"Do you know what this step just means? This is called knife test. You use the frustration of cutting meat to judge the tenderness of the meat. When the meat is old, the pieces you cut will have to be smaller later, otherwise it will taste different.

If the meat is tender, the particles should be appropriately larger, otherwise the meat will be easily cooked."

The biggest difference between the lion's head dish and the meatballs is that it cannot be chopped and must be cut with a knife throughout.

The so-called Thousand Knife Pork refers to this dish.

And when cutting, fat and lean meat should be separated.

The fat part should be cut into roughly the size of soybeans, and the lean part should be cut into the size of mung beans. The two should be cut into pieces separately, and then processed separately before being put together and beaten together.

While watching Lin Xu skillfully use the flat knife method to separate fat and lean meat, Qiu Zhenhua remembered the scene when he was an apprentice:

"My uncle was still young at that time and was keen on playing bridge. After assigning me the task of making a lion's head, he went to play cards. I felt that no one was paying attention, so I used a knife to chop the meat into minced meat..."

Dai Jianli asked with a smile:

"Are your palms swollen from being beaten?"

"It was swollen and painful. My uncle said seriously that ordinary people can chop meatballs when making them, but as a Huaiyang cuisine master, using a knife to chop the lion's head is disrespectful to the ancestor.

”

After Lin Xu separated the fat and lean meat of the pork belly, he began to cut the lean meat into cubes.

He said while cutting:

"Why do we use pork belly to make lion heads? The lean meat in pork belly has only a thin layer and no tendons. It grows close to the fat meat and has a rich aroma. This kind of meat can melt in your mouth."

For other meat dishes, melt-in-your-mouth generally refers to fatty meat.

But lion head refers to lean meat. The lean meat part is fragrant, soft and tender, and melts in your mouth. It is the criterion for judging the entire dish.

Cutting meat into dices seems to be a very simple thing, but when you actually do it, you will find that it is really difficult.

Because not only must it be cut into cubes, but also cut into uniform sizes. Even when placing pieces of lean meat on a eucalyptus board, the texture of the muscles must be considered, so that the cut meat will be uniform and more flavorful.

.

While Lin Xu was cooking, Xie Baomin and the other three were chatting about the dish, and they seemed to be very harmonious.

Fans in the live broadcast room posted various comments, and were all shocked by this delicate approach:

"Here I go, are all the lion heads I've eaten growing up fake?"

"It's not fake, it's probably just meatballs."

"How much does a lion head like this cost, will I give up if you tell me?"

"When you have money, you must buy a mobile phone that can smell."

"Obviously it's just the meat-cutting stage, but my saliva is secreting uncontrollably."

"Me too, just listening to the chats of several state banquet chefs makes me ravenous."

After dicing the lean meat, Lin Xu started to cut the fat meat.

Fatty pork cubes the size of soybeans are theoretically simpler than lean meat cubes the size of mung beans, but in fact the fat meat is relatively soft, and the step of slicing it into thin slices is quite embarrassing.

Lin Xu said while busy:

"If you are trying to make it at home, you can put the peeled pork belly in the refrigerator for half an hour, so that the fat meat will be easier to cut. I have decent knife skills and am in a hurry, so I didn't freeze it and started right away."

As soon as I finished saying this, the word "make do" with the title of the book floated across the barrage, which was obvious.

Everyone still vaguely remembers the last cooking competition, when Lin Xu carved two fish with lactone tofu.

Such beautiful knife work, do you think I can make do with it?

"Boss Lin said that his knife skills are just average, just like Liu Guoliang said that he can barely play table tennis."

"Jordan: I can make do with basketball!"

"Schumacher: I can make do with driving."

"Messi: I can make do by playing football."

"..."

Lin Xu cut the fat and lean meat, took a kitchen scale, weighed the lean and fat meat respectively, and said:

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"The fat-to-thin ratio of a lion's head is between 7:3 and 6:4. If there is too much fat, it will taste greasy. If there is too little fat, the texture will not be gluten-free. If you are particular about it, you can adjust the ratio.

Strictly control it at 6.18:3.82. This ratio is the theoretically optimal ratio."

Soon, some viewers calculated the number of this ratio:

"Let me go, it's actually 0.618, the golden ratio dividing point."

"Oh my god! I just learned cooking, but it actually involved mathematics and aesthetics. This is something I didn't expect."

