Sea cucumber, an invertebrate living at the bottom of the sea, is a valuable food with rich nutrition and high price. Although the sea cucumber is ugly, black and full of thorns, the ancients thought that its nutrition was comparable to ginseng, which gave it such a name. Now it seems that although sea cucumber is rich in nutrition, it is far less powerful than ginseng, but the full gum inside has created a unique and wonderful taste. Therefore, there is no need to eat sea cucumber specially for nourishing the body, just treat it as a kind of delicious food. In China, Stichopus japonicus from the Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea, Black Ginseng from the East China Sea and Plum Ginseng from the South China Sea are also called the three famous ginseng, among which Stichopus japonicus is the first choice for burning sea cucumber with onion.
Scallion-roasted sea cucumbers are all dry sea cucumbers that need to be soaked. Sea cucumber will be made into dry goods, mainly because it is not easy to preserve. After leaving the sea, the sea cucumber will die quickly, and it will secrete an autolytic enzyme, which can dissolve itself into a pool of water in a few hours and prevent us from eating it. In order to enjoy this delicious food, the ancients invented the method of making dry goods. Dry sea cucumbers can also be divided into several types according to different drying methods, such as light drying, salt drying and sugar drying, so I don't need to go into details here.
Many people think that the fresher the ingredients, the better. In fact, this is not 100% correct. For example, dried mushrooms soaked in water will have a more mellow fragrance than fresh mushrooms. Moreover, ingredients like day lily, because they contain a lot of alkaloids, can kill people when eaten fresh, so they can only be dried first and then soaked. The nutrients of soaked dry sea cucumber and fresh sea cucumber are almost the same. It is said that dry sea cucumber is more easily absorbed after unique processing, and the soaked hair after drying will bring more Q-elastic taste to sea cucumber. Therefore, you don't have to worry about the freshness of ingredients. Delicious is the last word.
The first step of buying dry sea cucumber is to soak his hair to make him feel soft again. Soaking sea cucumbers is a long process, and you really can't do it without patience. First of all, dry sea cucumber should be soaked in water at about 5℃ for 24 hours, which is almost the temperature in the freezer in our home, so just put dry sea cucumber in the water and send it to the refrigerator. Sea cucumbers soaked for a day, if they haven't been disembowelled, need to be cut vertically to remove internal organs. But now most of the sea cucumbers have been cleaned when they are dried, so we can save the second step. The third step is to put the sea cucumber in the pot and cook it for an hour or two to make the sea cucumber fully heated. The last step is to soak the sea cucumber in water and send it to the freezer for 48 hours. Counting it up, the whole foaming process will take at least three days, and the water will be changed continuously during this period. And some professional chefs will repeat the above steps and make sea cucumbers in five or six days. Generally speaking, the soaked sea cucumber will be twice as big as when it is dry, which is also the most intuitive way to judge the soaked sea cucumber.
You can't get oil when soaking sea cucumber, not at all. This is common sense that many foodies know. However, according to the tests of some professionals, only fresh sea cucumbers will turn into water after contacting with oil because of their own enzymes, and dried sea cucumbers will not actually have problems. I am poor, and I dare not do experiments with expensive sea cucumbers. Interested foodies can try it.
To cook sea cucumber with green onions, of course, high-quality green onions are indispensable. As for why we should use green onion to burn, Yuan Mei gave the answer in "Suiyuan Food List": "The sea cucumber is nothing, and the sand is full of smell, which is the most difficult to please, but it has a strong nature and must not be stewed in clear soup." In Shandong, there is a well-known variety of green onions in China, which happens to be the necessary supporting role for burning sea cucumber-Zhangqiu green onions.
Zhangqiu scallion was a special product of Qi as early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and it was recorded as a tribute in all previous dynasties. The real Zhangqiu green onions are tall and powerful, and you can't find them when you throw people into the green onions. It is said that the current record of Zhangqiu scallion is 2.5 1 m, which even Yao Ming has to admit defeat. Zhangqiu green onions are not only tall, but also good in appearance. They are white and have short green leaves, and they are not spicy to eat, and they are also slightly sweet.
When making sea cucumber with scallion, the first step is frying scallion oil. Many people will chop up Zhangqiu green onions and fry them directly in the oil pan. Although the onion flavor is rich, it is not the best flavor. The onion oil used in Fengze Garden, an old Shandong cuisine shop in Beijing, will be supplemented with ginger, garlic and coriander on the basis of Zhangqiu onion, with a ratio of 3:1:1. Moreover, when frying, you can't cook all at once. When the oil burns to 30% to 40% heat, first add ginger with relatively high moisture, fry for a while, then add onion, then garlic, and finally coriander. Only by distinguishing the order, can we ensure that the tastes of the four materials are well dissolved in oil without burning.
When the onion is fried, put it aside first, and the second step is to bake the sea cucumber. You can add some salt, sugar and monosodium glutamate to the water of the sea cucumber, so that the sea cucumber can have some bottom flavor. The baking process doesn't take long, just two or three minutes.
The third step, which many people will ignore, is to simmer the sea cucumber. Simmer the sea cucumber with the broth hung in advance, so that the sea cucumber can fully absorb the delicious taste of the broth, which is an excellent method to solve the problem that the sea cucumber is not easy to taste. Many people cook sea cucumbers at home, omitting this step, and the taste of sea cucumbers only floats on the surface and is not eaten. Some hotels will also omit this step in order to save money. However, there is a very simple identification method: rinse the cooked sea cucumber with water. If it tastes nothing after rinsing, it is obviously cutting corners or making a failure.
The first three steps are completed, and the last one is firing. The flavor of roasted sea cucumber is different from family to family. Simply talk about the formula of Fengze Garden: two spoonfuls of oil consumption, two spoonfuls of cooking wine, three spoonfuls of soy sauce, one spoonful of soy sauce, a little pepper, a little chicken essence, a little rock sugar and a spoonful of red yeast rice (fried sugar color is also acceptable). When firing, heat the pot, add some fried scallion oil, add the cooking juice and sea cucumber, and simmer slowly to let the sea cucumber drink enough soup. Some restaurants will add some fried chunks of scallions when cooking sea cucumbers, which can not only add some scallions, but also add side dishes to sea cucumbers. I remember seeing a chef put the onion into the sea cucumber, fixed it with a toothpick and then fired it in order to have a stronger onion fragrance. Before leaving the pot, sprinkle a little onion oil, which can make the whole dish bright and fragrant.
It is no exaggeration to say that when most people mention Shandong cuisine, they will think of sea cucumber with scallion. And to test whether a Shandong cuisine restaurant is authentic, a scallion-roasted sea cucumber can complete the task. Because sea cucumber is not easy to make, I still go to a restaurant to eat well, which not only saves trouble, but also makes me greedy. I can also judge the level of the chef in this restaurant and kill three birds with one stone.