Macau's Diabo, the most fascinating stew we've ever seen 

Hey guys, a few notes: 1. Happy CNY everyone! Our idea for this video was actually the theme of “how to use up leftovers from your Spring Festival meal”. But after delving into this dish a bit more, we felt that going at it from that angle actually wouldn’t totally do the dish justice. Still, it’s definitely a way to use up some of those leftovers… 2. So what does this taste like? Oh man. This is right up there with Guizhou stir-fried sweet tangyuan with suancai and chili as one of the most mind-melding things we’ve eaten. You look at the dish - it looks like curry, you serve it next to some rice with curry. Then you put it in your mouth and you’re eating what basically tastes like the stew equivalent of Cantonese Siuyuk dipped in mustard. Only it’s got richness from the egg yolks, some complexity from the tomatoes and pickles. It like… takes a second for your brain to register. It’s weird for a bite or two, then it becomes addictive. 3. Huge thank you to Paul Starr for getting us closer to solving the boiled egg yolks conundrum! Apparently it's a technique that's used in Catalan Picada - much closer/more likely source than Sauce Gribiche. Ah well, now you know about sauce Gribiche in case you've never heard of it (plus, I got to plug on of our favorite channels). 4. So one of the simplifications I made for the sake of the flow of the video was referring to the Kristang people as “Malaccan Portuguese”. Just like the Macanese, that kind of shorthand hides a much more convoluted tale… again, I’m certainly not an ethnographer, so I’m not going to jump in and make broad claims of who’s a mix of what. That said, it’s another fascinating cuisine in its own right - one that I wish I knew more about. 5. Some of the recipes included a bit of chili or chili sauce in with the sofrito. We originally tried it with some, but found that that we preferred the flavor a bit more straight mustard-y/pickle-y. Almost no recipe we saw went heavy on the chili though. 6. So this one used Cantonese roast meats, but some of the other ‘poor’ Diabos we saw used some leftover Macanese/Portuguese braised meats in addition/instead. 7. To all the Cantonese speakers out there, apologies for my crappy pronunciation of the word ‘Kiutao’. And I mean for that matter I suppose I should also apologize for my crappy pronunciation of “Worcestershire”… 8. The inclusion of Worcestershire is obvious enough - influence from Hong Kong across the delta. Why does this thicken with something very similar to the base of a sauce gribiche though? [edit: looks like it's from Catalan Picada actually? *That’s* what’s leaving me still scratching my head. Perhaps a Macanese/Portuguese chef trained in France and made it their own riff, then it trickled from there. Perhaps it was just convergent evolution. Perhaps it *is* actually a Portuguese technique, and I just couldn’t find it (any lusophone viewers out there, your input would be awesome… English language sources for Portuguese food seem to kinda suck).] 9. Regarding potatoes - if you look at most Diabo recipes, they'll either (a) start with the meats, cook them for a bit, then add the potatoes and continue to cook or (b) separately cook the potatoes, add them in near the end or (c) not use them. We didn't test (c), but found that with (a) the meat'll break down a bit too much and that with (b) the sauce didn't thicken quite as much as we wanted. So this was just a way that we cracked that nut... it should bear repeating that these were very waxy small stewing potatoes though. When you're cooking this, keep tabs on your potatoes and trust your judgement... if they're starting to break down too much, remove them, then adjust when you add them in the future. So today being the first day of the New Year and all, we’re chilling at Steph’s parents’ place for the day. So we might be less responsive than normal (or perhaps more responsive lol, we don’t have much going on… let’s just say, erratic). Something we forgot to mention in the video… we’re off next week, then we’l be back onto a more normal schedule moving forward (these last couple months have been a little crazy with traveling/holidays).

Portuguese here: there is no definite rule in Portuguese cooking for the duration or sequence for the “refogado” (soffritto is italian, basically), but portuguese tend to fry the onions until a bit after they are golden, turning on brown, and when it starts losing its sweetish smell and smells more like deep fried onion.

