Since ancient tis, sea cucumber has been considered a valuable marine product.
Last night, while Lin Xu was flipping through the set of "Imperial Food Records," he saw several ways to prepare sea cucumbers, but they were basically no different from the sea cucumber preparations today.
Dried sea cucumber is rehydrated, cleaned thoroughly, and then cooked using thods such as boiling, steaming, braising, stewing, simring, and roasting.
Sea cucumber is rich in collagen, and its texture is superb, but it has little flavor itself, thus offering endless possibilities in cooking.
As Lin Xu started to tidy up, Guo Xinghai had just finished his own tasks.
He glanced at these sea cucumbers and succinctly said:
"They’re over-hydrated."
Wei Qian curiously asked:
"Xinghai, generally, how much should they be rehydrated?"
Guo Xinghai ca over and weighed the sea cucumber:
"Generally, one pound of dried sea cucumber is best rehydrated to five or six pounds, but this dried sea cucumber has at least swollen to ten pounds. They look quite big now, but they will shrink once cooked."
Using a solution, sea cucumbers can be infinitely expanded, appearing large and plump.
However, when blanching them, the excess water will be extracted, and the sea cucumber size will return to normal.
This is why so sea cucumbers of lower quality shrink after cooking, but these sea cucumbers, without any peculiar sll, are just not of the highest grade and shouldn’t be considered poor quality.
Truly poor quality sea cucumbers sll of chemicals right after you open the packaging.
Lin Xu held the sea cucumber in his hand and used a small pointed knife to cut it open from head to tail.
Sea cucumbers are dried while alive, and their internal organs and mouth parts are still intact; these need to be thoroughly cleaned out, otherwise, they will affect taste and texture.
As each sea cucumber is opened, the white intestine inside is visible and should be carefully removed without breaking it; otherwise, sand inside the intestine may stain the inner walls of the sea cucumber, affecting taste.
Remove all parts like intestines, mouth, and even anus, leaving only the spindle-shaped body of the sea cucumber.
This is the edible part of the sea cucumber.
While helping with cleaning, Wei Qian whispered:
"People say sea cucumbers are like petrol stations for n and beauty salons for won, but does it really work?"
Lin Xu glanced at him:
"Another friend in need again?"
"No, no, just asking casually. If it really has beauty benefits, maybe I should make so for Tiantian to try. We can’t afford large sea cucumbers, but small ones should be doable."
Just like with abalone, the larger the size of the sea cucumber, the higher the price.
However, ordinary families don’t need to pursue size; as long as regular-sized sea cucumbers are well prepared and cooked, the taste isn’t inferior to larger ones.
Guo Xinghai put the prepared and cleaned sea cucumbers into a basin for washing:
"It definitely has so effect, but don’t hope to rely solely on it for beauty. Even if you eat sea cucumber like als, you won’t turn into Liu Yifei."
Lin Xu chuckled:
"That’s not a valid example. This isn’t beauty; it’s costic surgery of a high difficulty level..."
The beauty and nurturing effects of eating food like sea cucumber, cubilose, are not found in the food itself but in the social status.
People who regularly consu such foods are those who don’t need to strive for a living.
They go to bed early, wake up early, eat light and regularly, visit beauty salons for spas, and go for full body treatnts whenever they want.
Living in such a state, even without consuming sea cucumber, cubilose, fish fin, their skin wouldn’t be too bad.
Conversely, if you are working late at 3 am and have to get up at 7 am to squeeze into the subway, eat irregular als, and consu high-oil high-salt takeout regularly.
In such situations, forget about eating sea cucumber; even bathing in sea cucumber won’t help.
Once all the sea cucumbers are thoroughly cleaned and washed, water is added to the pot, where the sea cucumbers are placed for blanching to not only clean off the sand but also remove odors.
Blanching also helps the sea cucumber to shrink and set.
The more swollen the sea cucumber, the more it shrinks.
Guo Xinghai asked:
"Are you going to cook all these sea cucumbers with abalone sauce? Should we make so sea cucumber with green onions?"
Lin Xu shook his head:
"No need, although there seems to be quite a lot in this pot, once shared out, each person will only have one or two. There’s no need to make two dishes; we can work on so dried sea cucumbers ourselves later and make it then."
Sea cucumber cooked with green onions is a signature dish of Shandong cuisine, and this dish not only demands high-quality sea cucumber but also strict use of green onions, such as using only Shandong Green Onions and only the white parts, using green onions three tis.
Doing so allows the onion’s fragrance to fully perate the sea cucumber.
Soon the pot boiled, producing a lot of white foam, and so odors were also cooked out.
This foam is the excess water being cooked out.
Foam is created because the rchant used a solution to prevent sea cucumbers from rotting during rehydration.
This needs to be skimd off promptly to prevent it from reintegrating into the sea cucumber.
At this ti, the sea cucumber texture is relatively firm, so it can be boiled a little longer to completely remove the odors inside.
After four or five minutes of boiling, the white foam disappears, and the shrunken sea cucumbers are fished out using a slotted spoon and washed once with warm water.
Thoroughly clean the sea cucumber.
After washing, use kitchen paper to wipe off the moisture on the surface of the sea cucumber.
Next, place a sand pot on the stove, put the sea cucumber in, add half a pot of Pork Bone Broth, bring it to a boil and skim off the foam, add a small spoonful of salt and sugar, and continue cooking.
When cooking sea cucumber, follow the principle of "if it’s flavorful, let it out; if it’s bland, let it in."
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