I made a Durian Cocktail for One Piece | How to Drink

This is a durian, and if you know what that is, you know this episode's gonna be, it's gonna be something. I'm making a drink with a durian, for one piece, and then I'll have a drink. One Piece is a manga and anime that's been around for a very long time, like a very surprising long time, and today I'm going to make a drink from One Piece using a durian. Not this durian. This one's made of plastic. Thank God. Meredith, you know anything about One Piece? I know that it is an anime. It's an anime and a manga. Do you know the difference between an anime and a manga? I do not. Oh, a manga's like a comic book. It's the magazines. Yeah, yeah, and they get turned into animes on TV. Do you know the difference between an anime and a hentai? No. A hentai's porn. Oh. But drawn. A lot of times people ask me if I'm into anime, if I like anime. As if anime is a genre. I kind of know what you mean when you ask me that. You're talking about Shonen. I'm not into shounen at all. Shounen, if I'm not mistaken, I don't know what the age exact group is, but it's anime for teenage boys. Anime for teenage boys. It's not my cup of tea! The characters are all very, very screaming all the time, always, and everything is an explosive kind of level of importance, and also there's a lot of really emo-y melodrama, and everything is very heavy and very important, and... Super duper emotive in their performances. Nobody just like talks like regular people. Let me tell you what happened. I was gonna do an episode about One Piece. Okay, I was gonna make this episode. I did a lot of research. I learned about some of the characters. I watched a couple of episodes. I looked into the world. I know about the islands. I know about that, the pirates. I know about the stuff. I know about the setting with the devil fruit. I know about the devil fruit. I used to know it better a few weeks back when I was gonna shoot this episode and then it fell off of our schedule. And that really sucks for me because this drink. Involves durian. Why does it involve durian? I'm going to explain that better in a minute, but basically because devil fruit. It's a devil fruit. And that means that I had to make durian syrup. I made durian syrup. I had never touched durian before in my life. I made durian syrup in my kitchen. Nearly had to go to the Hague to testify against myself about war crimes. Could have ended my marriage. And you know what happened in the intervening weeks when I didn't shoot this episode? It went bad. So I had to do it again today. We went outside to make this. We literally went outside. I got masks, now I know a little bit better. I understand people like durian somewhere. I don't know why. I did make a drink that uses durian. This is that drink. Is it a good drink? You know, I haven't had it in several weeks since I wrote this recipe. So honestly, I'm gonna find out right alongside with you. What I remember about it is that it honors the ingredients. The durian is present, not overpowering, enjoyable if you like durian. Probably. That's sort of what I remember about it. What I wanted to say in all of that is that you're going to have to bear with me. I knew more about this show and who the characters are several weeks back. I forgot their names now, so we're going to call him that guy, that guy a lot. So the main character is this guy, Luffy B. Monkey, or is it, it's Luffy D. Monkey, and actually I think I'm pronouncing it wrong, I think it's Luffy D. Monkey, it's coming back to me now, and he's not a monkey, for those of you who don't watch One Piece, no, he is a boy who wants to be a very rich pirate and find the last one piece, I don't know how that works, but the One Piece is a great treasure, and he ate a devil fruit that turned him into a rubber boy. And so he's got rubber boy powers, that's his whole deal, and as a rubber boy he can like swing his fist around and punch real hard. I think that he can't swim though. Yeah, that's like another thing with the show. Anybody- okay, so there's devil fruit, Meredith. Can he control his arms? Yeah! Yeah, it's a superpower. Does he have an elbow? That's a great question. I think he is often drawn with elbows. Yes. Okay. Yeah, I don't think he's just like Snake Boy. Just like... So, here's the thing. In this setting, there are devil fruits. They... They... Show up. It's not like there's a devil fruit tree. It's just like, there's an apple tree and then something happens and one of them turns into a devil fruit. And there's only, I think, so many devil fruits in the whole setting. And when you consume a devil fruit, that fruit is gone from the universe until you die. And then it reappears somewhere else, right? So Monkey D. Luffy, Luffy D. Monkey, he ate a devil fruit that turned him into a rubber boy. Now here's the thing about the people