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Chapter 112 Spicy Mutton Fat
Chapter 112 Spicy Mutton Fat
My maternal grandmother's kitchen had a traditional earthen stove with two burners.
One is usually used to cook rice, and the other is used to stir-fry vegetables.
Or one can be used to cook noodles, and the other to stir-fry meat sauce.
Lu Yuan prepared four dishes today: stir-fried lamb, cold beef salad, braised gluten with water bamboo shoots, and meatball soup.
All the ingredients are pre-cut and prepared at the store.
When you come to your grandma's house, all you have to do is stir-fry it on the spot; it's not troublesome at all.
But today's main dish isn't these four dishes, but rather braised lamb offal.
To convince my second aunt and youngest aunt to join my uncle in selling lamb offal soup, I had to create a truly impressive dish that would win them over.
If you say that the lamb from the northern border region is the best, then people from Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang might have slightly different opinions.
But when it comes to lamb offal soup, if the people of northern China consider themselves second to none, then no one would dare to claim to be first.
The quality of mutton, to some extent, depends on the strength of its gamey smell. Even Tan sheep has a slight gamey smell; it's impossible for it to be completely free of it.
Lamb from northern China naturally has less of a gamey smell, so the selection of ingredients can minimize the gamey smell of lamb offal.
The organs of a sheep, especially the stomach and intestines, have an even stronger muttony smell.
First of all, dealing with these organs requires patience; if not handled properly, they will have a strong odor.
The parts of sheep offal include sheep heart, sheep stomach, sheep liver, sheep head, and sheep intestines.
The sheep's head needs to be roasted until it's blackened, and then the fine hairs on the surface need to be brushed off vigorously; if you don't brush hard enough, it won't be clean.
After rinsing the sheep intestines thoroughly, use a chopstick to turn them completely inside out and rinse the inside clean as well.
This technique requires considerable experience; if not handled properly, the intestines will break.
Broken sheep intestines will fetch a significantly lower price.
Sheep intestines taste great in mutton offal soup, but in later generations, they are generally no longer added to mutton offal soup.
One reason is that everyone has become lazy and is unwilling to clean the feces out of sheep intestines every day.
Secondly, because a complete sheep intestine has medicinal uses, its price has been inflated, making it uneconomical to add it to sheep offal soup.
Thirdly, in some places, there is a way of eating rice sausage, which is more profitable than making mutton offal soup.
Besides these cleaned and edible offal, there is another special ingredient that can be considered a crystallization of wisdom.
That's lung noodles!
After cleaning the sheep lungs, stuff them with a batter prepared in the correct proportions, cook them in a pot, and then cut them into strips.
When combined with other organs, it can greatly enrich its flavor.
What Lu Yuan needs to do now is to fill the lungs with noodles and cook the lungs.
Just then, my uncle came into the kitchen carrying a bag of mutton offal in one hand and a huge sheep lung in the other.
By this time, Lu Yuan had already prepared the batter. He checked it and found that the sheep lungs were cleaned very well and preserved intact.
So he sealed the opening and began pouring the batter in from the other end.
The best-tasting noodles are made when the batter is about the consistency of yogurt.
The sheep lungs, filled with batter, swelled up like a big balloon. Lu Yuan tied both sides tightly and put them in a pot to cook.
Lung noodles are not only eaten in the northern part of China, but are also popular throughout the Northwest. In Xinjiang province, there are also some dishes made with lung noodles on their own.
Taking advantage of this time, Lu Yuan prepared to make the soul of mutton offal soup: mutton fat chili sauce.
This is what makes the flavor of Northern China's lamb offal soup so unique: using lamb fat to fry the chili oil allows the aroma of the lamb fat to be fully released.
However, this method can only be used in the northern part of China because the fat of Tan sheep is very fragrant and has little muttony smell.
This is determined by the quality of the meat. Even if lamb from other places is cooked this way, the gamey smell will be amplified and impossible to suppress.
The flavor of lamb offal soup largely comes from the chili oil in the lamb fat.