0:18 Oh damn... I thought the guy was cutting his fingers off!

My family's Malaccan Nyonya-Portugese and I've been watching your channel for years. Weird to see it come full circle back... In any case, kudos to the fairly accurate background to our devils curry!

Every time I'm pretty sure I've seen it all something like this pops up. Thank you. Chef for 40 years and still learning. It's a process😀

Hey! Portuguese here! The initial preparation method you did with garlic, onion and tomato is called "Refogado"! Besides that, all is well, and very fascinating to get to know how our long gone colonial presence affected some dishes far away from home. Cheers!

An Indian Vindaloo is also based on a wine Portuguese stew. They add vinegar instead of wine for the acidity because they didn't have red wine. I'm guessing the pickles in this dish is replacing wine as well.

Portuguese here 😉 You are spot on! Also, we still have this same dish in continental Portugal. The small pickled onion aren't the same and the british sauce at the end isn't there at all, but all the rest is exactly the same. Some people mix sweet potato and regular potato too. 👍

Hey, thanks for this. I’ve always been curious because my family has this every year for new year as a tradition that was passed from my filipino, shanghai-born grandfather. I don’t know anyone else who eats diabo as we’re in the philippines and was curious about its origin because it didn’t seem very chinese either. It became a really cool talking point with my dad who explained more of our heritage in china. It turns out my grandfather’s mum was a portuguese woman living in macau, who taught it to my grandfather who in turn taught it to my dad. Thanks a lot for featuring diabo!! Edit: i showed my dad and he said yes we make it the same way except we mix portuguese sausage when we can find them with char siu and roast chicken (??) and we don’t have potatoes or egg whites! But he says thanks, we have more ideas to use thanks to your videos and we’ll try it this way too :D

Can you recommend books or websites about Macau's cooking? I am a Brazilian who loves Chinese cooking, so I'd love to found parallels between Macau's and Brazilian cooking since they share the same colonial Portuguese heritage

Loved this, and all the Macanese spotlights! Please keep em coming! Also. I'd love to see y'all do a video (or series) on Chinese herbs/spices. The history of each one, where it was originally cultivated, where it is now. And some of the chemistry of how they work in Chinese cooking. It would be fascinating in its own right. And really help us western cooks reconstruct these flavor profiles as best we can with limited ingredients.

You can get Portuguese olive oil here in the states. I'm Macanese born US citizen and we use a Chinese roast duck also.

You guys are so nerdy about cooking, I love it! You're doing a really good job of demystifying Chinese cooking for non Chinese people :)

Absolutely love your channel!

Happy new year! Never seen this dish before. Looks yummy. Anyway, hope you guys are safe and healthy in this special time.

Oh yeah, almost forgot in my first comment. Three garlic cloves? I don’t get out of bed for fewer than 10.

This looks like something I would really enjoy. I'm going to definitely have to make this one. Thanks!

What a cool recipe and I love how well ya'll explained it!! It somehow reminds me of corned beef and sauerkraut stew my mom makes with the pickled element but the sauce gribiche-like addition is a wonderful and the history of Diabo and Macau is super interesting- I definitely have to try this out myself even if I have to pickle my own onions to do it. One of my favorite videos of ya'lls so far and thank you!

This looks incredible, the fusion of East & West cuisine, im defo going to try this using a britsh staple, pickled onions!!! i absolutely luv your videos, thank you so much!!!

American here, but I lived in Macao for a short time. I miss it dearly, and it is such a treat to see Macanese recipes made here!

This sounds terrific! I just found your channel and am already hooked!

This looks amazing. Thank you!!!!

Very, very interesting recipe you two....! Thanks from Canada...!

I made this the other night. Sort of. I looked up a bunch of other recipes and worked it out as best as I could. What I gleaned from the other recipes was that this was a "New Year's meal" and was made from "leftovers". I had bread and butter pickles and they were really good in the stew...curry...whatever. I had leftover turkey shredded, garlic chives, Nappa cabbage. red taters and small Yukon golds worked great. It was really good. I shared it with friends and got rave reviews.

