Archaeologist here! We can figure out the diets of people in the past by analysing the isotopes in their teeth and bones (we'd usually look for strontium, carbon etc.), this along with carbon dating and pollen analysis of ancient woods and preserved plant matter can show us how farming or settlement patterns changed the environment! A lot of it does come down to assumption and guesswork on our part but humans leave a trace of themselves in every part of nature :)
Thank you, Sarah! That's lovely information to have! Truth be told, I'll likely never use the information, but my brain feels a bit more complete. Again, thank you!
@@mammamiia08 Yep! It can help us trace migration patterns and then through that we can figure out trade routes, military movement and things like that alongside their diet
Would definitely be nice to see him try again with the same exact ingredients, no cheating with oil or different spices.. But I mean, the meat could be cooked over a fire, and use the herbs in different ways.. Or heck, chop up the meat and use the dough as a casing. So many possibilities
@@stone5against1This would be great! They could also do this for different cultures and times, giving Ben the same ingredients that would be available and letting him experiment and create.
Would be great to see a battle, where they are given ingredients from prehistoric Britain and limited to similar cooking methods available around that time.
I've made variations on this in the past as part of my interest in historical food. Although pottery came to the British Isles in around the Neolithic (4000 BC), it would be too poorly fired to cook with properly. So I used the old technique of dropping fire heated stones into a wooden bowl I'd made to heat the water/food. The first version I did was similar to yours; water, venison cut up into small gobbets/collops & the dough added once the water was hot as small dumplings. There were also cut up pieces of edible roots & herbs to make it more of a stew. The 2nd version I cut the venison smaller, made a paste out of the other ingredients & added ground hazelnuts (hazelnuts were a major winter food source at this time). The paste was fairly loose as I wasn't going to add more water. I added the hot rocks again & immediately the smell was better. The hot rocks in the dough/paste smelt like cooking bread - that hot carbohydrate smell we associate with cooking bread. I continued to add hot rocks & take the cold ones out until it was all cooked through. This tasted much more like a modern meal. Like a cross between thick porridge & bread. In fact I've also make damper bread from barley flour before & it tasted like a looser version of that. Nice to see you experiment with old "recipes"... maybe hanging around with Max from Tasting History is rubbing off on you? Would love to see you do more in the future as understanding food from the past lets us understand where we are now.
@@GingaGirl2000 Thank you for the compliment. Historical cooking is a fascinating subject. Learning not only what we ate, but how we cooked it takes you down some interesting paths. I sometimes wish I'd gone into living archaeology rather than the career I chose. If you're interested in the subject Ivan Day has a great website for slightly more recent historical cooking at foodhistorjottings.blogspot.com/ . It would be great if Sorted did some work with him sometime.
FYI this is not an ancient recipe, it was the cook book equivalent of clickbait. Hell half the ingredients did not exist in the UK for over 3000 years after this recipe is supposed to exist
Come to think of it, there's a traditional Hungarian folk tale about an absurd meal called stone soup ("köleves" in the original). Maybe that's a sort of memory or remembrance of this ancient way of cooking.
@@ac1dflare937 Barley came to Northern Europe around 5th to 6th millennia BC but other wild grasses would have been gathered, it's one of the reasons I bulked it out with native hazelnuts. There are a couple of native deer species even though fallow had to be reintroduced after glaciation moved them out of the Isles. Pollen cores show that nettles are native to parts of the UK, not introduced as I was taught back in my school days. The chives are an import, but we do have native allium species. Dandelions have native & indeed endemic varieties in the UK. I'll admit I haven't looked into when some of them arrived back after the ice retreated, but I imagine a fair few did get here before the humans returned. We will never know the full extent of what our ancestors ate & yes this recipe was conjecture of what could have been around & suggested by pollen samples & & other archaeological finds. But its a fun experiment & part of the experimentation is trying to learn. It also sparks imagination & interest in some who have no idea where their food comes from. Some people are actually surprised that eggs come out of a chicken & that their meat doesn't magically appear in shrink wrap or formed as chicken nuggets. Sorted is trying to raise awareness of food & I think showing something, even if it is partially conjecture gets people talking. Since this video was dropped to me writing this 24 thousand folk have watched it. If it gets a few talking or thinking about food sourcing & production, I think its a good thing.
5:10 Pro tip: Before you chop stinging nettles, wash them quickly in hot water or heat them over a fire. The stinging cells are live ones and it only takes a few seconds of heat to kill and neutralise them. You can freeze the nettles too of course but that takes a bit longer and wasn't really an option 8000 years ago anyway. 8:23 No, there were no sunflower seeds in Britian back then, it's an American plant. They may have had rapeseed oil but it's doubtful. Siberian kale (the plant rapeseed and rutabaga are cultivars of) has been farmed for ten thousand years but probably more as a root vegetable than for its seeds and I'm not sure if it had reached as far as the British isles that early.
@@chrisk283 Typical fat sources as an ingredient or crafting material would have come as rendered animal fats, like suet, tallow or lard Acorns would have seen better and easier use being toasted and eaten that way
I would imagine there would have been lots of potential sources of vegetable oil around at the time. However, I would also imagine that there was no technology available to enable them to extract it in any meaningful quantity. Even if they _could_ technically do it, vegetable oil is very much a luxury. Whatever you extract it from is usually edible in itself, so the production of vegetable oil requires a hefty surplus of food, which I assume was not the case in what was (at least mostly) a hunter/gatherer society.
This brings me back to a 2016 archeological discovery. Approximately 3000 years ago in Denmark, some one screwed up making cheese so bad that they didn't even try cleaning out the clay pot and threw away the entire thing. This is the Bronze age where you'd have to make a replacement pot by hand. Should we set the Normals to cheese making?
Having taken a modern pottery class I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to make a new clay pot back then. They must have been really frustrated or embarrassed by their failed cheese 😅
@@ninamarie177 Gotta remember they would have been learned it from the local potter as a kid, and their standards were a little different to now. Having seen the pot, it was pretty thick, crude, and unglazed. Not exactly disposable, but easily replaceable if you live near a river. I know a few modern homesteaders who make similar clay pots as and when they need them like it's nothing
As a history nerd, I loved watching this challenge! in case you were wondering, on the British Museum blog, there are several recipes from Ancient Greece that would be awesome to see Sorted try!
I'd really like to see a history mystery box challenge. Where the chefs get a mystery box filled with old timey ingredients and come up with a modern interpretation. Ancient ingredients, modern techniques
Found your channel while pregnant with my first baby, still watching two years later. currently feeding my second baby to sleep! Love this channel, it's gotten me through so much. Appreciate you ❤❤
I'd love to see them try something from The Forme of Cury, the oldest english language cookbook. Especially if you get one that's still in middle english.
Excellent idea. Maybe one cook from "The Forme of Cury" & the other from "Liber de Coquina/The book of cooking/cookery". That way they could do lasagne, as both are in contention for the earliest recipe for the dish. Get Jamie to do the English version from "The Forme of Cury" so he can annoy Italy as he's already ticked off Spain. 😆
@@eldoradocanyonroaurochs which are big bastard cows plus moose or bear if they where gutsy enough their was some decently large mega fauna in the British isles until like 900 years ago and even some a bit later
I'd be really interested to see a few episodes on foraged/wild food. Nettle Pesto (Pesto d'urtica) is great, and one of the greenest things I've ever eaten. Wild garlic is great, and wild mushroom and sorrel soup is phenomenal.
