Recreating J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's Okonomiyaki From Taste

Hi, I'm Kat and I'm here in the BA Test Kitchen

to have a super secret conversation about Chris Morocco.

Once again, we're putting Chris's super taster abilities

to the test.

This is J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's okonomiyaki.

I'm challenging Chris to recreate this dish

with every ingredient.

He'll be able to taste it, smell it, touch it,

but at no point will he be able to see this dish.

At the end we'll come back to see his final creation

and I'll be the judge.

[dramatic music]

Oh, fascinating.

Ah, kind of a seafood undertone,

but with this kind of like barbecue thing,

kind of like riding on top of it.

So, suffice it to say, no [beep] idea here.

It's like it smells like monkfish

like, braised in barbecue sauce.

Spicy, sharp, maybe kind of tomato-y something.

I mean, it's like ginger

but you would almost say it was pickled,

and yet it's like very hot, very sharp, very raw.

I'm getting the sensation that there's some kind of flavor

sprinkled seemingly on top of things.

But then there's like a dried seafood element.

I think that's katsuobushi.

Then under it there's this really thin, crispy flap.

It's like this huge sheets that wants to just shred apart

into these long shreds.

I'm getting, like, pork rib,

but how is it like, boneless?

The richness from the meat,

I mean, it really is reading as pork belly.

What trips me up then is what is happening

to the striations that are really predominantly fat.

It just feels like that is gone,

which makes this feel like an incredibly specific cut.

This seems to be the glaze-y sauce that's on the meat.

You know, kind of like molasses-y, ketchup-y,

then Kewpie mayo?

Then under it there's this really soft pancake-y something.

Very neutral, very starchy.

It's a little bit gelatinous.

Is it like a batter that's holding

quite a bit of cabbage, ginger, maybe some garlic?

And then some sort of filler that's like, bulking this up.

Is it a potato?

That would account

for some of the stickiness and starchiness?

It's like all of a sudden,

like, I came in and there was some like, very like,

anonymous yet prominently displayed, like, tuber.

And now I'm like, questioning like, what was that?

This is gonna be a really, really massive challenge.

So what I think this is, is okonomiyaki.

It's sort of like a category of Japanese savory pancake.

Doesn't tell me everything I need to know,

but it's certainly got me a lot closer to understanding

what this might be and how to make it.

I think I'm good here. Woo.

Holy [beep].

Big piece pork belly.

You don't want me to [beep] around with some ribs

just for the sake of it.

Yeah, let's get some ribs.

So for sauce, we're doing ketchup.

Maybe we'll do like, rice vinegar, green cabbage, scallions,

AP flour, eggs,

Kewpie mayo, katsuobushi.

Could there be shreds of sweet potato in there?

Yeah. What root is this?

Taro? Cassava?

So somebody's gonna shop for this stuff for me

and yeah, we're gonna keep talking about

what kind of root this is

and have my first attempt.

I am in such an addled state today

that like, I'm looking at the pork belly,

but you know what I'm thinking about?

First, I'm gonna season up these ribs.

We're gonna have like, a rib snack.

Probably not today,

it's gonna be like a morning tomorrow rib snack.

But the pork belly is what we're really gonna lean on today.

Slicing a thin enough piece that it's gonna work.

Things got a little squiffy towards the middle,

but I think that's okay.

Let's see if I can get another good one or two out of this.

This is just like a little tester piece.

Can you just cook a really thin piece of pork belly,

no braising, and have it be tender and delicious?

Now that I've flipped it one time,

would I put my vegetable mixture over this,

then put the batter over that?

And still, I imagine,

we're gonna wanna go into the oven or broiler.

Look how much it shrinks.

So why don't we just put this to the side for the minute

and think about sauce.

Half a cup of ketchup, light brown sugar,

a couple tablespoons of rice vin.

Doing just a little bit of Dijon mustard.

Just trying to replicate just like,

kind of frankly a bit of a middle of the road

barbecue sauce vibe.

We're just gonna kind of heat this up,

see how these flavors concentrate back down.

