 The good aroma! Garlic, ginger, scallion, salmon. Help me, that doesn't sound good. Gorgon salmon, you. Gorgon salmon, you. That's it. I really miss eating my mom's ginger, scallion, salmon. That is my favorite recipe growing up, but you know what? I figured out a way to shortcut it and make it with a fraction of the effort. Listen, the reason why I'm making this is because I know a lot of people out there, including myself, we miss our parents' cooking and we want to recreate those recipes, but some of those recipes took a lot of troubles. You got big pans, big pots, big steamers, hot oil. It smells, you're getting your fingers all smelly, whether it's the garlic or the onion or the ginger, but I'm gonna try to show you the most shortcut, but still a delicious way to do it. And yeah, it's a little Americanized, but hey man, that's what life is right now. 25% of the effort, 75% of the taste and 300% of the efficiency. Ginger, scallion, salmon in 30 minutes. So the first step is actually cutting the scallions and this is even gonna be shortcut because I know a lot of people usually are gonna get the cleaver out, they're gonna get the cutting board, but I'm not gonna do any of that. If there's one thing I learn from the Korean restaurants is that scissors are really useful. So I'm just gonna go in straight out of the bag, green onions from Trader Joe's. I'm gonna cut them in about three inches because I like a lot of scallions. So you're gonna see how I use all this. And yes, I'm using the entire stock of scallions. What I love about the ginger scallion dish, you know, it's a very Cantonese dish. It's something I grew up eating. It has a lot of flavor, but it's not too crazy. It's not super spicy or overpowering. So if you like Cantonese cooking, you're gonna love ginger scallion, anything. Guys, there's a lot of recipes online where they're gonna talk about julienning the scallions and cutting it this way, but look, I didn't even use this. I just used a pair of scissors. It got the job done, 75%. Reason why I really wanted to make a shortcut version of this dish is because it involves heating up oil traditionally in a hot pot and then pouring it over the scallions and the ginger. But I'm not gonna do all that because I'm just gonna cook it in this air fryer completely all at one time. Everything in the air fryer, one time, one heat setting, one cooking session. That's it, that's all I'm doing. So it's super easy and honestly, it kind of still tastes like my mom's cooking. I'm just gonna spray some oil onto these scallions because I love scallion oil. I just want the oil to kind of seep into it because you'll see, I'll explain everything later. But yeah, definitely spray oil is gonna be a lot more efficient and actually you use less oil when it sprays as well. All right guys, I got my farm raised salmon and I know that wild caught salmon is gonna be more nutrient dense, but also the meat is gonna be more dense and more dry too. So when you're doing air frying, one of the keys is kind of getting like a piece that does have a lot of natural fat because it's just gonna cook really well. Basically, listen, farm raised salmon in a way it tastes better. So that's all there is to it. So I think what's gonna help is I'm gonna make some slits in the salmon. This is where I'm gonna put my ginger and my scallions in between to give it extra flavor. Not too deep, not too many cuts. All right, on to one of the most painful parts of this recipe is the ginger. Now, I couldn't even get raw ginger because actually there's a raw ginger supply issue at Trader Joe's. But literally, I didn't actually wanna get the raw ginger. So I got actually ginger, minced ginger paste and these ginger cubes. This is making it easy because ginger is one of those, you know, one of those things that if you try to scrape it and chop it, your fingers are gonna smell and then what do you do with the ginger? Do you put it in your fridge? You gotta wrap it up. Is it gonna make your fridge smell like ginger? Which is not a terrible smell, but you really don't want it. So anyways, this makes it easy. Yes, it's a little bit more expensive but they do the work for you. There's no mincing involved at all. So what I do is actually I put the ginger first in there and I'm gonna put it into the salmon and that's gonna ensure that the salmon has maximum ginger flavor. What are you doing this? I don't know if she'd think it was like massaging the salmon. She put it in and chewed. Why are you sticking your fingers