You could lookup the oldest preserved written recipe. I know there is some full Roman books preserved, including on how to make garum, Roman fish sauce, but it's quite possible something older, like cuneiform on clay has managed to survive the ages. Pretty sure I've heard of beer making guides from the Sumerians, not sure on a food recipe. But even an episode on Roman cooking would surely be fun as hell.
I absolutely LOVE this video concept. You should make this a series with a ‘Part 2’ where you create a dish that draws DIRECT inspiration from this historical dish using modern ingredients and techniques.
I really liked Ben's idea about Ötzi and decided to look for what his last meal was like. I found this "the researchers determined the ice mummy's final meal: dried ibex meat and fat, red deer, einkorn wheat, and traces of toxic fern." Would be interesting to see the boys taste that (Maybe don't touch the bracken fern 😂) And about the cooking: "they surmised Ötzi's meat was not heated above 140 degrees Fahrenheit. It's most likely the meat was dried for preservation." (About the bracken fern they say this "“ You can go as far as he might have treated stomach ache with this fern since we knew that he suffered from some stomach pathogens,” says Maixner. But he adds, “this, for me at least, goes a little bit too far.” Another possibility is that he wrapped his food in fern, accidentally ingesting pieces along with his snack-an idea previously proposed for Ötzi's ingested moss.")
Bracken is eaten by a number of people across the world! It's toxic because of a carcinogen, ptaquiloside, and thiaminase, an enzyme that breaks down thiamine and can therefore cause beriberi (thiamine deficiency), and heat denatures both of them. You can also destroy the ptaquiloside with a base, such as ash, and it even breaks down slowly over time at room temperature. Bracken consumption has been correlated with high rates of gastric cancer in certain regions, but it may be due to ptaquiloside leaching into the water supply rather than dietary consumption.
Dried meat and fat with wheat and the fern makes me wonder if it wasn't a form of pemmican. Native American pemmican can include berries, but I can see the wheat standing in to provide carbs, and the fern could have been a seasoning or preservative.
From how he died, where he was found and what he was carrying at the moment of his death it's very possible he was being chased and/or hunted and running for his life. I'd imagine in that situation you eat what you can that's quick and easy. It's possible he didn't realise exactly what he was eating and mistook it for something similar he knew was edible due to the haste and fear that was driving him on, especially if he was sleep deprived. 100% speculation obviously but doing such guessing, story making with such ancient history based on the few, facts you have is part of the fun of such finds to me.
Ben absolutely made this episode. He provided (nerdy) insight; he announced his ignorance (albeit very little); he defended Barry's thoughtful suggestions (as a leader should) when Jamie only attempted to make fun; and he remained practical. Good on you, Ben. What a good egg you are.
Traditional Norwegian dumplings ("raspeballer") are often made with a lot of barley flour added to the potato base. But served with fatty meats, like cured or salted lamb, pork knuckles, and bacon. Never lean venison. Very rustic, and VERY tasty if cooked properly.
I agree, some sort of fat is a good thing if making dumplings. (Why we use suet in the UK). So if forced to use venison either use the suet from the carcass - or butter & cheese was available at this time period, add that into the mix.
We make something similar called muthiya (pronounced moo~ti~ya) with different herbs or vegetables, namely mint/dill/cabbage/lauki/carrot. Made by adding flour, besan (gram flour), corn meal, salt, crushed cumin, coriander, chilli powder, turmeric, sugar and oil and just enough water to combine. These are steamed or pan fried.
I think it's one of those dishes that humans given similar ingredients will come up with over and over again. There are some dishes that seem fairly universal that just get adapted to the available ingredients and tastes of the area.
Love this video! I would absolutely LOVE to see a Chef vs Chef with Kush and Ben taking this recipe and modernising it for the 21st century using the same ingredients
Barry's chicken=dinosaur comment lol!!! Also him figuring out how to work with the stinging nettles and ben's geekiness in trying to figure out the timeline vs whatever that existed at that point of time. Fun video! As a history geek, I enjoyed it thoroughly! :)
Y’all, thank you for holding my interest for so manyhyears. I feel like you are warm friends that I spend time with every now and 😢then. So helpful to my social anxiety, y’all are awesome e!
More of this, PLEASE!!!!! Love this kind of rugged, simplistic cooking. Maybe do a few of these ancient meals and then do a modern take on them to show how far we've come in culinary growth. Pretentious Cavemen!
I just thought of an evil idea. Well, only to Barry specifically. Jamie or Mike can propose battles against Barry, and if they can win three or five times *IN A ROW,* they can take the Sous Chef title away from Barry and claim it, as well as his red apron. It will cause issues, so it’s kinda just for fun.
I had a similar idea when they were collecting badges, challenging someone's badge, having them cook something to prove that they earned it. Dunno if I'd take the sous-chef jacket away from Barry, he earned it. If anything, I'd have Mike and Jamie have battles to decide that in a year, who can challenge Barry for it with another three-course meal with judges.
I'm all for this in theory, as Kush pointed out we know who the actual better chef is. Barry won because what those chefs are looking for happens to be his exact area of expertise. Sadly, it'd be pointless, at least with Ben as a judge. Barry has won multiple creativity battles while openly admitting that he's making a different chef's recipe, including telling Ben that he's making one of HIS recipes. He won one with a recipe he'd done before, WITH ben giving him instructions, against mike pulling off something Ben had never attempted and said he liked. Barry has been allowed to work past the time limit, to openly bend or break rules. I like all our Sorted hosts, but Ben has a pretty notorious bias toward Barry. Probably at least partially from Barry's particular style being perfect for Ben's palate. Getting that many in a row just isn't going to happen, unless they get Kush or Slater in to judge.
Brilliant. Now I’ve found your channel, I can’t stop watching. So nice to hear some banter in a British accent- so much American content gets grating to my UKian ears. Not saying American channels aren’t good, but your content is amazing. I haven’t cooked for ages due to a back problem, and you’re making me want to get back into the kitchen. Keep up the good work, I’m loving it.
Thank you to the team at Sorted Food for posting this video today! I was just told that I have a non cancerous brain tumor which I did surgery for yesterday. This video has really brightened my day!
Sorell and nettle are two great ingredients. We use sorell a lot in Hungary. Traditionally we prepare it like a thick creamy soup and eat it with soft boiled/sunny side up eggs, or meatballs, but I regularly make pesto from it, too. Also I love Ben's attitude towards the whole process, he was so humble and respectful. And yes, cooked barley after the brewing process looks exactly like that, that was my first thought.
A pleasure to watch ben apply his cheffy knowledge with his broader knowledge to try and piece together this ancient recipe. His love for food always shines through ❤
My brothers wife made nettle and dock leaf soup a while back and it was shockingly tasty. Very little else in it, just a bit of vegetable stock, potatoes, onions and pepper makes a really good vegetable broth. Nettles taste a lot like spinach, dock leaves are like a more herby lemon grass. Two weeds that you'd be annoyed to find growing in your garden that are hard to stop growing, never mind difficult to cultivate...and they are actually really good ingredients. We just don't utilise them at all in the UK even though they are everywhere.
