Wow.....talk about spam....in the guise of stirfry???

Jkom51 has been here for years. She's not a spammer.

I agree that most of us do not automatically equate Asian food with braising. I remember the first time I had a clay-pot sort of meal at a local Vietnamese restaurant. It was absolutely delicious. Both pictures look wonderful.

That's a very interesting article. I think all the food sounds delicious. I certainly can't get freshly killed chicken but I'm off to look up crystal-boiling. I have used the velveting technique on meat and poultry but never on shrimp - that's something interesting to try also.

Thanks for sharing this.

Lee

OK, I've done that with chicken breast but I didn't know what the cooking method was called. I've learned a new term!

Cucumber relish- nothing better. I really enjoyed this post. I was so amazed when my first stir fry came out edible, too. It had to have been one of the first things I ever made.

When I grew up, our Chinese home cooking did not include any "wok" dishes or even the more modest "stir fry" technique.

Our kitchen didn't have woks, high-BTU burners, or the like. Just a standard range on which my grandmother boiled, steamed, simmered, braised and sometimes pan-fried. My parents didn't wield a wok or stir fry either. In fact, I don't recall any friends or family cooking by stir frying.

Most Chinese-American households then did not have anything special by way of high heat burners, and from my limited experience of home kitchens in Asia, most there didn't either. The typical modest Asian kitchen had a few burners, a rice cooker, and that's about it. In particular, ovens were not traditionally found in Chinese home kitchens back in the day.

Wok cooking is really a professional, restaurant technique. And plenty of Chinese families don't even try to stir fry at home.

Incidentally, roasting and baking is typically left to professionals too. Grandma buys roast pork at the store, rather than roasting pork at home. Buns are steamed on the burner, not baked. No oven, remember.

That's interesting. Pork belly for supper tonight!

Continuing to digress, I have read a few different explanations for the lack of ovens in traditional Chinese home kitchens. Economy in fuel (takes less energy to steam buns than to bake them), warm climate (no need for the hearing effect of an oven), lighter/cheaper home construction (before steel and gas, ovens needed masonry). Maybe some of these are partly true.

Chinese cooking tends not to have the big monothic roasted or baked things that have to be cut up at the table. Everything is supposed to be manageable with just chopsticks and the occasional spoon.

John, China is a very big country with about 4,000 ethnic diversities. Those times I have traveled to remote villages in China, I have seen many woks used. Wok works very well on wood burning stoves and coal/charcoal burning stoves. Wok is common because the making is very low-tech. I have seen people make their own wok by hammering a round sheet of steel. Cast iron wok/cookware was invented in China because it was cheap and low-tech.

Roasted pork is done frequently on coal/charcoal stoves. The Chinese like steamed bread because they believe baked bread is bad for your health.

dcarch

"Wok cooking is really a professional, restaurant technique. And plenty of Chinese families don't even try to stir fry at home."

I'm mystified by this statement. My grandfather cooked in a gigantic wok over a gas stove. I was just born when he died, so these accounts come from my parents. They said he was the main family cook and everything, even a single egg, was cooked in the big wok. My mother and aunts and all the cooks of their generation cooked in woks over gas. SIL got a separate gas burner to accomodate her wok in which she cooks most of the family meals. My mother and I went shopping together to buy my first wok. I own two and use both regularly, several times a week. My choice of cooktop was dictated by the need for high-heat cooking.

In my travels in China I saw many street cooks in rural areas using woks over propane burners. It's absolutely standard.

Cheryl

My apologies...I was reading in a hurry and saw a picture a restaurant name and a price and assumed it was spam...

Jkom has been posting for the past decade, she lives the life I want, eating in restaurants constantly (w/ her husband, not traveling, btw).

With her foodie knowledge, I assume she has some fine meals occasionally!

"Wow.....talk about spam....in the guise of stirfry???"

Actually, it is true, stir-fried Spam is a popular dish.

dcarch

The original post and the follow-ups are very interesting to me.

Regarding the combination of pork and seafood, as well as braising, I've had a wonderful clay pot dish which combined pork and oysters. Excellent! This was served at a Boston Chinatown restaurant which, unfortunately, is out of business.

The second chef is describing sous vide, isn't he?

When we became close friends of a Chinese couple many years ago, I noticed that out friends' kitchen was equipped with stuff like Corningware and ordinary frying pans. I don't recall ever seeing a wok or anything else that looked exotic, although they may have had it. I, myself, was accumulating Asian cooking equipment, which I thought was necessary to my exploration of Chinese cooking. :)

Incidentally, my friend once phoned me asking for a "recipe" for steak. I think she has long since learned to grill a steak without a recipe. She taught us to make gyoza. Of course, she needed no recipe for that.