Therefore, mutton fat chili oil is not just simple chili oil; it also needs to be seasoned in advance.
Locally grown large chilies are sun-dried, ground into powder, and then mixed with a small amount of dried small red chilies, dried long chilies, and dried bell peppers to enhance the aroma.
The chili powder should not be ground too finely; some texture should be retained, otherwise the aroma will be greatly diminished.
The chili powder is then mixed with special seasoning powder, salt, MSG, and other seasonings.
After preparing the chili powder, put the pre-rendered mutton fat into another pot.
While the mutton fat was melting, Lu Yuan chopped a large amount of scallions and ginger.
As mutton fat melts and heats up, its unique aroma is released, but it also contains a faint muttony smell.
Lu Yuan immediately added scallions and ginger; this step was to remove the last trace of the gamey smell.
Once the scallions and ginger were fried until golden brown, Lu Yuan immediately used a large slotted spoon to scoop them out.
At this point, the mutton fat no longer has a gamey smell, but only a rich and mellow aroma that fills the room.
Next, wait for the oil temperature to rise again to 60-70% of its maximum heat, then turn off the heat and scoop out a spoonful of incredibly fragrant mutton fat and pour it over the chili powder.
When pouring oil, you shouldn't pour too much or too quickly at once.
Instead, after pouring in a spoonful, you should quickly stir it evenly, then pour in another spoonful and stir again.
This is done so that all the chili powder can share the heat of the nearly 200-degree oil.
This is also to ensure that the top and bottom are heated evenly. If you don't stir it, the top will easily become burnt while the bottom remains raw, which will result in a bitter taste.
Repeat this process until all the mutton fat is poured out, and the chili powder will become the chili oil that everyone is familiar with.
However, this is not the final state. After the chili oil cools down, the mutton fat will gradually solidify, and the mutton fat chili oil will become solidified like hot pot base.
As Lu Yuan fried the mutton fat chili peppers, the unique aroma of the mutton fat chili peppers gradually wafted from the kitchen into the yard.
The group, who had been chatting, were captivated by the exquisite aroma and couldn't help but press their faces against the kitchen doorway to peer inside.
"Big sister, Xiaoyuan's fried chili peppers smell so good, I really want to put them in a hot steamed bun!" Second Aunt swallowed, she was slightly chubby and had been a glutton since she was a child.
"What a wimp! What's there to eat?" Wei Yinghong gently tapped her second aunt's head and said, "Wait until Xiao Yuan stir-fries some lamb for everyone, with vermicelli noodles soaked in the broth—that'll be so delicious!"
"Big sister, please stop talking! I'm drooling!" Auntie was so anxious that she started stamping her feet and gave Wei Yinghong a resentful look.
After frying the mutton fat and chili peppers, the lung noodles weren't cooked yet.
This is a good opportunity to deal with the other organs.
Lu Yuan checked them and found that the organs were cleaned very thoroughly and could be used directly.
"My second aunt, my youngest aunt, and my maternal grandmother washed these together this morning. They're very clean. Xiao Yuan, you don't need to check anymore. Go on cooking!"
Just then, Lu Yuan was startled by his second aunt's voice coming from outside the door. He then realized that several people were perched on the door frame.
Lu Yuan ignored his second aunt's words and instead said to his uncle who was filling the firewood in front of him, "Uncle, look how clean this mutton offal is. If you ask me, you guys were born to do this."
My uncle rolled his eyes, utterly speechless. He almost fainted this morning when he was washing the poop out of the sheep intestines.
After filling a pot with water, Lu Yuan put all the offal in to blanch it and remove the fishy smell—this was the first step.
After removing the impurities from the lamb offal, it is put into a pot and simmered until cooked, a process that takes nearly an hour.
After cooking, cut all parts into strips and set aside.
When you're ready to eat it, just blanch it again in the soup with a slotted spoon, and you can make lamb offal soup.
Therefore, lamb offal soup is actually a flavorful fast food. It has a high unit price and is served quickly, making it a perfect choice for a store as a star product.