15:05 The wort is the sugary water that the grain was steeped in, which is what gets fermented. The left over grain is just called "spent grain". - Time fore SORTED to take a brewery tour. And fun fact, many breweries donate that to farms who then use it to feed their animals and they love it. Some donate to be composted.
This would be interesting to see as a series! Proper old cooking using the same techniques and recipe PLUS the modern update with the same ingredients but with the techniques from the chefs!
Fun fact! I use nettle in my "NPR jam": nettle, peach, rhubarb. If you didn't know, NPR is National Public Radio here in the States, which my jam is an homage to!
@erzsebetkovacs2527 oh gosh, lemme try. It's been a few years because I moved. For 1 Mason jar, boil together 3 cups water, 1 peeled and large-diced peach (fresh), approx. 6 inches rhubarb chopped (fresh), and 3.5 oz dried stinging nettle with 1-3 cups sugar, to your own taste. Boil it low & slow (maybe a simmer?) Until the rhubarb has broken down, then you can turn it up if that's your wish until it coats well the back of a spoon. Cool and put into a Mason jar in the fridge.
15:15 the wort is the liquid that you then add yeast to that becomes beer. the spent grain is ususally just called the mash, grist, or... spent grain. (side note you can use the spent grain to make snack bars similar to granola bars)
Honestly, Ebbers is just such a delight. I'd genuinely love to eat a meal with someone who just spent the whole time talking analyzing the history of an ingredient or what tools would be useful in the prepapration. What an absolute gem 💜
I had an idea for you at the end. Take the wheel from the cook the countries series and put years on it suggested by the community. Then spin it and try to find a recipe from that time. Like a dish from 1574 or something, then make it as best they can. Don't limit it to European cooking but try worldwide. At the end of each video you can ask for more date suggestions and go from there.
I was wondering if you decide to stop giving a proper subtitles for any videos now because even though I can understand you guys quite well despite being a non english speaker, I found the subtitles very useful to understand more about the videos especially if you talk about some cooking techniques or some unfamiliar ingredients. I hope you bring it back.
People in China were in fact writing in 6000 BCE! Tortoise shell writing at that time. So yes! Writing did exist back then. (Historian here, but also, access to internet search lol)
Even the word “Nettles” makes me nostalgic for being a kid running around the Woods and Dells of Edinburgh , some of which barely even exist only 30 years later !
MAN! I love this channel so much. Please keep it up! Also my dream video is still Drunk chefs remote control Sober normals. Would be hilarious with guest chefs too! Keep it up Sorted :)
This was so cool! I went on a bit of a dive to find more info about where the recipe came from, since, as Ben rightly points out, written history didn’t exist a few thousand years later. Looks like it was pulled from ‘Prehistoric Cooking’ by Jacqui Wood. There’s a Guardian article about it from 2007. I would love to see how Ben would use these ingredients to create a meal, using cooking methods and other ingredients available to people at that time (maybe not hedgehog, though, they’re far too cute to eat!) Edit: prehistoric pass it on?!!!!
If they want to use hedgehogs they should call the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds). They had planned to cull some 5000 hedgehogs in the Hebrides to protect birds. After the killing started they eventually relented to public pressure & relocated the survivors. (Though many say that relocation is also a death sentence). But yeah, a prehistoric Pass It On sounds a grand idea.
"word of advice to them".... I was in bits, love the way Ebbers mind works. Idea time, give the boys the ingredients like this from really old recipes and make it a mystery box round, see what they come up with, but with no store cupboard. Thanks lads for another great vid, brightens my day.
I like to think some people from that time are looking down and thinking “ooo that’s not how I did it, but it looks about right” or totally roasting you for not doing it the old fashioned way 😂
I was actually sort of curious about this. They said the "recipe" dated back to the stone age, and my first reaction was: how did they boil things then, without metal pots. But apparently clay cooking vessels date back to 20k bc. Interesting!
Ben stating “there’s no fat in this”… yes, however you’re assuming the venison was butchered the same way as today and that they didn’t cook with rendered venison fat. Perhaps a task so common practice, it wasn’t needed to be written down in the instructions/recipe.
I think it would be really interesting to see the Chefs take these recipes and update them, trying to accomplish the same idea of the original dish but making it as good as it can be with modern ingredients and techniques.
I don't get what you did here, assuming ancient people wouldn't understand flavour. I would have more assumed that the meat was charred on a stick over the fire, cut up and simmer until broken down to make more of a stew, with the nettles used to help break the meat down, then the remaining herbs added to the barley flour to make, essentially dumplings. Meat and Gravy - that's how it was done, not the dry meat and green goop.
I took a nutritional anthropology course many years ago for my degree and was told that the oldest written recipe known is one for tomato salsa which obviously comes from the Americas. The recipe is so good that we are still using it today!
There are plenty of spices used even by Neanderthals (like mustard) that can be used in this. Unfortunately, we lost many plants (possibly also insects) that were used in cooking and medicine in the late stone age not least as a direct result of agriculture.
It’s be cool to see you guys take these old recipes and advance them! Like not changing any of the cooking techniques or not changing any of the ingredients. Put a cap or limit on how much they change. That would be fun to watch!
Sorrel is quite popular in Russia. We cook sorrel soup in summer, basically a couple of diced potatoes, any meat or sausage, sorrel leaves and a beaten egg right in the end. Delicious)
Speaking of Ancient Recipies, Sohla would be an amazing guest. Perhaps in a pass it on. Perhaps with her partner in crime, Ham. Edit: Please cook the Iceman's last meal.
Would love to see you make old recipes and then try modernizing them, both with local ingredients only but modern techniques and again with the whole pantry unlocked!
A tip from Finland, where we still have a lot of nettle recipes today. You should quickly blanch the nettles so that they will lose their ability to sting. Makes handling them much easier. 😉
As an American, the idea of eating something called "stinging nettles" sound about as appetizing as eating poison ivy. Makes you wonder what person went "Hey, I wonder if you can eat this plant that stings me."
We have stinging nettles here on the coast of Canada. Horrible little things. I still have ptsd from a run in playing paintball. Camomile lotion is a savior.
I would love to see much more of those ancient recipes, as I find it rather fascinating not just to read about it but actually get to see the dish. Also, I would love to see Ben in the end, or as another video, give the ancient dish a modern twist, and then all of you to tell us how much of a difference it makes. Foody geekery with Ben is one of my favourite things. 😊
If you want to do more ancient history recipes, you should do a crossover collab with Sohla el Wayly who does a regular History channel show where she tries to authentically recreate recipes from history and interviews experts.
All of those ingredients are still used today in many Central and Eastern European dishes. Sorrel soup (zupa szczawiowa) comes to mind - a favourite of mine....with the protein being pigs' knuckles.
The nettle pudding reminded me quite a bit of raspeball, a traditional Norwegian dumpling-like dish most often made of grated potatoes, flour, salt, and stock, mashed into balls and simmered. Very stodgy, but very tasty.
I remember suggesting Nettle Pudding to you last year. So glad you made it. I just hope the nettles you picked hadn't started to flower or you might get some pain in your kidneys!
