Chinese Dishes
Chongqing Spicy Dry Pot & Street Noodles
Jul
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*Original Content, if reproduce, please indicate the source*
Chongqing Street Noodles 重庆小面
In a misty morning, the first thing many people in Chongqing do after they get up is to look for a noodles restaurant/stall nearby, and order a bowl of street noodles to fill their empty stomach.
Chongqing Street Noodles was a kind of vegetarian noodle in the old days. The word “street” fully shows its simplicity and popularization. Now, everyone has agreed that all of Chongqing noodles would be called “Chongqing Street Noodles”. It’s low-cost, delicious and popular among people. It’s mostly found in roadside stalls of towns and food stalls. Its main ingredients include alkaline noodles, and the pepper and chili in the sauce are known as the “soul” of Chongqing Street Noodles. It has layered seasonings – oil, salt, vinegar, ginger, chopped green onion, etc., making the noodles itself outstanding. It mainly has a spicy taste and is light in texture, with dozens of different toppings such as beef, fat sausage, miso, peas, etc. The green vegetables also make the noodles more unique. For someone who has just returned to Chongqing, he will definitely have to eat a bowl of Chongqing Street Noodles if he can’t enjoy Chongqing hotpot immediately. Sure enough, Chongqing Street Noodles just make Chongqing people happier in general.
Broth:
Pig big bone; star anise; cumin; ginger slice; cooking wine
Slowly cook for two hours on low heat.
soybean brewing:
Wash the soybeans and soak them in water for six hours(Add 2 tablespoons of baking soda to make the beans swell up in short time.). Pour out the water and add the broth. Use a small fire to slowly cook for 2-3 hours. If you want the soybeans to be harder, you can shorten the cooking time.
Remade soy sauce:
Soy sauce – 500g
Brown sugar – 50g
Bay leaf – 1 piece
Star anise – 3 pieces
Cinnamon – 1 small piece
Pepper – 6g
Slowly boil the yellow soy bean sauce and put in other ingredients. Stir constantly. Boil for 10 minutes before turning off the heat, then remove the ingredients.
Chili oil:
Dried red pepper
Sand Ginger
Tsaoko
Ligusticum Chuanxiong Hort (LCH)
Cinnamon
Amomi Fructus
Dried tangerine peel
Fennel
Clove
Bay leaf
Lemon grass
Amomi Fructus Rotundus
Myristicae Semen
Star anise
Fructus Piperis Longi
Cooked white sesame
Rapeseed oil
Cut and chop the dried red pepper. Use a small fire to slowly cook until it becomes dark red and crispy. Mash the dried red peppers that have been fried and put it in a bowl, add other seasonings and stir well. Heat the rapeseed oil until there’re no more bubbles. Let there be a small amount of smoke, turn off the fire, and pour the hot oil into the bowl of seasonings.
Spiced salt peanuts:
Spiced salt
Pepper
Star anise
Peanuts
Wash the peanuts and put them into bowl, pour an appropriate amount of water into it. Put in other seasonings and soak for 4 to 5 hours. Then, wash the soaked peanuts and let them drain in a cool place. Place a layer of tin foil on the baking tray and place the peanuts on the tin foil. The temperature of the oven is set at 170 degrees, and the baking time set at 15 minutes. Finally, remove the roasted peanuts and mash them with a tool.
Water boiling is the key! Add an appropriate amount of alkaline noodles two minutes before it gets boiled in the pot. Wait until the water gets boiled, then add fresh water. Wait until the water is boiling again and add fresh water. Repeat this step for two or three times until the noodles become completely soft and ripe. During this time, prepare a bowl, add a small spoonful of lard (Or a teaspoon of scallion oil), a small spoonful of cooked sesame seeds, a proper amount of ground peanuts, picked mustard(榨菜/芽菜), and a small spoonful of vinegar（optional）. Remade soy sauce sparingly, add ginger garlic and a small spoonful of peanut butter（optional）.
Add vegetables to the pot to be cooked. Remove the noodles and vegetables and put them into the bowl. Add the chili oil and the soaked soy beans. Stir it for a while. A bowl of yummy Chongqing Street Noodles is now ready.
The Chinese cuisine is ever-changing. In addition to retaining its basic ingredients and taste, you can always try different ingredients and degree of heat to meet different needs of people. For example, you can use seafood broth, vegetables broth or meat broth. As I mentioned above, you can also try different toppings to make your Chongqing Street Noodles as varied as possible.
Chongqing Spicy Dry Pot 麻辣香锅
(Portion for three people)
Chongqing spicy dry pot is a kind of dish that you are free to mix different flavorings that give different aromas. You can also choose the kinds of meat and vegetables that you prefer. When all is cooked together in the hotpot, the smell is so mouthwatering you won’t be able to resist.
Today, Chongqing spicy dry pot has a medium degree of spiciness. While maintaining the constant proportion of hotpot seasoning, you can add a different amount of pepper to can get the different extent of spiciness. There might seem to be a lot of different kinds of hotpot seasonings but getting them is very easy as they are very commonly seen seasonings. In many households, you might be able to find all of them, and it’s not even necessary to buy new ones. After making it once yourself, you’d know it’s not difficult at all to prepare at home an authentic, delectable dry pot!
