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Short filmTranscript
00:00Discover Japan and beyond through food experiences with ByFood.com.
00:04Right now, I'm inside of one of Japan's terrifying eel farms,
00:08a farm that raises over 250,000 eels for human consumption each year.
00:15Today, I'm on a mission to learn how Japan turns something slimy and disgusting
00:19into a culinary work of art.
00:21This is eel and egg.
00:23This is an egg brick. You could build a house with this.
00:26And by the end of this video, I'll be risking my life in order to do what few locals have done before,
00:31eating an eel raw.
00:33What's the worst that could happen?
00:36Oh, dying.
00:39Welcome to Shizuoka, the eel capital of Japan, where unagi is not just a food, but a way of life.
00:44This region is famous for its pristine waters, ideal climate, and centuries-old eel farming traditions.
00:50That's what makes it one of the top freshwater eel producers of Japan.
00:54In a moment, we'll go to an eel farm, where we'll find out exactly what it takes to raise Japan's prized unagi.
01:01We have entered into the eel's lair.
01:04In here, it's about 100% humidity, while outside, it's about 32 degrees.
01:10Hence the creeping fog spreading out throughout the room.
01:13Eels are slimy, but it turns out when you raise eels in a tent like this, everything is slimy.
01:18Look at that wall.
01:20Look at the ceiling.
01:22There's slime everywhere.
01:24Now, of course, a very important part of raising healthy, tasty eels is feeding them.
01:28On the eel's dinner menu, fish paste, a mixture designed to replicate the eel's natural diet.
01:33The natural part is the fish they eat, like sardines and anchovies.
01:37Though the unnatural part is the disgusting goo ball those fish are turned into.
01:43Actually, does it smell that bad?
01:47I've never seen anything so disconcerting as this.
01:50Hundreds, maybe thousands of eels, and they're so vicious.
01:53They cling to the food.
01:54They're trying to push each other out of the way, but they don't have any arms.
01:58And then they take big bites of this giant, mucky blob of fish paste.
02:02These are Japanese eels, but in kitchens, they're called unagi, a Japanese word that simply means freshwater eel.
02:08Each year, this farm produces 60 tons of eel, satisfying a tiny portion of this country's massive eel demand.
02:15Agawa-san is here to walk me through the eel farming process.
02:18Can you tell me a little bit about where we are right now?
02:21This is the final processing facility for the eels.
02:24Here, they're just resting and waiting to be transported.
02:27They have to keep them in water to ensure that they're still fresh and alive.
02:31Returning as my guide to this country, Miss Universe Japan 2024, Kaya.
02:36How does the eel raising process begin?
02:39When they're in their ag, they come from the ocean first.
02:42And then when they're like, almost like a tadpole, they come through the Japanese river,
02:46and that's where they get them and bring them here.
02:49Since Japanese eels only start reproducing at 12 years of age, breeding them on farms is not cost-effective.
02:55Instead, farms like this go out and catch baby eels in the wild,
02:59then raise them in a feeding pool like you saw earlier.
03:02It's going to take at least six months to fully mature into the size that we can eat,
03:07but it can also take a year and a half for some.
03:09It's like competition.
03:10So they're not categorized according to age, it's according to their size.
03:14Once the eels are big enough, cozy pool they call home is drained,
03:18turning their former residents from this into this.
03:21A moment ago, you saw me just feed the eels, and I fed them in a pool just like this.
03:26Now, this pool has just been drained, and the eels moved out of here by way of an eel superhighway.
03:32The eels get sucked through a pneumatic tube, the same kind of tubes you see at your bank
03:36when you send them your money from your car.
03:38So the eels have gone from this building to another building.
03:41They thought they were flushed down the toilet for a second,
03:43and then they go, oh wait, we're okay again, for now.
03:46Hungry Japanese folks are lurking, and they want some Unagi.
03:50Farm workers pick up the eels that fail to catch the water train on time,
03:55or those that end up stuck in the mud.
03:57Then they reunite the eels with their slimy friends in a temporary holding pool,
04:01where the eels wait to be sorted.
04:02We have come to the eel sorting center.
04:05This is awesome.
04:06Now, from that temporary pool, they get pumped up to here.
04:09This is a sorting station.
04:11This place is critical for making sure the correct eels get brought out of this place.
04:15Most of these eels are adults, and they're ready to be processed and move on to the next step,
04:19which is becoming food.
04:21Here's how it works.
04:22So here we have a wooden grate.
04:24If they're small enough, they'll squeeze through.
04:26Oh, that one's not small enough.
04:28Oh, some of them get stuck.
