-Yeah. It's called
the Big Chicken Bun.
♪♪
Hi. I'm Trigg Brown,
and I'm from Win Son
Restaurant and Bakery,
and today we're going to make
a Big Chicken Bun.
I'm a little hungover today,
to be honest with you.
I'm going to have a beer.
[ Laughs ]
To get started making
the Big Chicken Bun,
we got to make a marinade
for the chicken.
I have some ginger,
some garlic and scallions.
I'm going to cut these guys
up into sections.
For the ginger, I just take
a little spoon and peel it.
Win Son is a Taiwanese-American
restaurant.
My business partner, Josh Ku,
and I met at a barbecue
in my backyard
just talking about food and
Taiwanese food in particular.
I've been cooking
since I was 15,
but I grew up right outside
of Lynchburg, Virginia.
His family is from Taiwan,
just started eating a lot
of Taiwanese food together
and techniques
I was learning as I was,
like, researching the dishes
and sometimes
recreating them at home.
It resonated with me.
Shio koji, it's fermented rice
mixed with water
and salt, very common ingredient
in Eastern Asian food.
Mirin, some sweet rice wine
and a little bit
of light soy sauce.
Chinese five spice,
key ingredient.
When it's in the marinade
and when it goes
on top of the hot
crispy chicken skin,
it really, like, perfumes
the chicken and has this,
like, honey, sweet flavor that
takes you right back to Taiwan.
White pepper.
I just love ginger powder.
We're going to put a tablespoon
of sesame oil in there.
[ Blender whirring ]
This is great. We have, like,
a thick,
viscous, liquid-y marinade
that will coat the chicken,
break it down really nice.
All right.
So the marinade is finished.
We're going to clean up
and break down the chicken.
We're going to kind of get four
pieces out of this for frying.
We're going to get two breasts,
and we're going to get two legs
with a thigh attached.
You don't have to get
whole chickens.
You can definitely
just get whole breasts.
I like to take the legs off.
Pop it out.
Go along the backbone,
so I get all that meat.
The legs off,
we're going to take
the breasts
off really carefully.
I kind of like to follow down
on the breastplate.
It'll kind of naturally pop off.
I also like to do whole chickens
because I can use the necks
or the backs for stocks.
The thighs and the legs
go to the bakery,
so it's just more sustainable,
the right thing to do.
Going to open it up from over
here, right under the breast,
and that's going to be
the basis for our sandwich.
This is a little bit more of,
like, a technical cut.
You're just kind of following
along the bone.
I just use my fingers,
fluff in between.
Cut that sinew right off.
Going to pull it up.
We're going to pull it
off the bone.
Yeah, I didn't cut through
the fat, so you have this,
like, chicken curtain.
I marinate a lot of chickens
at Win Son,
so I like to be really careful,
and a little goes a long way.
Just taking some
of the marinade.
I just roll this leg right back
up nice and neat
so it stores nicely.
Kind of like enchiladas, right?
Josh's good friend
is a director.
He just wanted to make
a commercial with us.
Cut to the video, right now.
-Hey, guys.
This is Josh from
Win Son Restaurant.
Come on down, and try our famous
Big Chicken Bun.
There's no tricks
up our sleeves...
...just great food at a price
that feels like magic.
Ah!
[ Record scratches ]
[ Laughs ]
-While the chicken
is marinating,
we're going to make the mayo.
Fermented bean curd, tofu.
It's fermented and stored
in a chili dressing.
It's kind of like a blue cheese.
It's called doufuru.
A little shiro-dashi, it's dashi
and white soy, essentially,
and this is Kewpie mayo which is
the best mayo, in my opinion.
It tastes like ham.
So now we're going to make
the herb salad, super simple,
mixed-up
scallions and cilantro.
Slice the scallions.
With the cilantro, I actually
like to start off
with the stems, kind of cut them
like chives, really thin.
You know, only did, like,
a restaurant
become a reality for us
after we had done, you know,
all of this research
and case study in Taiwan.
