00:12okay this is like my first apartment in the city hi I'm Leah Cohen and today we
00:20are making a Thai fried chicken normally you can find me a pig and cow in the
00:24Lower East Side but today I'm in someone's kitchen in the East Village
00:27wait whose kitchen is this hey it's Alyssa three things to know before you try to
00:33cook in here one I never cook I pretty much survive on takeout two I don't have
00:39many pots and pans because I just don't need them and then three I don't really
00:44have any serious cutlery or measuring cups or even bowls good luck okay my
00:51reaction when I first saw this kitchen was okay this isn't that bad this is a
00:56good prep space once I started going through the cupboards that was when I
01:00really felt thrown off damn she got nothing in here there's a lot of shoes so
01:07I'm gonna start by covering this tabletop with plastic wrap I need to open this
01:16this is literally the hardest part of this recipe
01:23okay we got our cutting board I can see a knife though this is the only knife that I have
01:28to work
01:28with I am gonna take the butter knife and clean the cilantro root scoring the chicken this is gonna be
01:36fun obviously if you have a sharp knife this is probably easier in an ideal
01:41world the incisions will just be enough to break the flesh and then I got to
01:47figure out a mortar and pestle
02:03okay just a couple of cloves try to break it up pepper coriander seeds this is
02:11actually not the worst thing ever trying to convince myself that it's not salt pound away
02:20I want to break the actual cup okay figure that would happen first attempt with a mortar and pestle
02:30was an absolute fail I broke the mortar sorry I'll get you a new one we're starting over again with
02:37a
02:38ziploc bag and we're gonna use the bottle of oyster sauce so this is not the consistency of the paste
02:44that I
02:45would like but it's good enough we're just gonna add the rest of the ingredients which is oyster
02:49sauce fish sauce we're just eyeballing everything which is fine some sugar and
02:55MSG then we are going to just add our chicken and then massage it all up in
03:02there let this marinate for a couple of hours get it better overnight all right so
03:07it's been about six hours the chicken's been marinating now we're ready to make
03:11the batter so we have the rice flour baking soda and then we're gonna use just a pinch of the
03:19mushroom powder and then a little bit of salt I'm gonna grab a fork from my tool bin I love
03:28how
03:28I'm calling it a tool bin it's literally a mug with silverware all right so we're using a seltzer
03:35water instead of regular water also just to make the batter lighter okay so you're looking kind of
03:42for thinner than a pancake batter a little bit thicker than a crepe batter we're gonna pour some
03:48flour onto the sheet pan I'm using rice flour here because that's what's traditional in the Thai
03:53fried chicken also it gives it an like a crispier coating you want the coating to stick to the chicken
03:59so you're gonna let it sit for I don't know maybe like 30 minutes so it seems like this stove
04:04doesn't
04:05have a pilot light I have a lighter which hopefully I don't burn any of my fingers or my hair
04:11that was
04:12actually pretty seamless this is a pandan leaf for those of you who are not familiar with it you want
04:18to make sure that you pat it dry because that is really dangerous if you just add the wet pandan
04:22leaf
04:22that can cause fire we're heating the oil up to 300 degrees I don't have a thermometer on me so
04:29I'm
04:29gonna test it by taking some of the flour like maybe one of these like bigger pieces and then just
04:35like
04:35putting it in the pot once it hit the oil it started to bubble right away so I think we're
04:40good I'm gonna
04:40drop in the pandan leaf and then very gingerly add the chicken to the pot I'm going to use some
04:50forks to
04:51turn the chicken around because we don't have any tongue I'm a professional and I'm still a little bit
04:56scared about getting the chicken out of this pot of oil if you can't get it out and it kind
05:00of like
05:01drops then the oil could potentially splatter in your face which you don't want to mess up the
05:05moneymaker wish me luck okay yay I didn't burn my face we want to make sure that the actual fried
05:21chicken cooks all the way throughout so that's why we do it at a low temperature at first and then
05:26we crank up the heat to 350 because we want the outside to get really nice and crispy
05:33oh okay we did it I'm not gonna lie I felt really defeated initially just because there was not
05:40much for me to work with but I powered through it and I made some delicious fried chicken so I
05:46feel
05:46relieved I have a message for Alyssa girl you need a chef's knife that is our finished product the Thai
05:52fried chicken done in a random apartment in the East Village
