When stir-frying tonight, I turned over the car. My son chanted vinegar cabbage for a day, and I fried it into sour soup cabbage.
The cabbage is not crispy, the green onion aroma is not there, there is too much acetic acid, and the vinegar aroma is completely absent.
I have stir-fried this dish hundreds of times, and when I opened the store, it was also a very popular dish in the restaurant.
When I calmed down to review, I found that the reason for the overturn was caused by a small bad habit I developed when I first learned to cook.
The dish of vinegar and cabbage, in fact, there is no trick, as long as the hands and feet are sharp.
The oil temperature is slightly higher, and the green onion is followed by the cabbage. The high temperature stimulates the aroma of green onions, drives away the earthy smell of cabbage, and locks in moisture by the way.
Cabbage is broken, put vinegar once to increase vinegar aroma and slightly sour aftertaste.
Put salt, add sugar, some soy sauce, and after the seasoning is broken, add vinegar again to the side of the pot at high temperature to increase the vinegar aroma and part of the layering of sourness.
And I failed today, mainly because the temperature was not well controlled, and when the oil temperature had not yet arrived, the green onions and cabbage were put into the pot.
This dish requires high heat throughout the whole process to instantly stir up the aroma and retain water.
The temperature at the beginning of my game was low, coupled with the lack of heat power of the household gas stove, the temperature of the cabbage under the pot plummeted, and it never rose again.
The consequence is that the green onions are not fragrant, and the cabbage comes out of the soup. The end is that the cabbage has no taste at all, and the vegetable soup is sour and salty.
Being afraid of high temperatures is a "bad habit" I developed when I first learned to cook. The oil temperature is high, one is love paste, the other is love jumping.
The key is to jump a bubble, who hurts who knows.
Therefore, just learned to stir-fry, often cold oil under the pot, cold oil under the pot, feel that the stir-fried dish is not fragrant enough, so I add more oil, the result is not only not fragrant, but also greasy.
Later, after learning to cook seriously, I knew the importance of temperature to cooking, so I deliberately changed this habit.
Although most of the time it is corrected, there are occasional times to reoffend.
In fact, the bad habits formed at the beginning of learning will set up many obstacles to the improvement of cooking skills, and even some small habits, many people do not realize it.
This article, share a few bad habits I once had, and friends I hope to see, some will change or encourage.
01 - Lazy to simplify the steps
Cooking is a meticulous job, don't look at the chefs one by one, really good chefs, careful thinking.
Many steps of cooking, you have to go 1234 this way, you have to become 134 to omit a 2, you can also stir-fry the dish, but whether it is good or not is not guaranteed.
For example, my master's old ruffian cook, can marinate a shredded meat for 20 minutes.
Put salt and grab it.
Put soy sauce and grab it.
Put some water and grab it.
Put some starch and grab it.
Seal with oil and grab again.
None of the shredded meat that passed through his hands read him well, and every trace of him was caught dozens or hundreds of times.
I was troublesome and put salt, pepper, soy sauce, flower wine, starch and oil into the shredded meat.
Just grab a few meanings, and the effect of the stir-fry is indeed different from my master's.
The old man's shredded meat is fried tender and juicy, and I stir-fry it to dry firewood and teeth.
When I understood the role and purpose of each step, I learned that if I was in a hurry, salt, soy sauce, pepper, and wine could barely be put together, but I had to grab it for a while and grab it all into the meat.
But the two steps of starch water retention, and sealing oil, can not be synthesized in one step.
Two days ago, my young master wanted to eat braised fish, and my wife had to show her hands, and the result was also smashed.
My wife was worried about the trouble of wrapping the fish in starch, and buried the pot, so she fried the fish pieces directly in the pot.
When I ate it, I found that this fresh fish meat was not tender at all, and when I asked, I realized that the leader was lazy.
I taught her that "every time it burns, it must be fried" is to remember, but the next phrase "fried must be powdered" ran away from the other ear.
Don't look at the flour is just a simple detail, which plays a decisive role in the construction of the fresh flavor of fish later.
After the floured fish, the surface starch layer is quickly ripened after the pot, which protects most of the moisture inside from leakage.
The retention of moisture can protect the internal temperature from being too high, thus preserving the umami.
Wrapped in a thin layer of starch, not only will not break the stimulation of the aroma of fish meat, but can increase some "starch aroma", which is fully in line with the "aroma accumulation law".
