Beef can be marinated or seasoned before cooking, stir fried or deep fried, and it will be soft and tender, "velvet" like. Drain. will change the nutritional information in any recipe. Then, the freezing process tears them apart. Besides tenderizing the meat, velveting also helps form a coating that promotes even browning and helps the sauce to adhere to the meat. The fibres are softened so you get less meaty texture, which is why I only use this technique to tenderise strips of meat and not cubes or steaks which would be a bit too eerie! Try to slice it thinly so you have a really flat cut like what you need for pastrami. Hi Nagi and Dozer, Add the water and soy sauce (or oyster sauce) to the chicken in a medium bowl, and mix until the chicken is well-coated. He then cooks the other ingredients, and then when everythings just about fully cooked, adds the chicken back in to finish it off and combine with the other ingredients. Increase the heat to high and fry until crispy and lightly golden brown. It gives the chicken that silky texture, with retained moisture and flavor from the marinade. How to Velvet Beef in Soy Sauce (Beef Stir-Fry Recipe) Preparation time: 20 minutes Maceration time: minimum 30 minutes Cooking time: 10 minutes Ingredients For 4 Persons 400g beef tenderloin or brisket 400g yellow onions 3.5oz chicken broth 1 egg 1 chive 4 tbsp sunflower oil or sesame oil 2 tbsp Chinese wine (or Shao Hsing) 2 tbsp potato starch I like to add sliced onions or garlic as well, which gives the alliums additional time to soak up the oil and salt. Weve seen other sources on the Internet suggest adding egg white to velveting marinades. Thank you so much, will use this trick every time ! Fill a wok or a large pot with water. Then cook over high heat for 2-3 minutes. Toss the sliced beef with the baking soda. But it certainly made it taste legit! Shaoxing wine or 1 Tbsp. Keep these in mind for a successful, and so worth it, batch of biang-biang noodles. Because were using thin slices of beef here and its been tenderised, we dont need to marinate for long. When using cornstarch with other ingredients, stir it well until its fully dissolved, and no clumps are visible. In Chinese stir-fry cooking, the way ingredients are cut should be consistent with each other. While we do our best to provide nutritional information as a general guideline to our readers, we are not certified nutritionists, and the values provided should be considered estimates. Try and get that soda powder all over the thinly-sliced beef by rubbing it in. Let stand 1-2 hours. Next, you have to wash the meat. The small amount of water moisturizes the chicken. If you decide to try velveting at home, be sure to let us know in the comments! Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API. While oil-blanching can require a lot of oil, you can also blanch meat in water. However, oil- nor water-blanching is absolutely necessary, especially for home cooking. You can see the grain and the slice a bit clearer in this photo, but you can imagine that the soft beef can be difficult to handle and slice. Its all thanks to velveting, a technique that gives Chinese dishes their signature texture. With a slotted spoon, remove chicken from pot and drain well. Add sliced chilis (optional). To sear, place your wok over high heat. Finally, sauce is added to bring the whole dish together. However, Im fine with that because stir fries always have great sauces! Velveted meat tastes best with preparations that are heavy on sauce and flavor. Bring water and oil to a boil in a pot over high heat. Whisk in the egg white till well combined but not frothy. Or, you could just put it in a freezer bag. 2. After 30 minutes, take the meat out. After 30 minutes, take the meat out. Add the chicken in one layer, and allow to sear for 20 seconds. Word of caution: The beef will turn freakishly bright red. Velveting beef involves slicing it into very thin pieces and adding them to a mixture made up of cornstarch or baking soda. For those of you who want to reduce fat in your diet or simply want that delicate taste of Cantonese cooking, you can blanch your chicken in boiling water. The flavour of the tenderised beef will only be as good as the cut you use. Want to master Microsoft Excel and take your work-from-home job prospects to the next level? Chemical tenderizer. However, if youre velveting chopped beef, note that chopped ground beef has a shelf life of 1 to 2 days in the fridge. The result is a silky mouthfeel and a flavor bomb in each bite! Then pat off all the excess water and get it set for your stir-fries. This method is achieved by pouring some soda into water. When you feel its time to stir-fry the velvet meat, cut the onions into very thin strips and the chives into rings. For. It has avelvety texture. Use for. Cornstarch is the foundation of Chinese cooking and this magical pantry ingredient is commonly used to thicken soups, stews and sauces. Time and again, my worldwide web pursuits for solid recipes that I know my family will eat has landed me back here.. Looking for more authentic recipes? Its typical to also marinate with ingredients like soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, oyster sauce or white pepper. To marinate chicken for stir fries, we use a simple mixture of water, oil, cornstarch, and a flavor agent like soy sauce or oyster sauce. Increase the marinating time for your beef by at least 15 minutes. but they dont all use the same method. Basically has written about the power of cornstarch before, but in this case it is more than just an ingredient: Cornstarch is the foundation of a Chinese cooking method known as velveting, which refers to marinating protein in cornstarch and, in the fullest sense of the technique, passing it briefly through hot oil or water before incorporating into stir-fries, soups, and stews. Usually it is easier to do two steps - brine/tenderize then velvet. Water-blanching did produce meat with a slight residue. A Study in Safety, How to Drain Ground Beef | 2 Easy Methods. 