into salmon? I'm like, bomb, trust me. I wanna get it into the meat. I don't know if this is a little bit Western and a little French to make the slits. I'm just gonna put the scallion in between honestly and you're gonna see how it cooks and just makes the whole salmon all tasty, guys. I'm just trying to prepare everything so that I can throw it in the air fryer. The goal is to make this dish. The goal is to prepare my salmon so that I can just put it into the air fryer, press the button, forget about it and then out comes my mom's best recipe. That's it. No steaming, yes, I get it. You'd have this big steamer with this big pot and then you'd have to shave the thing. It's just, we're cutting out all those steps. I just want the flavor. All right, so for the air fryer, yes, guys. We have parchment paper. Parchment paper is key for cooking. Okay, there's no cleanup with this. Trust me, you want to get parchment paper. I'll leave a link down below for the Amazon link, but so for this actually, you're gonna notice that I have this whole big plate of scallions. You're like, Andrew, how are you gonna cook the scallions? Because at a high heat for a long time, the scallions will get scorched and dried out but I have a creative solution for that. I put them down first. I'm gonna make a bed of scallions. Now, guys, in Cantonese, this dish is called, well, ginger-scallion is called gherngchong. My pronunciation, not great, of course, but I'm just gonna use, all right, I'll probably just kind of put it on the salmon like that. All right, guys, I have my salmon lathered up with scallions in between, scallions on the bottom, ginger, a little bit of garlic. I forgot the salt. Let me just pour a little salt on top and then before you pop the air fryer another spray of oil. Again, if you think about how much oil I actually used so far, it's not a lot. Boom! Pop it in the air fryer. I like to go low because again, if you put it on at like 400 degrees, the scallions are going to get like torched. But basically what I'm trying to do is cook everything at one time, but not overcook it. So I'm gonna lower it probably at 340 and I'm probably just gonna do seven minutes at first. That's not gonna cook the salmon all the way through but if I need to flip it or make any maneuvers or move stuff around, that's gonna give me enough time. Oh, and by the way, guys, this may or may not be a fire hazard, but I literally have created this cardboard ventilation that pushes the air that's pushed out of the air fryer, all that gas straight into my range hood. Next up is the rice and the sauce. Again, another shortcut in case you don't have a rice cooker in your apartment, you know, obviously growing up, we would eat white rice, maybe jasmine rice or even short grain rice out of the rice cooker, but I just went to Trader Joe's, okay? I could have got, you can get the little steaming cups of white rice, you're gonna be able to order those off of Amazon, but these are little just steamer bags of brown rice. And I got the brown rice because it was cheaper than jasmine rice. So you're gonna pop this in the microwave for like three minutes. All right, guys, so now we're gonna be making our special soy sauce. Now, if you go to the Asian market, primarily the Chinese market, there's going to be so many different types of soy sauce. You can get sweet seafood ones, you can get seafood flavor, you can get the dark one, you can get just, there's just a range, right? But I'm just gonna make mine at home, assuming that most people are gonna have just regular light soy sauce. So what I'm gonna do is I wanna make it a little bit sweet arugkan rice vinegar, Japanese style, so just gonna add a little bit of a light soy sauce there. I don't need that much because I actually don't want it that salty. Like I don't want it that concentrated. I might even add a little bit of water to this. Personally, I wanna add a little white pepper. This is just something that I like, but you don't have to do this. I'm gonna add a little bit of this rice vinegar. It's gonna add a little bit of sweetness, just a dab. And then I might add, and this is like the American side of it, might add a little bit of honey. Okay, that was seven minutes at 340. I like how it started. I'm pretty sure that salmon is not cooked all the way through, but it's all good because I might need to do a little flip and see. So this is what happens. See, when the scallion is exposed to the heat and it doesn't have enough oil, it is going to get