We were just having fun, like,
smoking weed
and eating Taiwanese food.
I like reading history books,
my main source of learning
and understanding
for Taiwanese food.
You know, if you can
contextualize dishes
and ingredients
and kind of grasp
where the food is coming from
and why it's a certain way
or...
So Taiwan is, like, a big, like,
history lesson for me.
As, like, a guy from the South,
fried chicken
is something that,
you know, I've always eaten.
Josh told me that
one of his friends' moms
would make fried-chicken
sandwiches
with Taiwanese
fried chicken and bolo bao.
The bolo bao is sweet,
so we have this
kind of sweet-salty combination
with our sweet Taiwanese,
you know, bolo bao
and the fried chicken.
Let's start frying our chicken.
We're going to make the breading
for the chicken,
so cornstarch and rice flour.
It's two to one.
This is a pretty strong dredge.
We want it to look
like wet paint,
so you want it to be
pretty loose
but have that kind of, like,
viscous nature to it, still.
The cornstarch and rice flour,
it's like cement.
It thoroughly
covers the chicken.
It really does a good job
of acting as an adhesive
for the sweet potato starch,
but it's funny.
If you put too much water
in there,
it can get
too thin really quickly.
So we just made the wet dredge
with the cornstarch
and rice flour,
and the dry dredge
is the most important ingredient
in Taiwanese fried chicken --
sweet potato flour.
So this is the chicken that we
have that's marinated overnight.
Drag it through the slurry.
Make sure it's nice and covered.
Let it drizzle off, and then
just drop it in, and pick it up.
So I'm just putting on a glove
so I can not get gross
sweet potato starch fingers.
I don't know if you guys
are used to frying
or, you know, launching things
into hot vessels of oil,
but you never want to fill up
your oil more than halfway.
Start by dropping it in,
and then just land it.
Give it a nice lift off
so it doesn't
cook on the bottom of the pot.
I would fry it for, like, 7
to 10 minutes.
We want it to be nice and golden
brown and cooked through.
Because we butterflied
the chicken
and it's super thin,
it cooks pretty quickly.
This bubbling is good.
It means that
the chicken is frying.
If it's not bubbling,
then you fucked up.
I also like to turn it
just to make sure
it's getting nice
and evenly cooked.
So we're going to let it rest.
When the five spice
hits the chicken skin,
you, like, smell the cinnamon
and the star anise.
I hate this question.
Sichuan peppercorn,
fennel seeds, anise.
Cinnamon is typically
in Chinese five spice.
It really depends on where
you're getting
the five spice from.
I just use the same brand.
And I do a little cayenne pepper
as well,
and it makes it
a little spicy.
Going to toast up this bola bao.
I actually just use
the mayonnaise.
Put that right into the skillet.
Bola bao is a super popular
and nostalgic pastry
that you'll find
at any Chinese bakery.
What's nice about the bola bao,
since it's a sweet pastry
or a sweet bread,
you kind of get that salty-sweet
flavor combination going,
and it's very much like
the chicken-and-waffles vibe.
The chicken right on top.
I like to liberally apply
this mayo
because it's like a adhesive
for the herbs.
You know, so I like to put
a lot of herbs on here.
I always cut my fried chicken
in half.
That's the Big Chicken Bun.
Super balanced, salty,
sweet, a lot of herbs.
Mayo is not crazy,
but definitely there.
It's really juicy.
When Josh and I started talking
about the restaurant,
creating our menu
and our version
of Taiwanese-American food,
we're going to have this, like,
fried chicken be, like,
a bridge for cultures.
This is going to resonate
with Americans
and people that don't know
what Taiwanese food is,
and it's going to really
resonate with Taiwanese folks
that have eaten, you know,
big chicken at night markets.
So for the recipe, click below,
or come over to the restaurant
and have a sandwich with us.
♪♪
Would you eat, chicken sashimi?
Do you want to try it?
I have not had it.
I was curious as to
if you would.
-All right.
