Food and wine editor, Karen Hardy, discovers how and what best to cook on a hibachi grill with Beltana Farm executive chef, John Leverink
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00:00All right, so John, we're here in the kitchens at Beltana Farm with your beautiful hibachi.
00:13It's seen better days. It gets a lot of use.
00:17That's right. So I suppose what would you cook on it here in the restaurant?
00:20So we do beetroot skewers, we do our ox tongue skewers.
00:24All of our steaks go over the hibachi.
00:27And we finish our salt bush chicken on the hibachi also.
00:33I guess for those of us who are fans of MasterChef, it never seems to go right on the show,
00:39but are they easy enough to use at home?
00:41I think so. Like anything with cooking, it's more or less about practice.
00:45So obviously you're going to perhaps fail the first and second attempt,
00:49but after that you should be a pro.
00:54It's all about heat control at the end of the day.
00:57If it's too cold, everything's going to stick. If it's too hot, everything's going to burn.
01:01I guess you said you do have one at home that you use?
01:04Yeah, I've got a little hibachi that I light up sometimes when I have time.
01:11And most likely I'll do a steak on it or if I'm bringing home the bonito
01:18or a piece of snapper or something, I'll do it on the hibachi.
01:23It's something that's going to enhance the piece of protein or the vegetable that you're going to take home.
01:29So I guess that's the question.
01:31What does it provide or what does it do that your regular barbecue wouldn't do?
01:36You can see that beautiful, beautiful smoke right now.
01:39So it's just imparting that.
01:41And that's just the fat dripping off the meat.
01:44And you get flare-ups from that fat and then it just imparts that.
01:49It's a very subtle smoke, opposed from wood smoke.
01:54It's just a very subtle smoke that's obviously really good with chicken.
01:59Japanese have been doing it for thousands of years with yakitori.
02:05So it's just borrowing a little bit of that and adapting it to our way of living.
02:10And you've got these beautiful prawns, seafoods, which are on the hibachi.
02:14Yep, seafood, amazing. Steaks, amazing. Chicken, amazing.
02:18But these are just like U6 in the industry.
02:21But extra large yamba prawns, fresh in this morning.
02:25Just cut them down the middle, separate the shell from the flesh and then put them on the hibachi.
02:31Lovely. Thank you very much.
02:33You're welcome.
02:40Thank you.