Entertainment
Top 10 Untold Truths of Munchies Moments
Who doesn’t love seeing crazy new foods, learning cool culinary skills, and watching your favourite celebrities show you their personal recipes? Well that’s what you can find on VICE’s Munchies channel. We went through all of Munchies’ super cool videos to find their top ten moments, so get ready to see some great food!
10. Supper With Natalie Portman
Natalie Portman is well known as an actress for her roles in Star Wars and Black Swan to name a few, but she also has quite the flair for cooking. This was revealing on a Munchies’ video called “Natalie Portman’s Favourite Home Cooked Dinner”, in which Portman gave viewers a little glimpse into her cooking habits. As Portman was promoting a documentary that she was producing about the negatives of factory farming, she decided to show off her vegetarian chickpea stew recipe. Including healthy ingredients such as zucchini and garlic, Portman’s stew was a tasty meal that she quickly whipped up, starting with seasoning and cooking the veg. As she cooked Portman talked about her personal journey of becoming a vegan, and explained how her diet kept her feeling energized and healthy. She encouraged viewers to spice their stews up with some red pepper flakes, and confessed to loving lots and lots of salt in her food. She served up her delicious looking dish over a bed of rice, and taste tested it to prove how good it really was. As the mother of a young child Portman automatically blew on her food before eating it, something that she admitted doing for her child as people behind the camera laughed with her. Portman proved that she’s not just an accomplished actress but a comedian as well!
9. Classy Caviar
While a lot of people know that caviar is a luxury food, not everyone knows just how much goes into getting the highest quality caviar in the world. In the video called “The World’s Best Caviar, Now Made in China”, VICE explained how caviar is essentially sturgeon eggs. Sturgeons are huge fish, but due to climate change many breeds of them are becoming extinct which has influenced the production of caviar. One of the reasons why China is becoming a major player in the caviar game is because a certain Chinese caviar brand produces a whopping 35% of the world’s caviar, dominating the industry. VICE took viewers into the brand’s sturgeon farm to see the full extent of their operations, and to get up close and personal with the giant fish themselves. Munchies’ employee Simon Zhang even held one of the huge creatures, but was in for a surprise when he got slimed by it’s mucous! Luckily he was a good sport about it, and he gave the fish some reassuring pats. Zhang then went to see the most expensive type of sturgeon, which cost about $43 000! And that’s just the wholesale price, as the fish can become six times their original price when they are processed. Maybe it’s time you considered becoming a fisherman!
8. The Secret to the Perfect Nugget
Chicken nuggets are a delicious culinary creation, but homemade ones never taste quite as good as the ones made by fast food restaurants. VICE’s Munchies channel set out to change that with their video called “How to Make Fast Food Nuggets”, and we are glad that they did! Culinary director Farideh Sadeghin taught audiences that perfecting the art of nugget making can be easy, with a simple recipe consisting of chicken, batter ingredients, and spices. She started off by combining the chicken with some onion powder, garlic salt, and kosher salt to have a yummy base for her nuggets. Then Sadeghin mushed the mixture together with her hands to create little nuggets shapes to pop in the freezer. The batter was a little more complex, with three separate stages. First Sadeghin dropped the nuggets into a bowl containing dry flour, and then into a bowl of wet ingredients before re-immersing the nugget in the flour mix. Finally she covered the nuggets in a tempura batter to make them extra crispy before dropping them into a deep fryer to sizzle. If you follow Sadeghin’s instructions, you may never need to visit a fast food restaurant ever again!
7. BBQ Brisket with Guy
Known for his numerous food shows and charismatic television persona, Guy Fieri is an expert at finding the best foods and tastiest recipes. He brought his skills to the Munchies’ channel in the video titled “How to Make Quick BBQ Brisket with Guy Fieri”, and provided some laughs along the way. Fieri professed to his love of using pressure cookers, and was super excited to show off his barbecuing skills after he stated that he had made it into the barbecuing hall of fame. Fieri set about spicing his food, adding in some fire with child powder and cayenne pepper. After pouring the rub onto the brisket, Fieri let it heat up in his prized pressure cooker before chopping up a medley of colourful veggies. While making barbecue sauce Fieri took the opportunity to flaunt his own brand of sauce, joking about how coincidental it was to find it waiting for him in the VICE kitchen. After adding some extra flavour to the sauce with things like ketchup and mustard, Fieri was extremely pleased by how the sauce turned out and doused the brisket in it before setting it all back in the pressure cooker. He even jumped into VICE’s garden to pick his own kale for the dish, proving that he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. The final product was a line of beautiful brisket burgers which Fieri and his friends enthusiastically chowed down on!
6. Dining in Prison
Munchies dove into a whole new world when they let viewers see into InGalera, a very unique restaurant located in Milan. Aptly titled “The World’s Best Prison Food”, it was revealed that InGalera translates to “in prison”, as the restaurant’s employees consists of people convicted of serious crimes such as homicide and armed robbery. While all of the workers are inmates, they still receive pay checks and pensions in order to keep them motivated and invested in the restaurant they are a part of. The inmates were extremely mature and voiced their dedication to the restaurant, and emphasized the need to have responsibility and a strong work ethic. The restaurant offers inmates an escape from the mundane routines of prison life, while working towards rehabilitation. InGalera is a popular success for diners, with the restaurant filling up most nights and customers leaving full and happy. Munchies’ brief peek into this special rehabilitation centre showed how everyone is capable of change, and applauded the inmates for their efforts to grow and achieve redemption. If you’re a fan of high class food and ever find yourself in Milan, you can stop by and see it for yourself!
