Pro Chef Uses Chicken Feet to Make $100 Risotto

What's up guys.

We out here, lower east side, welcome to, what's the name

of the show again?

It's my [beep] show and I don't even know what the name

of the show is.

[Harold laughs]

What up, what up, it's your boy Chef Harold,

aka Uncle Harold.

Even though chicken feet are regularly eaten

across the globe, they're still an ingredient

a lot of people are hesitant to try.

So I'm setting out to transform them into a completely

new dish that will challenge what people think about them.

[drumroll begins]

This is chicken feet.

I love chicken feet and I love eating all offals.

That's kind of like the thing that I eat on my days off.

In Southeast Asia, or even Asia this offal

pieces of animals are the main things that people sell

in those street markets

and the night markets and stuff like that.

You know, a lot of people love it

especially when you're drunk, right?

Like you coming from a party and you're like,

yo, they got chicken feet, I'm gonna get that.

And then you end up loving chicken feet.

To help me figure out exactly

what kind of dish I should make.

[record scratch]

Oh shoot, what's going on?

How you doing, nice seeing you man.

I decided to meet up with some friends

who cook with chicken feet all the time.

Welcome everybody, we're here in Kabisera

in the lower East side.

We're here with my good friends VJ and his father Virgilio.

We're about to learn about chicken feet.

So can you tell us

about So Sarap and how you guys put it together?

[VJ] Yeah, So Sarap in Tagalog means so delicious

and we're based on Filipino street food.

So in New York, the street is the subway.

So yeah, pretty much like the best way to sell it

was on the subway or around the corner on the streets.

What kind of skewers you guys do?

Definitely is not like regular skewer

that you see over here in the U.S.

Chicken feet, pork intestines.

Like the offals, right?

Yes, you got it.

So when did you guys decide

to put chicken feet on the menu?

Since like, us Filipinos, some of them like,

it's so hard to travel back to the Philippines.

So we want to try to like bring back the memories

what we have back at home and introduce like

the Filipino culture or food to non-Filipinos.

The reaction of people is it's like something new to them

that they were so curious about it that they want to try it.

Has everybody been ordering it?

Oh yeah, definitely.

How much chicken feet do go through every time

you do a pop up? Probably like 100 to 200?

200 pieces for your pop up?

[VJ] 200 pieces.

Holy shit, does your house smell like chicken?

Kind of.

[all laugh]

So how do you get the chicken smell out, what do you do?

Oh, so to take up the smell of it, pretty much

is like you gotta clean it on the water.

Like a brine almost, like a salt brine.

Yeah, salt and water and when it's ready

you cook it on the, as adobo style.

So adobo is one of them like traditional Filipino dish?

Yeah, do you feel like it's a national dish?

Oh definitely, everybody loves adobo.

You saute all the garlic and ginger.

Okay, so what are you doing here?

You're going to give it color, the chicken?

Yeah, just got to make some colors on it.

Just got to add a little bit water

and then after you baste it, we'll grill it.

[Harold] Grill, so when you adobo,

it's called Adobong Manok

and then when you grill it it's called Adidas.

Someone came out with it 'cause it resemble of the.

The three stripes?

Yeah, the three stripes of Adidas.

Before grilling it, one of the secrets

of sauces, banana ketchup.

Pretty much, it's like the hot sauce of the Filipino.

But it's sweet.

But sweet.

[Harold laughs]

We took some of the adobo sauce, put them on the side.

All you just gotta do, just add banana ketchup on it.

And then it'll give you that sweetness.

So when you grill it, it gives it a nice char right?

Nice char and so good.

So pretty much, that's how it looked like.

Oh man, that looks great, wow, look at the color.

So let's talk about the dipping sauces here.

Usually we dip it on vinegar, call it sukang

which is vinegar with red onion.

That's why it has like a reddish colors on it.

Some of the people that have like some sweet and sour

or spicy sour and yeah.

