In ancient China, there were many experts who lived a long and healthy life. They were all cooks and gourmets. For example, Peng Zu, a symbol of China's longevity, is said to have lived for 800 years and is best at cooking. His food was highly praised by Yao, so he was sealed in Pengdi.
Cooking can make delicious food with various colors and tastes, which is a benign stimulation to the stomach, which can promote the secretion of digestive juice and enhance digestion ability. Therefore, we also notice that people who are good at cooking and cooking have beautiful faces, which shows how important the cooking skills accumulated by our ancestors for thousands of years are to health.
The purpose of cooking is to make the diet more nutritious and delicious. In cooking, all kinds of spices are indispensable. Rational use of them can not only greatly improve the taste of food, but also help to preserve the nutrition of food. In my kitchen, the following four spices are essential. Knowing their nutrition and usage can get twice the result with half the effort.
The usage of the four spices has its own merits.
The original taste of salty salt is salty, and it is also the basis of taste. No matter what the taste is, salt will be delicious, so it is also called salt as the root of all tastes. The main functions of salt are: giving fresh flavor, removing peculiar smell and keeping food fresh. Generally, salt is put late, which can make vegetables tender, but it is easy to get old long ago.
Sweet sugar is one of the main condiments, and it is also the main condiment of sweetness. It can be used together with other condiments such as salt and vinegar to bring out a delicious compound flavor. The main functions of sugar are: to increase the taste; Add color to make the food bright red, bright but not dark; Supplementing qi, with sweetness in sugar, has the function of invigorating qi and strengthening spleen. When cooking, you should put salt first, then sugar, and finally vinegar. Sugar should not be released too early to avoid burning the pot.
Acid. Vinegar is the main seasoning for sour taste. The functions of vinegar are: to remove the fishy smell, so vinegar is often put in fish dishes; Arousing mellow fragrance, increasing the color and fragrance of dishes; Solve greasy. Vinegar should be put in the dish after heating, so as not to lose the aroma of vinegar, which is only sour and odorless. If you hook it a little before cooking, you can increase the flavor and prevent the loss of aroma.
Spicy. The pungent taste of onion, ginger and garlic is also an important seasoning in traditional cooking in China. When cooking, we should pay attention to the following points: 1 Stir-fry the onion and garlic a little, and the fragrance will be strong if they are half cooked. 2. Ginger should be put together with raw materials and heated at the same time to effectively remove fishy smell and peculiar smell. Pepper is the best soup, which tastes delicious, but the soup should be cooked before it is put, so as not to lose its aroma. Pepper may be bitter, so frying bitter gourd with pepper can alleviate the bitterness.
Make tofu and taste it with mushrooms.
After getting familiar with these spices, you can continue to know when to use "addition" and when to use "subtraction" for spices.
First of all, don't add too much seasoning when it's delicious, and try to keep it original. If the chicken has its own flavor, it's better to steam or stew it, and at most add a little cooking wine to make its flavor overflow, instead of adding seasonings indiscriminately. Even tasteless, such as sea cucumber and tofu, sometimes there is no need to use seasonings, and delicious meat, shrimp and mushrooms can be used to enhance the taste. Secondly, if the food is brightly colored, it should be preserved without seasoning. When frying lotus roots, add water while frying to prevent the color from turning black. Finally, boil water, stir-fry water (put a little oil in the pot), stew and steam, and make up the taste with onion, ginger and pepper.
More flavor is thin, less flavor is strong.
The ancients emphasized that simplicity is also applicable to cooking. When cooking, everyone should try to taste thin and eat less thick, and eating thick taste is often bad for health. Don't put two kinds of seasonings if you can, because many seasonings are not toxic, and various sauces also have additives. You'd better put less in your own cooking.
In addition, it is also a "simplification" principle to use more raw materials to complement each other and less seasonings to complement each other. Complementary raw materials, such as three kinds of miscellaneous grains cooked together, millet, corn, rice or soybeans, oats and rice, can achieve protein complementarity. Another example is the mixture of peanut oil, soybean oil and rapeseed oil, which is called triple heavy oil. Cooking can supplement fat. Another example is Sam sun soup, where fresh fish, fresh meat and fresh chicken are stewed together, which can be delicious and complementary in protein. This kind of raw material is delicious. Except adding onion and ginger to remove fishy smell, all seasonings are free.
In fact, for those who know how to live, cooking is endless. There are too many mysteries and pleasures waiting for us to explore from nutrition collocation to color, fragrance and harmony. Mastering the true meaning can not only make us healthier, but also bring us a lot of unexpected fun. Invest in every dish carefully, and you will get a good return from it.