In the kitchen.

Seeing Lin Xu come in, Zhu Yong asked curiously:

"I think some chefs need to boil the sauce when making peppercorn chicken. Don't you need to boil it now?"

Lin Xu opened the lid of the pot and said with a smile:

"You have to wait until the chicken is cooked, because the sauce needs the original soup... By the way, Zhu Yong, the cold air may come in a few days. Then you can make some lotus root stewed pork ribs and let everyone eat and drink at the same time.

Soup, have a good time."

"Okay, no problem."

For a Hubei native, making stewed pork ribs with lotus root is as easy as drinking cold water.

The chicken in the pot is still cooking over a low fire in Gudu Gudu.

In fact, you can put two flattened yellow gardenias or turmeric powder for good color, but Lin Xu feels that it is not necessary to eat it by yourself, and using yellow gardenias for coloring always makes you feel unconfident about your own ingredients.
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Good ingredients, no need to add extra ingredients.

After looking at the chicken cooking in the pot, Lin Xu went to the braised food department on the first floor to look at the roasted chicken braised in a sandwich pot over low heat.

The aroma of the marinade has come out, but because this pot is newly braised, the flavor of the marinade is a little bit strong.

When you make the next pot, the taste of the stew will become softer, and the original new stew will become the old stew.

Ten o'clock in the morning.

Lin Xu once again opened the lid of the pot where the old hens were cooking, and a rich aroma wafted out.

After the steam dissipated, he saw a layer of yellow chicken fat floating in the pot.

This is the sign of a boiled old hen. Only old hens will have this kind of yellow grease. He took a tassel and inserted it into the thickest part of the chicken leg.

Make sure there is no blood coming out, which means the chicken has been cooked through.

It’s ready to be cooked.

Carefully take out the chicken with a slotted spoon and put it into cold water with ice cubes without stopping.

The purpose of this is to make the chicken skin taste crisper and the chicken more chewy.

Don't soak in ice water for too long, otherwise the fresh flavor of the chicken will be soaked out. Take a cold bath and take it out. Empty the water in the abdominal cavity and put it on the tray, and then take out one.

After all the chickens are taken out and cooled in cold water, they are taken to the cold storage to cool naturally.

This is how restaurants usually cook shredded chicken. They cook the chicken all at once, put it in the refrigerator, and take it out for processing when customers order it.

Tear the whole chicken into strips, add shredded onions, coriander segments and green onions, pour in the spicy sauce and stir it, and a spicy and refreshing pepper chicken is officially completed.

Now that the chicken is cooked, it's time to make the spicy sauce.

For peppercorn chicken, the sauce is the soul of the dish and the key to turning old hens into treasures.

Since it is the soul, the method will naturally become cumbersome and demanding.

For example, if you need to use three kinds of seasoning oils: chicken oil, cooking oil and Sichuan peppercorn oil, you also need more than two kinds of chili peppers and three kinds of Sichuan peppercorns. In addition, you need to boil and fry the chili peppers.

All in all, this sauce is very satisfying.

Fortunately, Linji Gourmet Kitchen has a complete range of seasoning oils, including three kinds of seasoning oils, otherwise Lin Xu would really have to start by boiling chicken fat.

Bring over the several seasoning oils you need to use, and some rapeseed oil commonly eaten in the northwest.

Then take some dried chili peppers and king chili peppers. The chili peppers are only fragrant but not spicy. In order to make it more delicious, you need to add some king chili peppers to increase the spiciness of the dishes.

As for the three types of peppercorns needed in the sauce, they are red peppercorns, green peppercorns and fresh peppercorns.

The numbing flavor of fresh flowers and pepper is mixed with freshness, which can make the dishes more refreshing.

But if you only add Sichuan peppercorns, the numbing flavor will not be strong enough, so you need to add two kinds of dried Sichuan peppercorns to increase the thickness of the numbing flavor, so that when the chicken is eaten in your mouth, you will feel like your tongue is numb and dancing.

When everything was ready, Lin Xu set up a wok, boiled water in the pot, poured in the dried chili peppers and dried Sichuan peppercorns, and boiled over high heat for five minutes.

After boiling, the flavor in the dried chili peppers and dried Sichuan peppercorns will be boiled out, leaving only the aroma.

And if you cook it like this, it won’t be so easy to boil the sauce later.

Take it out after cooking, drain the water, and then cut the boiled dried chili into sections.

Do not cut the dried chili pepper before cooking, otherwise all the spiciness will be boiled into the water. Cut it again after cooking, so that the spiciness will remain in the pepper.

