- Breakfast time and I'm eating chips.

(chill out music)

Okay so I made this video about

why Americans eat dessert for breakfast.

- [Narrator] Two pancakes with hot syrup and butter.

- And in that video, I said I would share with you

the non-American breakfast I've started eating

if enough people commented,

and let's just say, enough people commented.

(slamming sounds)

(chime dinging)

For the past several months,

I've been on this journey of inviting

different breakfast traditions into my home

and into my habits,

and that's a hard thing to do,

but I've officially done it,

and I want to share it with you.

So I'm gonna share with you my top three

non-American breakfast traditions.

I wanna see in the comments

if you have suggestions on other breakfast

that I could try out that I'm not mentioning here, okay?

So leave those in the comments,

for now, let's get into my breakfast enlightenment.

(chill out music)

First up is Japanese.

(chill out music)

I went to Japan for the first time in 2017,

I was shooting an episode of Vox Borders,

and I had just taken a 14-hour flight,

I was totally delirious,

I got off the flight,

I met up with my fixer in Tokyo

and it was morning time

and she was like, "Do you wanna get breakfast?"

and I was like, "Yeah, sure."

So we showed up to a place called Yoshinoya.

- [Yoshi] Yoshi!

- I walk into this place,

I have no idea what to order,

and my fixer is like, "Don't worry,

"I'll order you something."

And she did, and before I knew it,

out came a platter that looked like this.

(chill out music)

It came with rice, and miso soup,

and a lightly grilled salted salmon

and a raw egg.

Yes, a raw egg.

I kind of freaked out when I saw the raw egg,

I was like, why didn't they cook the egg,

isn't there salmonella in this egg?

Turns out in Japan, they're just a lot better

about cleanliness and quality control on their eggs,

not surprisingly, and because of that,

they don't worry about salmonella

like we do in the United States.

So it turns out, you can eat a raw egg.

And I did and this meal turned out to be

one of the best meals of my life.

I ate it every day during that trip.

And here I am, three years later,

trying to reform my breakfast,

and where do I turn but this meal.

(chill out music)

Turns out, this meal is called tamago kake gohan.

Which basically means egg on rice,

and it is a very simple, traditional Japanese breakfast.

To recreate this,

I went to a wonderful Japanese-Korean market

near my home,

and I went shopping for all of the goods.

First thing I did was buy a rice cooker,

I didn't have a rice cooker before,

and I found out that a good rice cooker

makes all of the difference.

Second up, good salmon.

I kind of just throw some soy sauce

on the salmon, throw it in the oven for 12 to 14 minutes,

and then wrap it up and put it in my refrigerator,

and I eat it all week.

So now my mornings with Japanese breakfast mean

washing some rice, throwing it in the rice cooker,

pulling it out 30 minutes later,

and putting on a piece of salmon, some sesame seed,

sometimes an avocado, oftentimes a lot of ginger,

and all topped off with this amazing

Hello Kitty branded soy sauce,

that's like, kind of a morning tamago kake gohan sauce

that I found at this market.

It is delicious.

It is unbelievably delicious to have rice in the morning,

it's like salty, the salmon is salty,

the ginger is amazing,

I put seaweed in it sometimes,

and I, like, when I'm eating that,

I am just a happy happy human.

I also make a big pot of miso soup on Sundays,

which is a very easy soup,

you can throw, like, six ingredients into a pot,

let it sort of simmer for a bit,

and then you have miso soup for the rest of the week.

Oh and for the raw egg, I end up just taking

a high-quality American raw egg

and whipping it into the hot rice,

and it's delicious and I've been eating it for months now

and I have not gotten sick,

so you can do it too.

This food is so good.

Next up, let's talk about Israel-Palestine.

(chill out music)

Okay, listen.

Too much of my life has already been spent in the comment

section of videos,

reading and responding to comments on videos

that I make about Israel-Palestine.

Today, we're not talking about the decades-old conflict

where one asymmetrical power is illegally occupying

the other, ugh, jeeze, see, you can't help it,

you just, you can't help it.

Anyway, today we're talking about breakfast.

I was in Jerusalem in 2016 reporting

on the conflict,

and I was meeting up with an Israeli journalist

who I had met online, wanted to hang out with,

she told me to come to a breakfast spot,

so I navigated to the breakfast spot,

I parked, and I looked, and I realized,

it was a hummus restaurant.

