Hey guys, a few notes: 1. As Steph said in the outro, there’s a ton of different potential stuffings here. There’s kaya sauce, peanut butter + butter, beef satay, durian cream, nutella, cheese, sweet taro, matcha, etc etc. This is a dish that’s constantly in flux. Currently in Guangdong, probably the most popular one is a jiggly milk stuffed one with ovaltine powder (i.e. like this: th-cam.com/video/Cad1STySYlA/w-d-xo.html ). So definitely play around with it and allow it to be a canvass to put… whatever you want in it. Just do try the classic peanut butter one sometime though, because it is quite good. 2. I know a subset of you are really talented bakers and buying, like, wonderbread might feel… wrong haha. Any kind of chewy bread will work great. If you’re in the habit of making Japanese milk bread, something like that would work great too. If you're working from a whole loaf of bread, that's actually better because you can cut the bread a bit thicker and just toss your stuffed in between the two slices - this is usually what you find at eateries in Guangdong. 3. For those in North America, I know you might’ve done a doubletake when we called for ‘ovaltine spread’. It’s a thing in Europe, I swear (AFAIK super popular in Switzerland?). You can buy it on Amazon: www.amazon.com/Wander-AG-4014-Ovaltine-Crunchy/dp/B01283LAWI . It’s a bit pricey to buy online though, so if you keep Nutella on hand I’d probably just opt for that instead. If you’re an ovaltine lover like me though, it’s totally worth picking up a bottle just to try though. 4. The salted egg yolk filling was really similar to our custard buns video, but we did make the following adjustments: (1) we cut the cornstarch and gelatin quantity in half and (2) we upped the butter by 50%. This makes it more ‘leaky’, but still nothing quite like that Alfred Chan video. As we said in the video, if you want it runnier you can continue to play around with those three variables. Alternatively, if you *want* it gooey-er, you can take those in the other direction. Just remember that a little bit of gelatin can go a long way. 5. If you’re comfortable with deep-frying (whether in a wok or a machine), the frying process is actually way easier. You don’t really need to do that ‘sealing’ step, and the whole thing’ll be much more evenly golden brown - especially on the sides. That said, the bread’ll still float, so you’ll still need to flip/want to spoon over a bit of oil over your ‘show’ side. 6. This actually ends up - maybe surprisingly, given that it’s bread & a lower frying temperature - not very greasy. 7. Oh, I’m sure some of y’all noticed that when I said ‘140C’ the thermometer was showing ~130. Lots of moving pieces when filming. Really, you’re ok frying within that the whole range of 125-155. 8. We use one of those cool little infrared thermometers to keep track of oil temperature. Ours appears to be the generic/factory surplus version of the Etekcity infrared thermometer. They’re like $20 on Amazon, definitely recommended if you do any sort of deep frying/shallow frying with any sort of regularity. Infrared thermometers aren’t very accurate (so no candy making with them), but tend to be good within ~5C, which is totally margin of error level of deep frying. You can also just estimate oil temp with chopsticks, which’s also totally fine. You’d be looking for something about this level: i2.kknews.cc/SIG=1gcnll1/s77000467q3rrrn0q73.jpg
I imagine that the Biscoff cookie butter spread would work well here, too. That comes in smooth and crunchy; crunchy is harder to find but far superior. www.shopbiscoff.com/lotus-biscoff-crunchy-cookie-butter-1-jar
@@Bedevere it doesn't hold as well, but it can work if handled gently. I tend to use a mixture of peanut butter and nutella, but I am a peanut butter cup freak anyway... 😁
I will never, NEVER, forget the first time i tried this out of the blue. I was in Mongkok and got hungry. I decide to visit a nearby eatery. Saw this item written in the menu and instantly ordered it. IT WAS MAGICAL. This is nothing like the typical french toast, this is like super sinful tasty stuff. 10/10, will fly to HK to eat this again once COVID is all over
Dude, I made this recipe a couple times for the family and it was _instantly_ a family favorite. My dad (the household renowned french toast master) says he's never found a recipe he likes better than his except this one XD
im from hk and im so glad to see this dish get the rep it deserves. its what my mom and i would treat ourselves on special occassions when I was younger
The bread should be, as Chef John says in his Nashville hot chicken video: "The cheaper the better. We want something that contains no fiber, and even less nutrients."
@@amaladiguna8873 Except it is. There is at least 3 tablespoon of oil in that bread and with the butter. Plenty of ice cream are actually ok health wise. This dish is a mess lmao
@@telkmx well I suppose there's a reason I'm not a dietitian. Still, considering you also fry regular french toast and the additional fat the ice cream brings and both are eaten very sparingly I don't think health should be a part of your consideration when making this or regular french toast at least it isn't for me :)
I'm from HK so I ate in Cha Chaan Tengs a lot growing up, but never actually knew why toast of all forms were such a common menu. Thanks British food licensing laws!
Also Cha Chaan Teng and Bing Sutt served as an cheaper alternative for people to eat "western food" while at the time all the other western venues were high-end places.
This is also close to Shahi Toast ( south Asian dish). Shahi toast is white bread fried in ghee (clarified butter) then doused in a saffron, cardamom syrup and cream
I have a buddy of mine, a guy from HK. There’s a HK style cafe near his place and I always love going there. The French toast is one of my favorite things to get after a meal as dessert. Everything there is really good. And I’ll never forget the first time he showed he the place and had me try French toast HK style
my local diner in the states serves something similar. it's a single large slice of french toast, shallow fried, drizzled with condensed milk, and served with orange slices. adding a filling looks much better!
