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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Oh yeah, I ended up making this one and it turned out great! Well, mostly, actually forming the Bao was a bit of a learning process as the dough was different from others I've worked with. So a few got messed up along the way, dough too thick, too thin, sauce touched the side so it won't stick closed, ran out of filling with a few left to fill, etc. But they tasted great so that's a huge improvement Those look pretty good to me, and forming them definitely takes practice. There's a learning curve when it comes to using wet fillings in dough. The humidity won't help, but they come about because when it cooks, there's nothing for the dough to grab onto so it just rises from the rise that happens when you put dough into a hot oven. It helps to reduce the sauce plenty until it's very sticky, and then even dust the filling with flour or something, but it's sort of the nature of the beast. Look up tricks when making filled meat breads for a more complete answer.
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Aug 4, 2017 23:33
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Gave them another go yesterday and tried to experiment a bit with them some more. I tried steaming a few, they looked fine when I opened the steamer but then they quickly deflated and looked sad and lumpy. They tasted fine but I definitely prefer them baked with this recipe. Most of the baked ones ended up breaking on the bottom though and leaking a bit, I'm guessing I just didn't let them sit long enough before putting them in the oven this time, it was already getting really late (like 10pm) so I hurried that part a bit. Still tasted good though. I was getting the method down pretty well though, didn't have any big issues forming them and the thickness was pretty even all around. My wife suggested I try filling a few with pizza related fillings, so uh that was a thing too 
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Aug 7, 2017 17:05
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I made red-braised pork for the first time today, and while I was very pleased with the flavor, the texture was off - the meat:fat ratio was way skewed towards fat. Should I be trimming my pork belly before I start, do I need to find a leaner cut of belly, or do I need to cook it longer to render down the fat? I don't think I could have cooked it longer without burning the sauce. Also, how thick should the sauce be at the end? The pieces had a fair coating, but there was still some liquid in the bottom of the wok. If I keep going, will more of that thicken up onto the meat? Junji Eat More fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Aug 15, 2017 |
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Aug 15, 2017 02:40
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You can add water if you need to.
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Aug 15, 2017 03:42
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Junji Eat More posted:I made red-braised pork for the first time today, and while I was very pleased with the flavor, the texture was off - the meat:fat ratio was way skewed towards fat. Usually the way I've seen it out here is half/half meat and fat, with a few pieces being skewed one way or the other. However I would say don't overthink it: red-braising is just a way of cooking and a type of sauce, not necessarily "a particular dish" so if the meat is too fatty for you feel then free to trim it. You definitely still want some fat, sure, but trimming it a bit and aiming for more of a 2 meat:1 fat ratio won't hurt the dish IMHO. Then you can use that extra fat for other things (common problem here and I usually throw extra fat around asparagus, broccoli or cauliflower for roasted veggies, or use it for rice). Likewise I've seen the sauce thinner and thicker depending on what you want to do with it. If for example you want to make a noodle bowl with it, you might want to make it thinner or mix it with some soy sauce, vinegar, etc. to make more of a soup/sauce to coat the noodles. If you're eating the pork by itself or maybe in a sandwich/wrap then you can have the sauce be thicker, similar to the consistency of a lot of American Chinese sauces (ex. sweet & sour pork consistency). If you're doing rice bowls with some veggies and such, then you might prefer something in the middle. Having liquid at the bottom isn't a problem, if anything that gives you some extra to make a sauce with and use. Add some water or soy for a thinner sauce, if you want thicker then you can shortcut with cornstarch or maybe cook some potato strips or something in it to thicken it. If you were happy with the way the meat was flavored then don't worry about getting all of the sauce "attached" or cooked off onto the meat. Amergin fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Aug 15, 2017 |
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Aug 15, 2017 04:31
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Junji Eat More posted:I made red-braised pork for the first time today, and while I was very pleased with the flavor, the texture was off - the meat:fat ratio was way skewed towards fat. Having lived in Hunan I assure you that's just how it is. Roll with it or trim it. I would describe the authentic dish as soupy and greasy. If you want a Hunan greasy spoon standard I'd go with Tang braised sausage. I wish I had a recipe. It's like thin sliced Chinese sausage simmered in strong alcohol and served with julienned hot peppers (Of course) over rice. Fragrant boozy greasy and has a kick that's delayed by the fat. The coarse Midwest kind of sausage not the fine grained southeast kind. TBH the epitome of Hunan diner food is the humble pork fried rice. Best fried rice I've ever had I had in Hunan whether it was some guy in an alley with a wok and coal stove or a restaurant. I was poor in Hunan so I don't know about nice restaurants. The ultimate Hunan 3AM drunk food is stinky tofu. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Aug 15, 2017 |
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Aug 15, 2017 05:42
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I found a recipe, it's just julienned green peppers, 唐人神 sausage, garlic and onions stir fried. If you want it boozy finish with booze. I swear my favorite place made it with baijiu.
