In fact, if you want to hand-cut mutton more conveniently, a better and faster way is to freeze the mutton first. This will not only ensure that the mutton is fresh enough, but also ensure that the meat pieces have a certain hardness and are easy to support.
Anyone who has ever cooked knows that compared to those soft and slippery ingredients with no fixed shape, ingredients that are regular and square in shape and have a certain degree of hardness but not as hard as ice at 50 degrees below zero are the best. Cut.
This is true for a novice in the kitchen, and it is also true for a knife expert like Su Qingluan.
It's just that Su Qingluan was able to use his excellent knife skills to make the ingredients "obedient" when faced with such "difficult to cut" ingredients.
Su Qingluan held the piece of mutton and examined the texture of the meat for a moment. After a while, she found the muscle texture of the mutton, cut the mutton into several fist-sized pieces with a knife that cut across the muscle fibers, and then cut the mutton into pieces with a cross-sectional area about half the size of a palm along the direction of the muscle texture. Big "meat strips".
Considering that her sister's baby teeth have just grown in and her brother is still changing teeth, their chewing abilities are completely incomparable to hers and her parents, so Su Qingluan didn't cut the meat slices too much to make it easier to "eat" - after all, this was Mutton also has fascia. If the meat is too big and you choke on it, it will not be good.
So Su Qingluan patiently calmed down and used the fine iron knife to carefully slice off a piece of mutton.
Su Qing cut the mutton very thinly. Even when the meat slices were pressed against the back of the knife, looking from the front, one could see the green back of the kitchen knife shining through the thin texture of the mutton slices, casting a dark shadow.
And if you hold the mutton piece against the light, you can see that the mutton can pass through the light, and you can see the shaking figure on the opposite side, as if it were transparent.
After Su Qingluan sliced off a piece of mutton, he did not rush to tear the piece of meat off the back of the knife with his hands, because that would easily destroy the muscle fibers of the mutton and tear the meat piece into pieces.
She tilted the plate with the mutton over and swiped the back of the knife toward the edge of the plate. The thin slice of mutton fell onto the plate and clung to the edge of the plate.
Su Qingluan just cut it and wiped it, then cut it and wiped it again.
Su Qingluan did the very cumbersome movements for ordinary people, but he did it faster and faster. In just a moment, the mutton slices were piled up on the plate to form a mountain.
Su Qingluan looked at the "hill" and changed to another plate - the meat was too compact, making it difficult to spread it out when it was put into the pot, and it was difficult to taste.
After several kilograms of mutton were cut up, Yang's side had already opened another furnace and started frying chicken - she had learned how to fry shrimp and fish with Su Qingluan before, and by this time she was already familiar with frying chicken.
It has to be said that people who sit around the stove all year round do have some talent for cooking.
On the other side, the stove in the yard has also been set up.
This time the stove was built faster than before. On the one hand, it was because it had been built several times before and gained experience. What’s more, the last time he built such a temporary earthen stove, Su Qingluan muttered that he would use it every time. It was too slow to build now, so Su Guangfu was clever and didn't throw away the bricks used to set up the stove last time, so he could use them this time.
Therefore, even if he was the only one to build the earthen stove, the speed would be very fast - not to mention that there was Su Xuanhe, a helper who couldn't take any time, running back and forth.
As the sun set in the west and the sunset gradually glowed with golden light, Su Guangfu finally set up the stove and lit it with rags, cotton wool, dried weeds and other flammable materials.
As the stove slowly heated up, Su Qingluan adjusted the saltiness of the milky white broth that had been cooked, and poured it into the open bronze pot. Yang and Su Guangfu each carried the pot's " Ear" and place the pot on the stove.
Su Qingluan carefully took out the vine pepper oil that had been brewed before - even in the autumn when the evening was already chilly, after so long, this bowl of vine pepper oil was still warm - and slowly poured it in In milky white soup.
Su Xueyan stared at the vine pepper oil in surprise: "Wow! Sister, why is this oil green?"
"Because a green peppercorn is added." Su Qingluan explained with a smile, "A little bit of dogwood is added to the soup base, which is only slightly spicy. The soup stock has also been adjusted to be salty, so you can eat it with your mouth full - if If you don’t like spicy food or it’s not fragrant enough, you can try garlic sesame oil for dipping.”
Yang nodded quickly when he heard this: "I smashed the garlic with a stone mortar for pounding garlic." He turned around and looked for a week, but did not find the bowl of garlic paste on the temporary table next to it.
Mrs. Yang and Su Guangfu were holding the pot and adjusting its position together and couldn't get away, so she said to the two little guys: "Who are you two? Go to the kitchen next to the oil pot. There is a brown porcelain bowl with minced garlic in it!"
"I'll go, I'll go!" Su Xueyan responded in succession and trotted towards the kitchen.
Just now, when Su Xuanhe was chirping in the yard and helping Su Guangfu run back and forth, Su Xueyan felt itchy to see it, but she still knew that there was still one big word left to write.
So even though she was worried, she patiently finished writing the last article - of course, the child's restlessness can be seen from the words.
So when Su Qingluan saw the little sister writing big characters today, the more she wrote, the more frizzy she became. In the end, she wished that all her strokes had a burr effect.