We have a coffee shop here that makes amazing French toast drizzled with condensed milk and seasonal fruit. I've enjoyed expanding beyond the maple syrup topping.
I know it's a different style, but my mother ran a bed and breakfast, where breakfast included stuffed french toast. Her filling of choice was cream cheese, and it's pretty dang good.
I had something similar to that at IHOP. It was amazing, like a cheesecake stuffed in French toast because why not. It was a bit sweet, I bet your mom's is better.
Firstly, seeing you two in this video is wonderful! Secondly, seeing puppers licking peanut butter from the top of the mouth *made my day!* Although we'll clearly miss you, we're wishing you the best for the upcoming year!!!
It never ceases to amaze me how Cantonese cooks can make even the unhealthiest Western dishes even unhealthier. Deep frying French toast is just so exessive that you gotta love it for the sheer outrageousness.
"I do know that when we deep fry in a wok, the percentage of you who actually try these recipes plummits into like, the single digits" Thank you for understanding hahaha! My main problem is I don't like keeping deep frying oil around. So I probably won't try this one as such, but I might take some inspiration from it to make some stacked up french toast with fillings inside!
This French Toast style of dipping only in beaten eggs without anything incorporated is identical to the Spanish style “TORREJAS en Almíbar”! The difference being we don’t do any fillings or stack bread together and don’t usually add toppings! The Almibar is a sugar & honey syrup that is flavored cinnamon, cloves and lemon zest. The torrejas are made with a sturdy type of bread and after frying they go in the syrup to soak and are usually served as a dessert, especially popular during holidays! Love your videos, thank you for sharing them with us! Wishing you and your family A Very Blessed Season Greetings! 🙏
Tiried this on new years, absolutely delicious! Wanna try stuffing it with a variety of ingredients in the future. Keep up the amazing, detailed, videos!
I just made this! I used crunchy peanut butter instead (it's what I had in the house) and it was... not really ideal, but it worked regardless! It was way less over-powering and decadent tasting than I would have thought. It's very nice!
The Caribbean community approves of the condensed milk approach. My mother’s fondest memories as a child were her mother giving her condensed milk with crushed ice as a dessert. I make coquito every year with condensed milk, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of coastal Asian countries have an equivalent drink, combining sweetened condensed and evaporated milk with coconut milk.
So am I. I always Longyau and then proceed to do my dishes and it's awesome. I even got a five mouth stove top. The middle burner goes to epic heats! Recommend it if you can afford. (In Brazil we pressure cook a lot, so it makes a huge difference to have a double ring burner.)
So yeah! If you're cool with deep frying, you don't really need to do that additional 'sealing' step in the beginning. Makes the whole process much more more effortless. The toast will float, so you'll still need to flip/spoon over the oil in the same way... but it's much easier to get even browning on all sides. We were mulling over filming a visual for deep frying too, but figured that it's pretty straightforward :)
Haha well, we’re limited to China... but yeah, we’re spoiled over here. Looking forward to the vaccine roll out and life getting back to normal everywhere :)
@@ChineseCookingDemystified glad that got sorted quicker for you folks! assuming you probably don't want to start talking politics in the comments of your cooking show but that's at least one good thing to say for the Chinese system!
@@hannahl6845 Haha yeah, politics can get dicey (there's a... diversity of people that watch this stuff). But really, most of Asia-Pacific's fared pretty well (even Australia/NZ)... honestly I think the distance from the first major outbreak in Europe - together with CN & SK responding as rapidly as they did in the beginning - really did this region alot of favors. It feels alot easier to manage when you've got much lower case numbers to begin with... you get this virtuous cycle where hard lockdowns can actually work to return things to normality, which builds political support for using hard lockdowns again when needed, etc etc. That's at least my personal explanation for why countries as culturally, politically, and geographically distinct as China, New Zealand, Thailand, Korea, Singapore, and Australia all seem to be doing alright :) I know it's really hard in NA. My Mom only left their property once in the past eight months, and that was to vote. I can't imagine how tough that is. Really hoping things get better soon
@@ChineseCookingDemystified freedom of movement within a country is not being spoiled its a basic human right And the vaccine is not going to get everything back to normal anywhere.... Do you realize this vaccine totally skipped the animal testing phase it was rushed to say the least.... www.unz.com/mwhitney/heres-why-you-should-skip-the-covid-vaccine/ Look thanks for the great video but the vaccine is not a cure all I don't understand why obviously intelligent people like you think it will turn things back to normal. I don't deny covid or anything I just can't stand the way that the world government's and extremely powerful organizations like the WEF and the WHO have taken advantage of a natoinal pandemic to further their socio-economic and political goals.... In North America you are seeing freedoms being taken away and liberties being violated like never before. Pretty much everywhere you are seeing sheeir hypocrisy with how the bylaws are writen and how people enforce them I'm not even going to get into false positive and how they report deaths etc. At the end of the days this all kidns ties back into a manual called silent weapons for quiet wars if you google that it'd interesting read.