Is crystal boiled chicken the same thing I know as white cooked chicken? White cooking is basically a poaching technique.

Jim

Weird.

My exposure is more to urban Chinese families. Maybe the ones I knew and grew up with in the US were getting Westernized, but when I lived in and visited Taiwan I didn't see woks in home kitchens either. Street food stalls, restaurants, etc - sure, woks were seen there.

I wonder if it is a rural vs urban thing? A class thing, or a regional cuisine thing? I will ask my father.

This thread is interesting to me.
I have never understood the advantage of cooking in an
inverted dome, over high heat. Apparently the food
on the very bottom gets cooked first? But then
if you stir it up, how do you keep that cooked food
from not going back to the bottom???

"Is crystal boiled chicken the same thing I know as white cooked chicken?"

I should have said "white CUT chicken", not "white COOKED chicken".

White cut chicken uses what I would consider a primitive form of sous vide, one using hot water but no digital temperature control.

Jim

Here is a link that might be useful: White Cut Chicken

Jim, "--The second chef is describing sous vide, isn't he? --"

Jim, something is missing in the translation. "transfers individual portions into plastic bags which he vacuum-seals. He then steams the bags at 85 degrees Celsius for 10 hours. "

Steam, by definition is 100 C.

:---White cut chicken uses what I would consider a primitive form of sous vide, one using hot water but no digital temperature control. "

I think that is very good way to explain the perfect texture of White Cut Chicken. BTW, the name "White Cut" actually means, as I was told, that the chicken is so delicious, no sauce or seasoning is needed, just white meat, cut up to be enjoyed plain.

dcarch

We have many Asian-Canadian friends, and none of them do high-heat stir-frying at home. However, most if not all of them cook with woks. These pots are very useful for steaming and braising, or pan frying on ordinary household ranges.

It's hard to make generalities about over 1 billion people, lol. But I have found that there are many, many Chinese families who don't stir-fry at all, or do it very seldom. Not every American family eats burgers and hot dogs, either, for a local analogy. I guess if others judged American culture by TV ads and billboards, they would think we all lived on a daily diet of McDonald's Big Macs!

But in general, many Asian cuisines do have a "triple path". There is home cooking; there is restaurant cooking; and there is banquet, or feast, food.

I was talking to my Hong Kong-born Chinese-Portugese DH a few weeks ago, and he (finally) remembered to tell me a story about one of his uncles who died over 15 yrs ago. This uncle was famous in the family for making the Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, or ho yau gai lan as it used to be spelled (I'm terrible with the new spellings, sorry).

I've done this dish, and it seems very simple. Blanch the gai lan, stir-fry it quickly, drizzle it with oyster sauce. What's so hard about it?

DH told me his uncle was so meticulous and painstaking about doing this dish, it was intimidating even to just watch him. Every cut had to be a precise size, the water had to be just the right temperature, the timing was down to the second. The wok had to be heated for XX number of minutes with just enough oil but not too much; the tossing and last-minute steaming done always the same way.

In six decades of eating, DH says his uncle's gai lan remains the best. And every time, because he was so exacting about it, it was always perfect.

But it was a lot of work, done to ensure that nothing was left to chance. He very seldom made it, in fact. Just the news that there was going to be a party and that Uncle had promised to make his gai lan, was enough to make everybody, even reluctant-to-socialize teenagers, show up for dinner!

Oh, and outside of the gai lan, hardly anyone in DH's family, all 200+ members in Vancouver BC, stir-fries. Most of them don't even own a wok, which is interesting because otherwise they've kept their HK culture intact very assiduously. Unlike the American relatives, all of whom by the second generation barely remember their Cantonese, all the Canadian relatives speak Cantonese at home, so that even the fourth generation little kids are bi-lingual.

"----It's hard to make generalities about over 1 billion people, lol.---"

There are many areas in China I have been to where they seldom eat rice.

dcarch

jkom,

I would love eat your DH's uncle's gai lan. Now I know why mine has been mediocre. Not really bad, but certainly not excellent.

Jim

I do go past stir-frying but sure don't post about it in the Cooking Forum. Years ago, I tried a simmered/poached whole chicken cooked in a liquid containing star anise and other Chinese ingredients. It was wonderful so I posted the recipe. It contained specific instructions for the cooking technique, including removing the chicken from the pot and letting it cool to room temperature before serving.

