Joey reveals Eat To Win: The Culinary Lifestyle for flavour and function! We discuss Joey's new spin a classic mince dish- Chicken Larb! Strap in as we take your taste buds on a wild ride with jasmine rice—trust us, it's not just for curries anymore. Discover how toasting this humble grain can transform your meals with an added crunch that's simply irresistible. And for the guys who've been flexing their culinary muscles, get ready to explore the world of mince in ways you've never imagined, perhaps even finding inspiration for a 'mince brah all-day' cookbook. So, gear up for a culinary journey that's not just about feeding your stomach but winning at life, one simple, protein-packed dish at a time. This is the first instalment, so stay tuned for more tasty tips.
Joey reveals Eat To Win: The Culinary Lifestyle for flavour and function! We discuss Joey's new spin a classic mince dish- Chicken Larb! Strap in as we take your taste buds on a wild ride with jasmine rice—trust us, it's not just for curries anymore. Discover how toasting this humble grain can transform your meals with an added crunch that's simply irresistible. And for the guys who've been flexing their culinary muscles, get ready to explore the world of mince in ways you've never imagined, perhaps even finding inspiration for a 'mince brah all-day' cookbook. So, gear up for a culinary journey that's not just about feeding your stomach but winning at life, one simple, protein-packed dish at a time. This is the first instalment, so stay tuned for more tasty tips.
Speaker 1:
All right. So installment one of the Eat to Win Chronicles Shout out Eat to Win Nation. So it's a lifestyle. This is the first thing people got to get their head around. But no, I haven't been posting as much about Eat to Win lately. I probably haven't been, I think, because I've adopted so many fucking new habits lately Tool making, tool restoring, chisel sharpening, guitar playing, sword making yeah, the renaissance right, oil painting, oil, if you will. I uh it. Just I haven't had as much time for cooking and so it's been more like throw some shit together which, if you follow me on instagram, the eat to win like.
Speaker 1:
One of the tenets of eat to win is that it like should be simple. So your shit doesn't have to be complicated, right, it should. You can have fun and play with some like tricky things to prepare, but on the whole, your cooking should be very practical and straightforward, because that makes it easier to be successful. But I'll talk about what I've made this week and so so here's, here's what. Here's what we're looking for nutritionally from my point of view and I'm sure you would agree with this for the most part has to tick the boxes in terms of macronutrients, and so, for the main part. We're always looking for protein. Yes, because carbohydrate and fat are easy to come by in terms of I just put rice in the pressure cooker or I just boil some potatoes or roast some sweet potato, carbs are done and fat you've always got. You've got fat either in the meat that you're cooking, which is your protein sauce, or you can put some olive oil or avocado or whatever.
Speaker 1:
So then the center of the dish is like well, what's the animal? Which I don't say that for it to sound vulgar, but it's like it really is a thing. It's like, all right, what's the protein we're cooking? And then from that the rest of the dish emerges. And, hey look, if you're, if you're not, someone who likes to eat animals, that's cool. Whatever, we're not saying not saying this in the name of being disrespectful to anyone's choices, but joe, being the father of the eat to win movement, he's going to say what he's going to say. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1:
And to that point, if you know, if you were a vegetarian or a vegan, you would still, I would suggest you still look at it the same way. What's my protein? I'm doing tofu, okay, well, what kind of tofu am I using? What's the dish going to be, yeah, so yesterday, so what I like then, if I'm looking for protein during the week, so I'm going to cook something on the weekend, I want a large batch of it. I want it to be pretty easy to measure, so I don't actually weigh my stuff, but I like to know that I've got like sort of 200, 250 grams of the protein source there which is going to give me what like 50 grams of protein, maybe. No, it depends on what you're using. But yeah, like ish, yeah. So I was like all right.
Speaker 1:
And here's one that I found lately, as in the last sort of six months, mince is really handy for that. Yeah, it's like mince you can't like. There's no tenderness issues. Like steak, chicken breast, like whole pieces of meat. You can overcook, you can undercook, it can be chewy, there's all that right. Like chicken doesn't reheat very well, steak doesn't reheat very well, but mince, man, I can cook that into a bit of a sauce. I could do like a chili con carne type thing. I could do like a pasta sauce, you know which I could eat with pasta or rice, or I could do and this is the one I cooked yesterday larb chicken, larb, oh yeah, which is.
Speaker 1:
I believe it's actually from Laos, right, but it's like classically we get it at a Thai restaurant. Thai restaurant, yeah, can I just quickly say on mince, this is something I learned recently sprinkling a little bit of bicarb helps the mince retain water. Bit of bicarb helps the mince retain water, so it won't not that typically mince dries out. But this was like actually a hamburger guy, right, this guy is talking Just sort of softens it and, yeah, it stops it from it, kind of plumps it a little. Yeah, right, which I just I never heard that. And this guy was talking about making hamburger patties, because obviously you've got to make the patty with seasonings. Anyway, I digress, but sprinkle bicarb, that's an interesting one.
Speaker 1:
I've noticed a lot of Chinese restaurants will always use bicarb on their meat. You know, like when you eat, like, say, you're eating like Mongolian beef or like some fucking gnarly Chinese dish here in Australia, this is the meat's always like got that tenderness to it. Yeah, yeah, it's because they do the same thing they mix bicarb, yeah, yeah, and it like puffs it out. I think it tenderizes it, yeah, it plumps it. So it's like I think and correct me if I'm wrong here, my chemistry friends it does something to draw water into the tissue. Yeah, tissue, yeah, right, which you normally lose in the kind of cooking process, makes sense anyway, please continue.
