- 6/26/2025
Brent Young meets up with chef Eric Valdez at Naks, a popular Filipino restaurant in NYC. Valdez grew up in Manila, and brings traditional family dishes to the New York dining scene. In the kitchen, he makes a Kanto Fried Chicken sandwich, inspired by the chain restaurant Jollibee, as well as crispy lechon that takes 48 hours to prepare, and kare-kare with braised beef cheeks.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Don't act offended.
00:03He told me to eat everything at once.
00:06So I decided to eat everything at once.
00:09We're here at Knox, where we are going to make the best Filipino fried chicken sandwich.
00:15Knox is a traditional Filipino restaurant driven by Chef Eric Valdez.
00:21Yep.
00:24That is good.
00:26Here, Eric is showcasing a wide variety of Filipino comfort foods that he grew up eating in his hometown of Manila.
00:34Today, we are making Knox very popular Kanto fried chicken sandwich, which is inspired by the iconic Filipino food chain Jollibee.
00:43Ever heard of Jollibee? About to be Jolli-me after I eat this fried chicken sandwich.
00:49I'm Brent, and this is Brent Meets World.
00:56There's a lot of fried chicken sandwiches out there. What's the inspiration?
01:00Growing up, we have this fast food chain called Jollibee.
01:03Okay.
01:04Are you aware of it?
01:05I've heard of it, but I've never had it.
01:06So it's like our McDonald's background. They make the best fried chicken. We're trying to imitate it.
01:10Jollibee serves two kinds of fried chicken. So they have the regular one, which is the original, and they have the spicy version of it, which they make like a chili dust.
01:19Spice level, one to ten, what are we talking?
01:21Probably like seven.
01:22Okay.
01:23All right.
01:24Not bad, right?
01:25Not bad. We can handle that.
01:26We use boneless chicken thighs. So for the marinade, fresh kalamasi juice, a little bit of garlic, evaporated milk. So we don't have buttermilk back home. Use evaporated milk.
01:37So what's on the normal Jollibee sandwich?
01:39Just mayo and a pickle. It's like Popeyes. And they have spaghetti also. Jollibee spaghetti.
01:45Wait, wait, wait. You should try that. Say more.
01:48Usually when you go eat a Jollibee, you order fried chicken and spaghetti. So that's the combo.
01:55Let's do the chili butter for the chicken.
01:58Chili butter?
01:59Bunch of butter, long chili, a little bit of the Thai chili for some heat.
02:04So what's so important about this butter?
02:06It helps the dish to be more juicier. It adds a little bit of aroma. It adds a little bit of flavor too.
02:11The flavor for this sandwich obviously starts with the marinade. But the batter, the chili butter, and the chili dust are what push the chicken into unmatched tasty territory.
02:23Holy moly. This looks amazing. May I?
02:28Yeah.
02:29Oh, dude. That's phenomenal. Thanks, man. Oh, yeah. I'm not going to stop.
02:38Yeah, you'll get the tanginess from the pickles, the richness from the yolk, then the bite of the chili.
02:44But you taste the brine. That's so delicious. You get the zestiness. The mayo is awesome. The chili butter is awesome.
02:52All right. So as much as I want to finish this, I've got a lot more food to eat.
02:55Next on our to-do list is to make the iconic Filipino dish, lechon. This is a 48-hour process that begins by trimming up our pork belly to get it ready for a brine.
03:05Now everything is trimmed up. Let's do the brine run.
03:07Okay.
03:08All right. We start with soy sauce. So it's a Filipino soy sauce. So it's very different. You have your salt, MSG, chicken powder, black peppercorn.
03:17Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Chicken powder? Yeah. Good stuff. Say more. Say more.
03:23I mean, I grew up using that. I'm still alive, right? Yeah. Chicken powder. Okay.
03:28Don't get too much, though. That's chicken powder.
03:33Yeah. It looks like a big amount, but this is for big batches. Okay. Okay.
03:37So bay leaf and the stuffing mix. Ginger, chilies, you have lemongrass, garlic, white onions.