The nettles look very young to me, just... at this time of the year you don't find fresh nettles in the wild. They start to appear in February, March and are tiny and dark green then, get bigger in April and peak in early May - best time to harvest and dry / preserve them. So they have to come from some sort of (heated?) greenhouse. 👀
@@vanillablossomhey so I live in FNQ Australia. We have a nettle too but it doesn’t sting you like the southern one does, then we also have stinging tree which no one is dumb enough to fk with, but the southern stinging nettle is a proper CUin the NT. The one that doesn’t sting, should you still boil that and what’s the thing that makes your kidney hurt?
I would have used a mortar and pestle on the nettle. And I would have ground the dandelion to a powder, as that's how we use merrygold flowers in Georgian cooking. Great with any protein, grain and veg (anything really). All of the greens would have been good as a paste used however you like or in bold chunks.
I'd love to see you guys try longer makes - beer, cider, vinegars, wine and cook with them. Also, making more canning/ preserving things. Ben has an allotment that he surely preserves things from. Baz has his garden. What are you canning/ fermenting/ preserving from them? Here in China, on January 18, we'll make the pickled garlic (la ba suan) used for Spring Festival and into the new year.
Hi! You take peeled fresh garlic and cut a bit off of each end. Throw it all in a clean container. Heat up (simmering or just barely boiling) the vinegar of choice and pour over the garlic. Cover it completely. Then let it sit. You want the garlic to turn green. That sounds bad but it's not, it just means it's pickled. You can use eat the garlic (whole pieces) in (between) bites of dumplings/ gyoza or the like and you can use the vinegar it's soaking in to dip your dumplings in, too. For Spring Festival (mid February this year), everyone in the north eats dumplings as midnight rolls in so it's featured then. Making this pickled garlic is part of the festival prep, this year we should make it on January 18. The garlic stays good as long as it's in the vinegar. It gets sweeter the longer it is pickled. Delicious! @@erzsebetkovacs2527
I'd love them to do a "foraging" episode - bit hard in the middle of London City but I'm inspired by nature walks around where I live and someone who helps us pick out things like wild garlic, sorrel, dandelions and even mushrooms!
I'm curious about how difficult it is on a show like this to always be positive about everything you eat. The reality is, there are some truly unpleasant cuisines and countries that just have abysmal food scenes out there. Yet, on a show like this you can't offend anyone so, how often do you have to pretend that you actually like something or are excited about it?
I think this could make a damn good recurring segment. One week have the boys cook an ancient recipe. Then have another week with Kush and Ben trying to see if they can take those same ingredients and make them into something more modern. (Though I would like to see less store cupboard staples than the norm)
Chef Simon Rogan has a very very similar but updated in his cookbook "Rogan". It also used savoy cabbage, dock leaves, onion, leek, porage oats and grated hard-boiled eggs, panko battered, deep-fried, and served with a ramson (wild garlic) emulsion
Sally Pointer does some amazing foraging videos many of which also talk about prehistoric times as she is also a great experimental archeologist (masters degree from University of Exeter). Your video reminded me of her video where she also made a nettle pudding with nearly the same ingredients. If you can I would love to see a cross over where you revisit this, or other dishes with her. If anything I think you'd find her approach interesting :) th-cam.com/video/qG2OjuJqEzg/w-d-xo.html
It's a little late but for the future. The stinging part of the Nettle is on the underside of the leaf. If you stack them bright green side up before you cut it you won't get stung, or if you blanch the leaves before you cut them.
Archaeologist here! We can figure out the diets of people in the past by analysing the isotopes in their teeth and bones (we'd usually look for strontium, carbon etc.), this along with carbon dating and pollen analysis of ancient woods and preserved plant matter can show us how farming or settlement patterns changed the environment! A lot of it does come down to assumption and guesswork on our part but humans leave a trace of themselves in every part of nature :)
Thank you, Sarah! That's lovely information to have! Truth be told, I'll likely never use the information, but my brain feels a bit more complete. Again, thank you!
You can also figure out about where these people grew up through their teeth as well. Isn't a part of that from what they ate?
Keyboard warrior here...I concur.
Thank you! That was very interesting! 👍👍👍
@@mammamiia08 Yep! It can help us trace migration patterns and then through that we can figure out trade routes, military movement and things like that alongside their diet
I'd like to see Ben update this recipe for our modern palate! Perhaps in multiple ways? Would be a good follow up!
Would definitely be nice to see him try again with the same exact ingredients, no cheating with oil or different spices..
But I mean, the meat could be cooked over a fire, and use the herbs in different ways.. Or heck, chop up the meat and use the dough as a casing. So many possibilities
@@stone5against1This would be great! They could also do this for different cultures and times, giving Ben the same ingredients that would be available and letting him experiment and create.
Would be great to see a battle, where they are given ingredients from prehistoric Britain and limited to similar cooking methods available around that time.
I second this wholeheartedly, would love to see it modernized, they gave some good feedback on it, and we know they have the skills to put it to use~
That would be really cool! The recipe has potential I think :)
I've made variations on this in the past as part of my interest in historical food. Although pottery came to the British Isles in around the Neolithic (4000 BC), it would be too poorly fired to cook with properly. So I used the old technique of dropping fire heated stones into a wooden bowl I'd made to heat the water/food. The first version I did was similar to yours; water, venison cut up into small gobbets/collops & the dough added once the water was hot as small dumplings. There were also cut up pieces of edible roots & herbs to make it more of a stew. The 2nd version I cut the venison smaller, made a paste out of the other ingredients & added ground hazelnuts (hazelnuts were a major winter food source at this time). The paste was fairly loose as I wasn't going to add more water. I added the hot rocks again & immediately the smell was better. The hot rocks in the dough/paste smelt like cooking bread - that hot carbohydrate smell we associate with cooking bread. I continued to add hot rocks & take the cold ones out until it was all cooked through. This tasted much more like a modern meal. Like a cross between thick porridge & bread. In fact I've also make damper bread from barley flour before & it tasted like a looser version of that. Nice to see you experiment with old "recipes"... maybe hanging around with Max from Tasting History is rubbing off on you? Would love to see you do more in the future as understanding food from the past lets us understand where we are now.
That's very fascinating! Thanks for sharing your experiment :)
@@GingaGirl2000 Thank you for the compliment. Historical cooking is a fascinating subject. Learning not only what we ate, but how we cooked it takes you down some interesting paths. I sometimes wish I'd gone into living archaeology rather than the career I chose. If you're interested in the subject Ivan Day has a great website for slightly more recent historical cooking at foodhistorjottings.blogspot.com/ . It would be great if Sorted did some work with him sometime.
FYI this is not an ancient recipe, it was the cook book equivalent of clickbait. Hell half the ingredients did not exist in the UK for over 3000 years after this recipe is supposed to exist
Come to think of it, there's a traditional Hungarian folk tale about an absurd meal called stone soup ("köleves" in the original). Maybe that's a sort of memory or remembrance of this ancient way of cooking.