Awesome, I want to try the vinegar one.

So you just dip it in?

Yep, you dip it and you just let it sit down

so all the vinegar flavors on it.

All right, let's try it, man.

Filipino street food in New York City, huh?

Oh, that was great, man.

Great.

I mean the best part about this thing is the char

from the grill, just the adobo flavor profile's amazing too.

And I think it also showcases

kind of what Filipino food is about really.

It's really about, you know, using what you have

and not wasting and feeding the whole family

with all those products and then give the animal

the respect that it deserves.

The idea of the traditions of being passed down

to you and your father as a second generation

Filipino American here in New York.

Does it give you a lot of weight on your shoulders

to really carry on a tradition?

It's something very important and I'm proud of it.

And hopefully I will pass it to my kids

and from there to generation, generation.

He got it, he got it from his mom.

That's right.

I got it from him and now definitely.

That's why I inherited this type of cooking.

SO VJ, thank you so much for sharing with us

your family's tradition.

We hope to see you this summer and everybody needs

to keep an eye out for your truck.

And we want to say anything else to the people?

Yeah, I just want to say.

[VJ speaks in a foreign language]

and I'll see you this summer.

After hearing from VJ and his father,

I took some time to think about my plan.

The lime wash adobo braise and the char from the grill

are all things that could serve

as a jumping off point for whatever I end up making.

I knew I wanted my final dish to respect these traditions

but still showcase chicken feet in a brand new way.

You know, I think what I'm going to make is risotto

with the seasonal vegetables

and then have the chicken feet glaze

with this reduced sauce that we're going to be making

and then shave some black truffles on top.

Risotto is basically rice that's cooked in stock.

There's a narrative that everybody already knows.

The qualities of a risotto, that it must have.

It should be creamy and cheesy at the same time.

There's gotta be constant stirring.

It's gonna be constant adding of the stock.

Al dente is kind of where the bite, where you want it to be.

And I think it'll really balance it out

with chicken feet, where chicken feet has all these kinds

of fatty contents too it,

it has a little bit of acidity from the vinegar and the lime

and also char and kind of these umami flavor profile.

I think layering the food that way will create

a great one bite or a couple of bites of the dish.

And also I've never heard anybody make a chicken foot

risotto because it's basically an oxymoron.

You know, it's the, one of the most inexpensive parts

of the animal with one of the most expensive rice dishes

in a fine dining menu.

Yeah, this literally the first time I'm making it.

So let's see how it looks.

Now don't freak out.

Sometimes the chicken feet has these spots on them.

These are called blisters, okay?

Just like human beings when you walk on your feet too long

you get this little blisters, all right?

All right, and just snip it off, all right?

So it doesn't freak you out, doesn't freak anybody else out.

What you want to do next is you want to take your Revlons

and give her a little manicure.

I like to keep the nails in because I don't like to waste

but if it freaks you out to have it like this,

you can go ahead and just snip them off,

right on the knuckle, so you don't have to deal with it

and you don't have to look at it.

Next steps is to create a brine

and the reason why we have to create a brine is sometimes

some of these chicken have like a funky smell to them.

You want to wash that off.

You want to get all the impurities out of this product.

So we're going to have some white vinegar, some salt

and some water and I'm just going to go ahead

and dump our chicken feet in here.

We'll add the vinegar salt like this.

You see already that's a chemical reaction now

that's happening that's cleaning this product.

And we'll let this sit

in the brine for about 10 to 15 minutes.

So now, as you can tell, it's been sitting here for a while

and now all the impurities are coming to the top here.

Can you see how clear the chicken itself is looking.

Looking like it's been kind of in a bleach solution almost

but the vinegar itself is going to help to really, you know

take the look of the chicken feet

and the fear of eating chicken feet out of it

and giving it such a great flavor profile

that people enjoy eating chicken feet.

So the next steps for these chicken feet

are we're going to go ahead and braise it.