@@lurk7967 That link makes a lot of claims about "the covid vaccine", but there are many different vaccines and at no point does it specify any or point to any data to support its claims. Over 100 trials going on right now. Then it makes four claims. The first is that it won't cure Covid. Of course it won't, because that's not what vaccines do! Nobody is saying it will cure Covid. The whole point of a vaccine is to provide immunity. That brings us to points 2, 3 and 4 which, for the only vaccine to be approved in North America, are false (other vaccines are awaiting results, and some most likely will be shown not to be effective, which is a major reason we have trials in the first place - so we know what works). The Pfizer vaccine has been shown to be 95% effective in preventing Covid and also seems to be effective in reducing the number of severe cases (i.e. requiring hospitalization) (countless sources, here's one as an example: arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/pfizer-reports-final-vaccine-results-95-efficacy/) Now, if you would like point to *specific* vaccines and actual data, we can discuss this in more detail.
I love your channel. It’s a great blend of cooking information that is interesting, concise, and often humerus. This recipe is right down my alley. I can fin everything at the local Walmart,
I'm french and i've never seen anything remotly close to this lol ! We made "french toast" which we call "lost toast" here (pain perdu) because it's an amazing way to use dry french bread (like actual baguette, which gets dry very fast, you can lose a baguette in less than half a day if the weather is hot and dry). In my house it was really common to have dry french bread around in the bread drawer (yeah our family table made by my grand-grand-father actually has a bread drawer, and you can actually see the bread-knife strokes on the table, that table has so much history, and we feast on it once a year for christmas). So what we did is pretty much what you describe, toss it in an egg mixture of whatever you wanted, then pan it but with way less oil than that, it was litterally closer to a bread omelette ! I loved when we did it with my grandma, it was obviously super rich, but so simple and so rewarding for me as a kid ^^ (it was way safer since we were not dealing with boiling oil, just a pan with some oil in it)
with old traditionnal bread, the bread would last way longer because it is using "thicker" flour and sometimes even no yeast but what we call "levain" which is a live supply of "yeast" that you need to keep alive, so it was usually next to the fireplace, you have to "feed" it some flour and some water to keep it active and actually alive. It's very funny to think of it as some kind of alive blob of matter that you take some of to cook bread (but the bread would be litterally like a brick lol compared to actual yeast)
Is the restaurant at around 0:14 檀島 in Wan Chai? I used to eat there every year before the Hong Kong book fair. It's not the most delicious Chachaanteng but it certainly has the charm!
Used to work around there and eat lunch there (high tea, really, since prices were cheaper after 2pm). Lots of tour buses would stop by at that exact place. Mainly for the egg tarts, and milk tea. Honolulu Cafe, for English-speakers.
While we’re on the topic of toast, do you think you guys could do a prawn/shrimp toast recipe? It’s super popular here in Australia as kinda like a bastardised Chinese-Australian food down here, so it’d be interesting to learn about it’s history. :) Love all the work you do guys
its also some kind of old HK style snack. Basically u need some prawn/shrimp paste which you can make yourself or buy from the markets (probably can be bought in the Chinese markets). Smooth the paste on a slice of bread, add the usual frying coatings, then fry it.
Whoo! Thank you for sharing a hong kong style street food and cafe style video. I miss these! And wonder how they make them. In the future, I hope you make more of these foods from Hong Kong.
Thanks for this. I always wondered how the Hong Kong tea cafe came to be, so this answered many questions. We have two amazing ones near us, whose menu's confuse the hell out of newcomers.
Boy I never felt like my blood sugar level spiking to a deadly level before I watched this HK french toast... I want to try making it but probably not everyday. Maybe twice a year or so.
For a sweet version I'd probably do Nutella or some kind of cinnamon, sugar and butter mixture. For a savory I'd put slices of cheese or even a cream cheese and chives mixture. The possibilities are endless.
There are plenty of cooking shows with plenty of amazing looking food but hong kong style french toast? Boy, I'm a little winded. That stuff looks *delicious*. I'm gonna need to catch my breath. Ho lordy.
I was very surprised to hear that less people try your recipes when you deep fry in a wok. After finding your channel, if anything, I have used a wok more and more for frying. Things I would have normally used a cast iron for I have found work a lot better in a wok and use less oil!
Thank you so much for this video. It is fun to learn new things while vicariously traveling. I appreciate it extra due to the Covid restrictions. This reminded me of Thailand and the places there to get yummy toast!
i looooooove hong kong french toast!!!!!!!!! if you’re in hong kong the best place is “kowloon restaurant” in sham shui po... i love their french toast! love your vids! thank you for sharing them with us!!!!
Sorta reminds me of a monte cristo. There's a "trailer park monte cristo" which is basically a batter fried PB&J. I could swap the peanut butter for some cookie butter/Specuuloos spread, or maybe marshmallow fluff like a fluffernutter.
I have been to HK five times and I have never come across these snack places. After the pandemic gets under control I will be back for more Dim Sum and will definitely eat a toast or two!
Try this recipe: Make a batch of pancake batter. Take some sliced bread, dip it into the pancake mix on both sides and fry it. You will have a crispy French toast with a nice crunchy shell.
Go wild with the fillings. This dish was concocted in the multi-cultural pressure cooker that is Hong Kong cha chaan teng, and people are still inventing new takes and approaches by the year. This is a prime candidate as a canvas for creativity. I personally like the classic peanut butter sort the best, but Lok Yuen's beef satay filling was aggressively awesome (and totally would've been one of our three fillings if we could go to HK to test against it): www.timeout.com/hong-kong/restaurants/lok-yuen-1
@@ChineseCookingDemystified Woah that does look tasty, and unexpected. I defiantly love the crazy ways the concept of a deep fried stuffed french toast has gone savory. I can see all kinds of spins on this. Thanks!
