Authentic Beijing Food Explained Pt. 3

This is quite possibly the most authentic bowl of jjajangmyeon you can get in New York right now. But juicy insides still holding together as you can see. Of course, definitely the best I've had in America. This is delicious. This might be one of the only times I will willfully go for another bite of intestine. Capitals are often super mixed places because there are people from all over. Washington D.C.'s food scene is difficult to describe and so is Beijing's. However, we're gonna try to understand it. From Peking duck that was designed for an emperor, to the pig intestine stews of the Hutongs, and of course the jambings of Tianjin. Hey everyone, thanks for clicking on that video. Here's a shout out from our sponsor Omnipork. They are Asia's number one leading vegan pork brand and now you can get it in the U.S. They even have vegan tuna. I think it's dope because in Asian cooking there's a lot of pork. So now you know you don't gotta miss out on it. So the Lunar New Year might have just ended, but let me show you how easy it is to cook some classic Chinese dishes. Starting off, I have porkless chive and pork dumplings aka jiaozi. I'm gonna take the ground Omnipork version, throw in an egg, some seasonings, and then the chives for my filling and a little bit of scallions. Then I just take the store-bought dumpling wrappers. I'm gonna wrap them in different shapes because you know I'm not good at it. I'm gonna steam them up and I'm also gonna pan fry some. These are fired. Secondly, I'm gonna cheat my way to some delicious porkless mapo tofu. I'm going to stir fry some Omnipork with ginger and garlic I've chopped up, add a little bit of oyster sauce, then I'm gonna mix it into the meatless mapo tofu I've already bought. Honestly, this tastes incredible. If you have dietary restrictions or just want to eat healthier, I definitely recommend you check out Omnipork at that link down below. Please, you can buy it in the U.S. now. It's very tasty and it gives you that feeling just like it is pork. Our first spot in Midtown Manhattan, is trying to encapsulate the complexity and multi-layered history of Beijing's cuisine. Beijing has been China's capital for almost 700 years, so it is very, very mixed. A lot of different people from different regions have come and influenced the food there. Whether we're talking about, of course, Han people, Mongolians, Manchurians, Muslim Hui people. What Chai is doing is it's mixing authentic Beijing street specialties on the same menu as royal Beijing food. This concept is unique to New York City and quite possibly America in general. Let's check out Chai. Yeah, we want to bring like authentic Beijing cuisines from the street and all the way up to the Forbidden City where the emperor can have those meals. So that's what we're trying to bring the Chai to the American public. This is a literal intestine stew that you have to go deep into the hutongs to have. I think me and you had this once. So this is called the hutong pork stew. And I think on their menu, anything that's called hutong is going to be more referring to kind of the snack street dishes, the cheaper stuff. And this right here came out next to this royal dish. So Andrew, I think when I smell the Lu Zhu, it makes me kind of go, But then when I smell this, I go, So here I have everything. I have the tofu, I have the liver, and I have the intestine all in one bite. Dave, I don't like this as much as you. I don't even like this. I don't like this any more than you do. All right, here we go. Lu Zhu, hutong intestine soup. Honestly, this is way better than it was in Beijing. This is the best pork intestines I've ever had. It's not that funky at all. Now, maybe if you like the funk, you might be missing out on some of it. But for me, those non-intestine lovers, I'm feeling this one. You pay for the meat quality here in the U.S. This is the signature seafood bisque. Andrew, emperors ate this, bro. So as you can see, all the fancy chicken broths in China are very, very thick. It's almost like a congee. Oh, Andrew, I know you like some jitang. Oh, man. Bro, there's some sea cucumber. I think there was a little bit of abalone in there. Very fancy. The chicken flavor is super, super strong. And remember, there is no MSG at this restaurant. Honestly, I'm going to give this jitang laotanzi a 10 out of 10. All right, Andrew, this is the jinjiang rousi. This is the original origin dish of Mushu pork. And then here I have the origin dish of what is called Mongolian beef, but this is actually Mongolian lamb. This is