It’s been over two years since Erwan Heussaff made his first appearance on the popular cooking YouTube channel, Tastemade, where he debuted his infamous taho—you know, the one with heavily undercooked sago, watery syrup, and hard tofu? Yeah, that one. The passionate chef got a lot of flak over the video and received his fair share of mean comments.
Again, considering that it’s been two years since the video was published, I think it’s safe to say that everyone has moved on and forgotten about it. Everyone except Erwan, that is.
Just yesterday, he published a video entitled ‘Homemade Taho Recipe (Redemption and Apology)’. The video starts off with a written apology, complete with a Heussaff stamp of approval.
“A couple years ago, I was invited by Tastemade to go to the U.S. and shoot some cooking videos,” explains Heussaff, “I arrived there just planning to be the absolute best Tastemaker I could be. One of the recipes I had to do was taho, and this is where the story starts.”
Queue dramatic music accompanied by numerous screenshots of comments bashing his taho.
Heussaff acknowledges the shortcomings of his Tastemade taho, saying, “I did not cook taho properly. And I admit to that. And I’ve always admitted to it. But…”
Of course there’s a ‘but.’
He then goes on to explain that he and the Tastemade team had strict time constraints during filming and, therefore, didn’t have enough time to properly cook the sago even though he arrived there “planning to be the absolute best Tastemaker” he could be—which implies that he studied and knew the recipe well enough to know how time-consuming the entire process was. Sago, silken tofu, syrup and all.
Yes, he acknowledged that his taho wasn’t properly cooked, but then immediately cites time constraints as an excuse. Second, he says that viewers thought the arnibal sugar syrup from the first video was too watery and not dark enough, to which he responds with a wry tone, “sure, I don’t like really syrup-y stuff, but okay.” I think this comment sums it up more concisely:
So how does this new taho tutorial fare? Well, now that he’s not pressed for time or resources, Erwan goes as far as to make the silken tofu from scratch (although we’re not sure if our OG taho vendors use epsom salts to make their tofu), and makes sure that the sago is thoroughly cooked because he doesn’t want a raw, uncooked center haunting him anymore. The syrup is also considerably thicker. It would’ve been nice to see Erwan learn from real taho vendors, but the end product is a pretty delicious looking cup of taho—and an award for most-improved.
How do you feel about Erwan’s second take on taho? Tell us in the comments.
Photos from Erwan Heussaff and Tastemade on YouTube.
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