SORTEDFood is a British YouTube food channel that's been around since 2010.

It mostly features four guys (Jamie, Barry, Mike and Ben) who are longtime friends, featuring various dishes, their recipes and food/kitchen hacks.

Every week a theme is chosen for their food of choice, which culminates in an Ultimate Food Battle — and in the week just past, the chosen theme was Singapore food.

And we must admit, we're pretty impressed by the team's dedication to researching and understanding our cuisine, and getting the details as right as they possibly could.

Nasi Lemak

In their first episode on Singapore, the ingredients were unveiled as pandan leaves, candle nuts, palm sugar and black chicken, and the first dish they tried out was nasi lemak.

Even though the guys said this is a Malaysian dish that is popular in Singapore, Malaysian commenters still got upset, but we're busy being impressed by the attention they paid to the rice:

Pandan leaves, check. Coconut milk, check. Ginger, check. More spices, check! Good job guys.

Unfortunately, they didn't go into too much detail on the sambal (so important) and the peanuts seem a little too pale still, despite a "re-roasting" called for by Jamie.

But they still applauded its tastiness:

Watch the video of this here:

But wait till you see the sheer effort they put into the next dish:

 

Hainanese Chicken Rice

The guys pulled out all the stops in this one, really.

They consulted with a London food blogger who also happens to be an authority on Malaysian food — May, from Eat Cook Explore:

(Well, at least she's an expert in the cuisine of our very awesome neighbours up north. Close enough la hor.)

And they also noted that they studied the hundreds of comments (from kaypoh Singaporeans, of course) giving advice and tips on what needed to be done, and what to be careful with (well, everything of course) before attempting it.

So here's them making the chicken stock from scratch:

The ice water bath for the chicken as soon as it's done from the broth before its boiling-down — and yes, they also took the tip of exfoliating the chicken with salt and rinsing it:

And plenty of stressing over the sauces — they even took the effort to make a good ginger/garlic paste (although they didn't have the time to pound it manually with mortar and pestle, we note with the slightest disappointment):

The dude in black, Ben, even made sure he cut the chicken in the Chinese/Cantonese style, not in the usual French or European method he is used to:

And of course, immense enjoyment was to be had.

Watch their how-to video here:

Food battle: Roti John, Laksa, Satay

And their efforts culminated in their Ultimate Singapore food battle, where they dressed up in amusing costumes:

Singapore Sling, get it get it? And on the other side of Jamie's homemade sling are pasted raffle numbers, because Raffles. Tsk.

Barry went it simple, and painted his face with our flag (not too bad a job, we reckon), and draped himself with a Singapore flag cape:

But nothing prepared us for this whack-job by Mike:

Basically, we'll never see the Merlion the same way ever.

Ben was the judge of their competition, so each of them cooked:

1) Roti John

We think this looked the most legit — just not messy enough!

2) Laksa

In fairness, Barry said it would be done "Barry-style", but we're not sure about this, including his failure to use thick bee hoon. And where are the cockles??? Tsk tsk.

3) Satay

Which unfortunately looks more like kebabs (too big la dei), and the sauce is... whut?

Nonetheless, the laksa and kebabs satay received high praise from Ben, the only one among them who came to Singapore when he was 14 (some 15 years ago) and actually tasted local food before.

Of course, we had plenty to say about it, even though a grand total of none of us tried what they cooked —

From the encouraging:

To the completely unforgiving:

All that said, we definitely must give them credit for coming a long way from July 2016, where they featured a "Singapore noodles" recipe — which we all know isn't actually a Singaporean dish:

But hey, guess they redeemed themselves with the past week, and also by making chilli crab (albeit without the very necessary mantou) some time later last year:

Lunch?

 

Top photo: Screenshot from video

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