okay so here we are eating our feed my name is nikki today my friend patrick has challenged me to make a smoked watermelon that looks like meat i just don’t understand food pretending to be other food you eat with your eyes i don’t like the confusion of putting it in your mouth and being like this is not the thing i thought i was putting in my mouth so not only do i have to make this watermelon look like a ham i have to make a smoker yes that’ll be real easy and fun right because if i’m ever in a blind yeah it started at this restaurant in new york called ducks eatery there is a food insider video where they like interview the chef william horowitz he walks through the process of how to make this you first have to like skin the watermelon you have to take the rind off he brines it and then he dries it and then it’s smoked for like a half of a day and then it’s sliced up and served as if you would meet as always to help with every episode is our wonderful friend riya hi this is what i’m doing today i didn’t know there was such a trend i feel like chefs experimenting using you know like classic technique for cooking meat to applying to vegetable whatever the outcome is you will learn how to smoke if i do this successfully will i walk away being able to actually smoke a ham yes you have a lot of skills under your belt okay i see that i see that all right well sounds good i’ll keep you in the loop cool as they say i will set my bala so please do set that bar very low okay good luck bye i have a lot of work to do yeah first steps d rinding a watermelon you have these two choice watermelons patrick gave a preference bigger will look better bigger is better i need to get the enzyme to make flat bottoms which i think will then make the rest of the rind coming off around a little bit easier because it’ll be on a flat surface what does this tell you i’m too short now i’m ready oh god oh it’s really slanted it’s not a straight line at all it’s fine you like that i can get the other side that seems flatter so that’s this point it’s just a matter of that oh but i need to like cut deep enough that the rind actually comes off does it look meaty yet it does actually i’m like a barber might there be an argument for keeping a little bit of the rind on for the smoking process i think so maybe that’s like the fat i love it i think you’re ready yay so next up is brining the process of soaking something in water with salt it’s like a thing you can do to meat to make it flavorful and infuse it based on the insider video and how he brined the watermelon they talk about this ingredient called oakwood ash which helps in this brining process to develop some sort of skin we couldn’t find it so this is what we’re doing i’m just going to eyeball these measurements it’s water a lot of salt i’m going to put too much in isn’t that a thing when there’s too much salt and water it like comes to a point where it won’t dissolve anymore okay some coriander and oregano twister all right now for the plop this looks ridiculous big fruity basketball that’s a brine and there’s a naked watermelon we’re gonna put this in the fridge and brine it overnight and i guess magic will happen next we’re gonna go to a hardware store and hopefully start putting together a smoker okay believe it or not this is my soon to be smoker my smoker fiance i’m making a cardboard box diy smoker modeled after what alton brown has done on tv in his show good eats this is obviously like the smoker container in which we will put everything we got a couple of dowel rods to rest our watermelon on top of inside the box will be this roasting pan an electric burner a cast iron skillet which then we have to fill with wood chips a pie plate that will cut some holes in which will be a smoke diffuser dowel rods kind of like going right across one of these and then we’ll put the watermelon on top the box will be full of smoke that’s it we need to cover up the logos on this box i thought maybe we could draw something on it i drew a watermelon i drew us and then i said don’t touch me i’m a smoking hot watermelon that’s adam with glasses and a beard okay it needs a butt flap the only thing the buffalo needs to be big enough for is my hands i think to get oh god i totally missed that there’s a possibility that your wood chips will disintegrate and become no longer wood chips and you might have to replace them so i’m just going to start cutting okay that’s done so we have three dowels so i think i only need two now the trick is to poke holes on each side i want to just see like how high all of this stuff comes up to the watermelon needs to be high enough off of the smoker you want to smoke the ham evenly yeah that feels right basically we’ll put the dowel rods kind of through here hey it’s definitely at an angle but that’s fine whatever can we do one more so much crafting today and there you have it bada bing bada boom here’s our backup watermelon let’s see if it uh holds up that’s the watermelon right there oh wow i guess i could always just shave off the top if i absolutely yeah i need a hole in the box for the cord of the electric hot plate and i also need access to the on off switch for the hot plate itself so i could just kind of like cut open my roasting pan a bit don’t do this at home it’s a little janky but this whole thing is a little jinky yay just big enough okay my pie plate needs some holes you got to be firm oh okay i think that’ll dissipate smoke okay i feel pretty like accomplished actually could i just put this on my patio like one saturday and smoke some meat your neighbors would truly not know what the hell you’re doing they’ll just be like where is that smell coming from i don’t know so the last thing to do is to soak some wood chips these are like wood chunks so almost the whole bag i think we’re good good start adam just looked it up for me because i was like how long did i do this for and he was like you don’t have to soak wood chunks smoker’s done wood is wood and watermelon is brining tomorrow we start the grill tomorrow we smoke oh my god it’s so weird it’s got a big crack in it i thought you knew i had no idea so much oh it’s so cold here’s a smoker we gotta take it outside because we cannot smoke this inside okay we’ve got the smoker by plugging in the power to the hot plate this is full of wood all right lining it up so that’s gonna start heating and the wood’s gonna get hot and then that’ll turn into smoke in the meantime i have my watermelon