@@ac1dflare937 Barley came to Northern Europe around 5th to 6th millennia BC but other wild grasses would have been gathered, it's one of the reasons I bulked it out with native hazelnuts. There are a couple of native deer species even though fallow had to be reintroduced after glaciation moved them out of the Isles. Pollen cores show that nettles are native to parts of the UK, not introduced as I was taught back in my school days. The chives are an import, but we do have native allium species. Dandelions have native & indeed endemic varieties in the UK. I'll admit I haven't looked into when some of them arrived back after the ice retreated, but I imagine a fair few did get here before the humans returned. We will never know the full extent of what our ancestors ate & yes this recipe was conjecture of what could have been around & suggested by pollen samples & & other archaeological finds. But its a fun experiment & part of the experimentation is trying to learn. It also sparks imagination & interest in some who have no idea where their food comes from. Some people are actually surprised that eggs come out of a chicken & that their meat doesn't magically appear in shrink wrap or formed as chicken nuggets. Sorted is trying to raise awareness of food & I think showing something, even if it is partially conjecture gets people talking. Since this video was dropped to me writing this 24 thousand folk have watched it. If it gets a few talking or thinking about food sourcing & production, I think its a good thing.
5:10 Pro tip: Before you chop stinging nettles, wash them quickly in hot water or heat them over a fire. The stinging cells are live ones and it only takes a few seconds of heat to kill and neutralise them. You can freeze the nettles too of course but that takes a bit longer and wasn't really an option 8000 years ago anyway.
8:23 No, there were no sunflower seeds in Britian back then, it's an American plant. They may have had rapeseed oil but it's doubtful. Siberian kale (the plant rapeseed and rutabaga are cultivars of) has been farmed for ten thousand years but probably more as a root vegetable than for its seeds and I'm not sure if it had reached as far as the British isles that early.
So insightful and learned in the matter, it’s impressive ☺️
Acorn oil would have been another option.
@@chrisk283 Typical fat sources as an ingredient or crafting material would have come as rendered animal fats, like suet, tallow or lard
Acorns would have seen better and easier use being toasted and eaten that way
I would imagine there would have been lots of potential sources of vegetable oil around at the time. However, I would also imagine that there was no technology available to enable them to extract it in any meaningful quantity. Even if they _could_ technically do it, vegetable oil is very much a luxury. Whatever you extract it from is usually edible in itself, so the production of vegetable oil requires a hefty surplus of food, which I assume was not the case in what was (at least mostly) a hunter/gatherer society.
Did they have pine or beech nuts in England or was that American?
This brings me back to a 2016 archeological discovery. Approximately 3000 years ago in Denmark, some one screwed up making cheese so bad that they didn't even try cleaning out the clay pot and threw away the entire thing. This is the Bronze age where you'd have to make a replacement pot by hand.
Should we set the Normals to cheese making?
that sound like fund idea.
Having taken a modern pottery class I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to make a new clay pot back then. They must have been really frustrated or embarrassed by their failed cheese 😅
I found multiple articles and safe to say, I'm extremely fascinated!
@@ninamarie177 Gotta remember they would have been learned it from the local potter as a kid, and their standards were a little different to now.
Having seen the pot, it was pretty thick, crude, and unglazed. Not exactly disposable, but easily replaceable if you live near a river.
I know a few modern homesteaders who make similar clay pots as and when they need them like it's nothing
That's incredible. Humans are funny and we really haven't changed all that much 😂
As a history nerd, I loved watching this challenge! in case you were wondering, on the British Museum blog, there are several recipes from Ancient Greece that would be awesome to see Sorted try!
I'd really like to see a history mystery box challenge. Where the chefs get a mystery box filled with old timey ingredients and come up with a modern interpretation. Ancient ingredients, modern techniques
Found your channel while pregnant with my first baby, still watching two years later. currently feeding my second baby to sleep! Love this channel, it's gotten me through so much. Appreciate you ❤❤
That’s wonderful! Thanks for watching 😁
@@SortedFoodSO CUTE 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉❤❤❤❤
Awwww @SortedFood bringing up the next generation!!! 👶👩🍳🍽👨🍳
I'd love to see them try something from The Forme of Cury, the oldest english language cookbook. Especially if you get one that's still in middle english.
Forme of Cury would be great! I would love to see how one of the chefs got on with an English translation of Apicius
Scappi's Opera would also be a good contender, as would Apicius' De Re Coquinaria, both of which have English translations
YES, the Middle English/Roman readouts would be a blast😂
Excellent idea. Maybe one cook from "The Forme of Cury" & the other from "Liber de Coquina/The book of cooking/cookery". That way they could do lasagne, as both are in contention for the earliest recipe for the dish. Get Jamie to do the English version from "The Forme of Cury" so he can annoy Italy as he's already ticked off Spain. 😆
yes yes yes
Barry getting stuck with having to cut the stinging nettles is just brilliant. 😂
Indeed 😆
The fact that he didn't think to get some disposable gloves, which I KNOW they have in that studio/kitchen somewhere, is even better. ;)
@@SortedFoodso funny 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Sous chefs 😊always get the fun jobs.
@KhronicD you just have to blanche them for like 60 secs and the sting will go away
I like how Ben surmises how ancient Britains might have oil from plants when he had a piece of red meat in his hands. Tallow. The answer is tallow.
Not much on a deer!
Very lean.
Surmise. I like that word. Imma steal it to describe my every action
@@eldoradocanyonroaurochs which are big bastard cows plus moose or bear if they where gutsy enough their was some decently large mega fauna in the British isles until like 900 years ago and even some a bit later
Pork fat.
I'd be really interested to see a few episodes on foraged/wild food. Nettle Pesto (Pesto d'urtica) is great, and one of the greenest things I've ever eaten. Wild garlic is great, and wild mushroom and sorrel soup is phenomenal.
Wild Garlic is amazing. Its such a great ingredient if you can get your hands on some fresh stuff
Ramps -- an onion relative found in the States, particularly Kentucky.
@rcrawford42 why stop at ramps? Y'all oughta send those boys some poke when it comes up this Spring
Trying to make a meal from what we know Ötzi the iceman ate would be a phenomenal collab with Max Miller of Tasting History! :D
Bring in Miller and Sohla El-Waylly and do a paleolithic five course feast.
@@Zardagbum Oh! Even better idea! I'm in! :D
YES!!!!! I need him back on the show at some point and a collab between them even more!!!! Same as guga foods!
@@Zardagbumalso guga food!
No, that bloater is a terrible charlatan@@HunterSentinel
Hey! Shout out to the great pudding debate.
You could lookup the oldest preserved written recipe. I know there is some full Roman books preserved, including on how to make garum, Roman fish sauce, but it's quite possible something older, like cuneiform on clay has managed to survive the ages. Pretty sure I've heard of beer making guides from the Sumerians, not sure on a food recipe.
But even an episode on Roman cooking would surely be fun as hell.
I absolutely LOVE this video concept. You should make this a series with a ‘Part 2’ where you create a dish that draws DIRECT inspiration from this historical dish using modern ingredients and techniques.
I just want to spend a day in the kitchen with Ebbers, he makes these videos a joy to watch. He is always sharing his knowledge and experience.
I really liked Ben's idea about Ötzi and decided to look for what his last meal was like. I found this "the researchers determined the ice mummy's final meal: dried ibex meat and fat, red deer, einkorn wheat, and traces of toxic fern." Would be interesting to see the boys taste that (Maybe don't touch the bracken fern 😂) And about the cooking: "they surmised Ötzi's meat was not heated above 140 degrees Fahrenheit. It's most likely the meat was dried for preservation."
