How to make butter and spicy hot pot base

Butter; fermented glutinous rice; white wine; rock sugar; green peppercorns;

400g butter; 100g vegetable oil; Juancheng 150g Pixian watercress; 150g dried chili pepper (used for making glutinous rice cake and sea pepper); 10g white wine; 25g fermented glutinous rice; 23g ginger; 15g shallot; 10g green onion; 20g garlic; 20-25g fresh pepper (if not available, 8g dried peppercorns can be soaked in white wine) ; 10g tempeh; 15g rock sugar; 30g various spices;

Private hot pot base. After trying it, I am basically satisfied. I feel it is especially suitable for my family's taste and more suitable for the small batch production needs of most families.

Method and steps

Wash 1150g dried chili peppers and soak them in water for 20 minutes to half an hour; cut the soaked chili peppers into small sections with scissors and set aside; remove the soaked chili peppers and set aside Put it into the pot, add a cup of water, bring the water to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for 5 minutes (the above ratio and time are based on my experiments. At the temperature of my home fire, the peppers are just enough to soften and there is no excess water in the pot. It is basically cooked, if you are not sure about the water, you can add a little more, and the remaining water after cooking can be used in the hot pot); pour the chili into a blender, or put the stirring stick into the pot and stir directly into wet chili powder, and it is ready to cook. The most important ingredient of hot pot - glutinous rice cake and sea pepper.

2 Rinse the mixed spices in advance and soak them in warm water to remove the Chinese medicinal smell; if using raw vegetable oil, first burn the vegetable oil until it smokes, then turn off the heat and let it cool for a few minutes, then add butter slowly Simmer slowly; after all the oil has boiled and you feel the oil temperature, add onion, ginger, and garlic and fry over low heat at about 120-130 degrees to get the fragrance. After about 5 minutes, the spices will become dry and you can take them out first, and then fry them again later. Use;

3 Add bean paste and simmer slightly, stir gently to prevent sticking; add half of the glutinous rice cake and sea pepper, cook at about 100 degrees for 15 minutes;

4 Add the other half For glutinous rice cake and sea pepper, the oil temperature will drop after stirring well. Continue to simmer for 15 minutes to keep the oil temperature at about 90-100 degrees. Drain most of the water from the soaked spices, pound the spices slightly with a stone pound and add them to the pot; At the same time, add the previously fried onions, ginger, and garlic, pour in white wine, stir and simmer over low heat at about 80 degrees for 15-20 minutes;

5 Add fresh green peppercorns (or soaked in white wine (dried Sichuan peppercorns) and tempeh; simmer for another 5 minutes, and finally add glutinous rice wine and rock sugar; simmer on low heat for about 5 minutes and then turn off the heat; pour out the boiled hot pot base, let it cool down naturally, and then use a fresh-keeping bag Or pack it into crisper boxes, store it in the freezer, and use it as you go.

6. The Sichuan-style glutinous rice pepper often appears in the Sichuan hot pot base recipe. It should be made by moistening the dried chili pepper and then smashing it. Maybe in the past, the process of crushing wet chili peppers was done in a stone pound like rice cakes, hence the name rice cake and sea pepper. But now it is more convenient to use a food processor in actual operation. The aroma of dried chili peppers cannot be replaced by fresh chili peppers in many cases. Just like the flavors of dried shiitake mushrooms and fresh shiitake mushrooms are different, there must be a reason for using dried chili peppers. However, dried chili peppers become mushy when not used in the oil pan and cannot be boiled at all. So if you want to use dried chili peppers but don’t want them to become mushy, adding water and cooking them until soft is the inevitable choice.

7 There are many ways to make glutinous rice cake and sea pepper among the people. Some of them will have a lot of chili water left after cooking the chili. Of course, the chili water is still used to cook hot pot. After repeated comparisons, my favorite is still the version where the peppers absorb enough water after boiling and the water is used up, so there is no waste at all. It’s just that the amount of time, water and chili peppers need to be tried repeatedly and carefully calculated. The current recipe is the version I finalized. Each family has different firepower. If you feel that the water is not enough during the trial, you can add a little more. If there is not enough water, Finally it can be used in hot pot.

8 Tips: 1. Usage: Hot pot base is very versatile. It can not only be used to make hot pot, but also the spicy hot pot that will be written later, the grilled fish that has been written before, etc. In addition You can also cook hot pot noodles, hot pot noodles, maocai, cold pot fish, etc. The rich and spicy taste is much higher than ordinary bean paste-based cooking, and it is definitely the strongest secret weapon. 2. Portion: This amount of base material is enough for my family to eat for more than half a year, so I won’t increase the portion. However, the cooking time of a small portion of the base material should not be long, about more than an hour in total. Some stores use more than ten kilograms of butter to boil a large amount of base ingredients, which takes several hours to fully absorb the aroma. The flavor is indeed more mellow than that of a small portion. Home-made preparation does have many shortcomings that cannot be compensated for. 3. The order of adding ingredients: The more general order of adding ingredients that I summarized based on a large number of recipes is: first make wet spices, such as onions, ginger and garlic; then make pepper spices, such as Pixian bean paste, glutinous rice cake and sea pepper; then make hot water and soak them dry spices; then refine fresh peppercorns or dried peppercorns soaked in white wine; finally, tempeh or bean sprouts, etc.; before the ceasefire, add some fermented rice wine, white wine and rock sugar, and then turn off the fire when all the spices are boiled off and the water is gone. 4. Proportion: According to my statistics on multiple recipes, there are no hard and fast rules for the proportion of each ingredient in oil, and some even vary greatly. I think it first depends on each person's tolerance for spicy food. The proportion of chili peppers with the amount of oil I gave is already on the high side. If you want to increase the spiciness, you have to change the type of chili peppers. If you want to increase the amount of chili peppers, you have to add the oil. Increase, otherwise the oil-to-seed ratio will easily dry out.

5. Spices: Refer to the spices introduced at the end of braised pig tails. You can add any general brine. It would be better if you add a little of spices that have become popular in hot pot in recent years, such as Gansong, Lingcao and Chuanxiong. It should be noted that the amount of spices in hot pot is less than that in braised pork. Because the oil temperature is higher than the water temperature, it is easy to over-stir the flavor and make the base bitter. Insufficient spices can be replenished later when making hot pot. 6. Time: The cooking time is not fixed. The above time is for reference only. The actual method is based on observation based on the amount of oil. If you find that the ingredients in the pot are dry but not yet burnt, add new ingredients. The whole process is on low or even low heat. If there is a lot of oil and ingredients, it will take a few hours. If there is a lot of oil, it will take an hour. It’s not necessarily possible to get it done within a day, the time will be based on actual observation. For example, my glutinous rice cake with sea peppers was added twice, because all the peppers added the first time had more water, and it was difficult to stir-fry through too much ingredients. After a while, the water content of the peppers was reduced, and the peppers became smaller in size. Then I added the other half. It can ensure that the chili pepper releases the flavor to the maximum every time, while also adding different levels of spiciness.