As the New Year approaches, treating yourself, entertaining clients, and gathering with friends and family all often involve dining out. However, in an era of frequent food safety incidents, what should one pay attention to when ordering? A renowned chef says he rarely orders three dishes when dining out.
1. Boiled Fish
Cooking boiled fish often requires a large amount of oil. To reduce costs, some restaurants may cut corners on the oil. Therefore, even if the oil used for such dishes is not recycled gutter oil, its quality is unlikely to be much better. They might use cheap, low-quality salad oil, or it could be oil that has been repeatedly heated. Repeated high-temperature heating can cause fats to undergo changes like trans-isomerization, which may pose a cancer risk. Additionally, dishes with names like "dry pot," "boiled," "dry-fried," or "crispy" are prone to similar issues.
How to identify:
If the boiled fish is made with live fish, the meat slices will be slightly curled and have a springy texture. By carefully tasting the dish, you can tell how fresh the oil is. Fresh oil is smooth and flows easily; even if there's a lot of it, it won't feel greasy. You can easily rinse it off in water.
In contrast, reused, low-quality oil has a higher viscosity, a sticky mouthfeel, and lacks a refreshing quality. It can be difficult to rinse off, even in hot water. In comparison, cooking methods like steaming, boiling, stewing, blanching, and cold dressing have less impact on the quality of the oil and do not require repeated heating, reducing the risk of encountering gutter oil.
2. Stir-fried Beef with Hangzhou Chili Peppers
Many people wonder why the beef in some restaurants' "Stir-fried Beef with Hangzhou Chili Peppers" is exceptionally tender, as soft as tofu, while they can't achieve this effect at home.
This might be due to the use of "meat tenderizer powder." Meat tenderizer powders not only contain proteases and starch but often also include ingredients like sodium nitrite, baking soda, and phosphates. The nitrite content in some varieties may exceed standards. Sodium nitrite acts as a color enhancer and preservative but carries a cancer risk. Baking soda can destroy vitamins in the meat, and phosphates can hinder the absorption of various nutrients like calcium and iron.
How to identify:
The pink color of dishes like "Stir-fried Beef with Hangzhou Chili Peppers," "Braised Beef," or "Braised Pork Ribs" is often due to the addition of sodium nitrite to give them a better "appearance." Raw beef and pork are red; after cooking, they naturally turn brown or light brown. However, meat treated with sodium nitrite remains pink after being cooked, with a vibrant and uniform color throughout. While soy sauce or red yeast rice can also make cooked meat red, their color is only on the surface and is typically darker.
3. Spicy Crawfish:
In recent years, spicy crawfish have become a "common guest" at dinner tables, but few people consider the potential tricks involved. If a dish contains a large amount of chili, Sichuan peppercorns, and various other spices, or a large amount of sugar and salt, it can overwhelm the taste buds, making it difficult to discern the freshness of the ingredients or even detect if they have gone bad. Many of the spicy crawfish on the market today are made from unfresh frozen crawfish, so consumers should be particularly careful when choosing them.
How to identify:
Unfresh crawfish will not be crisp and tender; they will feel loose, the meat pieces will be smaller, and the meat will easily separate from the shell. For fish dishes, fish with prominent, clear eyes and intact skin are usually fresh. The flesh of such fish will be firm and springy.