The kitchen jar with the blue lid holds lard, always within my reach.
There are some dishes that use lard that are halfway decent. For example, the famous dishes of this gang, such as eel paste in oil and steamed anchovy, catfish belly and fish lips in white sauce in Suzhou style, and tilefish in Henan province, all must be cooked with lard. Lard is also necessary for the dim sum dishes such as eight-pot rice and Ningbo dumplings. Without lard, Shanghai people’s favorite home-cooked food – wontons, noodles in vegetable soup, rice with vegetables, fried rice with soy sauce – would be in vain, with no soul.
But for these kinds of dishes, different kinds of lard should be used.
For steamed anchovies, use pork net oil. The net oil is the oil that wraps the pig’s internal organs, hidden in the muscle, in the shape of a fishing net. The whole anchovy is wrapped in net oil and steamed to moisten it evenly. There is also net oil foie gras, net oil pig brain with the same way, after frying, the oil seeped into the ingredients, oil dregs are also crispy and gluten-free, almost can contain melted. But a pig has only one net, and restaurants don’t always have access to net oil. Steamed anchovies at home, a little lard is considered a good idea. There are other things to consider when it comes to what kind of lard to use.
The most common is pork fat oil, you go to the meat stall to buy fat boiling oil, without special instructions, the boss gives you is plate oil. Plate oil is the fat of the abdomen of the pig, the oil is fast and large, after refining oil residue shrink a little, soft collapse in water, not into the dish. Plate oil refining lard fragrance is not strong, used to stir-fry is sufficient, but to use it to embellish wontons, noodles in soup, is inherently inadequate.
Wontons, noodles, fried rice with lard, must be meat oil, is the fat on the back of the pig. As the saying goes, good meat grows on the side of the bone, and don’t forget, good oil comes from the side of the meat! I pick big ribs, must be gorgeous with a circle of fat, the fat is the most wonderful part of the ribs. The meat oil is so rich and thick that it adds a spoonful to noodle and soup snacks, like a finishing touch, even if it’s just soy sauce fried rice, with this kind of lard, it will turn the ordinary into magic. Meat oil is much less oil than plate oil, so housewives do not want to choose. But on the contrary, the meat oil refining leftover oil residue and fragrant and crispy, does not shrink in water and not rotten, use to roll tofu, stir-fry vegetables, do savory noodles is a delicious.
Then again, the meat oil is fragrant and moist, but it can’t be used in Ningbo soup dumplings. Ningbo dumplings must be filled with de-stiffened oil. When the dumplings are cooked, all the oil is dissolved and the dregs are gone, so the flavor is just right and does not overwhelm the aroma of the sesame seeds. The same is true for scallion pancakes and leek boxes.
It was a cold winter night, and I returned home wrapped in a cold air. The kitchen only had half a retort of cold rice left over from yesterday, but that didn’t discourage me in the least. The lard in the blue porcelain jar had a dull white glow, and once it was heated, there was a fatty fragrance like flowers blooming in the pot. To make fried rice with soy sauce, cold rice is put in the frying pan before soy sauce, and the rice absorbs the oil, so the fragrance of the sauce will not go deep. When the oil is eight minutes hot, you must first pour in the soy sauce and slowly stir-fry over low heat until there is no more steam rising from the pan and the oil and sauce are fully integrated before stir-frying the cold rice.
Or in addition to the leftover rice, you have a few pigeon’s foot level kaiyang, two frosted stumpy bok choy. Then, stir-fry the yellow wine soaked kaiyang in lard, add water and cook over high heat to create a pale white soup base for a minimalist style bowl of bok choy kaiyang soaked rice.
In the past, the vegetable oil was crude and the color of the dish was not beautiful enough. Lard taste fragrant, bright color, for the size of the restaurant loved to use. The misuse of lard is ultimately a bad cook’s flattery to the ignorant palate of diners. It is not good enough. But no matter how the weathervane of health rotates, I will never give up lard, because with it there, your stomach can always look forward to a most solid, rustic soothing.
A kitchen with lard has the hopes of the mundane world.
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