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Aug 15, 2017 06:50
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Arglebargle III posted:I found a recipe, it's just julienned green peppers, 唐人神 sausage, garlic and onions stir fried. If you want it boozy finish with booze. I swear my favorite place made it with baijiu. Well, poo poo. I might grab some booze of my own and try making this. We're talking this kind of Chinese sausage, right? I used to cook these alongside the rice in my rice cooker and pour soy sauce on it, and it came out pretty drat good.  So I know that a lot of the typical Chinese-American standards aren't easy or particularly possible at home, since you need really really high heat that you don't get in home kitchens. That said, fried rice is more than possible, but I kinda hosed it up today. So, questions: 1. Are you supposed to use 1~2 day old fried rice, or freshly made rice? The common knowledge is one or two days old, but I've also heard otherwise. 2. How do you know when your fried rice is ready? Is it meant to be slightly starchy/sticky, or more crumbly like you usually get in take-out?
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Aug 20, 2017 01:38
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Pollyanna posted:Well, poo poo. I might grab some booze of my own and try making this. We're talking this kind of Chinese sausage, right? I used to cook these alongside the rice in my rice cooker and pour soy sauce on it, and it came out pretty drat good. The rice doesn't have to be that old, but it can't be like right out of the rice cooker and into the wok. The issue is it needs to be at least a little dry. The reason you always hear 1-2 days old is because fried rice is traditionally a thing you did in China with leftovers, it's not really for any real requirement for cooking. http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/02/the-food-lab-how-to-make-best-fried-rice-chinese-thai-wok-technique-right-type-of-rice.html This has a way too in-depth writeup as part of this, but the bottom line is you can use rice you've just made as long as you take it out of the rice cooker, spread it out on a plate, and let the moisture evaporate off for a few minutes. He also explains how not to store rice because a lot of older rice can be really bad for fried rice if you store it the wrong way.
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Aug 20, 2017 02:12
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I'd also recommend rinsing your uncooked rice a couple/few times if you plan to use it for fried rice, as well as using a little less water than you would for good sticky steamed rice.
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Aug 20, 2017 18:22
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Soak and rinse the rice no matter what, all types of rice seem to benefit from it. Fried rice is finished when you can get your god damned antsy kid to finally sit down at the table for ten seconds. Also always make la chang. Even the fancy Hong Kong-bought hand cut stuff is laps (heh) behind the ones I make myself.
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Aug 20, 2017 20:00
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I prefer not to rinse my rice for when I want some nice gooey rice. Mmm, gooey steamed rice.
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Aug 21, 2017 01:15
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totalnewbie posted:I prefer not to rinse my rice for when I want some nice gooey rice. Mmm, gooey steamed rice. You have disrespected 5000 years of culture. I'm not joking this time.
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Aug 21, 2017 01:18
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Pollyanna posted:Well, poo poo. I might grab some booze of my own and try making this. We're talking this kind of Chinese sausage, right? That's right. I made it with Johnsonville brats and Serrano peppers and a ton of sherry and it was still good greasy spoon fare.
