00:00Thank you for stopping by Ballistic BBQ. On this video I'm going to be
00:03recreating the umami burger from the Boppin' Grill out of Chicago. Let's get
00:08going.
00:12Now I first saw this burger being prepared on a top 10 burger episode of
00:17Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. I immediately wanted to cook this thing. It
00:20looks insane. I mean just very well crafted. So I emailed the restaurant and
00:24they got back with me I mean within an hour or so. Very excited about me doing
00:28this recreation. They wanted to see my take on it which I really appreciated.
00:33So put it on the list of things to do. As that window started to close, the shoot
00:37date came closer, I started looking in to make sure I had all the correct
00:41ingredients and everything and I went out to their menu online. Now I'm going to
00:45rant a little bit here. I noticed that the name of the burger had been changed
00:50from umami burger to duck cell burger and I kind of knew what was going on because
00:56I had some experience with this. You see there's a restaurant chain that's based
01:01out of Los Angeles and their name may or may not have the word umami in it.
01:07That's all I'm going to say about that. But they think they own that word and that
01:13word was actually coined in 1908 by a Japanese chemist. It describes that fifth
01:18flavor you know savory just yummy basically. And they've been on a quest to
01:24basically bully restaurants that have that word in their menus. They think they
01:30own it and I think that's wrong and they came after me because I recreated one of
01:35their burgers. I did a copycat of their burger and basically what their MO is is
01:40they unleash this big attorney out of Chicago on the restaurants or whoever and
01:47try to bully them into taking that word out of there. And I discovered that they
01:52lost a lawsuit of a federal court judge ruled that they can't monopolize that
01:56word. I mean basically it's like the Cheesecake Factory a big restaurant out
01:59here telling people they can't have cheesecake or the word cheesecake in
02:03their menus. Wrong. I don't have any respect for that restaurant and I will
02:07never eat there again. I could be starving and I wouldn't go there and and I'll
02:11tell you what I used to go out on my way to go to that restaurant. Anyway enough of
02:14that let's get to cooking here. So the first thing we are going to do is make a
02:18duck cell which is kind of like a mushroom paste I guess and it's very
02:24commonly used in beef wellington. So in the cast iron skillet I'm going to add
02:28some pork fat and this is basically fat that I rendered out of bacon. You may be
02:33seeing later on in the video here and some butter and the owner of this
02:39restaurant uses a lot of pork fat and bacon so trying to keep it real here. Get to
02:47the butter and the fat I'm going to add some onion, some sliced onion here. Going
02:56to cook this down until it becomes somewhat translucent. We're going to add
03:01just a little bit of salt, a little bit of pepper, a lot of bit of garlic. This is
03:12chopped garlic, finely minced garlic. Stir this in. We're just going to continue
03:20cooking this down again. I want to see a nice translucency here. All right I have
03:26here dried bonito flakes. This is basically bonito fish that's been smoked, dried, and
03:33shaved into thin little shavings and I have to tell you it smells just very smoky and
03:39nice and I tried a little piece of it. I've used this in cooking before but I've
03:42never actually had the guts to just toss one in my mouth. It's actually pretty
03:45good and it's not going to give a fishy flavor. It's going to add a nice smoky
03:48flavor. We're adding a decent pinch of that. You can see it's literally evaporating.
03:55This is disappearing into the mix here. All right I have here anchovy dashi. It's
04:01basically a Japanese anchovy soup mix and I have about a teaspoon and a half. Same
04:10thing these are just going to add a lot of richness and essentially what we're
04:14doing is pumping up the glutamate in this dish and it's going to enhance
04:18flavors just like MSG does. Right now we're going to add some finely finely minced
04:24portobellos. I put this in the food processor and really minced it up and I'm
04:28just going to add this until we can't add any more. This will cook down. There's a
04:32lot of water and mushrooms.
04:40A little bowl in here. How's that? A little bit more salt on the mushrooms. A little bit more pepper.
04:52Continue cooking this down. So we've been cooking this now for about 15 minutes or
04:57so as you can see much of the moisture has been cooked out. Now we're going to
05:01finish this off with some white truffle oil.
05:15Wow smells good. All right we're done here. I'm going to pull this off put it on the
05:21warming spot of the grill and we're gonna start making that burger. So one of the
05:26things I really really love about doing these copycat recipes is I learned some
05:29very cool techniques and some recipes I never would have thought of. This burger
05:33has a lot of those. I'm going to start cooking that patty right now. Lay down some
05:38oil on the flat top here.
05:45The salt. A little bit of pepper. I said lay down the patty obviously. That's a meatball.
05:57We're going to take care of that right now though.
06:10All right we're going to give this a flip.
06:15There we go. That's why we do it. That's why we smash burgers. You get that killer crust.
06:21We're going to lay down some of that duck cell. We have some bacon that I cooked up crisp, sliced
06:29up.
06:32Fire guys. Sirens are rolling.
06:40I have here some smoked gouda. Some brioche rolls that I had just buttered. Lay these down.
06:56All right we are going to start assembling this burger. I have here some togarashi mayonnaise.
07:00Basically what I did was I took some Japanese mayo and I mixed it up with some togarashi seasoning.
07:06Which is killer. It's a bunch of Japanese spices blended together. And I found out about this seasoning
07:12because of this burger. And I'm going to be using this a lot. So lay down some of that mayo.
07:21Top and bottom buns. Now the Bop and Grill puts a sun-dried tomato confit on their burger. So what
07:28I
07:28have here is some sun-dried tomatoes. It was you know being marinated in an olive oil. Minced it up
07:34and this will be great. Put this down here on the flat top. Take the spatula press it down.
07:57And there we go. Check that out. So we are going to scrape this onto the bottom bun.
08:16Now this gorgeous, gorgeous patty.
08:25Top this bad boy.
08:28And just one more ingredient. I have to tell you this is a gorgeous looking burger. It smells so good
08:34in
08:35this patio. Wow. Let's go ahead and slice into this bad boy here.
08:47Ah. All right.
08:56I'm telling you what really pops right now is that sun-dried tomato. It just has a tanginess that you
09:02don't get with regular tomato. And that crispy bacon, that smoky gouda, and that duck cell is insane.
09:10Insane. Do not be afraid of using these ingredients like that dried bonito flakes or that anchovy dashi.
09:18I mean this guy knows what he's doing and I know why the men's journal voted this as the best
09:27umami burger in the country. It's insane. Guys, thank you for watching. I really appreciate it.
09:35Pop and Grill, you guys are awesome. Thank you for being excited about me doing this video.
09:41Hold your guns guys. I'm telling you, you can win this battle. Umami is a culinary word. It's common.
09:48No one has the right to monopolize that word. It's already been ruled in a federal court and I really
09:52hope
09:52you stick to your guns. It's just sort of a matter of principle. I understand if you don't, but I
09:56hope
09:56you do. Anyway, thanks for stopping by. Keep those requests coming guys. Cheers.
