1. Add flavor. Southerners attach importance to the taste of dishes and like sweet dishes, so they often add appropriate amount of sugar to enhance the taste. Sugar can reduce the bitterness and sourness of dishes, enhance the sweetness of dishes and greatly increase people's appetite.
2. adjust the taste. The combination of sugar and seasoning can make the taste more balanced, avoid spicy seasoning and increase the taste level and complexity of dishes. For example, when cooking fried cauliflower with soy sauce, adding a small amount of sugar can neutralize the salty taste of soy sauce and make cauliflower more fresh, sweet and delicious.
3. Improve the brightness. When cooking with oil, sugar also helps to increase the brightness and beauty of dishes; Cooking wine helps to remove fishy smell and improve the umami taste and quality of dishes.
4. Increase the smoothness. There are many fish and shrimp in southern cuisine, and adding cooking wine helps to remove fishy smell and relieve cravings. This is because the alcohol and acid in cooking wine can destroy the cell membrane of meat, and release some amino acids and some organic acids from it, making it fragrant and gravy-flavored, and at the same time making the meat tender and smooth.
5. Living habits. Southerners love to put sugar because the climate in the south is hot and humid, which is easy to produce moisture. Too much moisture will harm human health and cause various diseases. Sugar has the function of removing water, so southerners often add a certain amount of sugar to reduce water when cooking food.
To sum up, adding sugar and cooking wine to the cooking of southerners can not only increase the delicacy and taste of dishes, but also make dishes rich in layers and characteristics, so it is considered as a major feature of southern cooking.