The base of ketchup feels right to me.

It's just, what are those ancillary flavors?

Are there Japanese barbecue sauces?

You know, like the kind of sauce you see with like,

you know, kind of like tonkatsu.

There's like a ketchup thing,

like a Worcestershire sauce thing.

Maybe like a fruit jam,

just like, sweet component kind of happening.

So we're gonna throw in some Worcestershire sauce

and see where we get.

Better.

I mean there's still no heat to it, really at all.

So that's something to maybe consider for a future round.

This is a good juncture to do tasting of the pork.

It feels like fairly chewy.

I'm just gonna slather on a little bit of our sauce

and I'm gonna broil this and see what happens.

Maybe slightly more toothsome than I would've liked.

I feel like we really need to go

even thinner on that pork belly.

And then there was this question of like, the ginger,

like, do we need to pickle the ginger?

Ooh.

Oh well, isn't that interesting?

I've never seen pickled ginger like this.

This is what I was imagining,

like, when I said pickled ginger.

It's like, what we think of like, more like,

in like, the sushi space.

But then, look at this thing that showed up.

This is red pickled ginger.

It's also called beni shoga.

This reminds me of the original dish,

how it's like a hot and bright,

kind of reads mostly raw,

and yet it has this pickle-iness to it,

and it has this structure, it has this stiffness.

It doesn't wanna flop over

like the thinner sliced stuff there.

I didn't even know this was out there.

I'm gonna do some vegetable prep now.

Like, I need to thinly slice this cabbage.

I need to make a pancake mixture.

It's a little bit gelatinous.

Is it like a batter that's holding quite a bit of cabbage,

ginger, maybe some garlic?

That was like a very wet batter

made up with something starchy.

The lack of crispiness made me feel like

it was more of like, a flour based batter.

Baking powder, salt,

milk, egg.

Could it really be that simple?

I don't know.

Okonomiyaki, it's really like a veg forward savory pancake,

and I feel like I was tasting cabbage.

Could there be pieces of sweet potato

in the actual vegetable matrix?

We're gonna throw some fresh ginger in here too.

What else? I guess some scallion.

Let's throw some scallion in there.

I'll just give the tiniest bit of oil as a head start.

This is gonna get pretty fatty.

So we're gonna see her flip.

Press, really render it, get that crispiness going.

A lot of extra fat.

Let's move it off the heat for the minute

while I work together on my batter and my veg

and see how it's coating everything.

We're gonna build the okonomiyaki on top of the pork belly,

but then the whole thing is gonna have to be flipped.

What do you give me if I try to flip it?

[Kat] I just think you can do it,

and I'll give you a high five.

Oh yeah!

Wait, so I would get a Kat B high five

if I can flip this in one?

[Kat] Yeah. Yeah.

[high five slapping]

Yeah.

We've got like good color, a little bit of crispiness.

So I'm just gonna set that second side

before it can be sauced and broiled.

So I broiled this as a way of getting the glaze

onto the pork belly.

Katsuobushi here.

Beni shoga.

And then Kewpie mayo.

And then togarashi.

All right, first attempt at the dish.

Pork belly okonomiyaki.

To me, this feels reasonably well executed,

irrespective of how close it is to the original.

Honestly, it's not [beep] bad.

And this sweet potato, interestingly,

just disappears in there.

I feel like, frankly the original was tastier.

In terms of scores, ingredients, 60%

In terms of technique, maybe 50%.

The pork belly maybe needs a rethink

towards the, like, tender side of things.

Appearance? That's where I'll maybe go to a 75%.

We made an okonomiyaki, right or wrong.

I feel good about that.

For taste, I'm gonna give myself a 70.

I mean, I think there's a certain impression that's correct

but I don't think it's close enough to the original dish.

On this piece of paper I have my actual scores.

Sometimes it's nice to be right.

Sometimes it's not nice to be right.

My scores are pretty much exactly what I gave myself here.

This is one of those challenges,

I wonder how close I can truly get?

But let's see.