So I just made this and holy cow. I didn’t even do it very well and they were insanely delicious. I topped with a very light powder of brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg, then dressed it with Indiana apple syrup. My spouse’s had a bit of sweet chocolate as well
Any other glue substitutes besides peanut butter? Fried toast looks nice but I feel this can't be done without 2-3 slices, also stuffing it is just too tempting.
Yeah so that ovomaltine spread can but used as the 'glue', but we liked adding a touch of peanut butter to the edges simply because it 'glues' a bit better. Jelly or Kaya sauce can be good glues
my family makes the single french toast. same technique only without fillings. interesting twist to a classic one. or perhaps it's a twist of a twist. either way one of my families' favorite breakfast meal items. along with extra eggs scrambled and meat (homer simpsons sound while talking about meat) lol. thanks @Chinese Cooking Demystified
Yeah! I know Canto-Western stuff might not be high on the list if you're just swinging through the neighborhood, but I do think Cha Chaan Teng/Bing Sutt are a must-try in HK.
AFAIK HK-style French toast is specifically a dessert for a quick afternoon tea. That said, as long as the filling is pre-cooked, I don't see any problem switching the peanut butter to meaty filling.
I'd be curious to see if this could be made into a sphere, just for an aesthetically pleasing fried ball. I know making a bread sphere isn't difficult, just more time consuming due to shaping, but I'm more curious about how well it would fry up due to it being layered.
Hey guys, a few notes:
1. As Steph said in the outro, there’s a ton of different potential stuffings here. There’s kaya sauce, peanut butter + butter, beef satay, durian cream, nutella, cheese, sweet taro, matcha, etc etc. This is a dish that’s constantly in flux. Currently in Guangdong, probably the most popular one is a jiggly milk stuffed one with ovaltine powder (i.e. like this: th-cam.com/video/Cad1STySYlA/w-d-xo.html ). So definitely play around with it and allow it to be a canvass to put… whatever you want in it. Just do try the classic peanut butter one sometime though, because it is quite good.
2. I know a subset of you are really talented bakers and buying, like, wonderbread might feel… wrong haha. Any kind of chewy bread will work great. If you’re in the habit of making Japanese milk bread, something like that would work great too.
If you're working from a whole loaf of bread, that's actually better because you can cut the bread a bit thicker and just toss your stuffed in between the two slices - this is usually what you find at eateries in Guangdong.
3. For those in North America, I know you might’ve done a doubletake when we called for ‘ovaltine spread’. It’s a thing in Europe, I swear (AFAIK super popular in Switzerland?). You can buy it on Amazon: www.amazon.com/Wander-AG-4014-Ovaltine-Crunchy/dp/B01283LAWI . It’s a bit pricey to buy online though, so if you keep Nutella on hand I’d probably just opt for that instead. If you’re an ovaltine lover like me though, it’s totally worth picking up a bottle just to try though.
4. The salted egg yolk filling was really similar to our custard buns video, but we did make the following adjustments: (1) we cut the cornstarch and gelatin quantity in half and (2) we upped the butter by 50%. This makes it more ‘leaky’, but still nothing quite like that Alfred Chan video. As we said in the video, if you want it runnier you can continue to play around with those three variables. Alternatively, if you *want* it gooey-er, you can take those in the other direction. Just remember that a little bit of gelatin can go a long way.
5. If you’re comfortable with deep-frying (whether in a wok or a machine), the frying process is actually way easier. You don’t really need to do that ‘sealing’ step, and the whole thing’ll be much more evenly golden brown - especially on the sides. That said, the bread’ll still float, so you’ll still need to flip/want to spoon over a bit of oil over your ‘show’ side.
6. This actually ends up - maybe surprisingly, given that it’s bread & a lower frying temperature - not very greasy.
7. Oh, I’m sure some of y’all noticed that when I said ‘140C’ the thermometer was showing ~130. Lots of moving pieces when filming. Really, you’re ok frying within that the whole range of 125-155.
8. We use one of those cool little infrared thermometers to keep track of oil temperature. Ours appears to be the generic/factory surplus version of the Etekcity infrared thermometer. They’re like $20 on Amazon, definitely recommended if you do any sort of deep frying/shallow frying with any sort of regularity. Infrared thermometers aren’t very accurate (so no candy making with them), but tend to be good within ~5C, which is totally margin of error level of deep frying. You can also just estimate oil temp with chopsticks, which’s also totally fine. You’d be looking for something about this level: i2.kknews.cc/SIG=1gcnll1/s77000467q3rrrn0q73.jpg
Putting kaya sauce/jam into the list for tomorrow's shopping
Anyone tried Nutella as a glue?
Texas toast works well
I imagine that the Biscoff cookie butter spread would work well here, too. That comes in smooth and crunchy; crunchy is harder to find but far superior.
www.shopbiscoff.com/lotus-biscoff-crunchy-cookie-butter-1-jar
@@Bedevere it doesn't hold as well, but it can work if handled gently. I tend to use a mixture of peanut butter and nutella, but I am a peanut butter cup freak anyway... 😁
I will never, NEVER, forget the first time i tried this out of the blue. I was in Mongkok and got hungry. I decide to visit a nearby eatery. Saw this item written in the menu and instantly ordered it. IT WAS MAGICAL. This is nothing like the typical french toast, this is like super sinful tasty stuff. 10/10, will fly to HK to eat this again once COVID is all over
If you're in North America within travelling distance of a decently-large city, the HK-style restaurants will have that too. It's pretty common.
Me toooo! So delicious with HK tea.
i love experiences like that! finding little gems like this are so satisfying!