And the reason why we're doing

that is because it breaks down to collagen a little more

and it makes it malleable for you to really eat the chicken

itself and be able to enjoy it the way.

The way I'm braising it today

is going to be kind of like adobo style.

Braising the feet like this is going to bring some

of the traditional flavors I learned

from So Sarap to my risotto but instead of vinegar,

we're going to be using green chilies, Thai chilies.

They're pretty spicy, don't be scared all right?

A little bit of fish sauce and lime juice.

Want to coat the chicken feet with this.

Next, add chicken stock, see that collagen right there?

You just need enough to cover the dish itself.

And when you bring it up to a boil, then you let it simmer

for 45 minutes and then you'll have nice,

ready to go chicken feet.

Now we're back, it looks like this.

That's when you're almost done there.

So you want to just take it off and put on the rack.

And then what we're going to do, is going to go ahead

and put on the grill.

So you don't want to move it too much, all right?

Let the grill do the work and you know,

since we braised them a little bit of lime too,

it has this balance now because fat, if you cut it with acid

it gives it a balanced flavor profile.

This char is a lot like what VJ and his father did.

It's going to work well into the risotto

because it's going to give it a smokiness and that kind

of extra layer of flavor that this risotto needs.

Nice, at this point right here

the chicken feet is pretty much ready to consume.

We're gonna start putting together this dish.

I've set up my station in a way where I can

work multi things at the same time.

I have my chicken stock that I have right here.

I'm going to bring it up to a boil

and I'm gonna get that going.

This Sauteuse is going to be for the risotto

and this pan right here is going to be for the

asparagus and the beautiful chanterelle mushrooms

we got from the farmer's market.

We'll have the braise gone down here.

When you dip the chicken feet in there, it's going

to have this beautiful glaze right over the top, yeah?

So we're going to move fast, all right?

Small dice, half an onion, couple cloves of garlic,

diced to super small also.

[oil sizzles]

Then you want to cook down your onion and garlic

in a very slow and translucent way.

Add a little bit of nub of butter

just to slow the cooking process.

Now we're gonna add a little bit of the rice.

Thess are a beautiful risotto rice.

They're a lot of short grain and more starchy.

You don't have to wash it.

Asian culture, we usually wash our rice.

Here, you want this kernels to be kind of molded in

and kind of whipped together creamy, nice al dente rice

and you cook it just like pasta really,

to tell you the truth.

But what I've done also is I've hidden the black

truffle here in the middle of this rice.

Pull the truffle out, what we're doing is we're

going to toast the rice a little bit,

just to give it a little bit more flavor.

Season along the way.

I learned that the hard way when I had to get rid [beeps]

20 quarts of cauliflower soup

'cause I didn't seize any properly.

All right, so when you get to this point,

I like to turn it up a little bit.

Then I didn't want to just deglaze with a little white wine.

Any type of white wine would work.

We're using Sauvignon blanc.

You want to get it down to sec, but while that's going,

we're going to be working on

our asparagus and chanterelle mushrooms.

You don't want to cut these, all right?

You just want to tear them.

You want to respect the product, okay?

Where it naturally just tears and I want to give

it a nice sear on these mushrooms, all right?

Just add a little bit butter just to slow

the cooking process down.

Risotto is into sec, as you can tell,

it soaked up all the white wine.

And then now we start adding the stock itself.

We'll do a couple of ladles, you want to whip it.

Keep whipping that, all right?

And mount this with a little bit of butter.

You can't hurt nobody with no butter,

you know what I'm saying?

So while that's happening, just take care of our asparagus.

We don't really want to clean 'em because these are amazing.

Asparagus, just want to add them right in, just like that.

Season this again, a little more butter.

That's awesome, it looks great, it's getting super creamy.

Lucky we're only doing one cup

'cause if we were doing a lot of cups, we'd be right now,

be out here whipping this shit for two hours.

