To cook a cauldron, you have to use a big iron pot, which is fixed on a mud-covered stove with a bellows next to it. Nowadays, most people blow with a hair dryer instead of pulling the bellows manually. Sliced pork belly, diced cabbage, melon and potato, marinated kelp, vermicelli, pre-fried tofu, vegetarian meatballs, and seasonings such as onion, ginger, garlic, soy sauce and salt. Pour oil into the pot, burn firewood under the stove, pull the bellows, and the fire will flourish. When the oil is hot, add pepper, then scoop a tablespoon of sauce from the sauce jar and add it to the oil. Stir-fry with a big shovel (like a shovel) several times. In the sound of "Zila", the strong sauce flavor soon filled the whole yard. After the sauce is fried, add onion, ginger, garlic and sliced meat and stir fry. Then add water to the pot, add tofu balls, fill the bellows, increase the fire until the water boils, then add the previously fried Chinese cabbage, white gourd potatoes and pork belly pieces, add salt, and simmer slowly after the water boils. Finally, put the vermicelli and kelp into the stew until soft and cooked, and then stop the fire.

The cooked cauldron dishes are hot and delicious, which really makes people drool. Everyone put a big bowl in a big coarse porcelain bowl, drop a few drops of vinegar, eat a mouthful of steamed bread, and a word is delicious. Some people can't help drinking three bowls, and in the end they have to drop the vegetable juice left in the bowl into their mouths, and then smack their mouths, burp and touch their stomachs. Comfortable!

There are many cooking methods of cauldron dishes, but the most commonly used ones are frying, roasting and steaming. Below, the author briefly introduces the cooking methods and precautions of these three kinds of cauldron dishes respectively.

First, speculation.

This is the most commonly used cooking method of cauldron dishes, which can be divided into two types: stir-frying cauldron meat dishes and stir-frying cauldron dishes.

1, stir-fried meat cauldron

Stir-fry a large pot of non-thick meat dishes, such as Sichuan-style pork, salt-fried meat, onion mutton, green pepper chicken and so on. When frying such dishes, the main ingredients (meat or poultry) should be mixed with refined oil in advance to prevent the raw materials from sticking to each other after cooking; Accessories (vegetables) should be raw materials with low water content and high oil absorption, such as green pepper, garlic sprout, onion, lotus root and dried bean curd. The amount of oil used for cooking is also slightly larger.

Stir-fry a large pot of meat dishes, which are thick and thick, such as sliced pork with green bamboo shoots, shredded pork with green peppers, shredded pork with fish flavor and diced pork with Kung Pao. When frying this kind of dishes, the main ingredients (meat or poultry) should be thick and dry. The main ingredients should be fried with hot oil first, and then fried with auxiliary materials. If the amount of main ingredients is too large, it can be cooked several times; Accessories (vegetables) should be seasoned with a small amount of refined salt in advance, and then some water should be squeezed out to make it less water and easy to mature after cooking; You can also blanch, oil or fry the auxiliary materials in advance until they are immature, and then cook them with the main materials to shorten the formal cooking time and ensure their complete maturity. In addition, the juice used for thickening should also be prepared in advance. The amount of juice is less than that of small pot vegetables, but the juice is thicker than that of small pot vegetables.

The reason is that there is not enough firepower when frying cauldron dishes, and the water in the raw materials is not easy to evaporate, so there should not be too much water in the juice. Generally speaking, frying this cauldron of meat dishes is actually not "frying" in the traditional sense, but a bit like "stewing" dishes. That is, first put oil in the pot and heat it, then add small ingredients (ginger, onion, garlic, etc. ) to make it fragrant, then add the processed main ingredients and auxiliary materials, then quickly turn over, cook the juice, and simmer out of the pot.

2. Stir-fry a large pot of vegetarian dishes

Stir-fry green leafy vegetables with high water content, such as spinach, water spinach, leek, fresh Chinese cabbage and green bamboo shoots. Stir-frying this kind of food requires great firepower and high oil temperature; After the raw materials are put into the pot, they should be turned quickly to make them evenly heated and mature quickly; The raw materials should be fried in the pot until they are broken, so as not to put salt too early and cause the raw materials to spit water, thus turning "boiling" into "boiling"; You can also put some raw materials (such as green bamboo shoots) into the boiling water pot and then fry them in the pot to shorten the frying time. In addition, it should be noted that when frying green leafy vegetables, it is forbidden to cover them, otherwise the leaves will be braised.

Stir-fry other vegetables with low water content, such as green bamboo shoots, pumpkins, potatoes, green beans and garlic shoots. When frying this kind of vegetables, different pre-treatments should be carried out according to the characteristics of raw materials. For example, after potatoes (shredded) are washed with starch, they should be soaked in boiling water first, and then fried in a pot; Green beans should be cooked in a boiling water pot until they are cut off, and then fried in the pot; Green bamboo shoots (sliced or shredded), pumpkins (shredded) and garlic seedlings (sliced) must be seasoned with a small amount of refined salt, and then some water is squeezed out before frying.

When frying a large pot of vegetarian dishes, we should also pay attention to the fact that the raw materials should not be fried too well, and generally they should be fried raw or cooked. Because after the vegetables are put into the cauldron, the residual heat of the vegetables will further "retch" the raw materials (also known as "after-ripening"). In addition, it is best to use a special cauldron for frying vegetarian dishes, that is to say, it is not advisable to use a cauldron for frying vegetarian dishes (especially braised vegetables) to keep the wok smooth and prevent the wok from sticking when frying vegetarian dishes in the later stage.

Second, burning.

It is also a method to use more cauldron dishes. It can be divided into two types: burning cauldron meat dishes and burning cauldron dishes.