Mk has everything. one of my fav places to hang around
Make it at home, it'll be good for you probably
Dude, I made this recipe a couple times for the family and it was _instantly_ a family favorite. My dad (the household renowned french toast master) says he's never found a recipe he likes better than his except this one XD
im from hk and im so glad to see this dish get the rep it deserves. its what my mom and i would treat ourselves on special occassions when I was younger
The bread should be, as Chef John says in his Nashville hot chicken video: "The cheaper the better. We want something that contains no fiber, and even less nutrients."
Glad I wasn't the only one who thought of that fella
haha this actually so unhealthy. 50g of oil, White bread, melted butter. It's a bit of an insult to your arteries no?
@@telkmx its a dessert, its no more unhealthy than actual french toast and a scoop of vanilla ice cream
@@amaladiguna8873 Except it is. There is at least 3 tablespoon of oil in that bread and with the butter.
Plenty of ice cream are actually ok health wise. This dish is a mess lmao
@@telkmx well I suppose there's a reason I'm not a dietitian. Still, considering you also fry regular french toast and the additional fat the ice cream brings and both are eaten very sparingly I don't think health should be a part of your consideration when making this or regular french toast at least it isn't for me :)
This is literally my teenage years
Hey Mary! When your cooking/filming again wpuld you try a vegan version for us? X
I'm so immature. When he said "Just toss in as much salted egg custard as much as will fit in your hole" I snorted.
wait is that not normal
I don’t get it???
So many innocents replying
@@Locke3OOO Perhaps you would wanna go ask your mom and dad about it. They’ll either get a good laugh or you might not live to see another day. Lol
i thought the same thing 😂😂😂 i love that kind of humor
I'm from HK so I ate in Cha Chaan Tengs a lot growing up, but never actually knew why toast of all forms were such a common menu. Thanks British food licensing laws!
Also Cha Chaan Teng and Bing Sutt served as an cheaper alternative for people to eat "western food" while at the time all the other western venues were high-end places.
This is also close to Shahi Toast ( south Asian dish). Shahi toast is white bread fried in ghee (clarified butter) then doused in a saffron, cardamom syrup and cream
That sounds delicious (and expensive because of the saffron)!
I have a buddy of mine, a guy from HK. There’s a HK style cafe near his place and I always love going there. The French toast is one of my favorite things to get after a meal as dessert. Everything there is really good. And I’ll never forget the first time he showed he the place and had me try French toast HK style
You must have this with a strong cup of HK style milk tea to make it complete.
my local diner in the states serves something similar. it's a single large slice of french toast, shallow fried, drizzled with condensed milk, and served with orange slices. adding a filling looks much better!
We have a coffee shop here that makes amazing French toast drizzled with condensed milk and seasonal fruit. I've enjoyed expanding beyond the maple syrup topping.
I know it's a different style, but my mother ran a bed and breakfast, where breakfast included stuffed french toast. Her filling of choice was cream cheese, and it's pretty dang good.
I had something similar to that at IHOP. It was amazing, like a cheesecake stuffed in French toast because why not. It was a bit sweet, I bet your mom's is better.
That sounds great.
Is it just me or is the dog the highlight of these videos? They're just so precious!
Firstly, seeing you two in this video is wonderful! Secondly, seeing puppers licking peanut butter from the top of the mouth *made my day!*
Although we'll clearly miss you, we're wishing you the best for the upcoming year!!!
Always dropping the most amazing dishes that are totally fresh to my boring western mouth. Love you both
It never ceases to amaze me how Cantonese cooks can make even the unhealthiest Western dishes even unhealthier. Deep frying French toast is just so exessive that you gotta love it for the sheer outrageousness.
I used to love this when I was a kid. Made myself some this morning and I realize I no longer have the stomach to handle such a sweet dish lol.
"I do know that when we deep fry in a wok, the percentage of you who actually try these recipes plummits into like, the single digits"
Thank you for understanding hahaha! My main problem is I don't like keeping deep frying oil around. So I probably won't try this one as such, but I might take some inspiration from it to make some stacked up french toast with fillings inside!
I loved eating this in HK 10 years ago when I was a student there. Thank you for covering this recipe! Can't wait to try it.
I really like the history bits thrown in.
This French Toast style of dipping only in beaten eggs without anything incorporated is identical to the Spanish style “TORREJAS en Almíbar”! The difference being we don’t do any fillings or stack bread together and don’t usually add toppings! The Almibar is a sugar & honey syrup that is flavored cinnamon, cloves and lemon zest. The torrejas are made with a sturdy type of bread and after frying they go in the syrup to soak and are usually served as a dessert, especially popular during holidays! Love your videos, thank you for sharing them with us! Wishing you and your family A Very Blessed Season Greetings! 🙏
My blood pressure has risen just from watching this.
Right. I could feel my arteries clogging up from watching.
@@broccoliagain3012 Nonsense, it's the excitement.
Eh, we Hong Konger have been eating these for decades.
Thing is we eat them only once in a while as snacks, moderation is key.
Probably still healthier than drinking coke.
@@gl4re it is exponentially better than drinking a coke. fat really isnt bad for you at all as long as you just dont eat too much.
Tiried this on new years, absolutely delicious! Wanna try stuffing it with a variety of ingredients in the future. Keep up the amazing, detailed, videos!
I used raspberry jam and it was quite yummy.