and i don’t think we want any of the herbs on it while we smoke it also there’s a huge crack in it which i didn’t realize was there but apparently everybody else did it needs to dry it feels really silly to be using towels to dry off a watermelon because by nature should be wet but two thermometers so i think we want to aim for the temperature of the box and like the smoke in the box to be about 180. we’ll see if we get there the other one will go into the watermelon so when you set the temperature for the alarm there’s like different animals to tell you like what temperature it should cook at i think it’s so stupid to use the reference point for internal temperature for a watermelon with a ham because they are completely different consistencies you know what let’s just play along and let’s just use the ham one which is 160. it is currently 45 degrees so it’s got a long oh my god okay i’m gonna close this oh it’s now 93 in there wow this is actually working this box is going to get very hot in the alton brown video he says like if you stop seeing smoke that’s like a signal of when you should change the wood chips he also did use sawdust instead of wood chunks so it’s kind of like apples to oranges we can definitely keep an eye on it i need a little lawn chair [Applause] this is kind of nice i guess oh hello at the office oh okay what’s your name i was just calling you back three days later good job i’m sorry well i’m busy why are you calling me right now i’m smoking a watermelon okay can i go back to work now yes hey i love you let me buy boxes 129. center of the watermelon is still 43. it’s been about two hours the temperature of the box is hovering very close to 180 and the inside of the watermelon temperature is 63. there’s significantly less smoke coming out of the box and i think that’s because it’s time to change out the wood chunks or at the very least check them whoa quick quick very hot more more more great so i think we can do another like smoke check around two hours oh my god okay the heat in the box is rising quickly we don’t want anything to explode so i think you turn it down to medium oh god i can’t see anything oh my god it can’t be done abandoned ship i can’t keep like a face full of smoke adam’s alternative suggestion was just to unplug the hot plate which i have just done but the temperature is still rising and there’s 192. okay it’s been four hours these are patrick’s sunglasses here let me use them it is kind of that like two hour mark where we should probably swap out the wood but i’m a little scared because last time i opened the buff up i almost died whoa okay we’re in business yeah wow the internal temp of the box dropped down to 187. the melons still at 93. it seems pretty unlikely that the watermelon is gonna hit an internal temperature of 160 degrees but we do want it to be warm enough i think we give it another two hours it’s been about six hours the watermelon temperature is at 108 it’s like almost the other day and i feel like 108 is like a fine temperature for watermelon best time now’s the time i’ve been waiting for two days and we get to open this oh it formed a skin it looks smoked which is great that’s really all i could ask for great job thank you okay so this was in the oven just to keep it warm while we were getting everything else set up it’s so ugly it’s like wet soft baby skin so now i’m just going to score it like ham it’s like juicing this is very strange you know this kept its shape pretty well yeah it did oops i really don’t know it’s fine oh it’s not so bad also there might be some nice scoring on the underside that’s from like the grill okay so now i baste it and it’s juices some olive oil and a rosemary oh my god that was incredibly unsafe i’m okay it’s also just way too big oh yeah i need those long gloves on again now i’m protected and i can’t pick up this spoon i think it’s stuck to them really how could it be that i don’t know ah flipping it to see if we can get a little bit of color on the rest of it wow flavor city right there i don’t want these to burn and taste weird how often is it that you taste something you’ve never tasted before i know maybe i could be tasting a new flavor that really tickles my fancy i don’t know if it looks any more like a ham in the viral video like you can tell that the watermelon looks much more like a ham got a little bit more of like charred darker marks to it and it has like a gelatinous and like squishy texture i don’t think i have those so i’m going to throw this in the broiler 10 minutes and see if there’s a change hi riya hi i brought you watermelon thank you so much maybe we can eat a real one i had to put it in the boiler okay the last time i checked it it looked like it was changing tingey’s good they’re great yeah cool okay so i’m just gonna go take it out now and then we can take a look oh wow look at that looks like a ham look at that i have no idea how to get it out of this maybe i can hold the cutting board closer you can just like great thank you oh it’s so slippery good good yes wow wow beautiful three water melons this is definitely better than what we had in 15 minutes ago all right cut it okay this kind of look like roasted beef like it’s very yeah there’s like parts of it that look like yeah beef more than ham right yeah yeah yeah it’s not super ginger look i saw jiggle [Music] okay you’ve really truly done it whoa okay okay today i have prepared for you confused watermelon should we eat it yeah yeah yeah cheers one two three [Music] oh oh it’s so tart this kind of reminds me of a pickle yeah really smoky pig yeah it does look like rare meat [Music] you know what this actually tastes exactly like kool-aid pickle it makes them sweet and it also makes them this color he’s gonna like it yeah i like the smoky it’s definitely ringing a little too loud but if you tone it down by a couple decibels they spill that’s my audio analogy for this these are like great depression snacks yeah let’s eat that that was great let’s see which one’s tastier oh yes certainly a worthy opponent patrick really liked it i learned a lot and i’m 100 sure that the restaurant has made something that like is exponentially tastier than this as a food imposter this is like 10 out of 10 you know yeah good job thank you i want someone to like make like a stock sound track of like people eating and enjoying watermelon is just slurping and you going Video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOhQn-lkQIU