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Aug 21, 2017 07:25
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I wonder if I can blacken the peppers ala rajas and use those. It's lo-carb, too! Tried stir frying some bok choy tonight in vegetable oil, salt, and some minced garlic added at the end. Came out surprisingly well, I expected it to be all limp and mushy like the last time I tried to stir fry greens (ended up accidentally braising them instead) so I pulled them out right when they got floppy and it was choice. I sliced the stem/white part of bok choy really thin and that helped a lot. Much more preferable to the more common method I see of braising the poo poo out of bok choy until its a piece of mushy crap. Definitely making it again. I like the idea of stir fried greens but my local grocery store always has a really really lovely selection of produce, usually some romaine lettuce and collards. Also, lots of dandelion greens. People eat dandelion?
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Aug 23, 2017 00:24
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Dandelion greens rule. Lucky that you have thosem
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Aug 23, 2017 01:03
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My girlfriend and I recently bought a carbon steel wok from the Wok Shop based on recommendations in this thread. This is our first time owning a wok, and we feel very much in over our heads with it. We have an electric stove, btw. We followed the instructions Wok Shop sent us to season it: cleaned it, coated it in oil and put it in the oven at 425 for half an hour, then took it out, heated it on the stovetop with oil, and cooked a bunch of diced-up onion in it until they got reasonably charred. While we had the onions cooking in it, the bottom of the wok's cooking surface started to blacken, but the seasoning started to get significant scratches and scrapes where the original color was showing through. I tried salvaging it by seasoning it on the stovetop with some more oil, but it didn't work out. We cooked fried rice tonight, and it all had to be thrown out because there were little black chunks strewn through it and the whole thing tasted overwhelmingly like metal and burntness. The seasoning on the bottom scrapes off distressingly easily without a lot of effort. What's the right way to do this so we can get it properly seasoned and be able to cook with our new wok? Thank you to anyone who can help!
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Sep 4, 2017 03:12
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I think seasoning flaking off is more common with new seasoning and it will get better with time. But for now try baking at 500°f in the oven and do it 3 times and make sure the layers of oil are thin not thick Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 09:25 on Sep 4, 2017 |
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Sep 4, 2017 09:22
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Hmm, alright. I'm guessing that we ought to try to scour off the existing messed-up seasoning first before trying that? Also, would it be better to buy some flaxseed oil to use for this instead of vegetable oil? esselfortium fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Sep 4, 2017 |
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Sep 4, 2017 14:36
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In my experience, seasoning takes forever to do properly. You can do the oil -> wipe with towels -> bake forever -> clean -> repeat route, and that works reasonably well. I find that produces a pan whose surface is roughly similar to a standard pan (i.e. use lots of oil, watch out for sticking, yadda yadda). Even then, the "seasoning" does scratch when you cook and clean it. That's fine. Just keep using it. Over time (months to years) you'll get a true patina and something more non-stick. For example, I use my wok...twice a month? Ish? Less for a few years there, and much more the last few months. We've had it for four or five years now. It is finally getting pretty solidly non-stick. Even my wok, though, still has a band roughly where my metal spatula tends to hit it that's more silvery-colored rather than a darker patina. But because of the seasoning it's still pretty slick. The upper edges of the wok are not terribly non-stick because they don't get too much action or oil but eh. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I clean my wok by getting it pretty drat hot after getting my food out, then tossing it under my faucet and scrubbing it with a bamboo brush as the boiling water loosens everything.
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Sep 4, 2017 17:38
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Scouring off the botched attempt at wok seasoning is proving extraordinarily difficult. We'll keep trying and get rid of as much as we can, but is it possible to get away with leaving the original (flaking-off) seasoning attempt underneath and just seasoning it again that way, or are we in trouble? I'm afraid of wasting a lot of oil and a lot of time trying to season it again and ending up still having it chipping off into our food because of what was left underneath, but I don't know how we're going to get this all scoured off... esselfortium fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Sep 7, 2017 |
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Sep 7, 2017 22:13
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If you can get heat above 700°f it will burn off completely in a minute or two, instantly at 800°f. Got a charcoal grill?