Once I pulled this back, you see how it's coming together

like that, it means the starch is coming together.

So now you can tell the mushrooms are getting

this beautiful color to them.

And what we want to do next year is we're going

to add a little bit more flavor to it.

One garlic.

A little white wine, a couple things are butter.

You want to pull it off the pan

and you just make a pan sauce.

I'll just turn it off, let it sit, let it live

and then focus back on the risotto.

Wow, that's great, chicken stock has given a lot of flavor.

What we'll do next is work on some chives.

Like we talked about last video

and create a little bundle action here.

Chives, you're gonna finish the sauce

for the asparagus and the mushrooms.

Give it some color too.

What we're going to do now is I'm going to add

our chicken feet into this mix.

This chicken feet has already been grilled.

Foof, our braising liquid right there.

Our risotto has doubled in size.

The kernels has also bloomed a little bit more.

I'm gonna fold this right in, yeah?

I'm ready for plate up.

[groovy jazz plays]

There we go, I'm going to put some black truffle on top

of this so we can charge extra $75 for this dish all right?

It'll give it a more of an earthy tone from the mushroom.

Hey man, VJ came over, he was right down the block.

He's going to come taste this dish and see if it's worth

all this [beep] effort to make this, okay?

Oh wow, that looks beautiful.

You got my dad's recipe right here.

[Harold laughs]

Make your dad proud?

Mm hm, mm, that chef, that shit's banging.

He's just being nice.

How much do you think it would cost, VJ?

Probably 75, 100?

You actually put too much, probably more than that, too.

[Harold laughs]

That's true, there's a lot of truffles in there.

Bon Appetit budget is okay.

All right, cool, I'm gonna taste it now, see.

So it still has a little bite to it, a little al dente.

Risotto's hard to make you know how to maneuver.

You gotta really pay attention to it.

If you cook it a little bit more, it's a little too soft.

You know what I mean?

Like this is where you want it.

And Gordon Ramsey would say the same thing.

Let's try the chicken feet.

Mm, that's nice, there's like East meets West, you know?

If I would make it again, the one thing I would add

to it is maybe chicken butts.

[all laugh]

Chicken butts is so good.

Might as well put everything on, right?

Right, right?

You know, in restaurants when we used to roast stock

and like roast bones, chicken backs would be part of it

and chicken butts, it's everywhere on there, right?

So after you roast it for like 45 minutes,

you just peel off the chicken butts

and just eat that straight up, oh my god.

So I would, from all the scraps,

I would cut some chicken butts up and just put it in

between the chicken legs, the chicken feet

to really give it a nice unctuous burst of like

chicken flavor, you know?

That's the one thing I would add and maybe a little bit

of a crispy shallots or something just

for a little bit more texture, but overall man,

this is pretty good.

So VJ, I want to kind of talk about some social issues

that's happening right now in the Asian community.

Can you give a little story

about what happened to your wife a couple of days ago?

Oh man, yeah, we were just walking down

after a nice lunch.

Next thing, you know, just someone like

from nowhere came up to my wife and pushed her.

I was like a little bit like forward

and next thing you know, only thing

I heard from her, it was small scream.

I looked back and the guy was about to like jump something

like jump on her and I was like, yo, what the hell?

What the [beep] you doing?

Like, and I started like chasing him.

Yeah, it's pretty clear that we need to stand up

to racism and stand up to violence.

So the of people out there that's doing all these things

and attacking and all this kind of stuff, is not necessary.

You know, let's just have a conversation

and really talk about how we can move forward

as a culture and move forward as a country

to see the difference that we can make for each other.

And where the next generation lands here in America.

And we want to be able to continue

the culture and the ethics of our communities

and also continue the legacy that they left for us.

So yeah, so as we always say, never forget

where you came from, otherwise you become [beep] asshole.

Bon appetit, no doubt, South Bronx all day.

[mellow hip hop continues]