So I'm gonna be using a lot

Fancier than ingredients that I normally do, and "why is it a paid product placement" you say?

Because you can win two round-trip tickets to Japan

And you know I ain't paying for that the JNTO was looking for you to vote for a favorite Japanese inspired recipe.

I want to show you my favorite of the three recipes

I'm a little bit biased, because I'm Canadian and it has a maple soy glaze.

Why did I say maple that way? So make sure you stick around to the end of the video

And I will tell you, how you can enter to win those tickets

Today I'm gonna be making Wagyu beef skewers with maple soy glaze, because I'm Canadian, and we're actually legally required to include maple syrup in

every single one of our recipes

(That is not true...)

Let's talk about this maple soy glaze. It is really freaking delicious, and you can put it on many, many things

So if you don't eat beef, don't worry, make this magical glaze and just slather upon everything. First thing you're gonna need is sherry

vinegar. If you don't have sherry vinegar you can use rice wine vinegar or

Sometimes apple cider vinegar if it's not super strong. It's not necessarily a fancy vinegar

It just has more of like a golden vinegar taste to it, rather than like a tart one, like when you drink it

You're not like MYAH! It's more like mmm.

Yes, I did drink it in order to figure out the taste guys

[Simon in the background]: "DRINK IT NOW! DRINK IT NOW!"

I already did it. Why don't you drink it now? Drink it now!

You're gonna need to get yourself some okonomiyaki sauce. We've talked about this before for a couple other videos we did

I like to think of it as the Japanese answer to barbecue sauce. It's got like a tangy sweetness to it

But you can get this at any Asian grocery store

And if you don't have one near you, you can order it online. You're also gonna need some light soy

Sauce if you do have light soy sauce or low sodium

Just give it a little bit of a try and compare it to the other soy

Sauce you have and go for the one that tastes a little bit more blah, and if all this seemed too salty for you

Don't worry because you're gonna be adding a f*BAAA* ton of maple syrup. It's a real measurement in Canada it means half a cup

Literally half a cup. And you're also gonna need some cold butter

Icy cold butter, to add into our sauce to thicken it up

This is a really health conscious recipe, which is why I like to balance the maple syrup with the butter in an

Excellent kind of like, grains versus fats to make sure you get - okay, it's not good for you. All right. It's just delicious

What's that, you wish there was a vegetable of some kind included? yeah

I totally hear you, so you're going to be looking for the turd of all

potatoes, the sweet potato. I only say that because I always think they look like little tiny turds

We're gonna be peeling, steaming, and cubing it

We're gonna get to that later on. So before you start cooking, you're gonna want to take your bamboo skewers

And you're gonna want to soak them in some water in advance, to prevent them from catching on fire on your grill, because after all

They're wood. Now let's get going to the main ingredient, the beef. And for all you vegetarians out there, don't worry

You can substitute beef for cubed drained tofu

Hopefully you eat butter, because that's a critical part of this recipe. Vegetarians eat butter

vegans don't eat butter. So you vegans.. I don't know, I can't help you. All right, bring me the beef! *claps*

*Simon pinches Martina's nostrils and tries to hug her*

Ah yes, it always works that way. This is wagyu, and wagyu might sound confusing for some people

But it actually just means

"Japanese cattle." We've done a bunch of videos before when we had like Akita beef, which is wagyu but from Akita

We've also had Kobe beef, which is Wagyu from Kobe. We ended up getting this piece from-

HOLY CRAP!

*Transylvania music*

SEVENTY EIGHT DOLLARS?!

[Simon in the background]: "I told you you'd be surprised!"

$78 for this?!

[Simon in the background]: "We're stepping it up for this one!"

*Martina's tortured crying*

Oh my god

It comes in a leaf! Well, my leaf wrapped wagyu, wait till you guys get a look at this so

Beautiful and buttery looking. So you guys can see the intense marbling that's in this steak.

That's what all these little tiny light pockets

are, it's just a very

buttery type of meat so that when you actually cut it into cubes to grill it, the actual fat is gonna melt on the grill

And it's gonna be basically grilling and it's like magical

Self-made, butter sauce. Oh! I'm actually starting to salivate, we need to just get started. Oh, yeah

What's that f[bahh]kers?

Me, so f[bahh]king hot right now.

We're gonna peel and cube our sweet potato. You just put your sweet potato down on the plate like so, and you get one covered

In like a really cool amount of unicorns you just place it on like so, and then you just utter the magic words: "potato, potato

magical do"

And there you have it, all ready to go. I'm great at cooking, and yes, I'm totally great. Onto the glaze!

I was gonna say: "let's get glazed" and then I'm like: "maybe that means something

in a different language..."

So we're gonna take all our wet ingredients, that is the sherry vinegar, okonomiyaki sauce, the maple syrup, and the soy sauce, and we're gonna

Unceremoniously dump it into a saucepan

And we're just gonna heat it up on medium heat, and let that simmer for about five minutes

Then you want to cube up four tablespoons of cold butter

It should be cold, do not let it sit out on the table top and soften

*Whisper* I should probably turn it on..

Do you guys like my baby whisk? It's a little tiny.. Tiny little

Okay, now that it's starting to boil. I'm gonna let this simmer for five minutes

Just so that it thickens up, and then once five minutes go by, we're gonna add in our butter

Turn off the heat smells pretty fantastic

You can smell the vinegar, which is like your acidity side of it. Is acidity the right word it? is now b*BAAAA*es

It's gonna be so good. Isn't that right, Japanese bb8(?) that is right.