Made this today, it came out amazing! A new favorite! I used some pressure cooked Ox tail and air fried pork belly. There will be no left overs! 😂

This looks lovely, thanks for sharing.

Thanks guys. I love love love this recipe (and I also love sauce Gribiche) It has so many interesting components and interesting roots that even goes far as back to middle ages. Using hard egg yolks as a thickener is found in many medieval cookbooks -especially from the Iberian peninsula. This recipe might actually have common roots with sauce gribiche but it has been evolved in a Portuguese (and Chinese) culinary tradition. You can find other European "medieval" recipes in Asia. Such as Japanese Tempura or Filipino Lechon sauce (which is essentially the same bread and liver sauce as found in Catalan medieval manuscripts). Also, all dishes named after the devil has something to them.

Awesome! Love your show!

Malaccan Portuguese here, I would say, this this would be a variation of a dish we call Teem. My dad would cook something like this, with Roast Pork Leg and Pickled Mustard Leaf (Ham Choy) with a touch of vinegar.

Just wanna say that this video made me subscribe to your channel. Fascinating stuff!

Looks amazing! Gunna try it this weekend!

Happy New Year to you as well! Fantastic dish. Hope to see more Macanese content in future!

This recipe looks very interesting and delicious!

Just discovered your channel a few days ago and it's so amazing! I don't know if you're open for requests but there's a dish at my favourite Sichuan restaurant (in London) called 四川回锅鱼 " Fish in Sichuan style" which I haven't been able to find in any of my cookbooks. My online sleuthing has led to me to find out it's twice cooked fish. Anyway it's the best most addictive thing and if you could please make a video of how to make it I'd be eternally grateful! Thanks for the videos and awesome recipes!

Just made it. It's insane. Never tried anything like it before. Thank you for the recipe!

That looks amazing!!

That was really neat, thanks for sharing!

looking great...made me want to visit Macau even more...been to HK a couple of times...I'll get there!! Thanks !!

Awesome video - as always. I respectfully think that your wife is one of the loveliest ladies on RU-vid! Love your recipes! Thank you for sharing!

Happy CNY ! And respect for Beer Laos. Taste of the motherland.

Interesting to see the worchestershire sauce in there. It pops up in the strangest places sometimes. I once saw a recipe for a 'home style' Mexican dish where it was an ingredient and was referred to as "salsa Anglais". On a side note, I have made my own Worchestershire sauce twice now and its well worth the effort. If you search for it, don't use any 'quick and easy' variants. Look for one where you make caramel from sugar and use black cardamom and anchovies (yes, its got quite the ingredient list). If you can find the right recipe you will not be disappointed.

Another reason to want to check out Macau. Awesome video, dude, muito bom!

hoping you guys are ok amidst the serious virus happing over there. take care and a prosperous blessed new year to the both of you.

The ingredients and the way of cooking reminds me heavily of a Russian dish called solyanka. You get a bunch of leftover meats (often cured kielbasa) and lots of pickles + potatoes. Generally, the more sour it is, the more it offsets the insane lard to water ratio of the soup. And, of course, no soup is cooked without a bay leaf there, so that's another similarity. Fascinating to see similarities in cusines which are seemingly completely unrelated

I’m American born 1/2 Portuguese but I grew up in the most Portuguese city in the US - Fall River, MA. Our international sister city is in the Azores. My whole life, I never saw my grandparents cook just the base - each item added separately - for an extended period before starting a meal. We didn’t call it sofrito, that word feels South American to me. Also, our version included bell pepper (green or red) and something we call Pimenta Moida which my grandfather made himself and canned. Basically crushed hot red pepper with vinegar and salt and I pretty much can’t cook without it. Even on a fried egg, lol. My equivalent to chili oil I suppose. I’ve added it to your Dan Dan Noodles. After a quick look my preferred store isn’t listing my favorite brand. If you’re interested I’ll find out who can send it to China. If it’s me, lol, maybe we can trade for stuff I can’t get here!

