Gourmet: Midnight Vending
Chapter 488 - 401: Are You Going to Book the Entire Night Market Street?
After carefully studying the recipe, Chen Mo discovered that the so-called multifaceted flavors mainly refer to the soup base for Fuding Meat Slices.
As for the meat slices themselves, there are not many improvements, just a few rare steps.
After all, whether a dish is delicious or not, taste and flavor account for a significant proportion, and it is pretty much settled how the texture of this snack should be when made.
Without much ado, after returning to the parking lot and reading the recipe several times, Chen Mo started making it. The first step was, of course, not directly making the meat slices but preparing the condiments.
"It’s a bit of an exaggeration to call it multifaceted, but making a dozen flavors isn’t an exaggeration, right?"
First, prepare the most common seaweed-flavored soup base, which doesn’t differ from wonton soup base, mainly including seaweed, pepper powder, and some small shrimp.
Then there’s the authentic Fuding Meat Slice soup base, which mainly uses rice vinegar and yellow chili paste.
Chen Mo paired the soup bases one after another. If this snack were made with only one flavor, it could be made and sold simultaneously, but to make so many flavors, the soup bases had to be prepared beforehand and directly distributed into disposable meal boxes, stored according to classification.
When a customer orders a particular flavor, just take out the soup bowl and serve.
Of course, if Chen Mo were to set up a stall personally, there would be no need to prepare in advance. Even with a hundred seasonings in front of him, Chen Mo would confidently and quickly blend the needed flavor accurately.
But for a novice, it’s not that easy.
After matching ten flavors, Chen Mo prepared a hundred servings of each, meaning a total of a thousand servings were prepared for the night!
While organizing small bowls for storing them categorically, Chen Mo thought of another thing.
"Is it possible that curry flavor could also be quite tasty?"
No sooner said than done.
Making curry sauce was much more straightforward. Simply tossing the curry blocks bought from the supermarket into the pot to cook was sufficient. The taste was pretty good and not inferior to personal blends.
Thus, there were eleven flavors of soup bases.
Cheng Xiuli was responsible for recording various data today because sometimes she didn’t even recognize certain seasonings. At first, she used paper and pen, later simply resorting to filming with her phone.
Supposedly, she would take it back for the company’s technicians to analyze themselves.
"The seasoning pairing is pretty much like this, nothing novel here. Watching the video should be fine," Chen Mo said.
Cheng Xiuli sighed, "Who would have thought the few snacks you provided earlier, although looking simple, were quite complex to prepare. Bao Shuai and the other two couldn’t sleep well these past two nights and were constantly busy."
"That’s indeed the case."
After all, when Chen Mo first prepared that kind of thing, he had to prepare continuously for a long time, with no time to sleep.
However, once the process became familiar, things improved significantly.
Then began the preparation of the main ingredient, which was the meat slices. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮
There was no particular skill involved, just cutting two hundred pounds of lean meat into chunks and directly putting them into the meat grinder, adding some ice cubes and starting to grind them.
"Um, Boss Xiao Chen, I thought you’d make the meat filling by hand. Isn’t it said that handmade is always tastier than machine-made?"
Cheng Xiuli commented, mainly because she had seen Chen Mo’s online videos before, and in her mind, Chen Mo had always been someone who strives for perfection.
"That’s different." Chen Mo took out the minced lean meat, placed it in a basin, and continued to throw in another piece for grinding, "Some dishes require texture, the texture of the ingredients needs to be controlled with knife skills."
Just like the Lion’s Head dish, which requires the meat filling to be chopped into granules, preferably with some meat threads attached.
"Fuding Meat Slices aren’t like that; they simply require meat paste. Once it’s reduced to paste, what’s the difference between hand chopping and machine grinding?"
Cheng Xiuli somewhat understood, somewhat didn’t, but thought whatever Boss Xiao Chen said was it; market response is the best answer!
Once all the meat was minced, Chen Mo poured a large basin full of minced meat into the dough mixer.
This was unexpected for Cheng Xiuli.
Isn’t a dough mixer for mixing dough?
As he pressed the start button, the thick metal arms of the dough mixer started to roll, slowly stirring the meat paste in one direction.
And Chen Mo, holding a basin in one hand, filled with tapioca flour.
Scooping spoonfuls slowly added; the initially very moist meat paste gradually appeared somewhat dry, and Chen Mo quickly added some ice cubes into it.
After thoroughly blending the tapioca flour with the meat paste to an even consistency, the color of the meat paste took on a somewhat soft pink look, followed by adding salt, sugar, minced ginger, cooking wine, and finishing with a bit of baking soda.
Regarding the addition of baking soda, Chen Mo had given it deep thought; adding this makes the meat slices swell when cooking, looking chubby and enhancing the silky texture.
But the key is to eat them hot, as they won’t be as plump once they cool.
With the meat paste ready, as evening was still early, Chen Mo placed the two large tubs of meat paste into the cabinet for refrigeration.
"Alright, just wait to set up the stall directly at night."
"Hey? This snack actually looks quite simple, huh? Just wonder how it tastes."
What an international joke; simple? Chen Mo smiled slightly and added, "Of course, at night, the soup base used will be Clear Soup. I boiled quite some last night, should be enough."