- I gotta get better at this plant slap.

My name is Andrew.

You might recognize me from the show "Worth It"

where I eat foods at different price points

with my pals Steven and Adam.

Today, I'm going to be recreating one

of my favorite dishes I ever had on "Worth It",

fancy ranch and tofu nuggets.

Wait a second Andrew, you never ate nuggets

and ranch on "Worth It."

That's partially true.

So in the double cheeseburger episode,

we go to a place called Burgerlords which does a lot

of vegan and vegetarian interpretations

of classic fast food dishes.

In particular, they had these amazing tofu nuggets

and vegan fancy ranch.

That's what they call it.

It's actually called fancy ranch

which I think is pretty spectacular.

Often times on the show,

we'll eat foods that don't make it in the final cut

of the video.

Great opportunity to show you

some previously unaired footage.

- Oh, that is so good.

- When you think of a meatless version of a chicken nugget,

it's not obvious where it's getting its deliciousness from.

I think that these recipes explore something

that I'm really interested in which is

the fundamentals of why something tastes good.

Holy (bleep).

Nuggets are a little weird.

They're a weird food when you think about it.

Also ranch.

What is ranch?

Shard of ice just went into my mouth.

It was startling.

So to start, I'm gonna call Fred from Burgerlords to get

a little bit more information about these recipes.

Hey Fred, how's it going?

- Good, how are you?

- Pretty good.

Last time on "Worth It", we were trying

the double cheeseburgers, but we also

had these incredible tofu nuggets as well as this ranch.

It's ranch dressing, right?

- Yeah, yeah it's ranch dressing.

A lot of what we do is about nostalgia.

So recreating familiar food and they're things

that we make from scratch, like our recipe.

- How do you achieve a really delicious nugget?

- I think the most important part is the nugget skin

(laughs) I guess you would call it.

I mean it's not skin.

Like the nugget batter.

It's super crunchy, flavorful.

It's like cavernous and has all of the little cracks in it.

And then the tofu's actually seasoned really well,

so we break it down and process it.

It has dried mushrooms for umami flavor,

and then it actually has something called chicken spice,

but it's like a salt blend.

But there's no chicken in it.

It says chicken spice.

I've checked, you know, multiple times.

(Andrew laughs)

But that kind of helps push it over the top.

You're getting flavor through the whole thing.

- I look forward to making these nuggets.

- Awesome, yeah.

And let me know if you need any help or anything.

Just like text me or email me.

- First stage is going to be assembling

the tofu into nugget shape with some flavoring ingredients.

The first ingredient we're gonna deal

with is actually one that I already have,

dried shiitake mushrooms which I personally use

in things like soups.

This is what we're dealing with here.

These may in fact be porcini mushrooms.

I'm not sure.

I threw away the label.

We're gonna take these mushrooms

and actually grind them up into a powder

so it can flavor the entire nugget.

(food processor whirring)

Oh, I have created like a mushroom sawdust.

We need to crumble the tofu.

This is a really annoying packaging.

There's a lot of liquid here.

Okay, here we have our tofu.

Look at that.

Do I like tofu?

I do.

Unfortunately, my introduction to tofu was

with poorly executed health food,

and it wasn't until I had Chinese dishes, like mapo tofu,

that I came to really love it.

So my instruction was to use firm tofu.

I'm gonna break it apart into the texture of ricotta cheese.

I will add our mushroom dust.

The next ingredient is chicken seasoning.

A blend of seasonings.

Salt, garlic, paprika, turmeric, sugar, onion, white pepper,

cumin, black pepper, we also have monosodium glutamate, MSG

which has gotten a bad rap in the past

for being, like, this artificial thing

that could get you sick.

Those myths have been debunked.

It's really no worse for you than regular table salt.

And in fact, it's a thing that naturally occurs in a lot

of foods high in umami like Parmesan cheese,

tomatoes, fermented foods, seaweed.

(clears throat)

It does have this flavor combination

that I associate with chicken.

Oh.

You know what it tastes like?

Chicken flavored instant ramen plus a nacho cheese Dorito.

I mean, it definitely looks like Dorito dust.

Okay, and then the recipe also calls

for a little bit more salt and black pepper.

Okay, it's funny, I do really associate this smell

with chicken.

It's kind of like the pumpkin spice fallacy

where people think that pumpkin spice stuff has pumpkin

in it or that that flavor is pumpkin,

but really it's the spices that flavor pumpkin

and not pumpkin flavor.