04:29It's like a traffic jam in here.
04:31What I'm saying is if an eel is small enough, it will go through that gap,
04:35and it will go into a basket, and it'll be returned to a pool where it can grow even bigger.
04:40This is a pretty dicey job.
04:41These old guys working here, they're usually strapped in,
04:45and that's because it can be very slippery, and also they have to lean over.
04:48So it gives them a nice back support so they can stand like this.
04:51Good old guy posture.
04:53The big eels that can't squeeze through the grate move all the way to the end of the line
04:57where they're caught by a basket.
05:02The baskets are then suspended in a wading pool
05:04to keep the selected eels alive and fresh until transport.
05:09A 30-minute truck ride takes them to a nearby processing facility
05:12where they're mass-processed into Japan's most iconic eel dish.
05:16This place is where they sort the eels once more.
05:19So they back up a truck literally full of eels.
05:22They dump the eels out from these baskets, and they sort them out right here.
05:27Yes, we did sort the eels already, but here they do it once again with even more detail.
05:31In the front section, we have medium.
05:33Here we have large.
05:34And over here, we have the smallest eels.
05:36So the biggest, thickest, baddest eels are right here in this middle section,
05:40just slithering down to meet the fate that awaits them.
05:43This place is processing up to 30,000 eels per day.
05:47They're turning these slippery, slimy creatures into something absolutely delicious.
05:51Perhaps the world's most delicious eel recipe, kabayaki.
05:54Kabayaki is a Japanese grilling art that transforms slimy, fishy eels into tasty, glossy fillets.
06:01While the factory churns them out in bulk with high-tech machines,
06:04I get to see this 700-year-old dish crafted the traditional way by Chef Oguri-san.
06:10Oh, God, I was told he was going to tickle it to death.
06:12He's cutting the head.
06:14Well, he doesn't break the head completely.
06:16He just covers the spine right behind the head.
06:18From here, he takes a knife and he slits it down the back along the spine of the eel.
06:23The chef's movements are mirrored in the factory's filleting room,
06:26but with hundreds or even thousands more eels.
06:29And you can see all of the internal organs in the front third of the eel.
06:32And all behind the organs, you can see this nice, clean fillet.
06:35Right now, he's going to carefully extract the organs and the spine.
06:39He removes the spine, not taking any meat with it.
06:42While the factory only keeps the fillets and discards the organs,
06:45Oguri-san carefully saves them for a special, albeit slightly challenging, dish he'll serve us later.
06:51For the kabayaki, after removing the head, he skewers the eel fillet horizontally to keep it flat while grilling over charcoal.
06:59Meanwhile, in the factory, eel fillets lay open on a conveyor belt that carries them through a massive electric grilling machine,
07:08like a tanning bed set between high heat and slightly charred.
07:11Once the eel meat is firm, Oguri-san dips it in a magical blend of soy sauce, sake, sugar, and mirin before placing it back on the grill.
07:22He repeats this dipping and grilling process three times to create the rich, flavorful coating that kabayaki is known for.
07:29Thanks to modern technologies, the mass-produced kabayaki goes through a similar process without ever leaving the conveyor belt.
07:41The factory-made kabayaki will reach its final destination in grocery and convenience stores,
07:46while Oguri-san's masterpiece teams up with rice and meets me at the table.
07:50Who makes kabayaki better? A human or a machine?
07:54He works for the company.
07:58Dad has the factory. This may make his head explode.
08:02Still, factories cannot keep up with how we make it because he can see, visualize, and adjust what cooking when necessary,
08:11and factories still can't do that.
08:12I love that because of this chef's pride, he's willing to sacrifice his job here.
08:17Are you going to be okay?
08:18Of course.
08:19Yeah?
08:19Yeah.
08:21Now it's time for us to go for it.
08:23Now, as you pick it up, you can see it's so soft and tender.
08:27That skin that was once slimy and slippery is now fatty.
08:31It's best to eat just the eel first, then you can mix it with the rice later.
08:41Wow.
08:41I've never had this dish this good.
08:45There's like kind of a top leathery, slightly crunchy layer.
08:48It's sweet, and it's just been dredged or soaked with that sweet sauce.
08:52But then there's some natural saltiness that comes from the fish itself, and then that fat.
08:56The fat just helps everything melt right on your tongue.
08:59It has a nice depth of flavor with the smokiness.
09:02That's what I really like about it.
09:03Once you get past the filet, you can work your way down into the rice,
09:06which has been soaked with that same sweet brown sauce.
09:09This is perfect.
09:12Chef, I'm really, truly blowing away.
09:14Oishi.
