Firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce and vinegar tea, you can’t do it without salt. As the first of all kinds of flavors, it can change the taste of food, it can also support the national finance, and it witnesses the history of China.
The Story of Salt
When I was a child, my grandfather told me a story about salt. It’s been too long and I can’t remember the details clearly. It’s roughly an ordinary chef and a minister arguing in front of the emperor what is the best food?
Ordinary chefs say: “In the world, only salt is the most delicious”
The minister say: “It’s ridiculous, I have collected the most precious ingredients in the world, which one is not better than your salt?”
Later, the ordinary chef asked the emperor to be a witness, and asked the minister to not put salt in every dish he cooked. Sure enough, the most precious ingredients lost the tempering of salt and lost their taste!
Therefore, no matter how fragrant the other seasonings of a dish are, if there is no salt, it will definitely be tasteless.
Salt, known as “the first of all flavors”, is really all too familiar to us.
It is so familiar that it is usually not mentioned deliberately, and few people care about the type, origin, formation, etc. of salt… Most of the time we only mumble when the food has no taste, “Why is there no salt added to this dish today?”…
Two Typical Salt Dishes
This time I chose well salt from Zigong, Sichuan, China.
It is used to make two typical salt dishes, namely boiled beef and chrysanthemum beef.
The history of Yanbangcai is inseparable from the development of China’s salt industry. The recipe status of Yanbang Cai in Sichuan, China is like rock music in the music industry! Fresh, fragrant, spicy and full of flavor.
It is said that in the eyes of Zigong people in Sichuan, if a fish is left out of the water and has not been cooked for a minute, It is already a salted fish. When it comes to the recipe of chrysanthemum beef, the combination of chrysanthemum and beef can not only remove fishy and greasy, but also remove the heat of beef, which is very delicious.
This boiled beef is fragrant, tender and full of flavor. The soul of its lies in the marinating of the meat slices, the boiling of the soup, and the sprinkling of chili peppers. After the finished it, add onion, ginger, garlic, and green peppercorns. A spoonful of hot oil rang out, and the fragrance will be full.