Okay, we're gonna kill the heat, and we are gonna whisk in the cold butter and in the butter as it cools it down

It'll start to thickening up and we're just gonna leave that be. This is my stabby tool. It's a real chef's tool. Duh

Gosh, that's satisfying

Anyone else want to stab things with their

[Simon in the background]: "I wanna try!"

[M]: Go ahead [S]: Welcome back to short people cooking. [M]: You donkey.

[S] That was satisfying! [M]: Wasn't it?

You're really screwing, Si*BAAA*mon

Get out of my kitchen!

Note: if you are using tofu

You are going to need to use this glaze, to actually soak the tofu cubes for about an hour or so. A little bit more

work, but

That was your choice wasn't it?

*laughter*

*Martina's saying she lost her voice by laughing*

*Look at dat sauce though*

NOOOO! That's fine. I'm not using that much glaze...

Ugh, it's so bad. Ugh, who thought that putting maple syrup and butter together would be such a terrible idea?

Let me just, enjoy some more of this awful monstrosity of a glaze. Oh!

Look, I just need to wash it down

Just a little bit more

Probably should have had more than an onigiri for breakfast. So while the glaze is cooling, I'm gonna

Cube up the beef. Apparently this tiny amount of beef, means that all of us will be eating.. Um, perhaps two skewers

They'll give this to you, so you can like, butter up the grill. Might hang on to this, let me tell you. Pancakes later

[Simon in the background]: Beefy pancakes?! That's disgusting! [M]: MMMHM!

20 dollars! So I'm going to be going for these tiny

Cube sized beef skewers, because I don't have a real barbecue and a big grill

I have like a little baby grill, so I have to make sure my pieces are pretty tiny, but if you have a big grill

In a big space, you can make as big as beef chunks as you want

[Simon in the background]: "Is this the most expensive steak you've ever cut?"

Yes, it is the most expensive steak I've ever cut. We buy discount steaks. We're like: "it's the end of the night,

You know what that means: discount food!" and we go to the grocery store

I don't even think I've ever bought full priced meat before. Have we ever bought full priced meat before?

[Simon in the background]: "i don't know!"

All right, let's assemble the skewers. Sounds like an Avengers thing.

"Skewers assemble!"

So while I'm waiting for the sauce to thicken up, I'm heating up my, world's tiniest grill

[In baby voice]: Baby grill. So little!

I'll be able to fit one skewer on, at a time

But cooking will be quite quick. You just want to kind of like sear it on the outside

You don't want it to be super death cooked, this beef is so good, you do not want to overcook it. Okay, let's start

Skewering! We're gonna do a magical piece of Wagyu beef, and we're gonna do some sweet potato

And then we're gonna do some beef

How does everyone always do that so well? Like, you see them when the chefs are like: "everything's been cubed perfectly!"

I'm like, how? Look at mine

*Sad sounds* And that is definitely a tiny bit of cat fur right there..

Hey, did I mention that you're supposed to steam the sweet potato beforehand?

I'm pretty sure I did, but just in case, you're not putting on raw sweet potato, because that will never cook

We're going to glaze these up

Then we're going to pop them on the grill, and we're gonna keep checking on them and glazing it and adding more and more so it

Gets all delicious and caramelized. I think grill is nice and hot, I'm only using some of this

Magic fat. Not necessary, buy why would I waste it, when it cost me?

$79?!

Onto the grill

Oh yeah! Ready, closing it up

Sha-blamo.

Yes, I have mini tongs. Don't judge me.

Oh, look at how

Beautiful it looks. I don't know what accent is coming out of my mouth, but that sauce is like

Caramelizing, so you can smell it getting sweeter

But the steak is also melting, so you're getting like the beautiful buttery smells. Close it up again.

Oh my god guys, it smells

fantastic

Oh yeah, look at that nice looking. Char marks.

Oh yeah

Hello welcome to Martina's Kitchen, we run the slowest kitchen on the planet, because we have one tiny grill

*Look at that skewer*

[S]: Welcome back to Simon and Martina's Midnight Munchies [M]: Simon just appears out of nowhere. [S]: We like to delegate our tasks

[M]: Oh, I see how this is. [S]: In which, you do the cooking, I do the eating [M]: It's not very fair [S]: I cook for you too. Oh my god

Okay, grab the top piece there

Oh yeah

Mm

That sherry vinegar!

It's so.. It's so nice, because the beef is so

[S]: Juicy and fatty, [M]: Mhm, mhm [S]: and the acidity really, balances it out [M]: exactly, exactly

[Simon pretending to be Iroh from Avatar]: Zuko, we have to have balance [M]: Balance, Zuko! [S]: Balance, Zuko!

[M]: Sweet, savory, buttery [S]: Mhmm. Have you tried Japanese beef before?

It is so good.

Hmm

Ducky [M]: I was like, [S]: you made a masterpiece here

Why are we here again? Because you guys can win a round-trip ticket for two to Japan!

That's what we're doing. So if this amazing recipe looks good to you, head on over to the JNTO

We're gonna link to it in the info box below

And then you vote, and that's it, you've entered the contest!

That seems like a pretty good deal to me. [S]: So what you're saying is [M]: Yes. [S]: with this video [M]: Yes

[S]: I got to try really expensive beef [M]: Yep.

And then we also can get some of our viewers to get a free trip, over to Japan

Wait so what you're saying is, if you do win that trip to Japan

please, send us a message. So make sure you click the info box, and click on over that link

And opefully we'll see you in Japan. And you can make your own Wagyu beef skewers. [S]: Oh my god ducky

Do you.. This is.. This is so good! [M]: I grew the beef myself! [S]: Ah?