As the saying goes, "A man should match his clothes, and a horse should match his saddle", and cooked food with sauce and brine is no exception. It's not enough just to be delicious, but also to have a beautiful appearance and appetizing colors.

The color of braised pork in sauce is basically warm. Traditionally, it is sauce red. Recently, the kind with red in yellow is popular. Let's call it yellow red. This color is popular because yellow red can prolong the oxidation time and prevent the finished product from blackening quickly. What can make the color beautiful and bring out the yellow-red color in the brine of the sauce cooked food? Let's share it with my brine experience:

—— Bring out the yellow-red coloring material in the brine ——

1. Chemical coloring material: First of all, it shows that I don't use these, but since I share my experience, I will pour out all my bags. If you want to adjust the yellow-red color, you can use pigments such as monascus red and monascus yellow. It should be noted that these pigments are too bright and the finished products are unnatural.

2. Natural coloring materials:

Among them, red rice, turmeric and gardenia can be transferred to yellow and red. Among them, the most commonly used bittern is monascus rice with gardenia.

Monascus rice: it is mainly used to adjust the red color of brine, and there are generally three ways to use it: ①. Put it into a material bag and put it in the brine, and take it out immediately when the color is adjusted. (2) adding clear water to the red rice, boiling it into red rice water, pouring it into the brine, and adding it as needed with the color of the brine. ③ Monascus rice itself has its own taste. Adding too much into the brine not only makes the color heavy, but also affects the taste, and sometimes improper preservation can easily lead to the rancidity of the brine. You can choose a method without direct contact with brine: add red yeast rice when the ingredients are blanched, and give the upper layer of the ingredients a pink background with the blanching time.

gardenia: it is mainly used to yellow brine, which can be boiled into gardenia water or directly put into brine. Note that Gardenia also has a taste, and the dosage should not be too large, about 8 grams per 11 kilograms of brine. Gardenia should be fished out in time when the color is enough, and should not be kept in brine for a long time.

3. Secondary processed toner: The only thing that can adjust yellow and red here is sugar. The function of sugar color is very powerful. You can only use sugar color to adjust yellow-red color, or you can mix it with gardenia and monascus rice for better effect.

Then why do you say that there should be bittern oil with a certain thickness? It means that there is not much bittern oil, especially in old bittern, it is enough to keep the thickness of 3~5㎝. Too much will not only affect the judgment of the depth of bittern, but also make it difficult to maintain bittern.

—— Tips for adjusting the yellow-red brightness of bittern ——

1. In bittern with sugar color, don't stir-fry the sugar color too old. When the sugar liquid is fried to yellow foam and falls back, pour in boiling water. Never stir-fry until it is purplish red.

2. After the old brine is formed in the later stage, the sugar color should not be added every time, because the braised pork with sugar color is particularly prone to oxidation and blackening. To reduce the number of times of use, you can use rock sugar or maltose instead, and then use sugar color to correct it when the color is light.

3. when using the color of sugar-tone brine, the brine must be boiled away by fire and last for more than ten minutes to stabilize the color.

4. in order to reduce the oxidation of the braised pork, the color of the brine should be slightly lighter instead of just right, so that the slightly oxidized color of the braised pork is very beautiful.

5. Gardenia can be directly added into brine, or it can be boiled in water and fried in sugar color. The specific ratio is as follows: 111 grams of Gardenia is added with 1111 grams of clear water, boiled for about 11 minutes to filter residue, instead of boiling water to fry sugar color, about 1111 grams of rock sugar can be fried.

6. There may be less bittern oil, so some fried sealing oil can be properly used in braised pork, or more ingredients rich in animal fat can be added in the stage of hanging broth.

according to the above experience and skills, it should not be difficult to adjust the yellow-red color of brine. The difficulty lies in how to keep the yellow-red color for a long time and avoid blackening (or minimize blackening). Here are some skills to keep the beautiful color of braised pork and minimize blackening according to my experience.