(About the bracken fern they say this "“ You can go as far as he might have treated stomach ache with this fern since we knew that he suffered from some stomach pathogens,” says Maixner. But he adds, “this, for me at least, goes a little bit too far.” Another possibility is that he wrapped his food in fern, accidentally ingesting pieces along with his snack-an idea previously proposed for Ötzi's ingested moss.")
Bracken is eaten by a number of people across the world! It's toxic because of a carcinogen, ptaquiloside, and thiaminase, an enzyme that breaks down thiamine and can therefore cause beriberi (thiamine deficiency), and heat denatures both of them. You can also destroy the ptaquiloside with a base, such as ash, and it even breaks down slowly over time at room temperature. Bracken consumption has been correlated with high rates of gastric cancer in certain regions, but it may be due to ptaquiloside leaching into the water supply rather than dietary consumption.
Dried meat and fat with wheat and the fern makes me wonder if it wasn't a form of pemmican. Native American pemmican can include berries, but I can see the wheat standing in to provide carbs, and the fern could have been a seasoning or preservative.
@@rcrawford42 I was thinking about pemmican too!
From how he died, where he was found and what he was carrying at the moment of his death it's very possible he was being chased and/or hunted and running for his life. I'd imagine in that situation you eat what you can that's quick and easy. It's possible he didn't realise exactly what he was eating and mistook it for something similar he knew was edible due to the haste and fear that was driving him on, especially if he was sleep deprived. 100% speculation obviously but doing such guessing, story making with such ancient history based on the few, facts you have is part of the fun of such finds to me.
Ben absolutely made this episode. He provided (nerdy) insight; he announced his ignorance (albeit very little); he defended Barry's thoughtful suggestions (as a leader should) when Jamie only attempted to make fun; and he remained practical. Good on you, Ben. What a good egg you are.
Traditional Norwegian dumplings ("raspeballer") are often made with a lot of barley flour added to the potato base. But served with fatty meats, like cured or salted lamb, pork knuckles, and bacon. Never lean venison. Very rustic, and VERY tasty if cooked properly.
nomnom
I agree, some sort of fat is a good thing if making dumplings. (Why we use suet in the UK). So if forced to use venison either use the suet from the carcass - or butter & cheese was available at this time period, add that into the mix.
We make something similar called muthiya (pronounced moo~ti~ya) with different herbs or vegetables, namely mint/dill/cabbage/lauki/carrot. Made by adding flour, besan (gram flour), corn meal, salt, crushed cumin, coriander, chilli powder, turmeric, sugar and oil and just enough water to combine. These are steamed or pan fried.
I think it's one of those dishes that humans given similar ingredients will come up with over and over again. There are some dishes that seem fairly universal that just get adapted to the available ingredients and tastes of the area.
Love this video! I would absolutely LOVE to see a Chef vs Chef with Kush and Ben taking this recipe and modernising it for the 21st century using the same ingredients
Yeah I was thinking the same thing
Barry's chicken=dinosaur comment lol!!! Also him figuring out how to work with the stinging nettles and ben's geekiness in trying to figure out the timeline vs whatever that existed at that point of time. Fun video! As a history geek, I enjoyed it thoroughly! :)
So glad to hear it, thanks for watching! 😁
Y’all, thank you for holding my interest for so manyhyears. I feel like you are warm friends that I spend time with every now and 😢then. So helpful to my social anxiety, y’all are awesome e!
I think the pressure is quite high on Barry since he is a sous-chef. I love it !
@@H.M.Ot4kuHas he ever been "normal"?😉 All of them have been doing it for years and have cooks around them.
More of this, PLEASE!!!!! Love this kind of rugged, simplistic cooking. Maybe do a few of these ancient meals and then do a modern take on them to show how far we've come in culinary growth. Pretentious Cavemen!
I'd like a recreation of the oldest recipes from around the world. Simply fascinating and well done guys!
You can check out Max Miller and his Tasting History and Sohla El-Waylly Ancient Recipes.
@@cindiargumaniz2193 I love Tasting History! His video on Figgy Pudding was informative and I love his humor. Thanks for the suggestions!
Would love to see them try cooking a recipe or recipes from Apicius, A roman cookbook from around the 4th century.
I just thought of an evil idea.
Well, only to Barry specifically.
Jamie or Mike can propose battles against Barry, and if they can win three or five times *IN A ROW,* they can take the Sous Chef title away from Barry and claim it, as well as his red apron.
It will cause issues, so it’s kinda just for fun.
How is this evil? It’s quite brilliant if you ask me.
I had a similar idea when they were collecting badges, challenging someone's badge, having them cook something to prove that they earned it. Dunno if I'd take the sous-chef jacket away from Barry, he earned it. If anything, I'd have Mike and Jamie have battles to decide that in a year, who can challenge Barry for it with another three-course meal with judges.
This is amazing!!!!
I'm all for this in theory, as Kush pointed out we know who the actual better chef is. Barry won because what those chefs are looking for happens to be his exact area of expertise. Sadly, it'd be pointless, at least with Ben as a judge. Barry has won multiple creativity battles while openly admitting that he's making a different chef's recipe, including telling Ben that he's making one of HIS recipes. He won one with a recipe he'd done before, WITH ben giving him instructions, against mike pulling off something Ben had never attempted and said he liked. Barry has been allowed to work past the time limit, to openly bend or break rules. I like all our Sorted hosts, but Ben has a pretty notorious bias toward Barry. Probably at least partially from Barry's particular style being perfect for Ben's palate. Getting that many in a row just isn't going to happen, unless they get Kush or Slater in to judge.
More of this!!! There are sooo many old recipes thousands of years old with great stories and developments behind them. So many!
Love the Sorted/History crossover. Food and history are my absolute comfort zones (possibly the reason I liked you meeting with Max Miller so much)
Brilliant. Now I’ve found your channel, I can’t stop watching. So nice to hear some banter in a British accent- so much American content gets grating to my UKian ears. Not saying American channels aren’t good, but your content is amazing. I haven’t cooked for ages due to a back problem, and you’re making me want to get back into the kitchen. Keep up the good work, I’m loving it.
Can we talk about how amazing is to watch someone so passionate about food as Ben? I´m here for it!
Thank you to the team at Sorted Food for posting this video today! I was just told that I have a non cancerous brain tumor which I did surgery for yesterday. This video has really brightened my day!
Sorell and nettle are two great ingredients. We use sorell a lot in Hungary. Traditionally we prepare it like a thick creamy soup and eat it with soft boiled/sunny side up eggs, or meatballs, but I regularly make pesto from it, too.
Also I love Ben's attitude towards the whole process, he was so humble and respectful. And yes, cooked barley after the brewing process looks exactly like that, that was my first thought.
A pleasure to watch ben apply his cheffy knowledge with his broader knowledge to try and piece together this ancient recipe. His love for food always shines through ❤
Would love to see an episode where Ben improves this recipe and brings it up to date
Love Ben's knowledge of the humours. Not often encountered in cooking shows.
Aren’t the the humors a disproven theory from the middle ages? Like Bile and so forth?
@@abehmeI think they got it from the Ancient Greeks during Antiquity (around 400-500 BC)
@@NaishaS Yeah, the humors were supposed to correspond with the 4 classic elements as well.
My mother used to cook nettle soup, that was very tasty. I think I should give it ago in spring.
Yes, nettle soup is meant to be really good!