who eat the devil fruits, because they're all over. They can't swim. If they fall in the water, they sink and they drown. But they're all pirates! Check that out. Stakes. That's stakes. There's no... That's how you put stakes in. I think there's one guy who can swim, actually. It's like a big deal. That's his superpower. I'm not joking. Or there was, maybe he's like unkillable and therefore the water doesn't, I forget what it is. Yeah, like I said, I forget this. And a lot of people said that there's this character whose name, again, escapes my mind. He's like a robot who is powered by soft drinks, apparently, and lives on soft drinks. Yeah, I don't know. The devil fruit just called me, you know. And then there's another character who I think is the navigator who always is making drinks on the show that I should do some of those drinks there as well. Well, that would require... Do you know how many hours of this show there are? I'm not exaggerating. I think there's like 1,500 hours and it's still going. Yeah, there'd be a lot of research. That'd be a lot of research. I asked Twitter what I should know about One Piece, and a lot of people jumped in and answered that question very helpfully. Thank you, people on Twitter. Some people suggested, based on my responses and my live watch of it, live tweeting of watching it, that, boy, Greg reviews anime he's never seen, might be a whole show. We're trying that. We did that with The Chainsaw Man, I presume before this comes out. And, I don't know, that could be fun. Might do more of that. This episode isn't that. This episode, we're just going to make the drink. I've talked a lot about the show. I honestly, I don't have anything else to talk about here other than making the syrup. And I'm going to do that as a voiceover, but I'll tell you what it is right now. These are my very dangerous durian ingredients. I keep them in three Ziploc bags. The inner two have decayed, which is a problem. This is the deadly durian syrup. Okay. Oh God, the smell's already hit me. All right, we go to the inner bag now. This is the durian water that I made. This is the worst part about this. There was trial and error to make the durian syrup. Yeah. All right, so this is Butterfly brand durian flavoring. This is what I used to my durian stuff. And apparently, I'm just reading this now, this is artificial durian flavor. Holy ----, man, that's some potent stuff. Look, it's really hard to get fresh durians. Um, in the U S for the most part, and they only come around like one time a year. So I don't think that if I had access to fresh durians, that that would be like a repeatable recipe for you. The way that we made this is this is my durian flavored water way. I made it was by taking this and adding it to water at a ratio of 25 to one. So 25 parts water for one part of this, this is still. Very potent stuff. This stuff is insane. I mean, I should be wearing gloves. Honestly, we should do this episode naked or something, or like in a Tyvek suit. One or the other. Either wear nothing so that you can just like acid bath yourself when you're done, or like wear stuff you could set on fire when it's all over. Then I took my durian water and I made a two to one simple with it. I just did two parts sugar, one part this, and that's how you get these dangerous little spheres of durian syrup. And that's what we're gonna use for this recipe. So durian's a really big flavor. Honestly, that is the main thing that goes into this drink. The rest of it is pretty standard, honestly. Like there's not a lot that's gonna compete with it. All we wanna do is put that on a pedestal, lengthen it, make sure it is in there in a way that's approachable, palatable. Otherwise, this drink is gonna be a tiki drink. We're gonna use durian syrup. We're gonna use lime juice. We're gonna have coconut rum. In particular, this coconut rum. We're gonna use a little Chinola. That's probably the other big, big flavor in here. We're going to use some OFTD and some good old pirate. That's going to be a big old tiki drink. And since we're doing a big old tiki pirate drink, we're going to need a big old pirate tiki barrel to drink it out of. I think without further ado, I should just start making this drink. No delay, no time like the present. Let's make it happen. I'm just going to cut up all my limes so that they are ready to go. Limes are cut. Now I'm going to need my shaker. So the recipe that I have is for a smaller version of it. We're going to double it up because we're making this for two. So if you want to make it for one, just cut these numbers in half. But I'm going to use double my original recipe, right? So I need one ounce of lime juice. I like the idea, though, that we're making it for two, Meredith, because that implies that you and I are going to drink a whole one of these each. I'm going to do one whole