After dozens of posts telling me that it couldn't have been cooked long enough, the recipe couldn't have been correct, "I wouldn't serve my family undercooked chicken" , etc., I continued to make the chicken and explored similar dishes but never again posted an Asian recipe here for anything much more complex than a basic stir fry.

ruthanna,

The chicken you describe is what I know as white cut chicken. I think it is wonderful but friends consider it undercooked. Even when we ate it in a restaurant we all love, they found fault with it. When I cooked it at home, they were sure I had screwed up. As explained in the recipe linked in one of my posts above, it will have a little redness in the joints of the legs. To most Americans, any hint of blood in chicken is a no-no and the meat should be almost falling off the bone not firm, yet tender, as it is with white cut.

Like you, I will continue to make it for myself. I won't serve it to others unless I remove it from the bone and slice it before serving.

Jim

>>There are many areas in China I have been to where they seldom eat rice. >>

Rice only grows in certain agricultural areas. It needs warmth and lots of water. Northern China is high desert plateau; they couldn't grow rice if they wanted to. Rice is prized all the more because in most areas, it has to be brought in.

Guangdong is the most important province in China and always has been, because like Georgia was to the USSR, it is the agricultural heart of the country. Without its rice and water, Beijing would die, and they know it.

Traditionally all Northern Asian cultures, just as the Europeans and Hispanics do in their northern latitudes, depend upon starches that will grow in short-summer climate. Wheat, barley, buckwheat - other countries would add potatoes, rye, quinoa, etc.

As more Koreans move up from Southern CA to Northern CA and open restaurants, we are seeing a shift in the restaurant cuisine to match. Barley tea, buckwheat noodle dishes, etc., are much more common than they were five or ten years ago.

Posted by ruthanna "I do go past stir-frying but sure don't post about it in the Cooking Forum. Years ago, I tried a simmered/poached whole chicken cooked in a liquid containing star anise and other Chinese ingredients. It was wonderful so I posted the recipe. It contained specific instructions for the cooking technique, ---------- After dozens of posts telling me that it couldn't have been cooked long enough----------- never again posted an Asian recipe here for anything much more complex than a basic stir fry."

I certainly can relate to your sentiment, Ruthanna. There are always some who "Chew with their minds closed and their mouths open"; However, I feel that we all have a duty to share knowledge that we feel are valid, and we should not allow the few insular individuals to rule and to deprive everyone else's right to diverse information. As one of the many admirers of your wonderful cooking, I implore you to do the best you can to bestow on us with your special culinary talent, to benefit participants like myself who are very interested in new and different ideas.

dcarch

I think we talked about bloody chicken a couple years ago.

Basically there is something about how chicken is raised and sold now - very very young - that makes it "bloody" at the joints even when adequately cooked/done. Because people are afraid of bloody chicken, restaurants have to overcook chicken to get rid of every last bit of blood. People actually want to eat shredded pressed and molded chicken tenders, it seems.

I cook my chicken to 140F and don't care if it is bloody or not. It is a dead animal, it once had blood and entrails and a face, that's the truth. I want to it taste good, not pretend to be a McNugget or something grown in a hydroponic vat.

I agree that we've gotten hyper-sensitive to food safety, and I can be guilty of it as well. While I don't worry about the miniscule risk of consuming raw eggs, salmonella in poultry is a very real concern. Somewhere in the range of 20%, I believe.

From my research of sous vide I've learned that killing pathogens is not just a matter of temperature, but rather a function of temperature over time. On the linked page is a chart that shows how you can safely cook chicken to "medium rare" temperatures as low as 135. This is one area of sous vide cooking I'm interested in, but haven't got up the nerve to try yet.

Ruthanna - I'm sorry to hear that your experience keeps you from posting certain things. I think that for the most part when folks raise safety issues they're doing so with genuine concern and good intent. It might not seem that way to the OP. I hope you reconsider sharing some of those recipes.

Interesting thread. John - please let us know what your father's take is on home wok cooking.

Here is a link that might be useful: douglasbaldwin.com

I also cook chicken to a temperature of around 135-140F. At this stage it is cooked through, but if you cut through the bones, they are red. I only serve white cut chicken at home to family, never to guests. It makes many people uncomfortable, inured as they are to chicken that is cooked to death and bone dry.

If the chicken is being roasted or grilled, it's hard to see the pink or red at the bone, so guests are happy to eat it. I always get requests for recipes and comments on how juicy it is. I can't tell them that's it's because the chicken isn't cooked to 160F or even higher (as my MIL does).

I always brine chickens before cooking. I don't know if that has an effect on safety since it is a form of curing. So far I've never had anyone become ill from eating my chicken sashimi (as DH calls it).

Cheryl