After the knife modification is completed, production begins.

This is also the most critical link in making peppercorn chicken.

Add a tablespoon of chicken oil to the pot, then add half a tablespoon of cooking oil and half a tablespoon of rapeseed oil.

The three oils have both umami and aroma, as well as the aroma of onion, ginger and other ingredients, which can be said to concentrate the aroma.

When the oil is 50% hot, pour in the cooked dried Sichuan peppercorns and simmer over low heat.

Don't rush this step, you must boil out the numbing aroma of the pepper bit by bit and simmer it into the oil, so that the sauce tastes numb but not bitter, and is fresh and delicious.

Just put it in, because the water in the pepper is relatively large, so the oil will boil violently.

After simmering for a while, when the fat in the pot becomes flat, add the prepared fresh peppers to add a fresh flavor to the numbing smell.

When the fresh peppers are cooked until there is not much water left, add the chopped peppers and continue to cook.

Every time you add new seasonings, the ingredients in the pot will boil violently. This boiling can not only better release the aroma of the ingredients, but also allow the pungent smell of pepper and chili to evaporate in advance.

Let the spicy taste soften.

"Holy shit, with this fragrance, even if you mix it with some shredded radish, it would be delicious, right?"

Chicken fat, cooking oil, rapeseed oil, the aroma of three kinds of oils plus three kinds of Sichuan peppercorns and two kinds of chili peppers, boiled together, the fragrance is simply to a new level.

Wei Qian came over to take a look. He was keen on eating pork, and for the first time he was looking forward to chicken.

Even the cooking of seasoning oil is so complicated.

Will the cooked peppercorn chicken taste bad?

When the chili peppers were cooked until they were a little crispy on the surface, Lin Xu used a ladle to scoop out the chicken soup in the pot next to it, and added four spoons of chicken soup with yellow fat into the sauce pot.

When the chicken soup is poured in, the aroma in the pot rises to a new level again.

Bring the sauce to a boil and add a small spoonful of salt to season.

There is already salt in the chicken soup, so you don’t need to add too much salt to the seasoning. Add some salt and some pepper to increase the flavor of the sauce.

In commercial practice, freshness-enhancing condiments such as chicken powder, chicken juice, and MSG are also added in this step.

But today I am eating by myself, so I won’t add these condiments.

Lin Xu sprinkled some sugar for freshness.

Let it simmer for a while, stir the seasonings evenly, and then add a small spoonful of pepper oil to the pot to further increase the numbing flavor and oily texture.

Then, pour the sauce into the basin and start to cool.

As soon as it was poured out, Zhuang Yizhou and the others surrounded him:

"One pot of sauce and half a pot of oil, no wonder the pepper chicken is not cheap."

"This scent is so sultry, I can't help but want to take a sip."

"Boss, I'm going to be a little more finicky about the trouser belt noodles today. Even if there's no chicken, I can eat two big bowls of noodles with just this sauce."

If the sauce is too hot, it will affect the taste of the peppercorn chicken. Lin Xu plans to cool it in a cold storage because the natural cooling of the oil is too slow.

"Becoming an Immortal in One Step"

But the sauce cannot be completely cooled and needs to be warm, otherwise the chicken fat will solidify and taste like a lake.

He picked up the sauce and said:

"The price of the seasoning oil sold outside has little to do with it, right? Master Ma, you know better, how do restaurants usually make peppercorn chicken?"

Ma Zhiqiang, who was preparing food not far away, said:

"Chili pepper essence, pepper essence, chicken flavor additives, flavor enhancers... there are a bunch of them, and it looks like a chemistry experiment."

Lin Xu smiled and said to several senior chefs who had never worked in ordinary restaurants:

"The end of cooking is chemical industry, which is also a means for general restaurants to reduce costs."

After the cooking oil is boiled, Lin Xu prepares the side dishes of peppercorn chicken.

This one is very simple, just onions, scallions and coriander stalks.

Shred the purple onion, cut the green onion into strips, and cut the coriander stems into sections.

When lunch came, Lin Xu took out the chicken that had been dried in the cold storage and began to tear off the strips with his hands.

After cooling, the chicken becomes firm again and the chicken skin is much more elastic. Tear the chicken legs first, then the chicken breasts, tear off all the meat on the chicken, and put the bones and chicken rack aside.

You can add it to the braised soup later to increase the flavor.

Place the shredded chicken in a basin, then add the prepared onions, green onions and coriander stalks.
To be continued...