As a hong Konger in Canada, I’ve used THC infused peanut butter for this recipe, I think I touched heaven for a second there
The dog clearly had peanut butter stuck to the roof of its mouth at the end of the video. It is too cute!
I just made this! I used crunchy peanut butter instead (it's what I had in the house) and it was... not really ideal, but it worked regardless! It was way less over-powering and decadent tasting than I would have thought. It's very nice!
The Caribbean community approves of the condensed milk approach.
My mother’s fondest memories as a child were her mother giving her condensed milk with crushed ice as a dessert. I make coquito every year with condensed milk, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of coastal Asian countries have an equivalent drink, combining sweetened condensed and evaporated milk with coconut milk.
Dessert not desert
@@goodputin4324 Whoops! Seems there were a lot of typos since I wrote that on mobile. Thanks for the catch!
@@unamericano de nada
kakigori, that crushed ice w condensed milk (and/or other fruity syrups) is a realy popular Japanese thing as well
The dog is a highlight of this video. Such a good thing! Keep up the good work!
Bruh, I'm firmly in the single digit percentage that deep fries in a wok. Highly recommend yall to join the club
So am I. I always Longyau and then proceed to do my dishes and it's awesome. I even got a five mouth stove top. The middle burner goes to epic heats! Recommend it if you can afford. (In Brazil we pressure cook a lot, so it makes a huge difference to have a double ring burner.)
So yeah! If you're cool with deep frying, you don't really need to do that additional 'sealing' step in the beginning. Makes the whole process much more more effortless. The toast will float, so you'll still need to flip/spoon over the oil in the same way... but it's much easier to get even browning on all sides.
We were mulling over filming a visual for deep frying too, but figured that it's pretty straightforward :)
The save oil gang
As soon as i get a wok i will join that 1%
Those of us without gas burners are out of luck 😕 Just can't cook from a wok so well on an electric range.
"when we're traveling" oh, to live somewhere where that's an option this december :')
Haha well, we’re limited to China... but yeah, we’re spoiled over here. Looking forward to the vaccine roll out and life getting back to normal everywhere :)
@@ChineseCookingDemystified glad that got sorted quicker for you folks! assuming you probably don't want to start talking politics in the comments of your cooking show but that's at least one good thing to say for the Chinese system!
@@hannahl6845 Haha yeah, politics can get dicey (there's a... diversity of people that watch this stuff). But really, most of Asia-Pacific's fared pretty well (even Australia/NZ)... honestly I think the distance from the first major outbreak in Europe - together with CN & SK responding as rapidly as they did in the beginning - really did this region alot of favors. It feels alot easier to manage when you've got much lower case numbers to begin with... you get this virtuous cycle where hard lockdowns can actually work to return things to normality, which builds political support for using hard lockdowns again when needed, etc etc. That's at least my personal explanation for why countries as culturally, politically, and geographically distinct as China, New Zealand, Thailand, Korea, Singapore, and Australia all seem to be doing alright :)
I know it's really hard in NA. My Mom only left their property once in the past eight months, and that was to vote. I can't imagine how tough that is. Really hoping things get better soon
@@ChineseCookingDemystified freedom of movement within a country is not being spoiled its a basic human right
And the vaccine is not going to get everything back to normal anywhere....
Do you realize this vaccine totally skipped the animal testing phase it was rushed to say the least....
www.unz.com/mwhitney/heres-why-you-should-skip-the-covid-vaccine/
Look thanks for the great video but the vaccine is not a cure all I don't understand why obviously intelligent people like you think it will turn things back to normal.
I don't deny covid or anything I just can't stand the way that the world government's and extremely powerful organizations like the WEF and the WHO have taken advantage of a natoinal pandemic to further their socio-economic and political goals....
In North America you are seeing freedoms being taken away and liberties being violated like never before.
Pretty much everywhere you are seeing sheeir hypocrisy with how the bylaws are writen and how people enforce them
I'm not even going to get into false positive and how they report deaths etc.
At the end of the days this all kidns ties back into a manual called silent weapons for quiet wars if you google that it'd interesting read.
@@lurk7967 That link makes a lot of claims about "the covid vaccine", but there are many different vaccines and at no point does it specify any or point to any data to support its claims. Over 100 trials going on right now. Then it makes four claims. The first is that it won't cure Covid. Of course it won't, because that's not what vaccines do! Nobody is saying it will cure Covid. The whole point of a vaccine is to provide immunity. That brings us to points 2, 3 and 4 which, for the only vaccine to be approved in North America, are false (other vaccines are awaiting results, and some most likely will be shown not to be effective, which is a major reason we have trials in the first place - so we know what works). The Pfizer vaccine has been shown to be 95% effective in preventing Covid and also seems to be effective in reducing the number of severe cases (i.e. requiring hospitalization) (countless sources, here's one as an example: arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/pfizer-reports-final-vaccine-results-95-efficacy/)
Now, if you would like point to *specific* vaccines and actual data, we can discuss this in more detail.
That salted egg yolk filled toast looks AWESOME -
My buddy introduced me to this last year. This with hot milk tea is the perfect breakfast for me.
The whole time I was watching this, it reminded me of kaya toast and then you mentioned kaya at the end!
I adore the air licking. Doggy is very cute.
I love your channel. It’s a great blend of cooking information that is interesting, concise, and often humerus. This recipe is right down my alley. I can fin everything at the local Walmart,
That salted egg yolk variant sounds delicious!
I'm french and i've never seen anything remotly close to this lol !