Hm.

This sensation of sauciness, the whole top of this pancake,

and it makes me feel like this kind of barbecue sauce

is a separate drizzle.

Is Bull-Dog sauce like a style of sauce

or is it a brand of sauce?

Like, the way that the meat is so freaking thin.

It's like it's literally been cut

using, like, a deli slicer.

It's like it's fused to it.

I'm really thinking about the composition of this pancake.

It's like a very cohesive batter,

vegetable, you know, kind of starchy body.

And for a minute it gave me a little kind of like,

almost like an expression of like, dashi.

Could the liquid for the batter be dashi?

Well I think I'm good here

and I think I have some good takeaways to act on.

Woo.

Crazy thin pork belly.

Is there dashi in the pancake batter?

Like, Hondashi powder?

I'm also curious, like, is it as simple as, like,

just buy yourself a bottle of Bull-Dog sauce?

Japanese tubers.

Let's explore some of these other ingredients

and we'll be here bright and early.

Get another crack at this thing.

[Crew Member] Ready to catch?

Yes.

Oh, okonomi sauce for topping.

When I said Bull-Dog sauce,

I was referring to a style of sauce

that I have seen paired with tonkatsu.

What I needed to mean was okonomi sauce,

which is a thing, which I was not aware of.

But I was trying to make it and I kind of did.

Oh, what about the Hondashi?

[packet clatters]

[Crew Member] Oo!

I started to feel like maybe I was getting a kind of like,

a dashi from the pancake batter itself.

Hondashi is just like instant dashi mix.

It's like a combination of salts, MSG

and katsuobushi itself.

This stuff's powerful.

Now, I guess we kind of have to get in on this yam

and see what's what.

So a Japanese sweet potato feels very dry,

whereas this, it's like sticky and almost sap-like.

You know in Alien when like, the mother alien

like, opens its mouth

and it's like there's just like, this stuff,

you know, just like.

[monster growls]

It's probably what they use for the special effects.

I'm gonna grate this

and then I'm gonna try the grated mixture.

It's basically odorless, flavorless.

It's like 100% texture.

One cup of AP, powder, pinch of salt in there.

The dashi here is replacing our milk.

Slice up some scallion, also some ginger,

and I guess I'll leave the cabbage out.

Maybe I was like, real wrong about that.

There's a certain way that the original dish

felt like the experience of a spare rib.

So I wanted to recreate that experience,

as well as, you know, making the dish I'm supposed to make.

I also asked yesterday if Kat could find me

some pork belly that had been really thinly sliced.

Give me very broad coverage but very thin.

Okay. In with the batter.

So in terms of methodology for flipping things,

you've got a couple of options.

You know, you could slide this out onto a pot lid

and then invert the skillet back over it

and flip it, turn it back over.

I mean, you can also just do one big flip.

[Crew Member] Hey!

I think I'm a lot closer here.

In terms of the flavor,

is the mountain yam on its own really like

the star of the pancake show?

That feels like a bit of a stretch.

But I also didn't wanna just put other things in there

just 'cause, so.

Katsuobushi, okonomiyaki sauce, and then Kewpie mayo.

And then I'm doing a little bit of togarashi.

All right.

This is my second and last attempt at the dish.

Hope I got a little bit closer.

Ingredients. Let's say we were at what, 60 maybe?

Let's say we're now at 75.

A lot of questions about the vegetable mixture

inside the the pancake itself.

Technique. Maybe we crept up to a 70 here.

Appearance. Let's say maybe we bumped this up to an 80 now.

And taste, we'll do during the judging.

But before that, while we're waiting for the original dish,

let's get some ribs.

Kind of lost one off the end

'cause they were starting to fall apart they were so tender.

This is in honor of Cory's last day.

All right, start grabbing 'em. Come on.

Hey, Chris. Kat B.

Hey. Good to see you.

Nice to see you.

This was an interesting one.

Still some mysteries at work.

There's a lot of stuff going on in here.

Okay. Cool.

So I present to you okonomiyaki by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt.

