China's food culture is profound. Different cooking methods of the same ingredients will show another kind of food with unique flavor. Different processing methods in the same cooking food will also make the dishes show different effects, especially when cooking. In addition to directly cooking the ingredients, there will be some pretreatment steps, such as sizing, hanging paste and thickening. So, what are the differences between these processing methods?

first of all, hanging paste, sizing and thickening actually make us commonly used in Chinese food. Among them, hanging paste is to mix and stir eggs, flour and water into a thick batter, and then dip the ingredients that need to be processed into the batter and then go through different cooking methods, such as frying, frying and barbecue, which reflects the different flavors of the same ingredients.

Secondly, it is sizing, which mixes seasonings with ingredients, and makes the batter stick to the ingredients evenly by pickling, scratching and kneading. The sized batter is relatively thin, which is often used in stir-frying and slippery cooking. Sizing is generally used for fleshy food, which can protect the fresh and tender taste of meat and reduce the loss of water and nutrition during heating cooking.

Finally, there is thickening. This kind of cooking starch is heated to form a sticky paste. Its purpose is to increase the viscosity of the ingredients and enhance the tenderness. For example, it can make the soup thick and tasty, which can increase the fresh and refreshing taste when frying vegetables. Thickening is usually added when the ingredients are about to be cooked, and it is easy to paste the pot too early to affect the final taste.

starch can be used to increase the viscosity in hanging paste, sizing and thickening, but different types of starch have different gelatinization effects. Among the common starches, potato powder can be used for thickening and sizing, corn starch, which is widely used, but has poor transparency and easy gluing, and is usually suitable for sizing and hanging paste, mung bean starch, with small particles, high transparency and high viscosity.