When stewing fish, add some pork belly to stir-fry oil, or directly add some lard, in fact, it is also the application of the "aroma accumulation rule" to add a variety of aromas to the originally fresh and weak fish, forming a sense of layering.
There are many similar examples, when I was a child, I always added enough water at once, and the tahini that came out was leaked nine times out of ten.
The correct method should be to add water in a small amount and many times, let the water and sauce slowly penetrate and merge, so that the tension between each other can achieve a certain balance, in order to have that rich effect.
02- Only salt will be put, or everything
Learning to cook, at first, the difficulty is how to make addition.
Because you don't understand the characteristics and functions of various seasonings, using the wrong type or the wrong amount can be fatal to the taste of the finished dish.
After the addition is learned, the difficulty becomes how to do subtraction.
In the initial stage of learning to cook, the help of seasonings is used to outline the taste of the dish.
If you want to further improve your cooking skills, you have to start from a technical point of view, with amplifying the original taste of ingredients and matching between ingredients as the main means to build the taste of the dish, supplemented by seasonings.
At this time, it is necessary to use the original taste of the ingredients as a seasoning.
In the stage of only putting salt, there is no way to build the layers of taste.
Moreover, the original taste of many ingredients can only be expressed clearly when the odor evaporates away.
Although salt is the first of the hundred flavors, it is also difficult to compete with four hands, and it still requires the collaboration between different functional seasonings to build the fresh flavor.
To the stage where all seasonings in stir-frying must be put over and over again, it is also a "sickness", a seasoning dependence.
Compared to seasoning through cooking techniques and ingredients, using seasonings is a shortcut to seasoning.
Lack of umami, use MSG is good.
Not sweet enough, put more sugar.
The taste is too thin, put more soy sauce.
In the long run, it will become a taste of any stir-fry.
If you dig carefully, the acquisition of fresh fragrance is not that complicated.
The temperature mentioned above is the best tool to get the fragrance, and if the temperature is slightly higher, the fragrance of many ingredients will be released.
And there are also conscientious pot workers such as onions, ginger, and garlic, and a huge spice army that focuses on fragrance.
There is no need to rely too much on chicken essence, MSG and oyster sauce.
The fermentation group represented by soy sauce, vinegar, and sake is rich in free amino acids, which increase the flavor and complete the task of increasing freshness.
There are also ingredients such as peppers, tomatoes, and mushrooms that can be used to help increase freshness.
03 - Stir-frying without planning
When I mention this, I have to mention my family leader again.
My wife is usually a traditional oriental woman who is dignified and elegant, and her manners are generous.
But as soon as you enter the kitchen, you become busy, and you can even jump up and down when you turn on the fire and stir-fry.
This is often the case when cooking a dish:
"Oh, did I put salt?"
"Husband, I've fried all my dishes, what should I do if I find that I forgot to put the shiitake mushrooms?"
"Obedient, it seems that I have let the soy sauce go just now."
"Husband, put more salt again, can you add some water?"
Watching her stir-fry is more exciting than watching a stage play, and she interacts with me from time to time.
I didn't know how to fry half of it, the shovel shoved into my hand, and I turned around and walked away dashingly.
The reason for this situation is actually that before cooking, there is no simple rehearsal in the mind.
The whole time is carried out at high temperatures, the rhythm is tight and organized.
Many spices and ingredients have a window, and most of these opportunities are fleeting.
If the best moment is missed, the dish will make the most powerful counterattack on the final taste.
No matter how skilled the dish is, I always have a simple rehearsal in my mind before the fire.
What to put first, what to put later, when to put what, ponder, that is, a dozen seconds of effort.
Then take the ingredients and seasonings to be used and take them at hand, so that you can't find them in a hurry, or take them by mistake.
I remember the most interesting time when my old lady cooked, braised pork was hard to make vinegar stew.
What's the matter, when it's time to put soy sauce, I took it into vinegar in a hurry, and I felt that the color was not enough to put it once. Put it again, nothing changes.
Then I started adding it again and again, and when the bottle was bottomed out, I found that it was vinegar.
Many seemingly inconspicuous small actions, bad habits, and finally caused the butterfly effect in the wok, making the finished dish difficult to swallow, cooking is a discipline that is piled up by details, and please be more attentive to friends.
There is always an end to the article, and the creation continues.
Gentlemen, listen to the next breakdown...