5. The Pizza Man
In the episode called “This Man Cooked Only Pizza for 25 Years”, Munchies’ introduced a man who loves pizza more than the average joe. Prepare to meet Anthony, a masterful pizza chef who’s family hailed from Italy itself. Anthony specializes in Neapolitan pizza, and decided to move to New York to show a greater audience what he had to offer their taste buds. He was an instant hit, and although he only planned to be in New York for a short amount of time, he couldn’t completely leave his booming business. Anthony ended up partnering with multiple people in the New York food industry in order to get the best and freshest ingredients, and to also grow his restaurant game with other foods and desserts. With this new team behind him, Anthony was ready to capture New York’s heart again with his new restaurant Una Pizza. Anthony also gave VICE the inside scoop on how he makes his prized pizzas by explaining his choice ingredients and walking everyone through the steps of making his famous dough. He is definitely a perfectionist, and explained that he saw his pizza as consistently evolving and inching closer and closer to perfection with every day he works. If you want to see some beautiful pizzas and learn more about the art of pizza making then check Anthony out… but don’t blame us if you start craving pizza!
4. Experimental Eating
The cutting edge restaurant Miya’s was the focus of another Munchies’ video called “Experimental Insect Rolls with Miya’s of New Haven”, and from just the title it’s obvious that this restaurant is a little different! Owner Bun Lai explained that Miya’s can be explained in numerous ways, as a plant-based restaurant, or a sustainable seafood restaurant. Either way, Miya’s focuses on creating delicious dishes that were also ethical and environmentally responsible. Most of the items on Miya’s menu have a twist to them, from plant sushi that omits the classic fish element to crispy black solider fly larvae! They try to work larvae and invasive species into their dishes, and Munchies followed Lai as he headed out into the outdoors to find some invasive crabs to cook up. After pulling up rocks with a gang of helpers, Lai filled up a bucket with tiny crabs which he used later at this restaurant. Miya’s is the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world, and has been applauded for their responsibility and innovative takes on traditional sushi as they have learned how to swap out harmful ingredients for beneficial ones. Lai even went diving to show Munchies’ his favourite underwater vegetables that he cooks with, and proved that with a little bit of creativity anything is possible!
3. Extinct Dinner
Woolly mammoths have been been extinct for longer than humans have been civilized, and so you wouldn’t expect someone to have ever experienced them in this day and age, other than from inside a museum. However, The Explorers Club in New York thought they did the impossible and actually tasted mammoth meat decades ago, something that Munchies’ employee Adam Gollner tried to investigate in the video, “Dining on Woolly Mammoth”. This club is notorious for eating some of the weirdest things in the world, from goat eyeballs to insect skewers. It’s rumoured that in 1951 a dinner was held, and the mysterious mammoth meat was served to attending members. There is also a mammoth tusk hanging in the club which is allegedly from the mammoth which member tasted in the 50s. Apparently the mammoth meat had to be turned into a soup, as the 250 000 year old meat would have been too tough to eat on its own. A little piece of the mammoth meat was saved in alcohol, and studies were being conducted to conclude whether or not its origins were legitimate. Unfortunately after a round of DNA testing it was revealed that the so-called mammoth meat was in fact just sea turtle, and that the explorers were tricked all along.
2. Laser Bacon
In a world of ever evolving technology, new shortcuts are constantly being created to make everyday activities a little easier. That’s what Munchies’ video called “Food Hacking: Laser Bacon” was all about. Japanese professor Kentaro Fukuchi was on a mission to making the act of cooking bacon better, by using a laser cutter to fry up the meat! Fukuchi was a major foodie and was a huge fan of raw meat products, and wanted to see if he could combine elements of raw and fried food together by using lasers to cook his bacon. His goal was to use the laser to cook only the fatty, white parts of the bacon and to leave the red meat raw to chow down on. This was achieved by using a digital imaging software to detect the different colours of meat, and then relay what parts to fry to the laser. While the episode focused mostly on Centro’s bacon based experiments, he was also trying to use the laser to burn designs into foods such as sushi to give it more personality and visual appeal. Still in the early stages of experimentation, Kentaro admitted that some of the tastes and textures were a little funky – but he was determined to keep working to make his ideal slice of bacon. What a noble quest!
1. Seth Rogan’ Sausage Party
With his trademark adult humour, it’s to be expected that Seth Rogan’s Munchies’ video called “How to Make Sausage with Seth Rogan” would not be 100% PG. As the creator of the hit movie Sausage Party, it was only fitting for Rogan to learn his own sausage making skills while he promoted his film in 2016. Chef Jamie Bissonnette stepped in to show Rogan the ropes as they ground up all the necessary spices to make a delicious meal. They then mixed the spices in with the meat, while Rogan kept Bissonnette entertained with jokes and Sausage Party anecdotes. Rogan got to try out the meat grinder and managed not to break it before passing the torch back to Bissonnette to mix it by hand. While they cooked Rogan reminisced about playing a chicken chef one time, and having the film crew drop twenty chickens off at his house every week that he would have to break down and cook in order to prepare for his role. Rogan was definitely dedicated to that movie, and learned some new skills along the way! Rogan was super impressed by the sausages he and Bissonnette made, and found the whole process hilarious!