‘Haiya!’ Uncle Roger reacts to Rachael Ray’s botched adobo and sinangag recipes
Screencap from Uncle Roger/YouTube
Famous YouTuber Uncle Roger criticized American cook and TV personality Rachael Ray after she made questionable versions of Filipino staple adobo and sinangag on her namesake show.
Ray’s adobo had a rocky start but, in the end, turned out fine by Uncle Roger’s standards. While Ray picked the most desirable parts of the chicken—legs and thighs—her use of olive oil to brown them earned the YouTuber’s ire.
Olive oil, he said, is not for Asian food. So is jalapeño, which the American cook used to make her adobo “spicy and good.” She should have used siling labuyo if she wanted it to be spicy, he suggested.
Ray, he added, got some things right, like using tons of black pepper, crushed garlic, bay leaf, and white vinegar to flavor the sauce. But it was when she pulled out the tamari that he winced in pain, going into a tirade about how one of Asian cooking’s foundations is plain old soy sauce and not “gluten-free soy sauce.”
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Uncle Roger: Why you putting random sh** into your rice?
This version of adobo with garlic rice, Ray said, is a big deal in Filipino cooking. Right. But what Ray got wrong is that she started by cooking crushed garlic in chicken stock, effectively boiling it. To add salt to injury, she adds raw rice grains to the pot of boiling stock and garlic and, get this, sprinkled it with coriander seeds, which just about sent Uncle Roger into an unfathomable depression.
“What the hell? Why you putting random sh** into your rice?” He complained that by doing so, the seeds would interfere with the rice’s texture and mouthfeel, which Ray doubled down on by adding toasted sesame seeds before serving, saying, “Anything that adds texture and flavor, I say, go for it.”
“Uncle Roger so upset I have to put my leg down from chair,” he said, punctuating it with his famous expression “Haiya.”
This is not the first time that the YouTuber criticized Ray’s cooking. Previously, he’s reacted to her pho and pad thai recipes.
In an effort to appease his fans, Uncle Roger said he would be showing viewers how to make adobo properly in his next video.
The persona played by Malaysian stand-up comedian Nigel Ng is famous for exposing Western mistakes in Asian cooking in popular media. In his YouTube channel with eight million subscribers, he has so far “roasted” Jamie Oliver, Guy Fieri, and Salt Bae, among other popular cooking personalities. His most popular video with 35 million views critiques the BBC Food version of egg fried rice.
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