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Sep 8, 2017 06:58
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I live in a lovely apartment with a lovely glass stove top, is there any way for me to start wokking or am I boned
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Sep 14, 2017 01:45
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AnonSpore posted:I live in a lovely apartment with a lovely glass stove top, is there any way for me to start wokking or am I boned
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Sep 14, 2017 02:31
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Cooking in batches is definitely key on less powerful stoves. It's made a world of difference for me. Just be careful in an apartment, you don't want to set the smoke alarms off and piss off all your neighbors...
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Sep 14, 2017 02:33
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I'm back friends, looking for opinions/preferences on veggies in twice cooked pork! I personally prefer scallions and red peppers, but I've seen a few recipes suggest onions as well.
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Sep 28, 2017 23:34
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I like leeks and big hunks of green cabbage.
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Sep 28, 2017 23:50
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I do leeks and big chili peppers that I've already roasted to get the skin kinda black and bubbly.
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Sep 29, 2017 02:34
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AnonSpore posted:I'm back friends, looking for opinions/preferences on veggies in twice cooked pork! I personally prefer scallions and red peppers, but I've seen a few recipes suggest onions as well. You have a lot of options. Here in Sichuan the most common ones are: Scallions and Leeks Potatoes (sliced very thinly) Green peppers Cabbage If you can find it, "Suan Miao" is super good for this, but is hard to find if you don't have good access to Chinese markets. Or if you want to go super duper oldschool Sichuan, you can also add day old bread. This one is actually my favorite type of twice cooked pork.  "Guo kui" is the bread they normally use, and looks like this. It's generally lightly fried then baked. These are chopped up into small pieces then just fried up with everything else and is super duper good. You could probably make a decent facsimile with some sort of pita or similar unleavened bread.
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Sep 29, 2017 03:53
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As promised, my 'effort' post on making doubanjiang at home (Check the album for most of the effort). I was unable to source traditional ingredients which should be of no surprise to anyone as I'm about 7500 miles away from where the ingredients are typically grown. The biggest positives is that this is 100% gluten free, but it will really come down to the flavors. It very likely won't taste nearly the same, but if it ends up in the same ballpark for flavor profile I'll call it a success. Temperature and humidity control are a pain while growing the mold. I ended up using my oven as a proofing box and I used bricks to control the temperature with a pan of hot water placed on top of them for evaporation. Incidentally, if you're not used to cutting up about 2 kg of chili peppers in one sitting, your hand is likely to get sore. I didn't want to use a food processor and I didn't have anything else that would give me a decent chop. That and you have to destem them all anyway. It smells a little yeasty right now with a hint of citrus and funk, but it's also under 1/4 inch of oil, so a lot of the aroma isn't available.  Whole album here https://imgur.com/a/mHf1j Next summer I'm considering making soy sauce, because most of the GF ones out there are a little thin on flavor when most of the flavor should be coming from the soy beans and fermentation/oxidation anyway.
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Sep 29, 2017 18:26
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SubG posted:Yeah, just get a flat-bottom carbon steel wok and go to town. If you need a super-hot cook surface just keep in mind you might have to heat the pan for longer to get up to temperature and work in small batches to avoid crashing the temperature when you add food to it. But not everything (or even the majority of things) you might want to do with a wok needs a lava-hot surface. And literally every range made will gleefully heat a pan over the autoignition temperature of cooking oils, which is hotter than you need for any kind of cooking you're likely to do in a residential kitchen. The imagined unsuitability of everything other than mega high-output wok burners for wok cooking is greatly exaggerated by people eager to demonstrate that they're familiar with the term `wok hei'. The stove I currently have is a lovely 19K glass top and it's definitely not what I'd pick given other options but if you keep its limitations in mind it's entirely loving serviceable, so don't let purists scare you away from cooking. A cast iron skillet preheated in the oven can do some pretty serious stir-fry.
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Sep 29, 2017 20:15
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Jhet posted:As promised, my 'effort' post on making doubanjiang at home (Check the album for most of the effort). I was unable to source traditional ingredients which should be of no surprise to anyone as I'm about 7500 miles away from where the ingredients are typically grown. The biggest positives is that this is 100% gluten free, but it will really come down to the flavors. It very likely won't taste nearly the same, but if it ends up in the same ballpark for flavor profile I'll call it a success. This is pretty awesome.
