tinga is something we call "Choripollo" which has chorizo in it, in the south tinga is made with chipotle. We have burros percherones, filled with carne asada, we have chimichangas which were originated in tucson arizona and we eat a lot of chimichangas in sonora
that is very interesting! I didn't know that about chimichangas and I'm from Tucson
Yeap, they are from there but we eat them a lot
Happy New Year Chef! I'm from a state in Northern Mexico and no we do not make that type of burrito. Our burritos in my hometown are made with flour tortilla but the filling is only of one "guisado." No rice, no beans, no pico de gallo, no cheese; nothing else in it but just a "guisado." Guisado could be made of picadillo, papas con chorizo, refried beans...etc.
I enjoy your videos so much! Thank you!
Happy new year!
Congrats on reaching 100k subscribers Chef!
Thank you so much 😀
You can get (pickled) nopales in Czech Republic. Even nopal flour - which is great neutral (but green) thickener for sauces. I was initially ignoring them because my colleague used to teach in Mexico and hated nopales used as a side dish in school cafeteria.
Chef, so one of the reasons we blister the tomatoes, onion and garlic instead of roasting is because it adds a different flavor from roasting. There are sauces where we roast the vegetables of course, but they have a VERY different flavor. Some sauces are just boiled, some are blistered and some are roasted. They all have a different flavor due to the level of cooking and charring. I'd recommend trying it yourself to see the flavor of roasted vs blistered veggies. Also the toasted dried chiles is very common, but you want to remove the stem and be very careful with the toasting of the dried peppers without burning them. Burritos are much more common in northern Mexico. Central and Southern Mexican cooks/chefs usually don't like considering Northern Mexican as Mexican food lol.
I always love watching reactions to Chef Saul and your reactions are always informative
Yes, I use cactus (nopales)...in fact, I wanted to grow some in my yard, so I just planted a nice big paddle of cactus many years ago that I picked up at the grocerys store. Sadly, after over 20 years, I had to have the huge cactus plant removed due to disease; however, those years provided lots of nice cactus paddles for myself and my neighbors (in Los Angeles County area) and WONDERFUL ripe fruit which you can mix in equal parts with sugar and make jam that tastes EXACTLY like honey. Sure do miss it.
Hi James, so I asked my husband about burritos; he's from Merida Yucatan and he said they don't make burritos, tacos with hand made corn tortillas. He said the first time he ate a burrito was when he came here to the US to live.
Thank you for the information! Happy new year to you and your family!
I've lived in Utah/Colorado, and I use nopales often when I make relevant Mexican dishes, put it in a soup mmmhmmm. Very easy to find ingredient, especially if you go to a Mexican market.
I lived in Mexico for awhile and learned how to cook nopales. In Mexico I never had to clean as that work was already done in the store or market. They way I was taught to cook it was to first slice them into strips and boil them a short time, just to get the slime out. Then I drained and rinsed them. In a frying pan I cooked some chopped onion in a little oil and then added crumbled fresh chorizo or loganiza and cooked that. Then I added chopped tomatoes and when that had cooked down a little I put in the nopales and heated them through. Sometimes I added chopped serranos to the mix. Finally, I put them in corn tortillas and ate them.
Saul and Frank are my favorite chefs from epicurious! Btw you have a very nice voice and explain everything perfectly thank you!
Thank you!
Congrats for 100k 🎉
Feels like it was just last week I found your channel with under 50k subs
hope to see more recipes, especially simple dish, on your channel more
Enjoyed the react videos as well, keep it up!
Thank you so much 😀
For the sauce at 17:00 here in México it is called salsa tatemada
So basically you put the tomatoes, tomatillos, chiles, garlic and onion on a comal or a pan, no oil on it, so you kind to let it burn a bit, then put everything on a blender
So it is a common practice here, "burning" the vegetables with no oil is called tatemar
And for the burrito thing, it is a BIG thing but at the north of the country, like chihuahua and monterrey, the taco is most a all country thing
Loved this! My boyfriend’s parents are like Chef Saul’s. His mother was Dominican and his father was Mexican. Sucks both passed away and I didn’t get the chance to meet them. I’d love to try some recipes when we inevitably move in together when he relocates next year. He really likes Mexican style tacos. He never mentions burritos. I want to check out Chef Saul’s recipes if he has videos. I want to try making Menudo someday for him. Wonder if Chef Saul has a recipe for that.
As for the burritos, I’d try both!
My way to check spice on a pepper is to cut of the end and taste the stem end i cut. The pith will give you a good idea on whether or not to remove the seeds to accommodate your desired spice level
I live in Arizona and a good portion of what we eat here is tacos and burritos. Carne asada is probably number one
I used to live in Tucson! :)
Man I just love Chef Saul. He's definitely my favourite Epicurious Chef of the lot. That man is just too funny 😂
If you see Chef Saul's first video in Epicurious he was so awkward but funny at the same time. But as he appeared in more videos, we can see his character shine through in the vids
Chef Saul practically pouting about not having lime is actually hilarious 😂😂😂
I know how he felt! 😂
Chipotles are one of my favorite ingredients to use in Mexican food - our "secret ingredient". From the rice to the protein, they just make everything so much better. They're only $1.18 a can here.