Speaker 1:
So larb, so chicken larb, yeah, so I looked up, you know, and so my process is always google it, chicken larb recipe and then I look at the top. You know, usually, like google gives you like a summary of like the top six results and you usually get a star rating, and so I'm looking for something that's got a high star rating. I I keep it real simple with my recipes, but I'm like that one looks mad, click on that Mad, let's do it. So it was like some. It was like a little blog, some little food blog.
Speaker 1:
But the suggestion was don't buy chicken mince, because chicken mince is usually breast meat and it's just dry and shit. So I bought two whole chickens that had been deboned, which you know, I guess it depends. But I went to the supermarket. I'm like, all right, I was looking for either I was going to buy like chicken breasts and chicken thighs and mix them together, but then I saw there were these kind of laid out whole chickens that had been deboned that were quite cheap I think they're on special oh nice, and they were like a free range organic chicken. So I was like Biggity, bam, that's my one. So I brought them home, ripped the skin off, just went with the meat, chopped it up, used a meat cleaver Nice, hounded that shit, nice and small. And then, bro, it's fucking flavour town, all's you need to do. Shitload of mint, chop it roughly. Shitload of coriander, chop it roughly.
Speaker 1:
A bunch of echelons, scallions, scallions is that what they, americans, call them? Spring onion of sorts. Yeah, so echelons, you know, they're like the little oval shaped onion. Seen, those ones? Oh yes, yes, that's not a scallion, is it? Scallions are spring onion, you're right, sorry. So, yeah, a shitload of like six of them, and then a bunch of spring onions Chop those motherfuckers.
Speaker 1:
And then you can put some chili I didn't, because kids don't like chili Pussies Then the juice of four limes oh yeah, lime does it. And then, bro, all you do is throw all the mince in a nice hot pan, brown it. You've got to cook the water out of it because it, you know, there's a bunch of water in the meat. So you let that cook and so it becomes a bit drier and almost gets like a bit brown and crispy, and then you go fucking lime juice, fish sauce, and there was one other thing in there like a palm sugar or a little bit of sugar. Yeah, dog, hang on, I put like one teaspoon. I normally just don't know with asian cooking when like one teaspoon, I normally just don't no With Asian cooking. When I ask for sugar, I usually just don't no.
Speaker 1:
For acidity, I swear, and I'm not Obviously I'm no Eat Twin Nation founder, I'm just a fan from the sideline cheering there you are. But because I'm an anti-sugar guy, as you well know. But sometimes when you eat something you're like why isn't this like I get from the place? Oh, yeah, it's because they've added alcohol and sugar for acidity. Yeah, like, yeah, it's, it's crazy, it's so important to creating that balance. Yeah, what makes something flavorful and acidity is really important. Yeah, which I guess.
Speaker 1:
So you know, for me when I'm like, I'm always thinking of that trade-off, right, and that's another eat to intent, like it should be delicious but it should also be healthy. Yeah, and it's not like putting a teaspoon of sugar into fucking two kilos of meat. It's gonna be a problem, but I guess I just look at it like it does this meal, like if I was having you guys around for dinner and it's like I'm cooking chicken lab, then I'm putting all the sugar yeah, sure, because tonight we're having a special meal, sure. But if I'm like food prepping, I'm usually like, all right, I don't need to worry about that, right, and even if it's just it's one ingredient, I don't have to get off the shelf. It saves me 15 seconds. Yeah, that's a saving worth making. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:
But you could totally go with um, and then you just cook that shit for a little bit and then you just go, you've got this bowl of all the chopped onions and herb and then you just tip all that shit in and then you stir fry it for like another minute or two and then it's done. And so then I've got this pot of chicken larb in the fridge probably a kilo and a half of it, which I know that it's basically a pure protein sauce, more or less, with amazing flavoring, and then you cook some rice and then, if you want, you can do some veggies on the side I'm pretty lazy with that these days and just eat like a cucumber or a carrot. Why not? It is easier, do you with love?
Speaker 1:
The way it's served, I don't know, is this is it. You kind of do it. I don't know how you do it, so I'm just asking Is this something you would deliver in a lettuce leaf? I think it often is Something like that. Yeah, it's in a little lettuce cup.
Speaker 1:
Oh, and there's one ingredient I forgot which you don't have to add. You toast jasmine rice in a dry hot pan before you start brown it, and then you either grind it in a mortar and pestle or you put in a spice mixer. That's right, and then that goes in and so it becomes crunchy. Ah, so that gives a crunch through the dish, which I did, which is and we'll see I'm gonna eat it for lunch today. Okay, cool, but yeah, man. And so I find like that's a real easy approach, right, and you could argue like the cutting, the mincing the chicken yourself by hand, not using a mincer, just using a knife, is a bit time consuming.
Speaker 1:
But it's like the mince chronicles are like I actually want to do, like a just a to win cookbook. That's just mince. Yeah, all different types of minces. I know that's appealing to our male listeners right now. They're like fuck, yeah. Appealing to our male listeners right now. Yeah, they're like fuck yeah. Yeah, mince bra all day. That's awesome. So there, it is awesome. Well, stay tuned. That's. That's chapter one of the eight twin chronicles.