Hummus.

For breakfast.

I was little caught off-guard

because in my mind, hummus looked like this.

It was always like the extra add-on

that we would bring in a picnic

and in short, I didn't understand hummus.

During that trip, I had hummus of all kinds for breakfast,

in West Jerusalem, in East Jerusalem,

with falafel, with toppings of

different types of tahini, with mushrooms,

oh man, and every hummus was different,

and all of it was delicious.

So fast forward three or four years

and I'm in my breakfast crisis,

I just genuinely do not want to wake up

and consume dessert for breakfast.

And I decided that hummus is something

that I want to invite into my home.

A little daunting, 'cause I was like,

isn't hummus super complicated to make?

Turns out, it's not.

(chill out music)

Hummus is effectively just chickpeas and tahini,

which is ground up sesame seed.

You can soak your own chickpeas,

which is incredibly cheap,

or you can just buy pre-soaked, canned chickpeas,

however you wanna do it.

Basically what you're doing is combining

a bunch of ingredients into a blender,

and just blending it up,

and you have hummus and you have hummus

for the entire week,

and it is a perfect platform to add anything to,

I've been adding feta or an egg

or pairing it with pickles and beautiful bread,

I even tried my hand at making pita bread for the first time

which is actually a pretty simple, straightforward bread,

I did it on a griddle and in the oven, as well,

both were fantastic, I mean,

this is just amazing food to have in the morning.

It's smooth and light but also creamy, for some reason,

but it's not creamy like it leaves you, like,

wanting to take a nap, it's just good food.

And now I make a big pot of hummus

at the beginning of the week,

and we have it for the whole week,

it stays good forever,

not actually forever, doesn't actually stay good forever,

so, like, don't eat it after, like, two, three months.

Anyway, hummus is amazing.

(chill out music)

Okay so the last breakfast I wanna talk about today

comes from Texas, but really Mexico,

I mean Texas was Mexico and Mexico was Texas,

and then the US stole it all,

and anyway I'm making a video about that,

but let's just talk about breakfast.

(chill out music)

Last year, we were at South, in South West, in Austin,

Iz was speaking,

and I was just tagging along,

and eating a million tacos.

One morning, we walked up to this taco truck.

Vera Cruz all natural.

Oof.

Just saying the name makes my mouth water.

Listen, I've eaten a lot of tacos in my life.

I lived in Northern Mexico for two years,

I ate a lot of tacos, I continue to eat tacos

whenever I'm in that region,

and yet this morning those tacos were

some of the best tacos I've ever had in my life.

If not some of the best pieces of food

I've ever consumed.

The tacos at Vera Cruz are called migas tacos,

which is whipping scrambled eggs with corn chips,

like, crushed up corn chips,

and they kind of soften but they retain their crunch

and they just make for this delicious stuffing

into a taco, you can also add all pastor,

which is, like, pork,

and oh, just delicious.

It's usually topped with cilantro,

onion, and of course, topped with

your choice of delicious salsa.

All of this wrapped in a freshly made thin

but fatty flour tortilla.

Flour tortilla, the key to a delicious breakfast taco,

is the flour tortilla.

I'm a big fan of corn, but a flour tortilla

in the morning is just amazing.

This food wakes you up,

it fills you up, and it just makes you happy

to be alive when you're eating it.

I know it sounds super dramatic,

but I'm telling you, man,

I have a very strong affinity to breakfast tacos.

Inviting this in my home was not a hard thing to do

because I've been making Mexican-inspired food

for many years, ever since I lived in Mexico,

and what I love about it is it's simple food.

It is eggs, and chips, and tortilla,

and you could throw cheese on there,

and an avocado.

(chill out music)

Okay, so those are my three new staples in my life,

Japanese, hummus, and breakfast tacos.

I promised I'd tell you which of these is my favorite

and I have to say that Japanese takes the cake.

Cake.

There's something about having rice in the morning,

it's just, it fills you up, it stays with you for hours

and I love breakfast.

Never thought I'd say it but I love freakin' love breakfast.

So remember, if you haven't already,

go in the comments and tell me

if you have a non-American breakfast idea

that I can start trying out in my life,

give as much detail or a link as possible,

I would love to see what other people eat for breakfast,

all of these ideas that I got came

from just casual interactions with people

who live in other countries

who do have different breakfast paradigms

and I hope that reading through the comments

I can get some more ideas.