The most challenging part is actually to find the magical powder, (蒸肉粉), which literally translate to powder for steaming meat, I guess this is a popular dish haha they have a specialized ingredient just for it and nothing else. Go find it in your local chinese grocery. If you can't find it, you have to make it by toasting rice in a pan or in an over, then crushing them, then mixing with the five-spice (it's a pain, I wouldn't recommend).
Other than that it's a breeze! Marinade the meat a bit, put it over some chopped yam, and steam away until all the fat juicy meat juice soak up the yam. In this video I try to cover some basics in steaming, it's incredibly healthy way of preparing food and much easier than people imagine.
subscribe if you haven't already! hope you attempt it (try it w/o the powder, I imagine it can work as well)! much love --evan
I'm currently taking advantage of free parent food but I'll try this at some point. I have access to a very comprehensive market but I'm sure it will take ages for me to find the spice per usual.
Any specific meat cuts you'd recommend? I'll also need to screw around with setting iup something to steam it with.
well, just write down the 3 characters and show it to the workers at the market, they'll find it for you. any cut of meat is fine, as long as you can cut it small-ish, and you want some fat on it. 100% lean is a no no.
On September 09 2015 13:26 evanthebouncy! wrote: well, just write down the 3 characters and show it to the workers at the market, they'll find it for you. any cut of meat is fine, as long as you can cut it small-ish, and you want some fat on it. 100% lean is a no no.
Yeah of course. I really should do that haha, I've meant to do it several times but always forgot t.t
I'll probably get a part of a pork butt, that would probably work fine if cubed.
Evan this reminds me of a dish I ate awhile back and then couldn't find again. I know it was some type of 扣肉 with some type of root vegetable (my memory wants to say taro but it might've been yam). Some of the google pictures for "粉蒸肉" look like it might be it, but I remember it was strikingly red, not orange/brownish.
Any ideas? Maybe 紅糟 but don't think the taste was like it.. idk
On September 09 2015 13:26 evanthebouncy! wrote: well, just write down the 3 characters and show it to the workers at the market, they'll find it for you. any cut of meat is fine, as long as you can cut it small-ish, and you want some fat on it. 100% lean is a no no.
you underestimate the difficulty non-chinese speakers have in replicating those characters lol I'd have to copy + paste then print I think haha.
On September 09 2015 13:26 evanthebouncy! wrote: well, just write down the 3 characters and show it to the workers at the market, they'll find it for you. any cut of meat is fine, as long as you can cut it small-ish, and you want some fat on it. 100% lean is a no no.
you underestimate the difficulty non-chinese speakers have in replicating those characters lol I'd have to copy + paste then print I think haha.
you know the most impressive copy paste i've seen is when walking around San Francisco I saw a group of sketching artists. I asked to see some of their work and they recently did a sketch of China town. There is this guy with a street scene with all the shop signs, and he claims he has no idea what any of the characters say, but I could read all of them.
On September 10 2015 02:04 aboxcar wrote: Evan this reminds me of a dish I ate awhile back and then couldn't find again. I know it was some type of 扣肉 with some type of root vegetable (my memory wants to say taro but it might've been yam). Some of the google pictures for "粉蒸肉" look like it might be it, but I remember it was strikingly red, not orange/brownish.
Any ideas? Maybe 紅糟 but don't think the taste was like it.. idk
Is this perhaps this? http://baike.baidu.com/view/65660.htm I just typed 扣肉 into google and let it did the auto complete suggestion for me. It is meat with taros. This dish is actually hard as hell, only mom can pull it off. It's beyond me. We don't make it with the taro but with taro it should be very similar... But yeah it's definitely a "main event" dish, like if you're hosting a dinner party and you make this, and everyone will go "WOW" and you can basically serve them KFC buckets for all you care and they won't say anything bad about your party.
On September 10 2015 02:04 aboxcar wrote: Evan this reminds me of a dish I ate awhile back and then couldn't find again. I know it was some type of 扣肉 with some type of root vegetable (my memory wants to say taro but it might've been yam). Some of the google pictures for "粉蒸肉" look like it might be it, but I remember it was strikingly red, not orange/brownish.
Any ideas? Maybe 紅糟 but don't think the taste was like it.. idk
can you describe the taste and other ingredients? If its sweet it could be a the sweet (shanghai? too many :/) variant of soy braised pork. It could also be 梅菜扣肉. If its red, that probably means it as alot of soy sauce, and if it looks like this recipe, then it probably is braised for long periods in the soy sauce.
no it's definitely not 梅干菜..... I'm quite a capable cook myself, and it's not a normal soy sauce braise. It was literally red, like the western idea of red, which makes you guess 紅糟, but idk...
it's sweetish, and not so yeasty/wine tasting. maybe a different brand? idk!! I guess it's lost. I asked a waiter at the restaurant I had it at and she didn't know what I was talking about. maybe next time I need to ask the owner. it's been years but the impression remains :<
it's probably not a well known dish but the chef's own mash-up/creation I guess
Success. Pretty damn tasty. Took scouring asian food store for powder, and then making pork sooner than expected because when I smelled the pork I bought today for tuesday, I realized that I sort of needed to cook it asap.
It was also super familiar. I didn't know I'd had this before, and I"m still not sure that I had but the flavor profile is familiar and it smells super super recognizable.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/pt1h8a1.jpg)