ounce of our Chinola Passion Fruit Liqueur. I actually really like this stuff a lot a lot. Every bottle we're using here today is available at Curiata at drink.curiata.com. Here we go. One ounce of passion fruit. We got our lime juice, we got our Chinola. Let's put in one ounce of OFTD. Remember this is a double, could even be a triple. You got such a huge, the size of this tiki mug we're going to put this in is ridiculous. I want one ounce of my Smith and Cross, bringing in a little Jamaican representation. And I want three ounces of Coconut Cartel, coconut rum. And I mean only Coconut Cartel, coconut rum. Do not replace this with Malibu or any such stuff. I really like this. I don't know the process, but it strikes me that it is rum that has been de-proofed using coconut water. It tastes like... Rum and coconut water. Doesn't taste like a coconut liqueur or something like that, or tanning butter. There may be other products on the market like it, but this is the first one I've had in calendar that does that, and it's really cool. It's a much more subtle flavor, which sounds crazy. We're putting it up against durian, but I trust that I knew what I was doing when I wrote this recipe several, several weeks ago, when I should have shot this episode instead of letting my durian syrup go bad. I hope past Greg is right. We sure do. Three ounces of that. Find out like there's like a note inside the shaker like, **** you, future Greg. I got you. Ha ha ha ha ha! What? The original recipe calls for one quarter ounce of durian syrup. We're going to use a half an ounce of durian. All of a sudden, I feel all of my will to live just like leaving me. All right, that's everything. We're going to put some ice into a shaker and I'm going to do all cracked ice because this drink is going to be an open pour. All right, we're going to take our ice, and we're going to crack it into here. Mercy. Now, we need our mug. All right, do an open pour into the vessel of your choice. Take your shaker and throw it into the incinerator. All right, so I'm looking at this drink, and I was like, we need to, we've got to tiki this thing up a little bit. So I want to smoke this drink. I know that sounds crazy. It wasn't part of my original recipe, but the vessel sort of demands that I do in this particular case. So we're gonna smoke it basically because of what I've got to serve it out of. So this is my smoking gun. It used to be made by PolyScience in my case, but they're now made by Breville. We're gonna put some apple wood in there. Look at these little apple wood chips, they're perfect. I'm gonna turn it on. I'm gonna light it with a wooden match. It's pretty cool. It smells really nice too, actually. It's good. It kind of helps cover up the smell of the durian. You know, that's one way you could do this drink. I think the smoke's actually gonna add quite a bit to it. We're gonna find out. You could also just do like a garnish, like normal humans. Meredith, I got two straws for us. You ready? Two great big straws. Cheers. You go ahead. What are you telling me? I just the long straw actually makes it worse because I was a lot of anticipation sucking in but I could suck in the smell and I taste it once the drink hit I didn't taste it so much. I see what you mean about the smell coming up the pot. It's bad and then it goes away and it's not so bad. Right so that's exactly right. What I find with this drink is that these straws I've never used these straws before but they're too much this is too much straw. So what I find with this drink, right? First off, I'm not going to have like an immediate scrumptious experience with this drink because I don't really like durian. But the thing is, I can work with ingredients that I don't really like. There are subjective qualities to a drink that I look for and an objective qualities that I look for in a drink. Subjectively, it's not really my drink. Objectively, this drink is a success for me because it doesn't bury or hide the durian, not really. It does honor that flavor and it lengthens it and moderates it so it doesn't just assault your face. The flavor profile does open heavy on durian. You do get the nose of it, up the straw for sure. And I don't wanna say like, oh, it's just this. Nope, that will be an experience of this drink. Like the odor. The smell of it going down your throat as you suck it up is a component of it. And then you do get briefly assaulted by it. That is quickly kind of knocked down a peg, I don't want to say overtaken, by passion fruit and delicious mixtures of rums and lime juice that kind of carries us out. From there, the durian kind of... Goes into a little bit of hibernation and rides us out and it doesn't really seem to come back too strong for me. Making it manageable, making it something that, you know, you can approach. Something that a person who wanted a durian