Chapter 102 - Is that it? (2/2)

Seeing the cheaper cuts made him feel more excited this is his forte. He wouldn't feel as bad also messing up these cuts as they are cheap he could buy a lot of them. Even though he has a lot of money now, and could buy lots of expensive ingredients, he still didn't like the feeling that he's wasting them. But for the cheaper ones, he's less reserved.

This time he started with the lamb as he has no prior experience with them the only thing he knew is that for the cheap cuts like lamb shoulder you usually need to marinade them for a long period like 24 hours. But Wang Ming didn't want to wait, so earlier he had not only tenderised the lamb with a meat hammer, but he'd also covered it in baking soda and cornstarch and covered the meat with it, which is called velveting.

What this does is that it tenderizes the meat, many Chinese restaurant uses this mixture to ensure their meat is tender. This is also the reason they can cut the meat so thinly and even if the meat is overcooked it will still be fairly tender.

The lamb had been marinating for roughly two hours, which he hoped was enough. The reason he needed the lamb to be tender is that the meat tastes a lot better if it's tender, but also he was going to make the recipe mongolian lamb. The meat and the sauce is the hero in that dish so the meat has to be perfect else it's going to ruin the dish.

The dish is fairly similar to how he had made the sirloin steak earlier, but the big difference is first the marinating process of the lamb, he marinated it two times once in the baking soda and cornstarch making it tender. Then he also marinated it in a soy sauce base for it to absorb as much of the savory soy sauce as possible.

Wang Ming had to experiment multiple to make the perfect mongolian lamb sauce as every restaurant and family has a different spin on their sauce, some like it more savory, others like it with more chili. Even though he likes a lot of chili, he couldn't make the recipe too hot, as most people can't eat foods with too much chili.

After experimenting with the sauce a few times, Wang Ming found out that using the Xi Zai Qing here was actually a total waste, as it didn't make the sauce better at all, the earthy bean flavor that the Xi Zai Qing gives, the other ingredients Wang Ming uses overpowers it.

Instead, he used normal light and dark soy sauce the combination of them both gave a perfect base for the sauce. He then used some sesame oil and just a tad of chili. Tasting the sauce now, the sauce tasted good, but still he felt like it was lacking depth. It couldn't be a sauce for meat as it didn't have enough depth the meat would totally overpower the sauce.

But what more could he add?

It was then Wang Ming thought about the recipes he had made up till today, the multitude of dishes he had made when he was an apprentice at his father's restaurant, the meat skewers he ended up selling on the streets. But then he thought about one dish, the dish that have made him famous: the pork belly, what if he used the five-spice powder he uses on the pork belly in the sauce?

Is that it?