626628916 Beef Bourguignon in a white soup bowl on black . They opted for marinading meat, most often based on egg and soy sauce. Discovery, Inc. or its subsidiaries and affiliates. Mix the meat with the potato starch, the previously beaten egg, 2 tablespoons of chicken broth, sugar, salt, and pepper. After marinating, the chicken is tossed into a wok and flash-fried with oil over high heat. 1 tablespoon cornflour or fine cornstarch and 2 tablespoons cold water Step 1 - Slice the beef against the grain - this helps the velveting process as it gets into the fibres better. Add oil, oyster sauce/soy sauce, Shaoxing wine (optional), and cornstarch to the beef. He grew up in upstate New York, working through high school and college in restaurants with his father, a chef. More often than not, its thanks to one simple pantry staple: cornstarch. Add the chicken in one layer, and allow to sear for 20 seconds. If peanut oil is unavailable, award-winning cookbook author Grace Young suggests using oil with higher smoke points like grapeseed, avocado, rice bran, safflower or vegetable oil. I consider it a privilege to share it with others! Here are a few recipes I use this method: Did you make this? When you freeze it and thaw it back out, you can use it for all types of recipes. This process tears all the fibers apart, and when you thaw it out and stir-fry it, its incredibly tender. Add cornstarch and oil to give the meat a velvety texture. This is the only beef hes getting today . Velveting meat is used for making tender beef in Chinese stir-fry recipes. Cutting meat against the grain is very important to yield nice tender pieces in your stir-fry dishes. Rinse well in colander to remove baking soda. Required fields are marked *. of thinly-sliced meat. Its a way of preparing sauted meat in a way that they become tenderized. Increase the cornstarch and youll end up with something thicker and more substantive, maybe a slurry better-suited to a stew or soup, like the Chinese Filipino misua I grew up with. In most cases you want to preserve their fresh taste and natural texture, says Leung. Its about giving the beef an extra juicy texture. Thats the whole point, but it can only be done if the meat is thinly sliced. Basically, you need to freeze it evenly and take it out the following day, week, or up to four months. However, chemical compounds like baking soda can leave some taste in the meat. Whisk together one egg white, 1 tablespoon rice vinegar, 1 tablespoon cornstarch, and 1 teaspoon kosher salt. Next, you need to coat the meat in baking soda and freeze it. Please read my disclosure policy. Thanks Nagi When I was in culinary school, our chef taught us how to velvet pork for salt and pepper pork spareribs. Velveting is a Chinese cooking technique commonly used in stir-frying. The next step is preparing the marinade. So easy. Its time to share some Chinese restaurant secrets on how to tenderize beef. Partially frozen meat also allows you to be more precise in cutting to your desired thickness. If you like, you can make use of chemical methods such as baking soda, salt, or dairy products to tenderize meat. If you dont add egg, its generally important to add a little bit of water to make the mixture liquid and properly coat the meat, says Kathy Chen, head chef at Wenwen, a cozy Taiwanese eatery in Brooklyn. When it starts to smoke lightly, add a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil to coat the surface of the wok. Various online calculators also provide different results, depending on their sources. Start by beating the egg in a bowl and lay it aside. Other tenderising methods include marinating in a cornflour/cornstarch sludge then frying in oil before using in the stir fry, chemical tenderisers and egg white marinates. The plain tenderised beef isnt flavoured, so it can be used forany recipe calling for strips of beef that are cooked quickly, such as Beef Stroganoff. Even if you don't have a collapsible metal basket or bamboo steamer, you can still steam veggies and proteins easily. Yes. 4Keep going with the stir fry instructions. If you need more than that for your recipe, I suggest you do it in batches for the first attempt, so you dont mess things up. Im really impressed and Ill definitely be making it again. Simply boil enough water to cover the amount of meat you are velveting, then add the meat and cook until it becomes opaque. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); document.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. You could jazz up this marinade with minced garlic, spiced salts and sugar. The thin gelatinous coating seals in the beef juices which keeps it moist and gives it a slippery mouth feel, hence the name velveting! This is how to tenderise beef with a Chinese restaurant method called velveting beef. Popular in Indian kitchens, masala dabbas are brilliant spice storage containers, but also so much more. So, velveting makes cheap cuts tender. The most important ingredient of any velveting marinade is cornstarcheverything else is left to interpretation. So there you have it; the resulting beef from these animals was muscle-filled and very tough. Meat or seafood is marinated and pre-cooked in oil (or sometimes poached in boiling water). Flank steak is by far the most popular cut of meat used by Chinese restaurants in all of their stir-fry dishes. The other name for it is "velveting beef". side dishes. Rinse and dry the coriander. It also happens to be the most recommended cut of beef we use in our stir-fry recipes. If not, skip down to the next section. Mix everything well, cover, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or up to one hour to allow time for the cornstarch to transform into a thin gelatinous layer. It could be a tenderloin cut or any cheap cut. Bring the water to a boil and add about 1 teaspoon of oil. Although its safe, this method may not help you get a pleasant taste, especially on the first try. Have you ever tried to make a stir-fry at home, but the meat comes out dry and not at all like what youve been served in Asian restaurants? Step 2: Coat the chicken and let it sit Leave to brown for 3-4 minutes, then put the meat back, adding the rest of the chicken broth. Short-Cut Method for Tenderizing Beef: Add 1/8 teaspoon to 1/4 teaspoon (for tougher cuts) of baking soda and 2-3 tablespoons of water to the beef. In a colander, drain chicken. Sorry if this is a silly question. Begin by mixing soy sauce, cornstarch or potato starch, and oil with meat. Once coated in cornstarch, slices of pork became incredibly tender when dunked into a steaming hot misua with sliced patola and vermicelli. Others familiar with Chinese cooking styles use only egg white, corn starch, and Chinese (HaoSing) wine for the non-soda velveting method. I often use it to break down the fibers of meat and therefore tenderize it. Heres the general rule of thumb Ive come up with based on all the beef Ive tried: Chuck beef, gravy beef, oyster beef and other traditional stewing beef 30 minutes, Economical steak cuts (eg. Egg whites are a common ingredient which helps the cornstarch adhere to the meat, but I hate having egg yolks lying around and choose to use Shaoxing wine instead.