Emperor Qianlong's cabbage. Apparently, there was an emperor in the Qing dynasty named Qianlong, who was a Manchurian, and he loved eating this cabbage. Man, it actually really looks like shredded chicken. Honestly, I thought it was chicken. Qianlong's cabbage. This is going back to the streets. This is a pork intestine dish right here. Lots of pieces of large garlic. This is la ba suan xiao fei chang. Andrew, they do a really good job with intestine here, though. I will say this. This might be one of the only times I will willfully go for another bite of intestine. Andrew, this is a dense, reduced pear soup, or a pear tea, pear soup. These are out of copper cups, and it's very, very thick, and it's going to be very sweet. It's great to wash down all of the salty food that we're eating, because, again, Beijing food is kind of salty. Hey, man, from the inner city to the forbidden city. Andrew, I've never seen a zhajiangmian that looked this authentic before. This literally looks like we're in the hutong right now. David, we did have authentic Beijing zhajiangmian in the hutongs, and this looks exactly like it, down to the sauce with a little bit of oil on top. Guys, this is just like the Beijing hutongs, man. The noodles are thick. Sauce is thick. This is quite possibly the most authentic bowl of zhajiangmian you can get in New York right now. Salty, saucy, thick, and balanced out with a lot of the vegetables. Oh, man, you know I had to mix it up before we went. I put Qianlong's cabbage on my jingjiang roast with a little bit of zhajiangmian pork. You are mixing socioeconomic class status dishes together, man. You don't know how to act. Bro, I might get thrown out of the palace back in the day. This is what we call new money, new qian. When a peasant gets rich off Bitcoin and they don't know how to act. All right, you guys, we are going onward in our crawl. I think this was a great way to open up. You saw low to high, high to low, and let's keep it pushing as we explore Beijing cuisine in Manhattan. Elevated Beijing specialties. Like we said, Beijing, Tianjin, they share very similar things, and most of the street foods in Beijing actually came from Tianjin. These are dried, sugared, yellow raisins. We have some chestnuts right here. Yes. These are some dried yellow raisins right here. I got this bag for about three dollars. They dried them out themselves, sugared them. Sweet. What else do I have? Andrew. Chestnuts roasting over an open fire. This is a Tianjin chestnut roasted on the street. Like we said, a lot of the street foods in Beijing originally from Tianjin. All right, guys, here I have this kumquat tanghulu with the skin and pulp on. Yes, I'm just going to eat the whole thing. Surprisingly, it works. I'm eating all the brine, the pulp, the outer covering. Guys, the kumquats were so tender and easy to eat. I had to ask him if you boiled them first to make the skin softer. But no, just straight up, guys, kumquat skin is actually not that thick. It's not like orange. It's a lot more edible. So I got to say these are my favorite tanghulus I've ever had from the man from Tianjin. Came four years ago right outside of here on Main Street in Flushing, 4140. He hooked up the strawberry, so I'm just going to eat everything. I'm going to eat the greens, not going to waste any part of the strawberry. We're inside Tianmei Plaza, aka Tianjin Palace. Reppin' Tianjin. We came here for this, the doufu nar. They eat this in the Hutong in Beijing. They eat this in Tianjin. All right, the reason I never built a taste for it is because it is kind of like a sweet and sour soup, the Americanized version, but like a little bit burnt and bitter. This one's got beef in the middle. I'm pretty sure back in the day you could get one with donkey meat in it. And this is almost like, this looks like it's from like three or four thousand years ago. So a lot of people for breakfast in Tianjin, you know, they got a variety of carbs. Let's try this one. This is like the first time I've actually had it, even though it's kind of like a fried rice cake ball. Let's see what's inside. Oh, red bean. Everything's a surprise here, man. You never know what's inside. Let's try this. Whether it's dim sum or here, I'm not the biggest fan of this dish personally, but it's not bad. My recommendation would be to go with this almost like sesame peanut flavored Tianjin breakfast bun. All right, you guys, we are at Lesha in Midtown having the most authentic Mongolian Beijing hot pot you can have in New York City. All right, so this is so authentic. Let me tell you why. The