Tips

Soft and Tender Meat Stir Fry in Restaurants, But Tough and Hard When Cooked at Home: Tips from Chefs

It turns out that adding just one household ingredient when marinating can make stir-fried meat much more tender and delicious.

Administrator

14 November, 2023

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Pork is a familiar and nutritious food, chosen by most families to cook into daily dishes. One of the simple yet attractive ways to cook pork is to stir-fry it with various vegetables. However, many people wonder why the pork stir-fry at restaurants is tender and delicious while the one cooked at home is dry and tough. To answer this question, the chef revealed that an additional ingredient needed when marinating the meat is water.

Normally, when stir-frying, we often use pork collar, but this type of meat is quite dry and if we don’t know how to make it soft, the dish will lose its appeal. Therefore, after slicing the meat, it needs to be marinated with a little salt and water. At this point, the meat will absorb salt and water. When the meat absorbs enough water and then stir-fried, it will be tender.

Then, soy sauce and cooking wine will be used to further marinate the meat. In addition, it needs cooking oil, starch, or egg white to keep the meat moist. The processed meat will not be tough, but still tender and delicious no matter how it is fried or stir-fried.

Ladies, let’s refer to a simple yet tender stir-fried pork recipe below:

Ingredients:

– 200g of pork collar, thinly sliced, about 5cm long.

– 1 handful of celery or parsley, 1 spring onion cut into segments, 1 slice of ginger, 1 dried chili (optional), 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of starch dissolved in 1 tablespoon of water, 1 tablespoon of sesame oil, half a tablespoon of black pepper, salt, and chicken seasoning powder.

Instructions:

– Thinly slice the pork collar, about 5 cm long, and place it in a bowl, add half a tablespoon of salt, about 4 tablespoons of water (about 60ml), stir well. Marinate for about 15 minutes, the water will penetrate into the pork.

– Then, add 1 tablespoon of soy sauce to enhance the flavor, add 1 tablespoon of cooking wine to remove the gamey smell of the meat, mix well to let the spices evenly penetrate the pork.

– Add 1 tablespoon of cooking oil, mix well. The cooking oil will help lock in the moisture inside the pork, making the stir-fried pork more delicious and tender.

– Add starch water, mix well so that the starch coats each piece of pork to prevent it from becoming tough.

– Cut celery/parsley into 5cm segments. Slice the ginger.

– Add enough cooking oil to the pan, heat it up, when the oil reaches 60% heat, add the spring onion, ginger, and dried chili to stir-fry until fragrant. Then, add the pork and stir-fry until the pork changes color.

– Add the celery/parsley segments, season with salt, black pepper, and chicken seasoning powder to taste, stir well. Before removing the stir-fried pork from the pan, add 1 tablespoon of sesame oil.