Pickling: the oldest cooking method
As an ancient way of food preservation, pickling can not only make fruits and vegetables have special flavor, but also stimulate appetite and help digestion.
In the prosperous Tang Dynasty, pickled vegetables were an excellent food culture. Nara's famous kimchi was born when it was exported to Japan. To the writers of Ming and Qing Dynasties, a piece of porridge and a piece of cake is a good taste of poor days.
"Suiyuan Food List" records the practice of pickled melons. "Soak the melon, air-dry it and put it into the sauce, such as ginger juice ... after the sauce is dry, it will be sauce, so the skin is thin and wrinkled, and the mouth is crisp." The most direct principle behind this is pickling.
In fact, behind the pickling is the difference in salt concentration. If the soup outside is salty and the ingredients inside are light, salt or sugar will be pushed into the ingredients, thus inhibiting the activities of microorganisms and preventing the ingredients from deteriorating. This principle is used by candied plums, cherries, or most pickled pickles.
In the process of curing, there are several points to pay attention to. First of all, salt should be evenly mixed into the ingredients to prevent the ingredients that are not exposed to salt from deteriorating. Second, it is necessary to "pour vegetables" up and down during the pickling process, which is also for a more balanced pickling.
Two reactions behind braised pork
Braised pork, as the handle of China meat dishes, has two cooking principles behind it, which are working quietly.
Caramelization: The color is darker and the flavor is stronger.
When cooking braised pork, it is essential to cook the sugar color. Sugar gets darker and darker when heated at high temperature. This is caramelization.
The process is from thick syrup to light yellow, and then gradually to dark brown, and the taste is from sweet to sour and bitter. Simply put, when sugar is heated to 160 degrees, caramel reaction will occur. The longer the time, the less sweet the taste, the darker the color and the more bitter it is.
This reaction can make braised pork brighter and stimulate appetite, and also make many sweets and sweets full of more flavors, such as caramel pudding, which is a little bitter besides sweetness.
There is only one Maillard reaction to delicious food.
When sugar meets meat, sugar and amino acids have Maillard reaction, the color turns red and bright, and the charming fragrance is slowly emitted.
The principle behind it is that the reducing sugar (i.e. carbohydrate), amino acid and protein in food undergo a series of complex reactions when heated, and the color becomes darker, resulting in fragrance.