This looks SO good. I am planning on getting some of these meats today and know I will have leftover so I look forward to trying this nix the potato (gonna use jamaica to reduce the carbs).

Diabo - took my parent (and me when I was old enough to help) 2 to 3 days to make from scratch. They made it with separate dishes of chicken stew, beef stew, deep fried pork chop, and Chinese roast pork & duck. I'm going to try it your was one day. Our dish could feed 20 people easily.

Love the inclusion of Beer Lao!!!

Love the channel. I was wondering if you guys will ever do a video on a dish I've seen in Taiwan and some Sichuan restaurants in the US, named "Five O' Clock Intestines" if literally translated. It's spicy and delicious but very few videos in English on it.

LMAO the very second you said Sauce Gribiche the very first thing I thought of was the French Cooking Academy channel, he was the one who taught me about it haha. Since you’re my favourite chinese cooking channel it’s good to know your favourite French channel is also mine haha *Also* Xin Nian Kuai Le and/or Gongxi Facai!!!

Happy CNY! I am a Taiwanese, never see this fascinating Diabo before, so cool! I am a big fan of your channel, thank you for sharing!

My mom would make a South African curry using leftover turkey (not traditional, it used fresh capon originally.) But thickened with flour, not egg yolk. This is clearly a recipe of necessity , leftover meats, leftover hard boiled eggs and pickles to brighten and clean up the flavors. I'm not sure I'd make this, but it sure was an interesting recipe. Thanks so much.

I don't know if I would make this any time soon, but the sufrito (I think that's how you spell it) with onion, garlic, and tomato sounds like a great base for a lot of different types of soups. Thanks for the video!

This recipe is a wild ride from start to finish but the idea of gerkins in any form stew stuff made me gawk! Thanks for the video

Hong Kong citizen tourist flown to Malaysia / Singapore eat the dish loves the dish and bring home the curry recepi.

Happy CNY! It's more of a snack, but could you guys look into a good recipe for Macau mung bean almond cookies? Good video! Always appreciate your work.

That has got to be one of the most interesting dishes I've ever seen made before. Also, nice babish outtro music, if the glove fits! Though I guess to be fair I don't know if you or he was 1st, I'm kind of guessing you guys.

In the Portugese settlement in Malacca among the Portuguese Eurasian this is called Curry Devil. It’s base or sofrito is a mix of local ingredients - galangal, chili, onions, garlic and candle nuts. Every Eurasian family has their own twist to their family receipt. Not a stew but a curry that is distinctively from the Eurasian community. No thickener required as the candlenuts give rich flavor.

Very interesting to find sauce gribiche here ! Definitely linked to tête de veau (veal head) in my french speaking mind.

Keep up the good work! With all the tension between china and the west it's nice to see someone lift the veil a bit so to speak, reveal to us the culture of the nation so shrouded in misconception.

This channel just keeps on delivering time and again. I'm a huge food nerd and these type of videos are crack to me. You guys are really doing a great job.

Gongxi facai from Australia. This looks stunning!

This is super cool dish.

thats looks ridiculously good

This is an awesome soup/stew. Any advice on the meats? Definitely like using precooked meats.

Happy lunar new year😊😊😊!!!

Very interesting recipe. Can definitely see the Eastern and Western influence.

Very cool. I want to give it a go.

Damn that really looks good!

made this with leftovers from my local BBQ place and can confirm that it works with ribs brisket and half a smoked chicken, I wanna try it with no subs but as is it was like a BBQ soup

Who could dislike this?!?!?!?

Cool recipe! Is there a link to a written recipe somewhere? Thanks for putting the video together.

Us timorese chinese have a recope which is almost the same, although it's called kaldeirada, and it's more similar to a recipe found in the Philippines we use beer rather than wine, and a lot of it

This looks fascinating! This will probably be clarified in the full recipe, but how well should you stir in the egg yolk sauce? Normally I'd expect a vigorous stirring to fully emulsify the stew, but it doesn't look like you stirred it that much (though that could just be the editing in the video).