We made "french toast" which we call "lost toast" here (pain perdu) because it's an amazing way to use dry french bread (like actual baguette, which gets dry very fast, you can lose a baguette in less than half a day if the weather is hot and dry). In my house it was really common to have dry french bread around in the bread drawer (yeah our family table made by my grand-grand-father actually has a bread drawer, and you can actually see the bread-knife strokes on the table, that table has so much history, and we feast on it once a year for christmas).
So what we did is pretty much what you describe, toss it in an egg mixture of whatever you wanted, then pan it but with way less oil than that, it was litterally closer to a bread omelette !
I loved when we did it with my grandma, it was obviously super rich, but so simple and so rewarding for me as a kid ^^
(it was way safer since we were not dealing with boiling oil, just a pan with some oil in it)
with old traditionnal bread, the bread would last way longer because it is using "thicker" flour and sometimes even no yeast but what we call "levain" which is a live supply of "yeast" that you need to keep alive, so it was usually next to the fireplace, you have to "feed" it some flour and some water to keep it active and actually alive.
It's very funny to think of it as some kind of alive blob of matter that you take some of to cook bread (but the bread would be litterally like a brick lol compared to actual yeast)
@@irlrp Dans le pain perdu traditionnel de ma famille on mélange oeuf et lait pour tremper le pain, faites vous la même chose ?
Is the restaurant at around 0:14 檀島 in Wan Chai? I used to eat there every year before the Hong Kong book fair. It's not the most delicious Chachaanteng but it certainly has the charm!
Used to work around there and eat lunch there (high tea, really, since prices were cheaper after 2pm). Lots of tour buses would stop by at that exact place. Mainly for the egg tarts, and milk tea. Honolulu Cafe, for English-speakers.
its egg tarts are one of the bests
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year and thank you for sharing! Stay safe and healthy.
Happy Holidays to you both and your families. Thank you for another year of shared cooking, recipes and fun!
While we’re on the topic of toast, do you think you guys could do a prawn/shrimp toast recipe? It’s super popular here in Australia as kinda like a bastardised Chinese-Australian food down here, so it’d be interesting to learn about it’s history. :) Love all the work you do guys
its also some kind of old HK style snack. Basically u need some prawn/shrimp paste which you can make yourself or buy from the markets (probably can be bought in the Chinese markets). Smooth the paste on a slice of bread, add the usual frying coatings, then fry it.
Great video. I miss Hong Kong so much! Merry Christmas!
I made this for my family! It was WONDERFUL!
Whoo! Thank you for sharing a hong kong style street food and cafe style video. I miss these! And wonder how they make them. In the future, I hope you make more of these foods from Hong Kong.
Kaya Toast is the best toast in Asia. Its kinda similar to this but that Kaya butter is just heavenly.
Hi from Vancouver. Thank you for this one, of my favourite recipes.
I had this in a restaurant in Vancouver and its been on my mind for years. Great video!
Ovaltine Hongkong French Toast.... I never knew I needed some until today 😩
Thanks for this. I always wondered how the Hong Kong tea cafe came to be, so this answered many questions. We have two amazing ones near us, whose menu's confuse the hell out of newcomers.
Wonder Bread, Ovaltine, and peanut butter. I must have stumbled upon Paula Deen's page.
Forgot the pound of butter, lol.
This looks amazing. I'm going to try my hardest to find everything to make it asap.
Boy I never felt like my blood sugar level spiking to a deadly level before I watched this HK french toast...
I want to try making it but probably not everyday. Maybe twice a year or so.
Loved eating this as a kid. The condensed milk is a must!
For a sweet version I'd probably do Nutella or some kind of cinnamon, sugar and butter mixture. For a savory I'd put slices of cheese or even a cream cheese and chives mixture. The possibilities are endless.
There are plenty of cooking shows with plenty of amazing looking food but hong kong style french toast? Boy, I'm a little winded. That stuff looks *delicious*. I'm gonna need to catch my breath. Ho lordy.
Why do we not have ovaltine spread in the west?
Because Nutella dominates the chocolate spread market. Nestle is really aggressive.
It's sold in many European countries.
@@lewismaddock1654 I thought Ovaltine was started in America though.
@@derimmerlugt3032 damn I guess we don't have it in the US.
@@angellover02171 Just buy no sugar added chocolate spread and mix in a bunch of Ovaltine powder.
I'm putting Nutella in this and there's nothing you can do about it.
mixing whatever you have in your pantry is the true cha chaan teng spirit
I just had the idea of Speculoos cookie butter, but that would be over the top sweet.
that was my immediate thought too
WAS IT GOOD? WE MUST KNOW, either that or I will commit this crime too
Just tried this, think I found my new favorite breakfast
Hell yeah! This dish is so so sweet but it's worth trying. Will definitely make this.
Strawberry syrup is the best with your fry Toful French toast. Yum Yum!
This sort if reminds me of shrimp toast. It's one of my favorite things when done right.
I picture a shrimp eating a pancake...
Nutella in it would be FIRE 🔥🔥
I started using a wok because of you guys so add me to those single digits
I used one before this channel, however I started using my wok *correctly* after this channel 😅
I used a wok before this channel, but they got me realising how awesome it was for deep-frying. As well as stopping my habit of overcrowding the wok.
Frying in a wok, atop a portable gas burner is the only way to go. Recently fried cannoli shells in one
@@thecook8964 Latkes were done in a wok too.
I was very surprised to hear that less people try your recipes when you deep fry in a wok. After finding your channel, if anything, I have used a wok more and more for frying. Things I would have normally used a cast iron for I have found work a lot better in a wok and use less oil!
