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What do Chinese cooks use to tenderize meat?

Velveting is a Chinese method of marinating which keeps delicate meat and seafood moist and tender during cooking. The velveting technique is very easy and gives amazing results.

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You may have wondered how Chinese restaurants come to have such soft, silky textured meat in their dishes? Rather than stir-frying the meat and searing it all over until browned, they use a special technique called velveting.

What is velveting?

Velveting is a Chinese method of marinating which keeps delicate meat and seafood moist and tender during cooking. The velveting technique is very easy and gives amazing results. Simply coat strips of chicken, turkey, pork, beef, (or scallops, prawns etc) in a mixture of egg white, cornflour, sesame oil and salt before deep-frying in hot oil or poaching in simmering water. The coating creates a protective barrier which seals in the moisture and also helps prevent the food from overcooking and becoming tough.

Chef Ken Hom is a fan of velveting so why not give it a go?

What is the basic velveting recipe?

Basic quantity for a couple of chicken breasts:

1 tbsp whisked egg white

2 tsp cornflour

2 tsp sesame oil or rice wine

¼ tsp table salt

Mix the ingredients above together until smooth and no lumps – the consistency should be thin. Coat the chicken pieces all over in the batter and leave in the fridge for 30 minutes. Then cook briefly in simmering water or hot oil, separating each piece with chopsticks to stop them sticking together. As soon as the pieces turn opaque, but still raw inside (about 40 seconds), lift out and drain. You can then add them to your stir fry once your vegetables or noodles are ready and finish cooking in the wok for 3-4 mins until fully cooked all the way through and piping hot.

What are the tips for Velveting?

Slicing against the grain shortens the meat fibres which also helps makes meat tender Some recipes replace the sesame oil with rice wine (mirin) or rice vinegar. And you can replace the salt with Kikkoman soy sauce if wished. Velveting can be done in advance to save time. It is ideal for stir fries where the vegetables should be cooked separately to the meat according to thickness and texture. Then all ingredients may be brought together at the end, usually tossed with a sauce.

What recipes can you use velveting in?

Most recipes which call for strips or cubes of meat can be adapted to use the velveting technique before cooking. Try the following recipes, velveting the meat first before continuing

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How long to leave baking soda on pork chops?

THE BOTTOM LINE: Fifteen minutes is long enough to reap the benefits of a baking soda treatment, but don't worry if your dinner prep gets interrupted and you have to extend that time a bit. A 15-minute (or slightly longer) stint in a combination of water and baking soda keeps meat tender and moist when it's cooked.

Briefly soaking meat in a solution of baking soda and water raises the pH on the meat’s surface, making it more difficult for the proteins to bond excessively, which keeps the meat tender and moist when it’s cooked. Our recipes, such as our Vietnamese-Style Caramel Chicken with Broccoli, typically call for a 15- to 20-minute treatment, but what if your dinner prep is interrupted and that time is doubled or even tripled?

To find out if a soak longer than 15 to 20 minutes would do more harm than good, we treated 12 ounces each of ground beef, sliced chicken breast, and sliced pork with baking soda—¼ teaspoon for the beef and 1 teaspoon for the sliced meats—for different lengths of time before cooking them. We were surprised to find that samples that were treated for 45 minutes were identical to those treated for only 15 minutes. Here’s why: The acid/base reaction happens very quickly and does not build much over time. In fact, when we weighed the samples of treated ground beef before and after cooking, we found that the sample that had been treated for 45 minutes retained a mere 3 percent more moisture when cooked than meat that was treated for only 15 minutes. THE BOTTOM LINE: Fifteen minutes is long enough to reap the benefits of a baking soda treatment, but don’t worry if your dinner prep gets interrupted and you have to extend that time a bit.

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