She Only Cares About Cultivation-Chapter 757: [741] Beast World Farming 51 (2 updates)
After Tangtang saw the fresh peas, bamboo shoots, bamboo mushrooms, figs, yams, smaller Yellow Sweet Potatoes, Monkey Head Mushrooms, and those long and thin chilies... To tell the truth, these two full carts of good things couldn’t match the impact of Mai Sui.
This also proved that the world she was in was much larger than she had imagined.
She put the items from the cart back into space because in the cold winter, they also needed a supplement of fruits – whether hand-picked in the summer by themselves or stored in space, there was enough to see them through the entire Cold Season without worry.
The next day, after soaking the soybeans overnight, she wrapped them in a cotton cloth and steamed them in a steamer until they were cooked. Once done, she could rub a bean between her fingers and it would crumble into a powder.
If she had wheat now, she would roast the raw wheat until golden, grind it into a powder, and use it as yeast, but since she didn’t have any, she simply used buckwheat flour instead (nonsense, she hadn’t experimented, she didn’t know if it would work). After frying, she ground it into powder in a small mill.
She let the cooked soybeans cool in three large bamboo baskets, then added the ground buckwheat flour to each bean, making sure each one was coated with the flour.
And then she left them in a warm room to ferment with the yeast until a green mold grew on the surface. Of course, this required time – after all, good soy sauce, especially brewed using the traditional method, would need at least half a year.
Her timing wasn’t great now; although there was sunlight, it was the bleak, cold type, unsuitable for drying, so she decided to try other methods.
During the fermentation process of the soybeans, Tangtang directed the Beastmen to cut meat, cleaning the casings again. Due to the ample amount of meat, they had to quickly figure out how to make sausages for preservation. At the same time, they didn’t forget to produce cured meat daily. Divided into teams of two, with Lili and three Beastmen, she was responsible for giving directions and seasoning.
In order to fill the casings, they specially made a wooden stuffer – essentially just a long tube that would push the meat into the casing when pressed, easy enough to make using bamboo.
The casings should not be filled too much or too little. Every length would be tied with a string, and air holes pricked to allow for breathing.
When his house was filled with sausages hanging under the eaves and rooms full of smoked cured meat, they finally processed most of the meat, of course keeping about a hundred or eighty jin as fresh meat. As for all that could be made into cured or smoked cured meat or sausage, she did so, because only then could she free up space.
The remaining ribs, big bones, internal organs, heads, and the like, needed to be slowly stewed.
After handling the meat, her menstrual period also passed, and the soybeans that had grown fungal hair in the warm house were well fermented.
She brought in two buckets of stream water, diluted the brine in it, and poured it into a large clay jar filled with soybeans. Because it was cold outside and the sunlight insufficient, she placed it inside the bed-stove, careful not to put it at the edge for fear the temperature would be too high and spoil it. The center of the bed-stove was probably around twenty degrees or so.
After that, she covered it and stirred it every day. As the fermentation continued, the soybeans would darken day by day (it should have been sun-dried under the sun, but this is nonsense). This method was an alternative to sun-drying. Normally, this process would last half a year, requiring daily stirring.
"This will do. Now we have the bed-stove. When the outdoor temperature approximates our current temperature (after the Cold Season), we’ll move it outside. Remember this, we might have to wait until the rainy season. After the rainy season starts, we could have a second brewing. Of course, this is assuming my current attempt is successful."
"So, after half a year, it will become what... soy sauce?"
Tangtang shook her head, "It’s not that simple. First, it has to form soy sauce paste. The matured soy sauce paste needs to absorb the essence of the sun and the moon. Since we are completely fermenting it on the bed-stove, we don’t know if it will be successful yet. We just have to wait and see!"
"Alright, next, we’ll make natto. Take out the beans that were soaked yesterday, wash them thoroughly, rinse them several times to ensure there are no impurities, and make sure the water is clean too!"
In winter, she tried not to touch water if it wasn’t necessary, and this kind of work was typically left to the men to do, leaving her to enjoy her leisure.
Then, she poured the soybeans into a stone pot to cook over low heat until they were perfectly tender but not falling apart.
Before the Cold Season arrived, she had already picked natto grass. This grass typically grows by stream banks, blooming purple flowers; they had some in their yard before, and she had asked the cubs to collect a lot from outside, for making natto.