09:14How do you say it very?
09:15You want to say it with slang?
09:16Yeah.
09:17Mecha oishi.
09:18Mecha oishi.
09:19Yes.
09:20Remember all those eel organs?
09:22Well, instead of discarding them, Oguri-san skewers them up before cooking.
09:25This is what they refer to as eel liver.
09:28But actually, it's not just the liver.
09:30It's basically all the internal organs, including its bile sac.
09:34The organ skewers receive the kabayaki treatment, starting on the grill.
09:38You as a chef and people in Japan, do you prefer farm-raised eels or wild-caught eels?
09:45The dipping, grilling process infuses the organs with the same flavor that blessed our eel filet.
09:50In contrast to belief, you know, we think that fresh and wild-caught is going to be tastier.
09:55But actually, the ones that's grown commercially is going to be better.
09:58Because you can control the amount of food that you're giving them, the oxygen level.
10:01So it's going to taste so much better than what we see in the wild.
10:05The other good thing about being farm-raised is that the internal organs, like these,
10:08you know they've only experienced good quality, clean food.
10:11Because this next bite is going to be something a little bit challenging.
10:14So I've had something similar when I was in Vietnam.
10:18We had eels, and we cooked the bile sac, and we ate it, and it was very, very bitter.
10:23Now, when we bite, you know what?
10:25Don't even ask.
10:34That's a different flavor.
10:36Oh, yeah.
10:37It popped in my mouth.
10:38Yeah.
10:38Mm-hmm.
10:39Do you see?
10:40Like a wood chip that got too big.
10:41It's like there's a lot of sweet brown sauce on there.
10:43There's a lot of char, too.
10:45That gives it a little bit of flavor.
10:46You can taste the intensity of the eel through its organs.
10:49It's a much more vibrant, intense, amplified flavor, and a little bit bitter.
10:53Everywhere I go in Asia, anytime you eat something a little bit unusual,
10:55they say it's good for you in some way.
10:57Does eating the bile sac give me any superpowers?
11:05I'm not sure if I can say this on screen.
11:07Oh.
11:09You can say it.
11:10It's good for at night, like, sexual stuff, like, for men.
11:16Go on.
11:17Well, scientifically, it has a lot of vitamins in it.
11:21You think, since this is your third steak, you probably can't sleep tonight.
11:32Do you have a takeaway container?
11:33Next, we're leaving the factory and heading to a proper restaurant,
11:37where eel dishes go far beyond kabayaki, transforming into culinary works of art.
11:41This is an egg brick.
11:43You could build a house with this.
11:44This is umaki, which is eel and egg.
11:48This is bigger than anything I've seen in a restaurant.
11:51Usually, it's, like, half of this size, so this is crazy.
11:55I think that we should work our way up to that.
11:57And we should start with this right here.
11:58This is the eel tempura.
12:00Tempura is the Japanese name for anything battered and deep-fried,
12:04including whole eel fillets.
12:06The fillets put on a coat of flour and a layer of batter.
12:09Then they swim in bubbling oil until they're fluffy and crispy.
12:12The traditional way is to take the radish and mix it in with the tzuyu,
12:18which is dashi, soy sauce, mirin, sake, and bonito flakes.
12:22We can take our tempura eel and just dip it and eat it.
12:31Wow.
12:32You like it?
12:33I love it.
12:33It's so fluffy, oily, but the radish cuts the oiliness out.
12:38Right, this is cold, it's cool, it's refreshing.
12:40And this is extremely oily, and not just the batter and the fact that it's fried,
12:44but the eel itself is pretty oily.
12:45So this is a perfect combination.
12:47You can really taste the eel, like, what eel actually tastes like.
12:50I would say that's I-D-E-E-L.
12:53I-D-E-L, okay, I'm gonna leave.
12:55Now, buried somewhere in here is an eel.
12:58In a bowl, our chef cracks in eight eggs and pours in dashi,
13:01a stock made from bonito flakes.
13:03He whips them up well before adding sugar and soy sauce.
13:05What I think probably happened is he started with an eel,
13:08and then he coated it with egg, and then rolled it,
13:11like rolling it down a hill?
13:12No.
13:12Tell me.
13:13We start with cooking the egg in this rectangular pan first.
13:17Once you build up a good foundation,
13:19then you can add the eel.
13:20And then you roll it.
13:22You tip the pan over slightly,
13:25and you add more egg mixture,
13:27and you just keep repeating that process
13:29until it becomes a brick.
13:37Boom.
13:38Whoa.
13:39That's way more eel than I expected.
13:41This is, like, sur-eel.