elements are here. You have the copper pot. Okay, you have a water-based broth. It's actually not a broth. It just has a few elements, goji berries, mushrooms, ginger, scallions. That's how they want you to start it off. And then as you cook the meat first, it will flavor the broth and then you cook everything else in it. And what makes this so authentic is because it has the copper pot. It's starting off with just water, not an actual flavored broth, just a few herbs and mushrooms and goji berries. And then you're going to eat your meat first and that's going to flavor the broth for everything else. So I think in modern day, there's hot pot restaurants all around the world. But for many, many centuries, this was more of like kind of a Chinese Mongolian thing to do. And because it was eaten in inner Mongolia. I'm telling you on a hot day, there is nothing better than Beijing hot pot. For me, you know, maybe because I used to live in Beijing for a little bit, Andrew, there's like a, I got a soft spot for the mahjong and the lamb. Another traditional sauce is this salty chive sauce. I'm going to put a little bit in, but trust me, it is quite salty and fragrant. David, all I can say is that this is aromatic and I'm feeling nomadic. One of the most traditional veggies you can have for Mongolian and Beijing hot pot is the crown daisies. Very fragrant. About to throw that in. These are Yang Rou Chuan. And you know, these are brought by the Hui people because obviously Beijing cuisine does have a lot of Islamic influence, at least in certain parts. I mean, these are just everywhere in China. I feel like that this is one of the most recent exports and maybe the biggest export from Western China to the world. If you have not checked out the other episodes of our Exploring Chinese Cuisine series, you need to click on them right now. Now that we've put in all the ingredients, you can see that our water has turned into an actual broth. Something that you're going to really notice about Beijing food in general is that the very Beijing food, it's really, really old. Peking duck, hot pot. I mean, that's centuries of history right there. Aren't you guys? You cannot talk about Beijing cuisine without talking about Peking duck. Now, why is it called Peking? Because it's based off the Cantonese pronunciation of Beijing, which is *******. Anyway, here at Mr. Sun, guys, they do a super traditional imperial style version. They're going to let us in on the process. Let's check it out. Aren't you guys? Long story short, Beijing's been the capital of China for about 700 years. So every time they do that, the emperor decided to move the capital. It's happened a couple of times in China's history from Nanjing to Beijing. In Nanjing, they love eating ducks. There's ducks everywhere. But then the recipe switched once it got to China because there was all these other head chefs from other provinces, and they were all racking their brain to be like, yo, what can we invent that this emperor is going to love? So they ended up coming up with Peking duck. And originally, the recipe was roasting the duck inside of a sheep's stomach like a pressure cooker. But nowadays, they got the modern vertical ovens. I think it's a little bit better. Everybody likes to eat Beijing duck, Peking duck their own way. I know Andrew likes to do the modern Beijing style. For me, I'm just going to wrap it up like a regular tortilla. The easiest sell to American audiences because this whole duck is about like $100. People who are willing to pay $100 for a Peking duck meal probably either grew up with it or sort of understand the nuances and all the work that went into it. It's an old dish, but there's modern ways to eating it. I know in the north, a lot of people like to dip just the skin into sugar. And I'll be honest, it brings out something else in this skin, man. It makes it really sweet, buttery, sugary. It's actually the most underrated way to eat it. I would recommend more people do it. At any good Peking duck spot, they are going to give you a little side of sugar. People change, but Peking duck stays the same. Continuing our Beijing food crawl exploration of Manhattan, guys. We are actually in Chinatown. And yes, you can find Beijing snacks here. Okay, so we're outside of Yiwan Man. And actually, the owner is Fujianese. But the chef who helped come up with the menu is from Beijing. So that's why you're going to get a Beijing noodle. This is the Beijing style zhajiangmian. And then also, they have all these different jianbings. And yes, it is hard to find a fresh jianbing in