Food: The super chef just wants to set up a stall leisurely

Chapter 129 The story of stir-fried beef

"Come to think of it, this dish was developed by Lao Sun and I when I first started learning cooking." Gu Shanfeng told Zhao Xiaojing about it with a hint of nostalgia in his eyes.

"The stir-fried beef here pursues tenderness of the meat, and egg white and cornstarch are generally added. Some people directly add water and stir it in a convenient way. After the meat absorbs the water, add oil. This way, the moisture can be locked even when stir-frying, so that the meat tastes tender and smooth.

But Lao Sun and I have known each other for a long time. We have been to Xiangxi together and eaten authentic Hunan cuisine. I feel that this destroys the essence of Hunan cuisine.

Not to mention that when stir-frying beef here, they also pour a circle of cooking wine on it! "Gu Shanfeng shook his head and sighed in disapproval of this practice.

He and Sun Dehai went to Xiangxi and Sichuan together before they learned to cook. At that time, both of them loved food and said they were traveling, but in fact they went there to eat authentic Sichuan and Hunan cuisine.

We didn't visit many places during that trip, and all our time was spent looking for restaurants and satisfying our hunger, but we both felt that we had a great time.

Sun Dehai prefers the spicy and numb flavor of Sichuan cuisine, while he prefers the fragrant and spicy flavor of Hunan cuisine.

After they came back, they were still not satisfied, so they made several appointments to eat at local Sichuan and Hunan restaurants, but they all felt that the food was not as good as before.

It just so happened that both of them wanted to learn how to cook, so they started to study on their own, copying recipes from bookstores and trying to cook on TV through cooking channels.

After they started to do it themselves, the two realized the difference between themselves and professional chefs, and began to think about learning from others.

At that time, there was a state-owned restaurant in the city where they lived. It was very famous locally. It was said that the chef there was a national second-level chef.

At that time, Gu Shanfeng had a cousin who worked as a foreman in a state-owned hotel.

Gu Shanfeng went to him for help, and after he pleaded several times, the two of them went into the kitchen.

After entering the kitchen, I realized that there were many chefs in the state-owned hotel, all of whom were apprentices of the second-level chef. Under these chefs, there were more than a dozen kitchen workers. They were the small workers who followed behind the masters to do odd jobs.

At that time, odd jobs were paid very little, but there were many people willing to do the job. There were more than 20 people of the same generation as them, and they would try their best to stay close to the masters all day long, hoping to learn a few tricks.

But it is not so easy to learn just one or two tricks. There are many people in the kitchen who hope to learn from the master chef, but they are just at the bottom and have too much work to do.

The status relationship at that time was that the special second-level chef commanded other chefs, other chefs commanded a few cooks, and a few cooks commanded a group of handymen.

Not to mention becoming a special second-level chef, they can’t even learn the skills of a cook.

But he and Sun Dehai were not discouraged. They worked hard and honestly when the masters were not around and others were lazy. They also worked hard when the masters came and everyone around them was trying to please them.

The other handymen were impatient and laughed at the fact that they didn't know how to deal with things. But when they saw that they couldn't learn anything, they all gave up and left. However, these two worked hard and listened to the cook's instructions without complaint.

It was at that time that the two were noticed by Lao Jia, a cook. Seeing that they were honest people, Lao Jia began to teach them knife skills in private.

The teaching lasted for half a year. The three of them were all good at speaking, down-to-earth and not good at showing off, so they quickly became friends.

Half a year later, the master chef noticed their small group of three, admired them very much, gave them some advice, and nodded to promote the two who were still handymen to kitchen workers.

At this time, the two of them were finally able to officially touch the things on the stove. After finishing their own kitchen work every day, the three of them watched the chefs cooking with fascination, and occasionally when the chefs said a word or two, they wished they could take notes at that time.

Fortunately, the chefs at that time were all very nice people and were always willing to guide them in their spare time. After receiving guidance, the three of them learned from each other and practiced hard. During that period, their cooking skills improved by leaps and bounds.

Later, they were both noticed by a chef working for the master chef, who took them in as apprentices.

That is, after they formally became apprentices and had a basic and systematic grasp of cooking methods, seasoning, ingredients, and food characteristics, they began to re-study this stir-fried beef dish, and once during this period they asked for advice from a free master chef.

Only then did I realize that authentic Hunan cuisine generally does not contain cooking wine, is not coated with starch, thickened with starch, or added with sugar. Instead, it is stir-fried over high heat with chili peppers, ginger, and garlic to remove the fishy smell. These ingredients are used to highlight the dry aroma of the ingredients, blending the meat aroma with the chili peppers to the greatest extent, rather than having it be taken away by the cooking wine.

Moreover, Hunan cuisine does not excessively pursue the tenderness of the meat, but focuses on frying out the moisture and flavor of the meat. A little chewiness is better. Therefore, the stir-fried beef in Hunan cuisine is not actually marinated in advance, but cut into thin slices and stir-fried directly. The taste of the meat is determined by controlling the heat, rather than relying on marinating.

The two of them suddenly realized and continued to work hard in this direction.

But they were just beginners in cooking, and they only had a superficial grasp of the heat. Without marinating, the food they cooked was either cooked but tasteless, or tasted but so tough that it was hard to swallow. In Sun Dehai's own words, it was "more tiring than chewing a pair of shoes."

There was no other way. The two of them were not skilled enough to stir-fry and season quickly in one go, so they used their brains and decided to go back to the old way of pickling.

Cornstarch and egg white must not be added. Adding water and stirring is not a good idea, as the dry and fragrant taste of Hunan cuisine will be gone. Adding salt is not a good idea either, as it can be used to season the dish in advance, but salt will kill the moisture in the meat, making it dryer when stir-fried.

But it is okay to add light soy sauce in advance to adjust the taste first, so that when stir-frying you don’t have to add too many seasonings and be too busy to take care of them all; it is also okay to add oil to lock in the juice of the meat itself so that it does not need to be overcooked. At the same time, the oil will gradually evaporate during stir-frying, so it does not lose its soul like adding starch.

In this way, after continuous research and experimentation, both theory and practice were done, and they finally succeeded in neutralizing part of the pickling and non-pickling methods and made a similar version.

So many years have passed, and the two have taken different paths. After becoming a real chef, he went to Xiangxi for an inspection and learned the authentic Xiangxi method of cooking this dish. However, it did not taste as amazing and satisfying as when he first ate Hunan cuisine with Lao Sun.

I didn't expect that today, I would taste the flavor that the two of us originally researched together at Lao Sun's apprentice's place.

Zhao Xiaojing nodded in understanding. "When Master Sun taught me this method, I had just learned how to flip the wok. No wonder he said this method is suitable for me and asked me to practice it first."