If you think food TV has lost its mojo since Man vs Food died, then think again.
MTV are serving up a belly full of something tasty.
Introducing Brothers Green: EATS!Â
The show mixes mad meals, music and comedy together with star guests such as Ed Sheeran and David Hasselhof – in short, it looks batsh*t crazy.
Brooklyn-based brothers Josh and Mike go rogue in the kitchen concocting microwave cakes, making burritos with a clothes iron and throwing just about any ingredients together to make delicious snacks.
Who doesn’t want to learn how to make bubblegum BBQ sauce or a Mexican Twinkie?
Food hacks? Check! Mad recipes? Check! Kitchen mayhem? Check!
JOE interviewed brothers Josh and Mike about eating haggis, strange British food, homemade McDonald’s and where they get their inspiration from.
Warning: it will make you hungry…
What can people expect from the show?
Josh: It’s basically a cooking show with a lot of music and other different things. We explore Brooklyn and travel around the world trying different things and then putting on our twist on things and making our own versions.
We do four-ingredient meals, midnight munchies, there’s a lot of cooking hacks to inspire people to get in the kitchen. We’re two brothers with no professional training, there are no rules and we are just hanging out and being creative.
What was the weirdest thing you had to eat in Britain?
Mike:Â One of the craziest things was definitely the Munchies Box in Scotland. This guy just deep fries everything and puts it in a box. There was deep fried French fries, pizza, vegetables, lamb, chicken.
We have some of our own strange delicacies in Britain like jellied eels and pie butties, did you try any?
Josh: We had haggis. It was our first time in Scotland and we tried it and actually really enjoyed it. A lot of people are repulsed by it – there’s a lot of negative energy towards it. But we loved it.
You cook with some pretty unusual methods…
Mike: We do a lot of fun stuff. We are always trying to think up good ways to cook. It may seem silly to cook with an iron, but if you’re in a hotel room you need something.
We made salmon and vegetables in a coffee maker. It just shows that you don’t need that much stuff to make great meals. People think you need a lot of expensive equipment to make good food, but we inspire people to cook with what they have.
What are your best cooking hacks?
Josh: We did a microwave ice cream cake. All you do is melt ice cream in the container, mix in cake mixture and we make a really quick cake.
We have a lot of microwave recipes. We do a Dorm Room section which is just about how creative can you be with just a few things. With a microwave you just put it in and press a button – so we think what’s the best thing you can make in a microwave?
Where does your wacky cooking style come from?
Josh: We felt there were not many chefs out there going after what we were going after. They were in expensive kitchens with expensive equipment.
The two chefs that we really watched were Heston Blumenthal and Jamie Oliver. Heston went from self trained to one of the best chefs in the world and he was doing really creative food that made people feel like they were kids again.
Jamie Oliver has a really rustic cooking style just throwing ingredients in with no measurements.
Mike: That’s why he has inspired more people to cook than anyone else because of his personality. He’s just hanging out, having fun which makes cooking accessible.
Where do you get your food ideas from?
Mike: You don’t want to know! They come from all over – I will wake up from a dream because I have weird food dreams.
We just explore what people are doing. Sometime we go out and buy ingredients we have never seen before. Maybe we will make a mistake but it could be the best thing we’ve ever made.
Where did it all start?
Mike: Originally our mum was not the best cook so we started cooking our own food to have something that tasted better. We learned from TV cooking shows and used to cook at lot for friends at university. Just experimenting and having fun.
Josh was living with his band in Brooklyn and his roomy was a filmmaker and started filming our dinner parties and cooking.
We love a good barbecue in Britain, what’s the best way to do it?
Mike: Tonight we’re going to be barbecuing ourselves. We just go out, buy a nice piece of meat, some vegetables and a bit of bread and see what happens.
The best thing is chicken thighs – they’re really fatty, but so full of flavour. Just add a little salt, pepper and oil over a fire. The flavour is amazing.
Stay away from hotdogs and frozen hamburgers.
Do you cook healthy stuff? Or is the word ‘diet’ banned?
Josh: We always get asked that. A lot of the time when we were growing up we ate a tonne of fast food. We didn’t feel very good, but then slowly over time we learned how to cook that kind of food for ourselves.
So we were eating McDonald’s and then we learned how to make the McDonald’s for ourselves. It is like a journey – a learning process of how your body feels through food.
That’s what this show is teaching people. We show people how to cook something in the microwave then it opens up possibilities for people. We even made a salad just using a pair of scissors.
Brothers Green: EATS! airs weekly on MTV from Tuesday April 28 at 9pm.