Lovely

I'd say 10 + 5 + 20 or whatever you need for the tomato to loose it's acidity.

Wow. Wow! This looks amazing. I'm thinking i need to score some Chinese roast meats as i can't quite imagine this with thanksgiving turkey leftovers. I have never seen those pickles in the US but i have seen small Vietnamese vinegar pickled leeks that might sub. Happy New Year! Stay healthy!

I, a Macanese, never ate this before 😅

Happy to see that Beer Lao in the shot :)

Thanks Happy Luna New Year.

Nice!!!

Ya know, even if I never make the stew I will definitely be make that funky mayo sauce like situation. Very interested in that.

A wonderful Euro-Chinese fusion food! The Portuguese heritage in Macao is everywhere to be seen, in the architecture and in the food. Shared 👍🌟😋

Roast meat, chili paste (chinese), sour ginger and some port wine will definitely give the Diabo a more authentic taste!

It’s on the stove and the rice is cooking - of course some difference by the meat, I added some oyster sauce and used soya sauce instead of salt to get an equal flavour for my different used meat but can’t wait 😋 One question: the taste is dominated by the two main flavours, the pickle vinegar and the mustard, right? Greetings from Berlin, Germany 😊 PS: Because it’s more or less an Asien dish I used rice wine vinegar but in this case I would be happy if u said which kind of vinegar you have used cause more or less it’s French, Portuguese, British, Asien mixed kitchen and then it’s good to know this 😉

Brit here - try pronouncing Worcestershire sauce as: wuh-stir-shear sauce with the emphasis on the "wuh" part. You can also just say Worcester sauce and all Brits will understand, but maybe not the rest of the world! I hope this makes sense 😊

I loved this recipe and never thought of using cooked egg yolks to thicken but I'm going to give it a go. One tip though. Don't bother calling it 'worcestershire sauce'. Simply calling it 'wooster sauce' is never wrong.

This is pretty amazing a lot of uncommon techniques at least in my side of the world.

That is a soup thickening idea that I'm gonna have to employ on a few other dishes.

I learn something new everyday.....I always thought sofrito was a Puerto Rican sauce only.

Very good there are many recipes depending on the family actually, i agree that the poor Diabo its better, kari Debal it's also cooked from the left overs and also have the fresh meats or with the left overs, this recipes its pretty good to be fairs i can see you done your research, potatoes also can be from the night before, and other wines are also used for Diabo like Port wine oh the egg with mustard actually part of the cuisine as well and in very traditional recipes in Portugal as well thanks for your Macanese recipes as a non Macanese or Portuguese you are doing a Great job

Hi Steph and Chris! Love the channel! Can you guys do a clay pot 101 video? I live in Sacramento and there are wonderful Chinese markets and Cantonese restaurants here. I see frog legs and goose intestines on a lot of menus. Could you do a video on frog legs and organ meats.happy new year! Thanks

This food was created with the power of facts and logic

This recipe is a WILD ride.

Very nice video

Any chance you could do a guide to Qiang Guo Yu (炝锅鱼) flash fried fish? It's one of my favorite sichuan dishes and for some reason it's particularly difficult to find any decent recipes online - they all add a mountain of sauce even though in my (admittedly limited) experience it's supposed to be a mostly dry dish with a light scattering of peppers and douchi. When I try to approximate it at home, the flavor and texture is nowhere close to what I get from authentic restaurants. Not sure if I should be using a different type of fish, or if I'm priming it wrong, or maybe something's missing from my batter. It just never seems to get that sweet, almost sugary flavor and light, buttery texture that it's supposed to have.

Merry christmas

Here's a funny thing: I've never heard a Brit call it Worcestershire sauce, just Worcester. Guy Fieri had a laugh in his show a few years back, but our way it's much easier to say.

Melakan here. As thickening mostly we use sweet potato. Mee rebus is a good example. Hawaw

Breakdown at the end is the besy