Chinatown. This is one of the only spots. Let's check it out. All right, so here at Yiwan Man, we have a spread of some pretty authentic Beijing dishes. But they're done a little bit differently. So they do have a slight little twist on there. Guys, here we have the Beijing zhajiangmian. And compared to the one that I had in Beijing, obviously, the noodles are a little bit thinner, a little bit more like a ramen noodle. But this does actually look like it. Basically, when it comes to zhajiangmian, the more north you go, the darker the sauce gets. Okay, so here in my hand, I have two different jianbings here. And of course, it can get pretty non-traditional infusion out here because they offer a lot of different fillings. And then here, we have the Beijing kaoya bao. And this is just your Peking duck bao. Now, this is something that I think really took off overseas outside of China. I do not think they're eating this a lot in Beijing. But it is very delicious. And it does give you that taste of Peking duck. This jianbing is pretty good. It may not be wrapped exactly how they would on the streets of Beijing because it'd be a little bit more square. But this one's tasty and I think fits the American palate because it kind of has less of that soybean flavor from the different sauces that they might spread on there, you know, on the streets of Beijing if you're on the, you know, second ring. All right, now I'm going to try the Peking duck one. This one looks really good. For a couple bucks extra, I recommend you getting the Peking duck in this. This is nice. Wrapping it up here, I got this very popular Peking duck bao. Now, is it truly made with real Peking duck? I mean, probably not because it'd be too expensive. So this is more roast duck. But it is still going to give you that vibe. Hoisin sauce, roast duck with all the onions and accoutrements. Yeah, it kind of gets the job done. Okay, so here at jianbing shop, they obviously have the traditional one, but they also have a whole bunch of other toppings that you can get onto it. And I do think in China, even in 2022, they probably are offering a lot of other toppings as well that they might have not like 15 years ago. Okay, I'm here with Alicia. Alicia, you're a fan of the jianbing, right? Yeah. Do you think that this can actually get more and more popular in America? Why or why not? Definitely. I got mine with Spam, which I have to say is delicious and definitely bringing a 50s kickback here, but in a different way. And I really thought it was savory. The first time I had it, I wasn't super sure what it was going to be like. It would be like if a French crepe and the most delicious, savory Chinese food were to have a marriage and have a baby. This would be that. And we are looking at a jianbing here at the jianbing shop. Man, getting really popular with different groups of people. Yeah, and I think it's the form factor. And I think it has a universal taste. It's eggy, it's a little bit salty. The form factor, it's very soft to eat and you can fill it up with everything. Like the American girl earlier, she just got it with Spam. Obviously, that's a Western meat. But obviously, listen, guys, Queens is going to have like the 10 out of 10 authentic ones. But in terms of deliciousness and in Manhattan, come to jianbing shop. Guys, what's more Beijing than just sitting out in the cold, eating a hot, fresh jianbing with your gummers? David, you have the fully loaded one. It has all the meats. It has the beef, the Spam and the Peking duck. Oh, there's yeoksong in there too. And there's pork floss in there. Is it kind of crazy? It honestly is crazy. It's a little crazy. It's crazy. Most people wouldn't order that, by the way. Guys, I just wanted to get it to see how it worked. This is the original. This is definitely an all-around classic hit. You guys got to check it out. I think the jianbing shop does one of the best jianbings you can get in New York City, especially Manhattan. It's just like how Shanghai kind of takes a lot of credit for like the xiaolongbao and other water town region dishes. Beijing is going to end up getting the credit for stuff like the jianbing. Beijing has been the capital of China for 700 years and has a number of different influences. Some of the hutong dishes are loved like zhajiangmian and some are polarizing. There's a lot of street food dishes we love that we could not even find in Manhattan or even America, such as manding roubing. But I think there is a general consensus. Peking duck and jianbings are the way to go. Food fit for an emperor or even just laopao.