very, very toasted. But I really like the look of that. There's little parts that are brown, but that's actually the garlic paste. So that's a good aroma. Garlic, ginger, scallion, salmon. Help me, that doesn't sound good. Gorgon salmon, you. Gorgon salmon, you. That's it. Ginger, scallion, salmon, baby. Look at that. Only a little bit of oil. I did not have to heat up oil. I didn't have to make the whole crib smell. I didn't have to do any of that. I still achieve this. You can too. Oh, nice, barely cooked. I like that. I don't really actually like eating too raw salmon, but that's just good enough for me right there. All right, and the final step is to add the special soy sauce. I've sweetened the soy sauce. I've seasoned it myself a little bit. Now you could take a little spoon and do this and a little drip it on and make it all nice, but you know what? I'm just gonna trust my hand and I'm gonna do it. This is the real shortcut style. Don't pour too much. Ooh, just that much. Now remember, it is a slightly watered down soy sauce and I did that on purpose because I wanna pour more without it getting too salty. I can even pour a little bit on my rice. Not too much. Guys. Mom! I made it! The ginger, scallion, salmon. All right, I gotta taste it though, actually. Mm. All within 30, how much time do we have left? I got five minutes left too. And guys, I made this with all the ingredients from Trader Joe's. And this is not sponsored by Trader Joe's. If anything is sponsored by Smala Sauce, it's coming back soon. But I have to acknowledge that Trader Joe's provided almost everything. I could've even got soy sauce at Trader Joe's. So even if you don't live next to an Asian market or you're not Asian or whatever, you can still make this dish. No, that's pretty good. 25% of the effort. 25% of the smell. 75% of the flavor. That's pretty good. And in fact, sometimes the fact that some of the ginger pieces are actually roasted and there's a little bit of garlic, it added a lot. Guys, the reason why I wanna start this series is because we gotta be able to shortcut our way to our traditional recipes that we love. Because the truth is, if you're making it at home, it's just gonna be too hard. Like your kitchen might not look exactly like your parent's kitchen and that's fine. That makes total sense. You grew up in a different way, but you want some of the same recipes. You can still do it to an extent. You really can. And honestly, every time I make this for myself, it reminds me of my mom's cooking. I always like take a picture and message her. And then I'm always like, yeah, mom, I made it. And so, you know, cause that's just cause I miss my mom's cooking, you know? So anyways, guys, make it easy for yourself. Tear down those barriers so that you can eat delicious, authentic Asian food at home. Let me know in the comments down below what other recipes you think I should cook. I got some other recipes I'm gonna show you from my mom's cooking, but man, this is the first one. All the online recipes for this dish actually call for like 50 to 60 minutes. And if I wasn't talking to you, I probably would have gotten it done in like 22 minutes. See, the beaver just went off. About to send this to my mom. All right, everybody. That was the first episode of the shortcut kitchen. Let me know in the comments down below what are some shortcuts you have to get to your parents' dishes, you know? Because I know, once you leave the nest, you're nostalgic for everything, but you don't have all the tools and the time to play with it. So hopefully this helps you just, you know, stay more Asian, I guess. But anyways, guys, let me know. And until next time, we out, peace. Okay, okay, we're gonna eat off the parchment because you're an air fryer, bros. What do you think, man? Mom's best dish from the air fryer. I'm not saying it is 100% like it, but I'm saying it's 75 to 80% just as good. Listen, guys, you gotta use it or lose it in terms of your culture. And in case you're wondering, everything that I ate costed me only about $15. The salmon filet was a little bit less than $10. Obviously, I bought some brown rice, I bought the scallions and the ginger and garlic, but those things I'm gonna keep using so they're not one-time use. So ultimately for two servings of a big old salmon filet, ginger, scallion, I spent 15 bucks. Shortcut kitchen, guys, $15 at home. My apartment still smells fine. I didn't even use a steamer. I didn't heat up any oil. I didn't fry anything. My hands don't stink. Nice.