Ah, Kenji.

What's the green stuff?

Is that a different type of seaweed?

It's aonori, which is a finely ground seaweed

Savory, but like smokey. So savory.

Yeah, but very traditional on top of okonomiyaki.

You did use baking powder in this,

which you might have felt there was a little bit

of height and airy texture to it.

But that actually comes from really whisking the batter.

I think it's the texture of the mountain yam

and the sliminess.

Like, the more you whip it

it's almost like egg whites or something.

Well if you don't know a mountain yam,

you don't know a mountain yam.

You don't. You know.

Like, as as the old... And then once you meet it,

you never forget it.

Yeah.

[monster growls]

You finally got the mountain yam

but decided to remove the cabbage.

There is cabbage in there?

There's cabbage in there Chris.

Ah!

Do you wanna give this a try?

Yes. Let's start with the original.

So custardy

The flavors in there are subtle.

Yeah, you're totally right.

It's so mild in there.

There's not much salt.

No.

Because there's so much salt in all the toppings

and like, the whole point is like,

you want it swimming in toppings.

Yeah.

[Kat] You see the height of it too?

Yeah.

[Kat] I think it's the,

there's four cups of cabbage in here.

Wow. Yeah.

It's introducing a lot of moisture,

which is keeping things like, pretty soft in there.

Yeah.

All right, I'm serving you

some of mine. Yeah. Let's do it.

[Kat] Yours looks really crispy.

[Chris] Yeah, it's certainly lacking

the same sense of height here.

Mm! Chris, that's so good.

The crispiness is actually really nice.

Seasoning's definitely more aggressive with mine.

Yeah.

Yours has a little bit of a brighter,

maybe lighter ginger flavor.

The pork is cooked really well.

The crispiness is actually really nice.

You got the okonomiyaki sauce.

That's a thing. Yeah.

Like, if you don't know that beni shoga is a thing

and Kewpie mayo and okonomi sauce, and like, all of it.

Yeah. Yeah.

You could go down a rabbit hole.

Yeah.

So for ingredients you gave yourself a 75,

and I gave you an 80.

Okay.

The only issue was the cabbage.

I mean, that was just

such a big part of it. That's worth

20 points to you?

Fuzzy math going on around here.

You didn't put the katsuobushi inside of the pancake,

or the beni shoga.

I mean. Great.

Yeah, you got an 80. Okay.

That's it.

I love it when you're like, firm.

And for technique you gave yourself a 70

and I gave you an 90.

Your technique improved so much.

Like, you got down to the actual recipe

and it was really impressive.

So for appearance, you gave yourself an 80,

and I gave you an 85.

I do agree that they look very similar

but you are missing the green pop of color

from the aonori and from the scallion.

The original recipe

is a little bit taller. Taller and bigger.

Bigger. Yeah.

It's so much cabbage in there.

So much. Okay.

How are we feeling about taste?

Yeah, I'd give myself about an 85.

You know, like you close your eyes,

you taste those elements.

Yeah, I mean, I think I agree.

I would maybe even give you an 87.

You gave yourself a 78 and I gave you an 86

All right. Yeah.

Doesn't always work out that way.

Yeah.

And I mean, let's mention the pork ribs you worked on.

Just like, on the side for fun to feed the crew.

Like, I'm gonna maybe just give you an extra point for that.

Ah, thanks. That's real sweet.

Like, this is up there with pizza for me.

They should be selling slices of this

for, you know, a dollar to $5 on every street corner

of every city. Giving people ideas.

I'm just saying what a fun challenge.

I mean, just like the exploration of ingredients

that like, are really at the utter boundaries

of my own knowledge.

And I just love that feeling that like,

you know, what felt to me like inherent culinary logic,

played out, you know, as such,

in the course of doing this challenge.

So this is something that I had some awareness of,

but I mean, there's nothing like tasting it blindfolded

to find out how much you actually know.

[Crew Member] And we got ribs.

[Chris] And we got some ribs.

Yeah, good one!

[people applauding]