13:44Surreal.
13:46You can eat this alone, actually,
13:48because the egg should have that dashi flavor.
13:52It's full of flavor.
13:55Yeah.
13:57It's weird.
13:58There's plenty of oil that went into both of these dishes,
14:00but it doesn't feel that heavy.
14:02And I was hit with, like, a smoky flavor from the eel, actually.
14:05How do you feel right now?
14:06The eel.
14:09That's lame.
14:11Fluffy egg, flaky eel.
14:12The textures meld together perfectly.
14:14It's got that dashi flavor.
14:15Like you said, a little smoky.
14:16It's excellent.
14:17Egg-cellent.
14:18You're getting pretty good.
14:20Here's what we should do next.
14:21The owner of this restaurant has a special dish he's preparing for us.
14:24What I've heard is that eels in Japan, they're like beef.
14:27They're graded differently, and there's different levels of quality.
14:30So, I want to talk to the...
14:31Too much explanation.
14:33Editor, just write some voiceover, please.
14:37Chef, put her there.
14:39Akimoto-san is the representative director of Gosaro Restaurant.
14:44This is a restaurant that specializes...
14:46Local food.
14:49Do you want to do the whole interview in English?
14:50No.
14:52Chef, I want to talk about this right here.
14:54I've never seen an eel so vulnerable looking.
14:56It looks naked.
14:57It looks like I walked in on an eel as it was getting out of the shower.
15:00We here at the restaurant believe that this is the best way to truly taste the eel.
15:07This is shirayaki, a cooking method that begins with filleting and grilling the eel, similar to kabayaki.
15:13But unlike kabayaki, shirayaki requires only a light sprinkle of salt and a spray of sake.
15:18Everybody knows in Japan there is wagyu beef.
15:21That has a rating system from, I don't know, A through F and 1 through 5.
15:25But it's my understanding that you're also grating the eels.
15:28How does that work?
15:31The grilled unagi takes a short break from the grill and rests inside a steamer to rehydrate and enhance its tenderness.
15:37There's actually just two levels of eels.
15:39So, the standard can be both male and female eels.
15:42But the deshiko, which is the premium, can only be female eels.
15:47While regular eels possess 20% body fat, the deshiko eels have 28%.
15:52And more fat means more flavor.
15:54So, today have you served us a standard eel or the deshiko eel?
15:58Deshikoγ§γ.
15:59Nice.
16:00After the steaming section, the unagi's skin side is grilled once more to regain its crispiness.
16:05The shirayaki is served with finely grated garlic and wasabi.
16:08So, he actually served this dish to the emperor of Japan.
16:11And they really love the grated garlic and wasabi with the unagi.
16:17Mm-hmm.
16:22That is the way to try eel.
16:23Mm-hmm.
16:23It is so soft, fat, tender, juicy.
16:27It's really delicate, flaky meat.
16:28You have the fat kind of interspersed within the meat.
16:30But then, of course, the skin.
16:32The skin is so fatty, too.
16:34I thought, since it's a freshwater animal, that it might be minerally, that it might have some gaminess or funk to it.
16:40It is such a clean flavor.
16:41I was skeptical at first about the garlic, but it's really, really good.
16:45Oh, the garlic's very nice.
16:47The garlic is very potent.
16:49It is like a, don't say nuclear bomb.
16:52It is like a, sorry, like an explosive device of flavor.
16:56Jesus, I'm not doing good here.
16:57Should we try now with wasabi?
16:59Oh.
16:59Hi.
16:59The wasabi and garlic are similar.
17:04They're both really intense and kind of burn you.
17:06And it really cuts through that intensity of the eel.
17:08You need to do, right?
17:09The eel.
17:10If I had to choose between these three, I would take the eel.
17:13Our last stop is a restaurant that attracts travelers from all over Japan.
17:17Here, they serve over 10,000 sashimi eels each year.
17:20That means 10,000 eels served raw.
17:24Konnichiwa, Nakamura-san.
17:25Konnichiwa, Sunny-san.
17:26I forgot my next line.
17:27That took all my energy to remember that.
17:28Meet Nakamura-san, the man who's responsible for our sashimi eel and maybe even our lives.
17:34I'm told that when you make the sashimi, you have to prepare it properly
17:38or else something bad could happen to the people who are eating it.
17:42Stomach.
17:42Stomach.
17:42Oh, no.
17:43You won't die, but your stomach will be in lots of pain, I'm assuming.
17:47No.
17:48To be killed, you'd have to drink 60 eels blood.
17:52Possible.
17:53What is the proper process to kill an eel and then drain its blood so it can be used for sashimi?