"Sure enough, the golden ratio can be seen everywhere in life."

Lin Xu weighed it, then picked up the hard fat on the pork butt and cut some off.

This time he didn't weigh himself and started doing it directly.

"I just weighed it for you to see. For a professional chef, the hand is the scale."

While talking, he held up the cut piece of fat meat and said:

"For example, this ball of diced meat weighs 13 grams."

After saying that, I put it on the electronic scale, and it showed 13.

He casually mentioned several numbers, and all of them were correct. Not only did the audience astonished, but Qiu Zhenhua and the other two people also praised him repeatedly, thinking that his weighing skills were really amazing.

Lin Xu smiled and didn't say anything more. Instead, he put the diced fat meat into a basin, sprinkled in some salt, stirred evenly, and set it aside to marinate.

When table salt melts, it has a strong water-killing effect.

Lean meat is most afraid of direct contact with salt grains, so season the fat meat dices and let the salt melt. At the same time, use the water-killing property of the salt to kill the water in the fat meat, so that it will be easier to glue when beaten.
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Then he took the diced lean meat over, put chopped green onions and sesame-sized ginger inside, then poured some green onion and ginger water, and started to add water to the meat filling.

If you want lean meat to be tender, you must add water to allow the fiber of the lean meat to absorb water, so that the lean meat can melt in your mouth.

"Onion and ginger add flavor to lean meat and remove foreign matter, and water allows lean meat to absorb it. However, these two have no effect on fat meat. On the contrary, they will affect the fat meat's gumming, so you need to beat the lean meat first.

, beat it, mix it together, mix and beat."

Lin Xu stirred the lean meat in one direction, and then added water after stirring for a while to allow the lean meat to be absorbed.

When the lean meat feels moist, soft and tender, and even elastic, the meat is considered to be whipped.

Then bring the fat meat over, pour the two kinds of meat into a large ceramic basin, then add the prepared crab powder, egg white, and shrimp roe crushed with a rolling pin, stir evenly and start beating.

Seeing this, Qiu Zhenhua said:

"When Lao Dai called me, he said he was coming to check with Master Lin. But when I saw this, I realized that I am not qualified to check. I can only learn from each other... Many Huaiyang cuisine chefs don't know how to cook lion.

When cooking, you need to crush the shrimp seeds. This is also a secret that is not passed down by my uncle. I didn’t expect Master Lin to master it."

Shrimp roe is added to the lion's head to increase the flavor, but the entire stewing process of the lion's head is simmering, and the shrimp roe is sealed into the meat. The temperature is not enough and the umami flavor cannot be released.

So when making it, you have to use a rolling pin to crush the shell of the shrimp roe, so that the umami flavor can be perfectly released.

Lin Xu kept scooping up the mixed diced meat from the basin like he was playing with clay when he was a child, and then dropped it to the bottom of the basin.

In this way, the fat meat can be glued, and the fat meat cubes and lean meat cubes can be bonded together.

This is physical work, and people with insufficient physical strength simply cannot persevere. Therefore, chefs who appear on stage, especially senior chefs, will deliberately simplify the steps.

This is not only for the convenience of shooting, but also to save physical energy.

After beating for about ten minutes, all the diced meat had become like minced skin jelly, full of gelatin, and was shaking tremblingly around in the basin.

And those fat cubes also look a little translucent because of the gelatin being punched out.

After seeing this, netizens have given up on the idea of ​​following suit:

"The meat is ready, and I'm just waiting to cook it with Boss Lin. Now it seems that I'd better make Dongpo pork. This is not a dish that I can get involved in."

"That Huaiyang restaurant was beaten. We could have learned a few moves from Boss Lin, but because of your provocation, we couldn't learn them."

"That's right, get out and get beaten!"

After seeing a lot of barrages, Xie Baomin took his mobile phone and started interacting with everyone.

He looked at a barrage and said:

"Why not add chicken powder, MSG, rice wine and other condiments... My friend, the standard lion head is only seasoned with salt. If chicken powder is added, it means the chicken soup is lazy. If MSG is added, it is meat.

The crabmeal and shrimp roe have cut corners. If rice wine is added, it means the meat is not fresh..."

He revealed the core technique of the entire dish in a few sentences.

Qiu Zhenhua smiled helplessly:

"Lao Xie, you are destroying the jobs of those restaurants. Be careful when you go out in the future, so as not to get slapped."
To be continued...