@@SortedFoodyessir 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉❤❤❤❤
I tried it the other spring, thanks to Atomic Shrimp and his foraging videos. Brilliant it was, too.
My brothers wife made nettle and dock leaf soup a while back and it was shockingly tasty. Very little else in it, just a bit of vegetable stock, potatoes, onions and pepper makes a really good vegetable broth. Nettles taste a lot like spinach, dock leaves are like a more herby lemon grass. Two weeds that you'd be annoyed to find growing in your garden that are hard to stop growing, never mind difficult to cultivate...and they are actually really good ingredients. We just don't utilise them at all in the UK even though they are everywhere.
15:05 The wort is the sugary water that the grain was steeped in, which is what gets fermented. The left over grain is just called "spent grain". - Time fore SORTED to take a brewery tour.
And fun fact, many breweries donate that to farms who then use it to feed their animals and they love it. Some donate to be composted.
I would assume the venison in the water would be less trimmed and have more connective tissue and bone that would make it more of a broth
Indeed, that sort of cut would be ideal for a soup.
This would be interesting to see as a series! Proper old cooking using the same techniques and recipe PLUS the modern update with the same ingredients but with the techniques from the chefs!
Fun fact! I use nettle in my "NPR jam": nettle, peach, rhubarb. If you didn't know, NPR is National Public Radio here in the States, which my jam is an homage to!
Care for sharing a recipe with us?
@erzsebetkovacs2527 oh gosh, lemme try. It's been a few years because I moved. For 1 Mason jar, boil together 3 cups water, 1 peeled and large-diced peach (fresh), approx. 6 inches rhubarb chopped (fresh), and 3.5 oz dried stinging nettle with 1-3 cups sugar, to your own taste. Boil it low & slow (maybe a simmer?) Until the rhubarb has broken down, then you can turn it up if that's your wish until it coats well the back of a spoon. Cool and put into a Mason jar in the fridge.
15:15 the wort is the liquid that you then add yeast to that becomes beer. the spent grain is ususally just called the mash, grist, or... spent grain. (side note you can use the spent grain to make snack bars similar to granola bars)
Love the video, as usual. Would love to see Time Team Tony Robinson come on as a guest cook & you do recipes through the ages.
Honestly, Ebbers is just such a delight. I'd genuinely love to eat a meal with someone who just spent the whole time talking analyzing the history of an ingredient or what tools would be useful in the prepapration. What an absolute gem 💜
All the discussions on the history behind it being accurate is just so funny. Ben asking all the important questions. 😂
Of course! Only the important questions here 😆
@@SortedFoodAMAZING 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉❤❤❤❤❤
I had an idea for you at the end. Take the wheel from the cook the countries series and put years on it suggested by the community. Then spin it and try to find a recipe from that time. Like a dish from 1574 or something, then make it as best they can. Don't limit it to European cooking but try worldwide. At the end of each video you can ask for more date suggestions and go from there.
I was wondering if you decide to stop giving a proper subtitles for any videos now because even though I can understand you guys quite well despite being a non english speaker, I found the subtitles very useful to understand more about the videos especially if you talk about some cooking techniques or some unfamiliar ingredients. I hope you bring it back.
People in China were in fact writing in 6000 BCE! Tortoise shell writing at that time. So yes! Writing did exist back then. (Historian here, but also, access to internet search lol)
Even the word “Nettles” makes me nostalgic for being a kid running around the Woods and Dells of Edinburgh , some of which barely even exist only 30 years later !
This is really intresting, I hope you explore more of these ancient methods and what would have been avalable and what it's based on
MAN! I love this channel so much. Please keep it up! Also my dream video is still Drunk chefs remote control Sober normals. Would be hilarious with guest chefs too! Keep it up Sorted :)
Make more of this! Always loved Sohla's Ancient Recipes series and would love to see more from you guys!
This was so cool! I went on a bit of a dive to find more info about where the recipe came from, since, as Ben rightly points out, written history didn’t exist a few thousand years later. Looks like it was pulled from ‘Prehistoric Cooking’ by Jacqui Wood. There’s a Guardian article about it from 2007.
I would love to see how Ben would use these ingredients to create a meal, using cooking methods and other ingredients available to people at that time (maybe not hedgehog, though, they’re far too cute to eat!)
Edit: prehistoric pass it on?!!!!
If they want to use hedgehogs they should call the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds). They had planned to cull some 5000 hedgehogs in the Hebrides to protect birds. After the killing started they eventually relented to public pressure & relocated the survivors. (Though many say that relocation is also a death sentence).
But yeah, a prehistoric Pass It On sounds a grand idea.
Ooooh that sounds like a cool book to read!
"word of advice to them".... I was in bits, love the way Ebbers mind works. Idea time, give the boys the ingredients like this from really old recipes and make it a mystery box round, see what they come up with, but with no store cupboard. Thanks lads for another great vid, brightens my day.
I like to think some people from that time are looking down and thinking “ooo that’s not how I did it, but it looks about right” or totally roasting you for not doing it the old fashioned way 😂
Hahaha love this! We wonder what they would think? 🤔
I was actually sort of curious about this. They said the "recipe" dated back to the stone age, and my first reaction was: how did they boil things then, without metal pots. But apparently clay cooking vessels date back to 20k bc. Interesting!
Also from the same rabbit hole, people apparently definitely wrote things down in 6k BC, unlike what Ebbers expected of them. :)
Ben stating “there’s no fat in this”… yes, however you’re assuming the venison was butchered the same way as today and that they didn’t cook with rendered venison fat. Perhaps a task so common practice, it wasn’t needed to be written down in the instructions/recipe.
@@MrVovansim I also fell down a rabbit hole!
I think it would be really interesting to see the Chefs take these recipes and update them, trying to accomplish the same idea of the original dish but making it as good as it can be with modern ingredients and techniques.
I don't get what you did here, assuming ancient people wouldn't understand flavour. I would have more assumed that the meat was charred on a stick over the fire, cut up and simmer until broken down to make more of a stew, with the nettles used to help break the meat down, then the remaining herbs added to the barley flour to make, essentially dumplings. Meat and Gravy - that's how it was done, not the dry meat and green goop.
I took a nutritional anthropology course many years ago for my degree and was told that the oldest written recipe known is one for tomato salsa which obviously comes from the Americas. The recipe is so good that we are still using it today!
Sorrel and lovage are SO UNDERRATED. (says hugging the jar of lovage)
Careful with sorrel if you're prone to kidney stones though, same as rhubarb.
I’ve seen this multiple times now? What’s going on here?
@shantelletolley6896 Seen what?
Discovered your channel Monday. Love the laughs! Thanks!
There are plenty of spices used even by Neanderthals (like mustard) that can be used in this. Unfortunately, we lost many plants (possibly also insects) that were used in cooking and medicine in the late stone age not least as a direct result of agriculture.
I love how Ben is just all in for the teasing joke of being 'old' and plays it out in such a fun way.
Now this is a video you could’ve shot with Max Miller. Please collab with him again
It’s be cool to see you guys take these old recipes and advance them! Like not changing any of the cooking techniques or not changing any of the ingredients. Put a cap or limit on how much they change. That would be fun to watch!
I would love it if they did another episode like this and asked Max for help
Great shout!
