Every year between the winter solstice and the beginning of spring, the most colorful thing in Jiangnan winter should be the various sauces hanging on the windowsill and under the eaves of every household.
Hangzhou people's lives cannot be separated from these sauces. Duck, pig's trotters, ribs, crucian carp, oxtail... all unexpected ingredients can be eaten with sauces.
Every year when winter begins, I stand in a residential area and look around. Hehe, my eyes are filled with red-colored sauce ducks and sauce meat. The air seems to have a strong aroma of sauce.
Hangzhou people make soy sauce, and every family has its own flavor. During the Spring Festival, it is not only delicious food that is placed on their own tables, but also used to be distributed to relatives and friends. Every winter, my mother-in-law would personally dry a balcony full of pickled duck and pork and send it to us in the far north. If I don't take this bite, I always feel like something is missing, as if even the flavor of the New Year has become much lighter.
Nowadays, far away in a foreign country, the flavor of Jiangnan also forms an indispensable part of the continuous nostalgia. I dried the sauce meat myself and steamed it until it tasted delicious in my mouth. It was really quite fragrant, full of sunshine, which warmed the memory of my family.
sauced meat
By PenelopeHand
Recipe Recommendations
Steps for sauced meat
1
Wash the pork first and use a kitchen paper towel to dry off the surface.
2
Then cut into long strips. The volume of the sauce meat will shrink a lot after it is air-dried, so don't cut it too small.
3
Thread the rope on one end of the meat strip.
4
Hang it in a cool and ventilated place for day and night to remove moisture from the meat.
5
The next day, you can feel the meat drying obviously, and you can start to pickle.
6
Each family's pickled meat has its own flavor, but the key lies in the different marinades. In fact, there are no fixed rules for what to put in and what the proportion is. It all depends on personal preferences. The most traditional sauce meat can only be put in soy sauce. I wanted to try the salty and sweet taste, so I specially added sweet flour sauce and barbecued pork sauce.
7
The ratio of soy sauce to sweet flour paste and barbecued pork paste is basically 2:1:1. Add two tablespoons of white wine, and the white wine used for sauce meat tastes better than cooking wine. Salt is not needed at all.
8
Stir all the seasonings evenly and you will have the sauce for curing. The amount depends on the meat; place the meat in a container large enough and pour in the sauce so that the meat can be completely soaked in it.
9
It is recommended that you use this oversized crisper, which is well airtight, but you should pay attention to washing and drying in advance, and there should be no oil or water in the container.
10
Add a little pepper.
11
Then add a little of the ingredients.
12
Completely seal the container and place it in the refrigerator to refrigerate. The marinating time depends on personal taste. If you like it is light, it can be marinated for three days, or if you like salty, you can marinate it for a week. However, no matter how long the meat is, the meat must be taken out and turned once in the middle. I marinated it for about five days and felt moderately salty.
13
After marinating, you can start drying the pickled pork. What I do is to take it to a terrace without glass during the day, dry it when there is sun, dry it when it is cloudy, and bring it to the kitchen at night and hang it in a ventilated place.
14
The drying time of pickled pork is directly related to the size and thickness of the meat. It takes at least ten days and a half a month. The way to judge is to press it hard and soft with your hand. I don't like pickled meat that has a hard taste. Even after steaming, it is still not easy to bite. Therefore, I basically grasp that the surface of the meat has become hard, but if I press it until the inside is slightly soft, it will be done. The hardness feels relatively moderate.
15
The cooked pork should be bright and oily, purple-red, close to black, with firm meat and uniform color.
16
There are many ways to eat soy sauce meat, such as stir-frying, making steamed buns, or even wrapping meat dumplings. The easiest way to eat is to steam it in the pan, so that you can best taste the original and strong flavor of soy sauce. Spread some dried plum vegetables at the bottom of the plate. After steaming, the meat can absorb the special aroma of the plum vegetables and make it more delicious.
17
Slice the sauce meat and spread it on a plate.
18
It only takes to steam for 10 to 15 minutes. You can be like me. You can place the sauce pork on the top of the rice cooker while steaming the rice. When the rice is steamed, the meat will also have a fragrance, which is very convenient.
19
Making pickled pork is like an exam. Only until the moment you put it into your mouth can you truly know whether the salty, soft and soft are suitable. Seeing that this plate of pickled pork was swept away by our family of three in an instant, it seems that we should be able to score a good score.
20
The remaining sauce meat can be cut into large pieces and wrapped in plastic wrap.
21
Put it in an airtight container and refrigerate it in the refrigerator. It can be stored for a long time. Just take out one piece when eating, which is very convenient.sauced meat Make Tips
Sauce meat must be made in winter. Nowadays, in the hot and scorching weather in China, you must not make it, otherwise it will turn sour and grow white hair. Friends who want to try will have to wait until after the winter solstice. It is best to choose days when the temperature is low but the weather is sunny for several consecutive days, so that they can eat it during the Spring Festival. Once cooked, the sauce meat can be stored for a long time. Sauce pork is also delicious, but two points should be noted: First, after slicing or slicing the sauce meat, it must be steamed in the drawer and then stir-fried in the pan. It cannot be used directly for cooking, otherwise it will be too hard and hard to bite; Second, the sauce meat itself already has a certain degree of salinity, so the amount of salt should be reduced in the dish to avoid being too salty. Hangzhou people also like to eat it steamed with sauce pork with various vegetables, such as steamed bamboo shoots with sauce pork, pumpkin, vegetarian chicken, tofu skin, taro... The combination of meat and vegetables, salty, light and neutral, is a rare delicacy. Eating in summer is particularly appetizing, and the more exquisite ones can be spread on lotus leaves and steamed, which will give you even more fragrance.