(bright music)
- Greeting my beautiful lovelies.
How are you, and welcome back.
Today, I'm going to be taking
this beautiful
chicken-of-the-woods mushroom
that my husband and my son foraged for me
on their walk yesterday,
and I'm going to be transforming it
into a Popeye's chicken sandwich.
So this does not look like
your supermarket variety
of mushroom -- no, it does not.
It is still a mushroom, or a fungus.
More specifically, it's a shelf polypore.
It lives on living, or
dying, or dead trees,
most often, for this species, on oak.
And it's known as a sulfur polypore,
sulfur shelf, or, most
commonly, chicken-of-the-woods.
Many people say it tastes like chicken
and it tastes delicious.
And because of its bright
orange color and location,
it is very easily identifiable.
So a little disclaimer here,
before consuming any mushrooms
you have foraged,
make sure you are 100% sure
they are of the correct species
and they are edible.
Having said that, most
people have no problem
eating chicken-of-the-woods,
but some people do get
some stomach irritation
if they find that this mushroom
is living on a eucalyptus
or on conifers.
So if that be the case,
perhaps pass on eating
the chicken-of-the-woods.
Isn't it absolutely gorgeous?
And what a gift this is.
So let's go ahead and make
this into a Popeye's sandwich.
So I watched a couple of
videos for inspiration,
including Sauce Stache's
chicken-of-the-woods
conversion into KFC,
and Joshua Weissman's video on how to make
the ultimate homemade Popeye's sandwich.
So I will put links down
below to the original videos
in case you're interested.
My husband and I enjoy
foraging for mushrooms.
We haven't foraged nearly
as much as we used to
before we had children.
But now that our children are large enough
to actually walk on their own,
we would love to be able to take them
on mushroom picking jaunts.
So you can kind of just
take the layers apart.
I usually just clean mine
off with a paper towel,
or you can use a mushroom brush,
rather than kind of running
them under any water.
On the bottom of this mushroom,
you'll notice that there are no gills.
Instead, there are little holes.
So this is a pored mushroom,
and that's where the spores come out,
rather than the gill structure.
So that's a very general
classification for mushrooms,
pored mushrooms versus gilled.
So my husband and my youngest child
found this mushroom yesterday.
(bright music)
So if you're interested
in foraging for food,
I suggest going with someone
that has knowledge of it,
that can show you the lay of the land,
show you the habitat in
which to find things,
and, most importantly, how
to properly identify things.
That's particularly
important with mushrooms.
First, we're going to
make our buttermilk bath.
If you're making this for real chicken,
you would allow the chicken
to soak in this marinade
for several hours to
absorb all those flavors
and allow the buttermilk
to tenderize the chicken.
But since we're doing mushrooms,
and we don't want them to get waterlogged,
this is going to be more like an egg wash.
So we need one cup of buttermilk.
One teaspoon of salt.
One teaspoon of, whoa, garlic powder.
Half teaspoon of white pepper.
Ooh! White pepper.
Give that a thorough whisking.
(coughs)
(sneezes)
That was a sneeze cough.
Attractive, yeah.
Glug glug, glug, glug, glug, glug.
One and a half cups of all-purpose flour.
One and a quarter teaspoons salt.
One teaspoon of garlic powder.
One teaspoon of paprika.
Quarter teaspoon of white pepper.
Quarter teaspoon of black pepper.
Some cayenne pepper.
As much as you like.
We're going to take our same whisk
that we used for the buttermilk mixture
and whisk this around.
Both Joshua and, I believe
Kenji suggested this as well.
You take some of the buttermilk
mixture, add it to the dry.
And what that's going to do
is create some little balls
of kind of like dough.
But that's going to give
you some added chunkiness
to your breading so that
when you dredge your chicken,
or in our case mushrooms,
it's going to enhance the crust,
make it a little bit more
textured, a little bit thicker.
So I've got a baking pan with a rack,
lined with a bit of paper and
that will absorb excess oil.
Take our mushroom, dip
it into the buttermilk,
coat it very well and
put it into our flour.
Press this flour mixture
onto the mushroom.
Really dredge it.
So we're going to do that
for our remaining pieces.
Dunk with the left and then into our dry.
Now we want the oil to
be about 350 degrees.
Drop a little bit of my batter in there.
If this is right up and
floats right to the surface.
So we're ready to fry.
Gently place our mushrooms in.
This is gonna be good!
(oil sizzling)
So whenever I deep fry,
I like to use cast iron.
Except when I'm deep frying sweet things.
I've learned that the cast
iron can impart some flavors
into sweets, like if
you're making doughnuts.
So in that case, I'd like
to use a dedicated fryer.
This one I'm calling done.
Look at that. That's beautiful.
Take that out and put it on my rack here.