fruit cocktail would like this. I just don't happen to want a durian fruit cocktail. Subjective. Objective. This does the things a good cocktail, or certainly a good tiki drink, should do, in my opinion, but it won't be for everybody. It's just a fact. Let's see what else is going on with this devil fruit. Oh, I was going to call it devil fruit stew. Let's see what's going on here a little bit more, see if I can pull apart. What does durian taste like? That's what was missing before. So what I haven't told you yet is what the durian actually tastes like. I don't know if I can describe it. Many people have tried. I'm gonna try with the passion fruit. And honestly, it kind of tastes like rotting bananas and with the passion fruit. But not like banana funk in a rum, but like actual rotting bananas. I'm a parent, by the way, and there's some other stuff that goes on in here that I have detected. It does also kind of smell, like I think the smell of it reminds me of like, not reminds me, but it makes me imagine somebody boiling baby diapers, just like maybe even dirty ones. It's not good. Nobody must like this smell. I've been told that in Southeast Asia, where durian is common, there's signs in hotels that say, no durian. You can't have durian in here and stuff. This is a durian-free hotel. Yeah. It's thick. It's a thick smell. I don't know if I can taste it anymore. I think the durian's fucked up my taste buds. You want to try and describe it? Do you have it? It's like. Let me see if I can stick with this. I wish I knew what those trees were actually called, because I'm not going to call them vagina trees on the show. You just did. It takes all of the flavor away, so it erases everything at first, and it sort of comes back to you over time. I don't know what the—it's like neutralizing it. It's powerful. It's the only flavor. It tastes like the trees in New York when they bloom. I think those are trees of heaven. Okay, I'll have to look it up, but it's like, it's a thick smell when you're walking down the street. It tastes like a bitter version of that. It's funny, I don't get bitterness. I never did. I get... Bitter's the wrong... Like rotting garbage? Bitter might be the wrong descriptor. There is a dump near me that sometimes smells real bad, and when you drive by it, it smells a little bit like this taste. Yeah. It's unique. It's very tough to compare this to another flavor. I've heard people say rotting gas. Gasoline or something, like gasoline and rotting flesh. God, actually, now that I say that out loud, I don't know how wrong that is. Yes, I could see it relating back to the smell of decay. Putrid, intense decay. Gasoline, I don't know about, yeah, sometimes. Sometimes you get, maybe not gasoline, but like some kind of petrochemical shows up in there. And that's just my subjectivity. Objectively, this is a good durian cocktail. But durian itself is rough. I will say this, like I've drank things on this show that like knocked me on my ass. This isn't that bad. It's just, ooh yeah, that's the worst part. You get the, it comes back with your burp. Well, I mean, that's the one piece drink that I invented. I call it the... Devil fruit stew. It's got durian in it. I feel like this drink is, it's unique. It's a durian cocktail. And I think that the devil fruit is durian. If there's a fruit of devils, this is it. And honestly, where the show comes from, I wouldn't even be surprised if this is what devil fruit is kind of referencing. This is how to drink. The show about making cocktails and how to drink them. If you want more cocktails made from One Piece, let me know. I would do this again. I would do more cocktails. I don't know enough about One Piece to do more than this. So you gotta give me a list. Give me a list of drinks you want from One Piece and maybe we'll do it. Maybe we'll do that episode because I think One Piece is hot stuff. People love the One Piece. You know what I thought One Piece was? Just because I know anime stuff. I didn't know this. I didn't know it was about a treasure. I thought it was about like hot girls and bathing suits. Well, that's what I would have thought. Why is it called One Piece? Because the One Piece is this treasure that he's searching for. It's about gold. Or diamonds and jewels and magic. Anyway, I've been on the internet for a long time making this show. There's other episodes of it. I did some anime before. We did an episode about Cowboy Bebop. I did an episode about DBZ. Nobody watched that. Maybe anime is not a slam dunk. I don't know. But thank you guys so much for watching. I'll see you next time on another episode of HGD. In the meantime, check out the other episodes of the show. And you will find me in the social media places appearing before your very eyes. Goodbye. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Nah, I don't want anymore. Yeah.