Eating habits make Cantonese people very good at drinking soup and stewing soup. They deal with soup almost every day, so let's talk about me. Even if I eat alone, I have to get a dish and a soup, otherwise it will not be a sense of ceremony. Chicken soup is even more common in life.
I think that a good pot of chicken soup needs to know what it is like first, and then infer that it doesn't need any ingredients, which is more reliable. Then what kind of chicken soup is a good soup?
the standard in my mind is this: the pot is fragrant, and the soup is clear at the bottom, with strong taste and no peculiar smell.
This is obvious. It is required to put less strange things in the stew, especially some heavy seasonings, which will be discussed later. Then there is the heat. The secret of clear soup is to grasp the fire, while the strong flavor requires that the ratio of soup to water should be reasonable.
what kind of ingredients are not suitable for chicken stew?
I think the most important thing of chicken stew soup is to ensure its original flavor. How to do it? It's very simple, that is, except for the necessary materials, other things are not put. For example, the most commonly used three-piece set in the spice world: star anise, cinnamon, fragrant leaves, pepper and rattan pepper, which are very effective in removing fishy smell, and cooking wine, which is essential for frying dizzy vegetables, are all unavailable.
The first few spices (star anise, cinnamon, spice and pepper) can't be put away, because their own aroma is very rich and obvious. A little bit can make people drink their taste, which will suppress the original flavor of chicken soup and give people an imperfect feeling. What strange smell is this? It's so uncoordinated.
The principle of cooking wine to remove fishy smell lies in its volatility, which can take away some fishy smell by the way when cooking. When it is put in soup, although it has the function of removing fishy smell, it will also take away a lot of umami flavor of chicken soup. At the same time, some cooking wine will be soaked with these spices mentioned above. In addition, once its own wine flavor is put into chicken soup, the soup will be "mutated".
So, don't put the spices such as star anise, cinnamon, fragrant leaves, pepper, etc. in the chicken soup, which is unnecessary and doesn't match the flavor of chicken soup. Besides, don't put the cooking wine, which is the same as not putting the spices.
how to stew a pot of good chicken soup?
Delicious food needs to be cooked with heart. I think no one will object to this statement, and so will chicken soup. Generally speaking, a good pot of chicken soup can be made from the following aspects: selection of materials, selection of ingredients and temperature.
material selection
for a very obvious example, which is better, the soup stewed by a three-year-old rooster or the soup stewed by a two-month-old chicken? I think anyone who knows something about cooking knows it is the former. The reason is that, although the old chicken bones are tough and hard to chew, it has been raised for a long time and accumulated for a long time, which makes its nutrients very high. The most fearful thing about stew is that the ingredients are tough, the time is in place, the heat is in place, and the steel bars can be softened.
therefore, the first step is to choose old chickens, that is, those that have been raised for a long time, when choosing ingredients. For example, there are fewer farm-scattered old-age roosters just mentioned. The old chickens that are more common in the market are generally old hens, followed by some chicken-flavored chickens, such as Qingyuan chickens, and the last one is the kind of young chickens with a catty of eleven or twelve pieces. This restaurant is not bad for quick frying, and the stew is almost tasteless.
Selection of ingredients
Chicken itself is very delicious even without any ingredients, but if it is icing on the cake, it will not only highlight the original flavor of chicken soup, but also make chicken soup have the function of medicinal diet. Why not? Of course, the taste of ingredients should match the chicken soup well.
The common ones are: Lycium barbarum, red dates
Clear and cool images: Adenophora adenophora, Polygonatum odoratum and sea coconut
The ones with strong color and strong taste: Radix Rehmanniae Preparata and Radix Angelicae Sinensis
The combination of ginseng and Radix Panacis Quinquefolii with chicken soup is ok, which can not only improve the medicinal diet effect of chicken soup, but also be used as chicken soup with suppressed main flavor.
heat
I don't know if you have heard of the word "three stews and four stews", which means that it takes more than three hours to cook the soup, and it takes longer to stew the soup, with a minimum of four hours. But now the pace of life is tight, and "experts" say that cooking soup for too long is not good for health, so this practice is used less. However, no matter how to reduce the time, I think the stew is soulless in less than two hours.
and it is also very important to control the fire. The old-fashioned stews are usually stewed in water. The method is to boil boiling water in a pot and put it into a stewing pot, so that the temperature in the stewing pot will remain calm and stable after reaching the boiling point of water, that is, 1 degrees, and the nutrients in the ingredients will be slowly released into the soup, which is clear but delicious.
But now everyone will try to save trouble and just cook with a small fire, which is also called stew. Ok, stew it, but turn down the fire. Suggested practice, whether using an induction cooker or a gas cooker, just keep the soup in the pot slightly open after the pot is covered, and don't let the soup in the pot roll like water in the east of the Yangtze River, and finally tell me that the soup is gone. I've tried, the battery oven has a minimum fire of 3, and a pot of chicken soup has been stewed for 2 hours. There is not much water missing, and the soup is quite clear.
Stew a pot of chicken and ginseng soup
Materials: old hen, ginseng and ginger slices
Specific methods:
1. After the old hen is slaughtered, soak it in boiling water. This step can remove the odor of the chicken and preserve its nutrition. Ordinary blanching will make the chicken lose a lot of nutrition, which is a pity.
2. Choose a crock, or a deeper casserole, or a thicker soup pot without it. Add a piece of ginger and ginseng, and pour in clear water (the amount of clear water here should be careful not to drown the whole chicken, which should be equal to or slightly lower than that of the old hen, and it will not evaporate if the lid is covered with a small fire, so don't make the soup taste like water by adding too much water). After the fire is boiled,
3. Only put salt when drinking, not in advance. Just put it 1 minutes before drinking the soup and let the salt melt. Because the addition of salt will affect the release of nutrients in chicken, and it will also cause chicken to become firewood and harden.
4. Finally, who said that you can't put ginger in chicken soup? I've never heard of such a saying. No matter what kind of soup is made in Guangdong, add a piece of ginger to remove the fishy smell and cold, and enhance the taste and freshness. Isn't it delicious?