Alrighty, so let me finish frying these up
and then we'll assemble the sandwich.
(upbeat music)
Before we even assemble this,
I am dying just to taste this.
Look, this even looks
kind of like a drumstick.
Itadakimasu.
Outstanding.
Absolutely stinking delicious.
The batter is crisp.
Mmm, flavorful, garlicky.
We get a little bit of
tang from the buttermilk.
Lovely amount of salt, perfectly seasoned.
It does have the texture of chicken.
Seemingly, it looks just like chicken.
Does it tastes like chicken?
It does have a meaty
flavor to it. It does.
But most mushrooms do.
They have glutamates
in them that give them
that really great savory-sweet,
meaty flavor to them.
Similar to chicken, but still
mushroomy and delicious.
But look at this texture, it's amazing.
See those fibers and strands.
I mean, if you were to
show a picture of this,
someone would say, "Yes, that's chicken."
No, it's not.
It's a mushroom.
A delicious chicken-of-the-woods mushroom.
Scrumdiddlyumptious!
Got ourselves a bun here.
These are Martin's potato rolls.
Love these, nice and squishy.
They're my favorite hamburger rolls.
I got myself some mayonnaise.
This was very kindly sent to me by Sean.
Sean, thank you so much.
I finally got my Southern Duke's.
Give a squirt of that. A little schmear.
I'm going to place my
mushroom right on top.
Or my chicken-of-the-woods.
And I know I've said this before
that I don't like pickles,
but that's not entirely true.
I like pickles on a
chicken sandwich. I do.
I think they are appropriate
and they add a nice tang and crunch.
Two! Let's make the top meet the bottom.
Boom.
Oh, ho ho ho.
That, my lovelies, is
a chicken of the woods
Popeye's sandwich.
Isn't it beautiful?
Oh, I can't wait to bite into this.
(upbeat music)
Oh my goodness, lovelies,
so this looks amazing.
I mean, I've seen
chicken-of-the-woods before.
I've never prepared it this way,
but it looks so much like chicken.
It's amazing.
With the pickles, I mean, I...
Here we go, enough talking.
Alrighty, itadakimasu.
Mm hmm, pretty stinking delicious.
It is phenomenal.
Yes, it's vegetarian.
And yes, it is similar to chicken.
But most importantly, it is
stinking delicious as it is.
It is reminiscent of a
Popeye's chicken sandwich,
but it's a mushroom after all,
and it is super, super delicious.
Mm hmm.
And now I'll tell you why.
The mushroom is perfectly cooked.
It's not squishy.
It has a great texture that's fibrous
and similar to chicken.
And it has a beautiful flavor to it.
It's got lots of glutamates,
which mushrooms have,
so it's kind of sweet and savory,
kind of like MSG.
It's just really flavorful and meaty-like.
And it has a flavor of mushroom too,
that kind of woodsy, just beautiful flavor
of a light mushroom.
It's not overly powerful
as far as fungi go.
And then you've got the dill pickle
that's crunchy and full of dilly flavor.
You've got the mayonnaise
that kind of adds a little bit
of lubrication to the sandwich,
a little more richness.
And then you've got the super soft bun
that holds everything together.
And then of course, you've
got the beautiful seasoning
that you've added to the
outside of the mushroom
that makes it feel and taste
like a Popeye's chicken sandwich.
It's crunchy, it's crisp,
it's salty, it's peppery.
That black and white pepper I
think is absolutely essential
because a little bit of heat
we also added some cayenne.
So there's some extra heat in
there, but not overpowering.
So it is absolutely gorgeous.
Gorgeous.
Also, there's plenty of garlic in there.
So stinking delicious.
Now, I'm going to have some hot sauce.
Have a bite that way.
Mmm!
So I think next time I
would do as Joshua did,
and add this to the mayo.
Just one drop really does do it.
Because it is very smoky,
and tangy, and vinegary.
And it takes away from
all the beautiful flavors
that we added to this
gorgeous, gorgeous sandwich.
Outstanding.
Alrighty, my beautiful lovelies,
that's how you transform
chicken-of-the-woods
into a Popeye's chicken-esque sandwich.
Absolutely stinking, delicious.
If you're not vegetarian,
I would still recommend making this.
Use the same buttermilk mixture,
the same breading to make some beautiful,
outstanding fried chicken.
Or if you've got a lovely husband and son
to go foraging for you
and find beautiful chicken-of-the-woods,
make this recipe, it's
so stinking delicious.
Alrighty, my beautiful lovelies,
thanks so much for tuning in.
I hope you enjoyed that one.
I hope you learned something.
Please share this video with your friends.
Follow me on social media,
like this video, subscribe,
and I shall see you in the next one.
Toodaloo, take care.
Bye!
(upbeat music)
Bye! (belches)
(giggles) Just for you!