03:43So is brining lechon traditional? No. So usually they just season the lechon with salt and pepper, then roast it straight up.
03:51But it's a nox thing. So we want that flavor bomb on every dish. Okay.
03:57So that's why we brine our lechon. So we got the brine going. Now we need to get the seasoning?
04:02The stuffing. We'll do the stuffing. The stuffing. You have the scallion, you have the ginger, whole garlic, lemongrass, then you have a little bit of chili for a little bit of heat.
04:10Smells amazing. Let's have a taste. Wow. So that's a huge punch. Yeah. A lot of ginger, a little bit of chilies, but that's freaking spicy.
04:25That's a lot, right? So you want this to be like big and like in your face. Big punch. Yeah, we're there.
04:31Once the brine is finished, it needs to cool down before we can add it to the pork belly. The brine is the secret sauce to this dish. Not only is imparting all of these flavors early on in the process, it's also going to be the base that helps give the lechon a final glassy red coloring.
04:48All right. So we brined our belly for 24 hours. Time to stuff and roll. Yep. So I'll do the dirty work. I'll do the hard work. Okay. I like that. Thank you.
04:56You can overdo the soy sauce because you'll get the dark skin when you do that. That's why 24 hours is enough for this. If you do like 48 hours, you'll get the flavor, but the color of the skin won't be right. So let's just dry this out.
05:09Not only is it going to brine for 24 hours, then it needs to air dry for 24 hours before rolling it in order to make sure that that skin is nice and crispy.
05:17Yeah, that is fine. Two day process just to make this lechon happen. Yes, sir. I love it. How heavy are we going with the stuffing?
05:23Just like that. Just like that? Yeah. This is very similar to Italian porketto, right? But just Filipino flavors. This smells amazing right now. A lot of fresh scallion, a lot of fresh ginger. Thanks, man.
05:35You said a lot of people do this dish in the Philippines, but what makes this special? What makes this, you know, your version?
05:43First, the brining is special. The stuffing is special. The thing with Manila version, we always serve it with the liver sauce. Other region, they serve it with vinegar. That's what makes it unique, too.
05:54You're from Manila. This is something that you would eat, you know, pretty frequently, or is it just special occasions?
06:00I mean, very occasional things. So very festive dish. So once in a while we get it. Like if there's a birthday, like a celebration. My mom usually buy a small piece of lechon just to share for everybody.
06:11Is it something you do at home? Not really at home because you need to have like a good ass oven for this. And back home we don't have that one.
06:19How's it look? Very good, man. I should hire you. I'll work. I'll work. For free?
06:25The lechon will now cook for three to four hours at two different temperatures. It sits at around 200 degrees for two hours.
06:36And then we crank up the heat to 350 degrees, which gives the pork the desired crispy, glassy looking skin.
06:43We must start the process for our kari kari.
06:46Now we're butchering our beef cheeks for a dish. It's called kari kari. So there's a lot of history with kari kari. Malay influence. Or they say it's an Indian influence also. You'll never know, man. It's good.
06:57So what's the dish? Beef cheeks stew with a peanut sauce. It's a festive dish. My mom usually cook this dish when I get home.
07:04How do I get the invite?
07:06You must be part of a family. Okay. Damn. This dish, they use an oxtail. I think the flavor profile of beef cheeks is almost the same as an oxtail.
07:16Yeah, they pull apart like a chuck roast, but it's not quite as fatty. Tell me more about this dish. I mean, is it something specific to Manila? Or are you gonna see this everywhere?
07:27No, you're gonna see this everywhere. Like, I mean, every household has a different version. Some of them put the commercial peanut butter. Some of them make homemade peanut butter. Okay.
07:35And some of them add roasted rice. Some of them not. And it depends also on the shrimp paste because every household does a different recipe for shrimp paste too.
07:43Wild combo. I'm so freaking excited about this. After cutting it, we need to braise it for a couple of hours. The base of the sauce is the stock of this. It needs to be flavorful.
