Vote on Video in February, 2021

Hey guys, I know it’s been too long since we’ve done one of these. Seriously, if I blank on it posting this poll don’t hesitate to bug me about it - sometimes we can get lost in the whirlwind when we’re planning videos. I know it’s something that I say we’ll do for you guys, so there’s not really an excuse to me not following through. Really sorry it’s taken this long to do again.

The list is basically the same as what as we proposed last time. Knocked a couple off the list from before because we already did them (also decided to knock the KFC China Peking Chicken Wrap vid off this time… just I want there to be some distance from the Spam Oreo burger vid before another fast food related video). The one new idea here is the ‘rice cooker’ rices video idea.

We’ll be looking at this video to be the first video back after the Chinese Spring festival break. All should be pretty easy to accomplish within that time frame – the one slight question mark might be #6 – the Sichuan beef Guokui. If y’all choose that and we can’t pin that one down in time, we’d then move onto the second most voted video idea.

As always, we’re always super open to ideas, but over the years we’ve gotten… stronger opinions on video topics lol.

As an aside, in the tiers I do promise this monthly. Would there be any strong objections if we do this bimonthly? Feels like it'd be the most realistic on our end :)

In any event, the choices:

1. Ways to make Rice Cooker Rice more interesting. There’s plenty of “Rice Cooker Hacks!” videos online, and we don’t have too much interest in adding to the heap. But we were mulling over whether we could do a video on other interesting rice dishes that can be easily (and tastily!) produced in a rice cooker – e.g. how to make Zhanjiang-style taro rice (below), rice with schmaltz and ginger, etc:

2. Over Rice Dishes, Volume 2. We had an idea that this might be a 'series' of sorts. People seemed to like the first one, so yeah. Would also be three dishes... one absurdly simple (like college student pour something for the jar), and the other two more proper 'dishes'. One meat, one vegetable - and one of those to be a 'western supermarket club' dish ala the diced pork and mushrooms.

3. Vegetarian "Baozi" (not a Baozi). A dish from Shaoxing with mushrooms and vegetables wrapped tofu skin, then cooked in sauce and chilled. Picture below:

4. Shunde Five Cup Duck. Many people've asked us for a "three cup" chicken/duck/etc. It's one of those dishes I just don't feel overly enthused about because it's just so... done. Maybe we could explore Jiangxi vs Taiwan versions or something, but... maybe we could do something different. In Cantonese cuisine, you not only 'three cup' things, but 'four cup' or even 'five cup'... might be fun. We could do a straight up five cup duck (classic with duck), or potentially show three, four, and five... though no promises on the latter front, sounds like an idea that's Steph'd kill me for haha.

5. Henan Puffed Egg. Now, we've never been to Henan, so we would be rolling the dice here slightly re authenticity. But Steph's research is usually good enough for government work, and recently we've made this a couple times... cool dish. It's a super old school one. Forgive us in advance if we, uh… call it a “Henan Baby”

6. Sichuan Beef Guokui. Something that's been heavily requested. If you know the dish, the thing speaks for itself. Spicy fried pancake stuffed with beef. Note that out of everything on the list, this is the one that there might be some risk in us not hitting right if you guys select it. While we've made similar things before, we've never aimed directly for guokui before, and anything dough-related always could potentially have unseen variables. So right, this is the one thing that we can't cross-our-hearts-hope-to-die level promise, but it shouldn't be too much of an issue (if we can't nail it in time, it still shouldn't take all too much longer to get it out).

7. How to Use Seitan. Another one that I'm not 100% how to accomplish, but it's definitely something our vegetarian viewers've been asking for. I think we'd do three simple dishes, and structure it something like (1) how to braise seitan (2) how to stir-fry seitan (3) how to use seitan in soups. Some sort of idea along those lines. It's always a little hard with Seitan though because I always personally think of it as like a 'side'. We'd have to do some digging in our new old school Buddhist cookbooks. As such, for each dish the focus would be on the proper technique rather than 100% nailing authenticity (because we have much less exposure to vegetarian Chinese cuisine).