However, considering that the younger sister is not always like this, Su Qingluan just pinched her nose teasingly and said: "Look, you have grass growing in your heart. You are not quiet. Even your words are grass growing. If you are not serious like this next time, you have to be careful." Hit the palm of your hand."
Su Xueyan knew that although her sister usually looked smiling and had a good temper, she usually told the truth. She said that if she does this next time, she will slap her palms, so she will definitely get beaten next time if she does this again.
"Don't fight...can't you?" The little girl was very prepared for danger in times of peace. Even if she escaped this time, she was seeking leniency for her next mistake.
Su Qingluan still smiled in such a good-natured way, and even touched his little sister's furry little head, and then said cold and cruel words: "No."
The little girl immediately wilted like a little flower beaten by wind and rain.
It was precisely because of this little episode that Su Xueyan, who had been hiding in the house without a chance to come out to watch the excitement, immediately went out happily when she heard her mother asked her to "run errands".
After a while, Su Xueyan held the bowl of minced garlic tightly in her little hands, ran over and pointed to the inside of the bowl with surprise on her face: "Auntie, Auntie! The garlic has turned green!"
Su Xuanhe sneered from the side: "Garlic is white, how could it turn green? Could it be poisoning?"
The little girl was already three or four years old. Although she didn't understand what "poisoning" was, she vaguely understood that "poisoning" was a terrible thing, so she was so frightened that her hands trembled and she almost threw the bowl on the ground.
Fortunately, Su Qingluan had quick eyes and quick hands, and reached out to catch the porcelain bowl that almost fell to the ground, saving a bowl of minced garlic that almost died in the battle.
Staring hard at Su Xuanhe who had a smirk on his face, Su Qingluan said angrily: "What kind of man do you think you are if you scare your sister when you have nothing to do? Master Zhou just lets you scare your sister for fun when you have nothing to do. ?”
Su Xuanhe was originally praised by Master Zhou today. It was when the cowhide coaxed his tail up to the sky. After eating such a meal from Su Qingluan, his tail that was visible to the naked eye also drooped down. He looked at his parents who also had disapproval on their faces, and then he hesitated. Don't dare to yell anymore.
Seeing that Brother Skin Monkey was being honest, Su Qingluan turned around and stroked her sister's back comfortingly: "Your brother is trying to scare you. If garlic is peeled and left for a long time, it will turn into this green color. You Have you seen laba garlic before? That one is also green."
However, the little girl is only over three years old this year. She really has no impression of the Laba garlic she ate in the cold winter a year ago, so she asked instead: "Sister, what is Laba garlic?"
Yang took the bowl of garlic paste from Su Qingluan's hand and said with a smile: "Our family makes Laba garlic every year. When winter comes this year, you can see it!"
Su Xuanhe frowned when he heard this: "I don't like winter, it's too cold, my hands and feet will freeze off, and there are many grandmothers and grandfathers in the village who can't survive the winter!"
The air was stagnant for a moment.
After a moment, Su Guangfu touched the back of his son's head with his generous palm: "Don't worry, Mom and Dad will definitely not let you get cold."
Yang didn't say anything, but a hint of gloom flashed in his eyes.
It was not convenient for Su Qingluan to share her inner plan with her family for a while. Not to mention the final effect of this matter is not something she can simply imagine. The key is that there is no clear order or deposit in front of Su Qingluan from the Xie Mansion.
Not being completely sure, Su Qingluan did not intend to reveal the entire plan to help the villagers survive the winter. That would only increase the worry of his parents.
Thinking of this, Su Qingluan said a series of greetings: "The pot is boiling, the pot is boiling! How about you try the rattan pepper hot pot this time? If you like it, you can continue to make it next time!"
When Su Guangfu and Yang heard this, they seemed to have woken up from some nightmare, and began to greet everyone to prepare their own dipping dishes.
"Mommy, haven't you seen Ma Jiang? That fragrance!" Su Xueyan twisted her little neck back and forth to look for Ma Jiang.
Su Qingluan smiled and said: "Today's pot bottom itself has flavor, but if it is dipped in sesame sauce, it will lose its flavor! Xueyan, do you want to try the hot-boiled pork first?"
The impatient Su Xuanhe over there had already rinsed the carrot slices and was about to put them in his mouth. Yang quickly grabbed her son's sleeve: "The carrots haven't been cooked yet, how can you eat them?" Then she asked him to put the carrot slices into his mouth. Throw it back.
While Su Qingluan was serving mutton to her sister, she raised her head and looked at Yang: "Yam, winter melon, carrots and the remaining mushrooms can all be stewed for a long time. Just add them to the soup base first. .Oh, white radish too.”
As she spoke, Su Qingluan carefully reached her chopsticks into the "mutton slice hill" and gently picked up a chopstick of mutton slices.
The mutton is cut so thin that you can only pick up two or three pieces at a time, place them in the hot pot and then gently spread them apart.
But after a while, the mutton turned from tender pink to grayish brown.
Su Qingluan flipped her wrist and placed the three pieces of meat on the plates of herself, her sister on both sides, and her mother-in-law. As for her father and brother, they were seated one person apart, which was really inconvenient.