07:54Okay. So yeah, we add some onions, some long chili for the aroma, not for the heat. So a bit of ginger, garlic, a little bit of salt, soy sauce.
08:04We're just gonna wrap this up. Let it cook two, three hours.
08:08Yep.
08:09All right. So we're doing a peanut sauce.
08:11This is the base of the sauce. So we're gonna toast white rice and some unsalted peanuts.
08:16Once it's toasted, we're gonna blend it all together with some anato oil. It gives that aroma and color to the dish.
08:23So why peanut sauce for this dish?
08:25So traditionally, it must be peanut. Peanut sauce. Yeah. You can use like the ready-made peanut butter or you can make your own peanut butter.
08:32Are families making peanut butter at home?
08:35Yes. That's how my mom does this.
08:37Really?
08:38Yeah. That's why I fell in love with cooking with my mom and my grandmother.
08:42Yeah.
08:43They're the good cooks. So we put it in a blender and then we add anato oil to it.
08:52Here's the thing I've never had, warm peanut butter.
08:57As we finish up our prep to the kari kari, it's time to go back to the lechon and pull it out of the oven.
09:03You're underselling this. You're really underselling this. This thing looks freaking amazing.
09:09We take all the fat drippings, then we're gonna baste the lechon with it.
09:13Then ready to slice?
09:14Yep.
09:15Where do we start? What's the process?
09:17We trim the ends because that is the chef's cut, right? So we taste it.
09:23Already sounds good.
09:25Try the skin first.
09:31Not bad, right?
09:32Not bad. Very specific. Like, this is not chicharron. It's a different consistency. A little more brittle. That is good.
09:40Thanks, man. That's from the brining. That's from the air drying. Two days of process, man.
09:45That's two days of flavor. That's so unique and really different than any, like, chicharron that I've had before.
09:51You really do taste all of the aromatics. The lemongrass, the scallion, the ginger, it all comes out nice and crispy, but, like, a totally different texture.
10:00What's your perfect bite?
10:01Next, get some rice. Chase it with some veggies.
10:04Steamed okra, grilled eggplant, and some grilled shishito peppers. Put some lechon on top of it.
10:10Put a spoonful of the liver sauce.
10:16This is beautiful and two days' worth of work. I cannot wait to try it. I'm so excited.
10:21Now that all of our hard work is done, it's time for my favorite part of the day, sitting down and stuffing my face full of food.
10:29All right, everyone. This is my order. We have the 48-hour lechon.
10:35Karikari beef cheek stew and the KFC fried chicken. This is amazing.
10:40Chef said best thing to do is just get a little bit of everything. I'm excited, and here we go.
10:46Don't act offended. He told me to eat everything at once, so I decided to eat everything at once.
10:56That is so good. You really do taste the brine in the pork. It really matters.
11:02Unseasoned pork belly is like fatty pork, which is always delicious.
11:05Having it have brine to it is salty, it's sweet, all of the aromatics come through.
11:10With that perfect, crunchy skin, it's hard to get a better bite of pork.
11:15We got a beef cheek stew here. We got a bunch of eggplant chard and shrimp paste on the side here.
11:22Just want to try the stew by itself. Oh, man. The peanut sauce. Wow. We did that. We made that. That's so fun.
11:31Super unique. That's bright, satiating, really good comfort food.
11:35It really just doesn't get better than eating shredded pulled beef, but it's not too fatty. Wow.
11:41All right, so we had the chicken sandwich. That was fantastic, but you can get this chicken every night at the restaurant.
11:49Maybe you do just want to sit down and eat an entire plate of fried chicken. Nothing wrong with that. I'm not judging you. Are you judging me? You better not be.
11:56This is so good. The brine, again, really comes through. The spice flavor is fantastic. It's super unique.
12:05Obviously, it's fried chicken. It's familiar. Chef Eric said, all of this food is celebratory and you should come here with a group to try all of it.
12:14Super, super special. Get that fried chicken sandwich. That is definitely worth having.
12:19But then, come back. Come back with some friends. Get a couple beers. Order the menu. Be nice. This is delicious.
12:26It's delicious.
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