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Sep 29, 2017 20:21
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Jhet posted:As promised, my 'effort' post on making doubanjiang at home (Check the album for most of the effort). I was unable to source traditional ingredients which should be of no surprise to anyone as I'm about 7500 miles away from where the ingredients are typically grown. The biggest positives is that this is 100% gluten free, but it will really come down to the flavors. It very likely won't taste nearly the same, but if it ends up in the same ballpark for flavor profile I'll call it a success. That is cool as gently caress
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Sep 29, 2017 20:23
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Stuparoni posted:A cast iron skillet preheated in the oven can do some pretty serious stir-fry. Like if you're running your oven anyway it won't hurt to use it to preheat a skillet. Or if you have a fire alarm you can't silence that goes off whenever you heat a skillet on the stove. But if you're trying to get your skillet as hot as you can loving get it for stir-fry, for most people using their range and being patient is going to work better than using the oven.
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Sep 29, 2017 23:57
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Peven Stan posted:That is cool as gently caress Thanks. I just hope it tastes as good as I hope it will. Smells were good, and while they were obnoxious to my wife during the part where I was growing the mold, it never smelled off. Really not that much work considering how long it might last. I'm going to end up giving away plenty too.
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Sep 30, 2017 05:13
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looks good todd How do you know it's the correct mold? I've never tried anything like this. It should be real zippy, Thai chilies are a lot hotter than the normal Sichuan chili peppers.
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Sep 30, 2017 09:47
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Grand Fromage posted:looks good todd Research mostly. Aspergilus oryzae is used in sake making and other cooking applications. The pack of rice covered in A. oryzae can also be used to simulate dry aging beef, and a few other things that I haven't tried yet. If I were trying to wild capture the correct mold from just leaving it out I would likely have run into issues as I'm not sure it's available currently in my kitchen biome. So sourcing it from a Japanese source ensures it's pure enough for what I needed. You can also buy it in powdered format to use in sake making, but as it spores, just mixing a bunch of rice with active mold is enough to propagate the right species. Then you can just keep an eye on it. If it smells good and stays white and then yellow as you dry it out it's just fine. Funky smells are good, rotting smells are not. You will have other stuff join the party, but they'll be out competed by the one you used to begin. I adjusted the recipe for the chilies. I ended up using about a triple batch of the beans to a double batch of the chilies. I used some of the fresh ones in some other dishes to gauge intensity. The citrus brightness of the Thai chilies is going to be one of the biggest differences, at least that I can expect.
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Sep 30, 2017 14:31
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Ok everyone, please help me with my lifelong quest to make Perfect Restaurant Style Tofu. You guys know what I'm talkin' 'bout... those nice little triangles of perfectly fried tofu... crispy and relatively thick crust, with a nice pillow soft interior. My favorite cheap local "Chinese" restaurant does it just right but goddamn I cannot make it the same way and I've been trying off and on for drat near 25 years now. Stuff I've tried, singly and in various combinations: Freezing the tofu Pressing out as much water as I can Soaking in salt water then pressing Various oils when stir frying - coconut, peanut, vegetable Deep frying in peanut oil Buying pre-fried tofu from an Asian grocer Using various combos of flour and/or corn starch I never get the crust right, which seems to be the key part. he;lp
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Oct 1, 2017 01:51
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If you've been trying for that long with no success wouldn't it be better to just ask the restaurant people
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Oct 1, 2017 02:32
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pahuyuth posted:Ok everyone, please help me with my lifelong quest to make Perfect Restaurant Style Tofu. You guys know what I'm talkin' 'bout... those nice little triangles of perfectly fried tofu... crispy and relatively thick crust, with a nice pillow soft interior. My favorite cheap local "Chinese" restaurant does it just right but goddamn I cannot make it the same way and I've been trying off and on for drat near 25 years now. Have you tried potato starch? It's what I use for agedashi tofu
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Oct 1, 2017 04:54
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