So today we will talk about the practice and skills of "beef stew". With the improvement of people's living standards, the main meat ingredients are not only satisfied with "pork". For example, beef and mutton have also become the main source of meat after pork. However, compared with mutton, beef has a light and dry smell, and is suitable for eating beef in a wide range of seasons. It can be said that it can be eaten all year round.
Beef is not only delicious, but also rich in nutritional value. At the same time, it can be eaten flexibly, including stewed beef, fried beef, braised beef and sauce beef. Next, I will focus on how to cook the delicious food "beef stew".
Stewed beef looks very simple. Some people think that beef stew with seasoning is very good, but the result is often unsatisfactory. For example, beef stew has a strong fishy smell, or it is too dull to chew, or it has no taste at all. In short, the beef made is not delicious.
Then why is the beef stewed by a chef or a good chef in a restaurant delicious? Not only soft and rotten, but also fragrant, not fishy and not firewood, just right. Mainly because they have mastered the key skills of beef stew, the effect of "beef stew" is very different.
Let's take a look at what skills should be paid attention to in "beef stew". It's actually quite simple. Just remember that beef will naturally be soft, rotten and fragrant.
When cooking meat ingredients, many of us are used to treating the meat a few minutes before cooking, that is, blanching and blanching immediately after cleaning. In fact, this is not right, because only one or two minutes of blanching can not remove the blood from beef well.
The correct way is to clean the fresh beef and soak it in cold water for at least two hours, so that most of the blood in it can be soaked out. At the same time, pay attention to changing the water frequently in the middle, so that the effect is good.
Why are you doing this? Because the blood in any animal meat component is one of the main sources of its fishy smell. It is impossible to completely remove the blood in it by blanching alone. So if you ignore this step, the stewed beef will have a heavy smell, the soup color is not good, and the taste is very poor.
Beef is a high-fiber meat ingredient, and the fiber inside is still relatively thick. Therefore, when cooking beef, it is easy to stew for too long, and a little carelessness will cause firewood and difficulty in chewing. Even if you can chew, the cooking time will be greatly extended.
Is there any good way to solve this problem? Add hawthorn slices as auxiliary materials when stewing. Because hawthorn slices contain a variety of organic acids, it can soften the crude fiber in beef well, greatly shorten the cooking time and make beef softer and more delicious.
At the same time, adding hawthorn slices has another advantage, that is, the unique sour and sweet taste of hawthorn slices can be very helpful to remove the fishy smell of beef.
Many people don't know that beer is a good cooking accessory. It can be said that beer is not only a rare auxiliary material for beef, but also a rare auxiliary material for common meat ingredients if the cooking method of "stew" is adopted. Because beer is made of malt, it has a certain alcohol content and unique aroma.
Therefore, if a proper amount of beer is added to the stew, it can not only remove a certain fishy smell, but also add a unique flavor to the dishes. Therefore, beef as a meat ingredient, of course, don't forget to add the right amount of beer to stew beef together!
Fresh beef is soaked in cold water and blanched before cooking. However, many people just put beef in cold water and stew it over high fire. This method is not advisable.
The correct way is to blanch the beef and wash it with warm water of 30~40 degrees to wash off the foam on the beef surface. Then add boiling water to the pot, or boil the water in the pot first, and then add beef to stew, so that the stewed beef tastes soft and not stiff.
It is precisely because beef and mutton have a strong smell, especially mutton. Therefore, especially some old people who only eat pork, chicken and other meat since childhood, as long as they hear about eating mutton or beef, the first thing that comes to mind is how to suppress the fishy smell of beef and mutton with various seasonings. Therefore, anise, pepper, cinnamon and other strong-smelling fennel will be the first choice.
As everyone knows, when stewing beef and mutton, it is taboo to add these aniseed. Because aniseed such as pepper and star anise can't actually remove the fishy smell of beef, it will cause strange taste, cover up its original taste, and affect the color of vegetables and soup, which looks unsightly and has no appetite.
Nowadays, young people are better, especially elderly people. When cooking any dish, the ingredients are put in the pot, and basically the salt is put in the pot together. Why are you doing this? That's because they think that the salt should be cooked early so that the ingredients can be fully tasted. If the salt is put in late, it will not be fully seasoned.
In fact, this habit is not good, because putting salt too early will greatly affect the taste and quality of dishes. Take stewed beef for example, the best time to put salt is when the beef is cooked, which is about 10 minutes before cooking. At this time, after adding salt and stewing beef together for ten minutes, not only the salt can fully penetrate into the beef, but also the taste will be more delicious and fragrant.
Thank you for your patience in reading! Today, I shared with you the methods and skills of beef stew. Remember "three releases and three releases". Beef is soft and rotten, fragrant and tasteless. Have you learned? If you have better beef stew methods and tips, please share them in the comments section! Follow me if you like me. See you next time for more wonderful food!