17:58It must be still living when it is prepared.
18:03Oh.
18:04If you kill it first, the blood will bleed out and the blood will get all over the eel and that will make it poisonous.
18:10We have to first chop the head and the tail off.
18:15And then he puts a mysterious white powder into the ice bowl and then...
18:21That sounds like me after I eat Indian food.
18:25So, he places the freshly chopped eel into the mysterious liquid and it starts spewing out blood from both ends.
18:36Wow.
18:37Yeah.
18:37That is quite a visual.
18:38The chef repeats this process multiple times over three hours to ensure the meat is cleansed of any blood.
18:47Then he slices the eel meat and planches the skin before slicing it thin.
18:51The only problem, unbeknownst to us, some blood still remains, which we'll find out soon.
19:00Now, we're going to try this in one moment, but first I want to talk about this right here.
19:04So, these are the eel's bones.
19:06They have been made into a chip form.
19:08Here's what I love.
19:09Basically, today we will have eaten every part of the eel except for its face.
19:12Oh, it's kind of like a fish skin chips, but it's got a lot of flavor though.
19:20It doesn't feel like I'm eating a bone.
19:22It feels like I'm eating like the skin of the potato, like a little gritty.
19:26That's true.
19:27It would be a great accompany with some sake.
19:30Kanpai!
19:33I think that was the liquid courage I need to try this right here.
19:39All right.
19:40This seems like something that would be pretty rare.
19:41What percentage of Japan do you think's actually tried this?
19:44Honestly, I think like 5 to 10%.
19:47Now, what's interesting here is he's using the dashiko eel that has 80% fat.
19:50But it doesn't look fatty.
19:52Each piece is so thin.
19:54Do you want to dip it in the soy sauce?
19:56No, I want to go full eel.
19:57I want to see if eating eel raw is going to be a brand new enlightening experience.
20:05Hmm.
20:07Different.
20:08Different from fugu.
20:09Different from just normal fish.
20:10A little bit more gummy than I expected.
20:12Slightly chewy.
20:13There's a bit of minerality to it.
20:15Did your tongue go kind of numb?
20:17Yeah.
20:17Now, here's the thing.
20:18He puts a white powder in with the eel.
20:21And maybe that powder is in our mouth now.
20:22Making it go slightly numb.
20:23There's a strange sensation when eating this.
20:25It's confusing me.
20:26Should I be scared?
20:27Yeah.
20:27Yeah.
20:28And now I'm feeling it like in my throat.
20:29Yeah.
20:29It's like spreading?
20:31Is it from the sake?
20:32I don't know.
20:33I think we should call him over here.
20:36We're eating this.
20:37It's making us feel weird.
20:38It's a little bit as if it'sηΊγγ.
20:40This little pinkish red part of the eel is blood vessels and that's the same feeling of the blood in a way
20:47Some people feel it, but most people don't actually. But what's the worst that could happen?
20:54Well dying
20:57He muttered I shouldn't say what's the worst. What's most likely to happen?
21:04It'll quickly go away. It just happens when it's in your mouth
21:07The taste might actually diminish if you eat it with the ponzu sauce. I can eat the whole plate and still live? Yes. Chef, thank you very much
21:14Thank you
21:16Safety!
21:18Hit it with a little bit of sauce
21:22That's delicious. Same slightly chewy texture, but of course it's soaked up all that delicious ponzu sauce
21:27Before we wrap up, right here we have some eel skin. It looks curled up and cute and tiny
21:31Cheers
21:33Mmm kind of reminds me of pig skin like the texture. That's because it's mostly just made of pure fat. It's very thin. It's very small
21:39I mean, this is the confetti of eel skin. Not much flavor. It's just a little bit of a texture sensation and it's not making my mouth go numb
21:45Yeah, that's a good part
21:46I think people would want to eat this because of the unique texture it serves rather than like the taste
21:52Well, I think it's just an experience. Yeah
21:54I'm sitting here wondering if we're gonna die. I'm wondering if there's something in my sake and if you drugged me
21:58Me? You didn't drug me, no? No, no
21:59It's really hard to get drugged as a 40 year old balding guy
22:02Boom! Today we ate several different eel dishes in Kaya. I want to know right now which one was your absolute favorite?
22:07My favorite will have to be the shirayaki
22:10The white eel. That is a good choice
22:12But if I had to pick one eel dish, it would be the classic kabayaki
22:16Oh!
22:17It was my first taste of eel. It was crispy, sweet, fatty, it was just so delicious and it was my favorite
22:23What would be your second favorite?
22:26That's it
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