Thank you so much for this video. It is fun to learn new things while vicariously traveling. I appreciate it extra due to the Covid restrictions. This reminded me of Thailand and the places there to get yummy toast!
Oh yum! I had kaya French toast in Singapore years ago and it was amazing. Can't wait to try this version, with a nice cup of HK milk tea.
i looooooove hong kong french toast!!!!!!!!! if you’re in hong kong the best place is “kowloon restaurant” in sham shui po... i love their french toast! love your vids! thank you for sharing them with us!!!!
The dog frantically licking its chops at the end really made this video :D
I miss Hong Kong so much after watching this!
Sorta reminds me of a monte cristo. There's a "trailer park monte cristo" which is basically a batter fried PB&J.
I could swap the peanut butter for some cookie butter/Specuuloos spread, or maybe marshmallow fluff like a fluffernutter.
Looooooove Monte Cristo sandwiches... 🤣😁😍😍👍
Specuuloos, yes! I hate peanut butter, so was wondering what to swap with. Thanks for the idea!
peanut butter, banana, and bacon was Elvis's contribution to the culinary world 😋
@@Douglas.Kennedy Why not stuff that in French toast too? 😋
I have been to HK five times and I have never come across these snack places. After the pandemic gets under control I will be back for more Dim Sum and will definitely eat a toast or two!
Sweet French toast baffles my British sensibilities, but I must admit it sounds intriguing.
@@sukedent1 I'm sure you can, though adding sugar wouldn't normally be on my list. Just different tastes I guess.
Try this recipe: Make a batch of pancake batter. Take some sliced bread, dip it into the pancake mix on both sides and fry it. You will have a crispy French toast with a nice crunchy shell.
So impressed, you guys know about the KAYA spread! :)
Awesome. I was looking for a new french toast recipe.
I'm so trying this for the holidays. What other fillings do you like? What if I put in other cultural influences?
Go wild with the fillings. This dish was concocted in the multi-cultural pressure cooker that is Hong Kong cha chaan teng, and people are still inventing new takes and approaches by the year. This is a prime candidate as a canvas for creativity. I personally like the classic peanut butter sort the best, but Lok Yuen's beef satay filling was aggressively awesome (and totally would've been one of our three fillings if we could go to HK to test against it): www.timeout.com/hong-kong/restaurants/lok-yuen-1
@@ChineseCookingDemystified Woah that does look tasty, and unexpected. I defiantly love the crazy ways the concept of a deep fried stuffed french toast has gone savory. I can see all kinds of spins on this.
Thanks!
I live in beijing, I just found those videos, they are amazing! you are great!😋❤️
Very tasty toasts and lovely dog.
So I just made this and holy cow. I didn’t even do it very well and they were insanely delicious.
I topped with a very light powder of brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg, then dressed it with Indiana apple syrup. My spouse’s had a bit of sweet chocolate as well
Wow, that's my grandfather's HK Cafe at 00:34!
Your cute schnauzer has the same yoda ears as mine!! Such a cute assistant.
you guys content is fire
made this while faded halfway out of my mind and it was the best food decision I've ever made
Would love a recipe for lo mai gai. Just found a supermarket by me that sells lotus leaves.
I love this recipe. Thank you!
This was part of my childhood growing up!!!!!
So beautiful 🤩 love hk toast
I love your dog, his bushy eyebrows in the corner are super cute 😁
Looks like the dog found the peanut butter..
Thanks for posting this! Can’t go to HK without getting french toast.
Can't wait to try making this!! Thank you!!
Any other glue substitutes besides peanut butter? Fried toast looks nice but I feel this can't be done without 2-3 slices, also stuffing it is just too tempting.
Yeah so that ovomaltine spread can but used as the 'glue', but we liked adding a touch of peanut butter to the edges simply because it 'glues' a bit better. Jelly or Kaya sauce can be good glues
Bisoff spread, Nutella or make a cinnamon paste would probably work
I can’t wait to get a wok and cook my way through all the videos I’ve skipped making so far
never in my live I would've thought I'd be receiving cooking tips from Ben Shapiro
"A great strategy, honestly, is douse it in coke."
my family makes the single french toast. same technique only without fillings. interesting twist to a classic one. or perhaps it's a twist of a twist. either way one of my families' favorite breakfast meal items. along with extra eggs scrambled and meat (homer simpsons sound while talking about meat) lol. thanks @Chinese Cooking Demystified
I didn't know this existed, and I've been to Hong Kong six times.
Yeah! I know Canto-Western stuff might not be high on the list if you're just swinging through the neighborhood, but I do think Cha Chaan Teng/Bing Sutt are a must-try in HK.
halal?
@@goodputin4324 It's peanut butter, egg, bread, and canola oil. I don't know how it could be un-halal. Well, unless they fry it in bacon grease.
@@UrsahSolar oh yum
That was poetic. Will try soon.
Traditionally, are there other version with savoury / meaty filling ? Something that goes with hot sauce perhaps
AFAIK HK-style French toast is specifically a dessert for a quick afternoon tea. That said, as long as the filling is pre-cooked, I don't see any problem switching the peanut butter to meaty filling.
I'd be curious to see if this could be made into a sphere, just for an aesthetically pleasing fried ball. I know making a bread sphere isn't difficult, just more time consuming due to shaping, but I'm more curious about how well it would fry up due to it being layered.
Amazing! thanks for sharing!