@@SortedFoodYES PLEASE 🎉🎉🎉🎉❤❤❤❤
Sorrel is quite popular in Russia. We cook sorrel soup in summer, basically a couple of diced potatoes, any meat or sausage, sorrel leaves and a beaten egg right in the end. Delicious)
Speaking of Ancient Recipies, Sohla would be an amazing guest. Perhaps in a pass it on. Perhaps with her partner in crime, Ham.
Edit: Please cook the Iceman's last meal.
Would love to see you make old recipes and then try modernizing them, both with local ingredients only but modern techniques and again with the whole pantry unlocked!
I love this video - it’s so interesting to learn about the cultural history 🤓🤓
Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for watching!
A tip from Finland, where we still have a lot of nettle recipes today. You should quickly blanch the nettles so that they will lose their ability to sting. Makes handling them much easier. 😉
As an American, the idea of eating something called "stinging nettles" sound about as appetizing as eating poison ivy. Makes you wonder what person went "Hey, I wonder if you can eat this plant that stings me."
Very true! If only we had a portal….. that would be awesome.
@@SortedFoodLOVE YOUR CONTENT GUYS 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
You need to show the plant who's the boss!
@@kjts9846😂
We have stinging nettles here on the coast of Canada. Horrible little things. I still have ptsd from a run in playing paintball. Camomile lotion is a savior.
I would love to see much more of those ancient recipes, as I find it rather fascinating not just to read about it but actually get to see the dish.
Also, I would love to see Ben in the end, or as another video, give the ancient dish a modern twist, and then all of you to tell us how much of a difference it makes.
Foody geekery with Ben is one of my favourite things. 😊
If you want to do more ancient history recipes, you should do a crossover collab with Sohla el Wayly who does a regular History channel show where she tries to authentically recreate recipes from history and interviews experts.
She even did a version of THIS recipe a couple years ago! th-cam.com/video/by8WDtgE_Dc/w-d-xo.htmlsi=Fu3_9wgKeINypUDO
All of those ingredients are still used today in many Central and Eastern European dishes. Sorrel soup (zupa szczawiowa) comes to mind - a favourite of mine....with the protein being pigs' knuckles.
Sorrel soup 💚
I can't believe you let him do all that without just steaming or parboiling the nettles
The nettle pudding reminded me quite a bit of raspeball, a traditional Norwegian dumpling-like dish most often made of grated potatoes, flour, salt, and stock, mashed into balls and simmered. Very stodgy, but very tasty.
I remember suggesting Nettle Pudding to you last year. So glad you made it. I just hope the nettles you picked hadn't started to flower or you might get some pain in your kidneys!
The nettles look very young to me, just... at this time of the year you don't find fresh nettles in the wild. They start to appear in February, March and are tiny and dark green then, get bigger in April and peak in early May - best time to harvest and dry / preserve them. So they have to come from some sort of (heated?) greenhouse. 👀
@@vanillablossomhey so I live in FNQ Australia. We have a nettle too but it doesn’t sting you like the southern one does, then we also have stinging tree which no one is dumb enough to fk with, but the southern stinging nettle is a proper CUin the NT. The one that doesn’t sting, should you still boil that and what’s the thing that makes your kidney hurt?
I would have used a mortar and pestle on the nettle.
And I would have ground the dandelion to a powder, as that's how we use merrygold flowers in Georgian cooking. Great with any protein, grain and veg (anything really).
All of the greens would have been good as a paste used however you like or in bold chunks.
Would have been cool to see what Ebbers would do with those ingredients now a days
3:04 I love sorrel. It is very hard to find, in houston. Farmers’ markets are the best hope.🤗
You guys dont include closed caption in your videos anymore?
I'd love to see you guys try longer makes - beer, cider, vinegars, wine and cook with them. Also, making more canning/ preserving things. Ben has an allotment that he surely preserves things from. Baz has his garden. What are you canning/ fermenting/ preserving from them? Here in China, on January 18, we'll make the pickled garlic (la ba suan) used for Spring Festival and into the new year.
Is it garlic garlic? How do you pickle it and how do you use it for the festival?
Hi! You take peeled fresh garlic and cut a bit off of each end. Throw it all in a clean container. Heat up (simmering or just barely boiling) the vinegar of choice and pour over the garlic. Cover it completely. Then let it sit. You want the garlic to turn green. That sounds bad but it's not, it just means it's pickled. You can use eat the garlic (whole pieces) in (between) bites of dumplings/ gyoza or the like and you can use the vinegar it's soaking in to dip your dumplings in, too. For Spring Festival (mid February this year), everyone in the north eats dumplings as midnight rolls in so it's featured then. Making this pickled garlic is part of the festival prep, this year we should make it on January 18. The garlic stays good as long as it's in the vinegar. It gets sweeter the longer it is pickled. Delicious! @@erzsebetkovacs2527
Jamie, everything looks like a massive burger to you...
I'd love them to do a "foraging" episode - bit hard in the middle of London City but I'm inspired by nature walks around where I live and someone who helps us pick out things like wild garlic, sorrel, dandelions and even mushrooms!
Very interesting video, even though I spent half of it yelling ''animal fat'' at the screen
Would love to see you guys re-imagine this old recipe with modern techniques and modern spices
Can we have a pass it on using only foraged ingredients? They’re allowed to use modern equipment obviously 😂
I'd absolutely love to see you guys recreate old recipes from history such as Max does.
A crossover between Sohla of Ancient Recipes and Sorted could be fun. She's the absolute best.
That was so entertaining and very educational. I would love to see more, and you guys slinging knowledge and theories.
I'm curious about how difficult it is on a show like this to always be positive about everything you eat. The reality is, there are some truly unpleasant cuisines and countries that just have abysmal food scenes out there. Yet, on a show like this you can't offend anyone so, how often do you have to pretend that you actually like something or are excited about it?
I think this could make a damn good recurring segment. One week have the boys cook an ancient recipe. Then have another week with Kush and Ben trying to see if they can take those same ingredients and make them into something more modern. (Though I would like to see less store cupboard staples than the norm)
I love sorrel. It's phenomenal in sauces.
Or sorrel soup with hard-boiled eggs. YUM.
Chef Simon Rogan has a very very similar but updated in his cookbook "Rogan". It also used savoy cabbage, dock leaves, onion, leek, porage oats and grated hard-boiled eggs, panko battered, deep-fried, and served with a ramson (wild garlic) emulsion
Sally Pointer does some amazing foraging videos many of which also talk about prehistoric times as she is also a great experimental archeologist (masters degree from University of Exeter). Your video reminded me of her video where she also made a nettle pudding with nearly the same ingredients. If you can I would love to see a cross over where you revisit this, or other dishes with her. If anything I think you'd find her approach interesting :)
th-cam.com/video/qG2OjuJqEzg/w-d-xo.html
I love Sally! Her reproduction garments are incredible
It's a little late but for the future. The stinging part of the Nettle is on the underside of the leaf. If you stack them bright green side up before you cut it you won't get stung, or if you blanch the leaves before you cut them.
5:18 Barry hurting himself with the stinging nettles shows that he's still learning. Grow from this bazz😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Definitely 😆
@@SortedFoodYep 😂😂😂😂😂
Watching him waive his hands around the pile b4 he started chopping them up needed to have disco music in the background. 😆🪩🔪
I would LOVE to see more content like this. Ben's suggestion sounds like a perfect place to start!