Monday, October 26, 2015

Traditional Shanghai Soup with Fresh and Salted Pork (醃篤鮮)

This is a very traditional Shanghai soup, with a lively Shanghai-style Chinese name.  The first word, 醃 (curing meat), points to Salted Pork, the second word, 篤 (stewing), talks about the cooking process (stew slowly in covered pot), and the third word, 鮮 (fresh ingredients), refers to the fresh pork.  The soup is supposed to be white, and the flavor rich (湯白味濃).
  1. [Make Salted Pork] Get a piece of pork leg meat, with skin (usually in ~3"x3"x 6" size).  Cut into 3 long slices each in ~1" thick, ~3" tall, ~6" long (with skin).  Rub salt and sprinkle Sichuan Peppercorns (花椒) on both sides of each slice. Let air dry (uncovered) in fridge for 5 - 7'days. Store in a plastic bag in the freezer if not used immediately.  For this soup, rinse and blanch half of a slice of the salted pork.  Cut it into bite size (~1/2" x 1/2" x 1.5", keep the skin) and set aside.
  2. Cut 4-6 oz of fresh pork (pork butt, pork shoulder, or pork belly, with skin) into similar bite size as the Salted Pork.
  3. Get a pack of Soy Sheet Knots (百頁結, see product package to the right).  Use half a pack for this soup.
  4. Cut 2-3 pieces of Winter Bamboo Shoots (冬筍) into triangular bite size and Spring Bamboo Shoots (春筍) into 1/2" segments.
  5. Get 4-6 stalks of Bok Choy ready (pick apart, and rinse)
  6. [Make the Stock] Get a bag of beef bone, rinse, blanch for 2-3 minutes.  Place the bones in a fresh soup pot.  Fill the pot with water to 70-80% capacity.  Bring to boil at high heat.  Skim off foams and stuff.  Keep the pot in vigorous boiling state at medium-to-high heat for 30 minutes (cover the lid, make sure the soup does not boil over and spill).  The soup should be turning almost milk white at this point, as the fat content dissolves into water at high heat.  Skim off oil.  Continue to let the soup simmer in covered pot for 2 - 2.5 hours.  
  7. [Make the Soup] Add about 3 - 4 cups of the stock (prepared in Step 6) into a fresh soup pot.  Add the salted pork, fresh pork, soy sheet knots, and bamboo shoots prepared in Step 1-4 above into the pot.  Fill the pot with water to cover the ingredients.  Add 2-3 stalks of scallions (cut into 2" segments), 6-8 slices of ginger, 10-12 pieces of dried shrimp (蝦米), 1 tsp of salt, 2 Tbsp of Rice Cooking Wine, 3 Tbsp of Shao-hsing Rice Wine (紹興酒). Bring the pot to boil, and let simmer for 1.5 - 2 hours.  
  8. Season to taste with salt.  Place the Bok Choy (prepared in Step 5) in the pot to steam for 1-2 minutes.  Now the soup is ready to serve.  See picture below for finished product (with half of the stock and half of this dish's own clear soup). Note- The flavor of the meat pieces is all in the soup now.  There is almost no need to consume the meat.

1 comment:

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