Seasoning:
Sichuan PiXian Broad Bean Paste with Red Chili Oil
Chongqing hot pot seasoning – 50g (use butter type)
Scallion oil – 50g
Pepper – 5 grams
Fine sugar – 25g
Dried red peppers -25 pieces (cut into small pieces)
Ginger – 1 piece (sliced)
Ginger head – 1 piece (sliced)
Spring onion – half (cut into parts)
Dry Star Anise Seeds
Cinnamon – 5 to10 grams (optional)
Cooked white sesame seeds – 10 grams
Salt – 2 grams
Coriander – right amount (optional)
Ingredients:
Shrimp – 200 grams
Squid/beef – 200 grams
Broccoli – 1/3 piece
Shredded Konjak – 1 box(optional)
Flammulina / mushroom / Pleurotus – a total of 400 grams (you can freely choose the type of mushroom)(to be sliced)
The root of lotus – 150 grams(to be sliced)
Potato – 1 piece (to be sliced)
Preparation of scallion oil:
All cut into parts – scallion 200g, shallot 200g, onion 200g, ginger 50g, parsley 100g, vegetable oil 0.5kg.
First, heat the pot, add vegetable oil, heat it to about 100 degrees, put all the seasonings inside and stir constantly. Fry for 10 minutes to soften all the ingredients. Then, use medium heat to fry for 8 minutes to make the water of the seasonings evaporate. Finally, use small fire to fry for five minutes to turn the seasoning into yellow. Then, remove the seasoning.
Marinating of beef:
Slice the beef, add two teaspoons of starch and mix well, then add a small spoonful of baking soda to stir. Put in half a bowl of 30° lukewarm water and stir again to make the beef fully swell to cool. Then, add a teaspoon of cooking oil, a teaspoon of cooking wine and a small spoonful of salt and continue to stir evenly. Cover the plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator for half an hour. (You can also use egg white instead of starch and baking soda.)
Preparation method:
1.Remove the feelers and the tip of the head from the shrimp, cut the back from the joint between the shrimp head and the body with your scissors. Cut open the meat (this will make the shrimp more tasteful). Finally, remove the shrimp intestine.
2.Pour half of the pot of water into the pan, cover the lid, and boil with a big fire. After it’s boiled, put all the ingredients one by one and boil them once. The shrimp and the squid are to be cooked medium. Then, boil all the vegetables (it’d be better to remove the excess water after they are boiled).
3.Set aside all the boiled ingredients.
* The time required for cooking different ingredients is different. Therefore, when preparing the hot-spicy pot, make them 80% cooked and this will significantly shorten the subsequent cooking time.
* Boiling the vegetables can avoid too much water when frying them, which can, in turn, result in too much soup in the hot-spicy pot. To prepare this dish as authentic as possible, you need to make it as “dry” as possible and avoid creating too much soup.
4.After cleaning the pan, reheat it with a big fire. Pour 80 grams of vegetable oil to heat it before turning it into a small fire. Then, add the fresh shrimps and fry for one minute for later use.Add seasoning, cinnamon, spring onion, ginger, and other seasonings and stir-fry for 1 minute.
5.Put the Sichuan Pixian Broad Bean Paste into it, add the dried red pepper, cooked white sesame, pepper, etc., continue to use a small fire to fry, until there is red oil.Add the marinated beef, use big fire to stir fry before adding the fried shrimp, pour in a little cooking wine and stir fry repeatedly.
6.Put all the boiled ingredients into the pan and stir-fry.
7.Add salt (adjust the amount of salt according to your preference, it’s optional, since the Pixian bean paste that is added earlier would be tasty enough), stir-fry for about 3 minutes, sprinkle with a spoonful of scallion oil and chopped parsley/celery (optional), your dried hot-spicy pot is now ready! Serve yourself with a bowl of rice and enjoy!
Tips:
1.As each of us has different taste, you can freely adjust the amount of pepper to be added. The more peppers you add, the spicier your dish is. Pepper can be replaced with Chinese red pepper (spice berries).
2.When preparing the dry pot, the most important thing is that all ingredients need to be boiled first. And as each of them requires a different amount of time for cooking, when the meat, roots (which take longer to be cooked) and vegetables are boiled to 80%, the time for the subsequent cooking is significantly reduced. Vegetables with high water content such as those with green leaves, mushroom need to be mainly boiled beforehand. Otherwise, they’d get too watery afterward, which dramatically affects the taste. (to make your dry pot fresh, smell sweet, hot and spicy, you must make sure to keep all the ingredients as dry as possible. There must be as little water content as possible.)
3.Apart from the elements mentioned above, you may add those that you like, such as a variety of meatballs, luncheon meat, lettuce, beef, chicken breast, etc. This is what makes the dry pot so attractive – you can never fail to find something you like in the pot!
Albizia Chrysanthemum Tea
During the summer days when it’s stuffy and hot, pamper yourself with a pot of Albizia Chrysanthemum tea to relieve your nerves, clear the heat, increase appetite and detoxify. If you prefer it sweet, add some honey after the tea cools down.
Ingredients:
Albizia – 12g
Chrysanthemum – 10 pieces
Honey – an appropriate amount
How to brew the tea:
1.Wash the Acacia and chrysanthemums in clean water, drain and dry them before use.
2.Boil the water with big fire and put the Acacia and chrysanthemums in it.
3.Cook for 10 minutes with small fire.
4.Add honey after cooling.
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