I'm also gonna add more tofu 'cause I didn't do

the directions right.

(water dripping)

This is the good stuff.

Okay, cut this whole part out.

Hmm, okay.

It's not my favorite sensation.

It's so wet.

These are supposed to be a half inch.

There's really no other binding agent here?

Have I, Oh, ho, ho, ho-o.

Okay, I needa text Fred to make sure that this is okay.

I just texted Fred.

He said this is it.

Okay, so these are supposed to be about half an inch thick.

Remind myself of what that is.

This is too thick.

Man, I love any food that is in the take

a homogenous squishy mixture

and put it into a shape category like makin' meatballs.

Okay, so these nuggets now have to go in

the freezer for 24 hours before they can be breaded.

See you tomorrow.

I may actually have to rearrange some stuff in my freezer.

Okay, so we're breading the nuggets.

The first thing we're gonna do is make a vegan buttermilk

to dip the nuggets in before dredging them in flour.

An Ener-G egg replacer.

When I was looking for this in the store,

I was looking for a liquid.

Did not expect to have it be a powder.

This contains stuff like, potato starch, tapioca

which is gonna be doing some

of the thickening action required

to make this like a buttermilk.

Absolutely zero odor off of that.

100 percent zero.

Something actually Adam told me is

that I smell things too much.

It's like a habit of mine.

(mellow guitar music)

O-kay.

Chef Merito makes a second appearance.

I made salmon for dinner last night.

Put a little Chef Merito on the crispy skin, amazing.

Soy milk.

I was supposed to shake this.

(soy milk sloshing)

Main liquid component of this buttermilk is soy milk

which I usually don't buy 'cause I don't think

it's particularly tasty however, we went to Taiwan

for "Worth It.'

We had that soy milk the first dumpling restaurant, wow!

Big time wow.

It's similar satisfaction to having a milkshake, truly.

I tasted this.

It's not the same.

What do we got now?

A little Dijon-- (spoon tapping)

I'm just gonna eyeball it.

A couple tablespoons of mustard.

(spoon clanking)

Whoo!

Mustard is really pretty frickin' good.

I love mustard, wow.

Well, these are two things I never thought I'd

be whisking together.

Distilled vinegar, got it.

I'm lookin' at dairy and I'm smelling vinegar.

Having flash backs of the pie episode.

Oh, you know the smell is not pleasant currently.

Okay, liquids going into the dry.

Shall I taste?

(mellow guitar music) (tongue smacking)

(coughing)

Not very pleasant.

Now also occurs to me

that I've never tasted regular buttermilk.

Not really sure what my point of reference

is supposed to be.

Next up we're gonna be making a flour dredge to bread

the nuggets in.

Wipe the dust out of this.

It's clean.

Everything's very clean in my house.

Pepper, milled by hand.

Salt, cayenne pepper and the last thing here is Old Bay.

Old Bay is like this iconic American seafood seasoning.

It's ingredients are celery salt and paprika,

salt and pepper basically.

That's entirely it.

I think I just realized for the first time

that Old Bay just smells like celery.

Really makes me feel like I'm doing some,

kind of like, witchcraft, you know?

The last instruction is to add a little bit

of this buttermilk to this flour.

The goal here is to make clumps in the flour so

that those clumps can then stick to the outside

of the nugget giving it more texture.

This is very satisfying.

This has a very similar satisfaction

to like playing in mud as a little kid,

Time to get the frozen nuggets.

Wow, they look extremely unappetizing,

but that's what they look like.

Look at that.

Kind of like oatmeal cookies, right?

Pretty weird.

I dunk, mm.

Then this goes here.

There you go.

That's a frickin' nugget.

You deep fry that.

How could that not taste good?

All right they will freeze for another 24 hours.

So we're making Burgerlords' vegan ranch

which they call fancy ranch.

What are the key flavor components of ranch?

Like why does it taste so good?

- It's number one the herbs,

dill, parsley, tarragon, and just a mix of that

with the onion and garlic.

It tastes like a ranch.

I imagine myself on the bottle of Hidden Valley.

It's that feeling, you know, when you have that.

- Vegan mayonnaise.

What really distinguishes it from regular mayonnaise

is that regular mayonnaise is oil

and eggs emulsified together and this is primarily oil

then other things to stabilize its emulsion

like soy protein.

Okay, and the rest of this is pretty straight forward.

There's garlic powder, onion powder.

There's a little bit of plain salt,

white vinegar mixing this up now.