I'm the Culinary God-Chapter 598 - 284: Stir-Frying Water Spinach with Ham Fat, Delicious! Brother Lin, Can You Make Steamed Pot Chicken? [Subscribe Please]_2

Chapter 598: Chapter 284: Stir-Frying Water Spinach with Ham Fat, Delicious! Brother Lin, Can You Make Steamed Pot Chicken? [Subscribe Please]_2

What’s this oil for?

Seeing some cleaned water spinach placed to the side, Lin Xu smiled and said, "Later, I’ll use this oil to stir-fry some water spinach. It’ll be water spinach with a cured meat flavor—so there’s no need to even add salt."

I was just wondering what other dish to add. And here it is!

Though Mapo Chicken Cake is delicious and goes well with rice, one still needs to eat green vegetables. After all, it’s autumn; gotta get those vitamins to prevent dry skin.

It also perfectly suited the ladies’ desire to diet.

He took the cleaned water spinach, chopped off the tough ends, then separated the leaves from the stems.

Water spinach is a common green vegetable in major restaurants and sells well, especially in southern regions. There, delicious water spinach can even become a restaurant’s signature dish.

Water spinach is also a frequent dish in daily home cooking.

However, it’s rare to achieve the restaurant-quality appearance and taste at home. Most home-cooked versions end up too watery, turn black, or are simply overcooked. They lack the vibrant green color and crisp texture found in restaurants.

Actually, there’s a trick to making delicious water spinach: an additional step called ’killing the greens’ before cooking.

’Killing the greens’ is a common step in vegetable preparation. For example, blanching Boiled Chinese Broccoli is one form of ’killing the greens.’

However, this water-blanching method isn’t suitable for water spinach. Because there’s too much water involved, the resulting dish becomes too soupy.

Vegetables like water spinach should have their ’greens killed’ by flash-frying.

After chopping the water spinach, Lin Xu grabbed a handful of peeled and washed garlic cloves. He placed them on the cutting board, flattened each one with the side of his knife, and then minced them finely.

Flattening the garlic enhances its flavor, but one must be careful. Some knives can break easily, potentially causing accidents.

When stir-frying water spinach, a generous amount of garlic is needed for better flavor.

Besides garlic, he also chopped some dried chilies. These add a fragrant, dry aroma that makes the dish even more appetizing with rice.

With the garlic and dried chilies ready, Lin Xu also prepared a bowl of light brine.

He heated the wok and began to cook.

He poured oil into the wok, cranked the heat to high, and tossed in the water spinach stems and leaves.

Immediately after, he quickly poured the prepared light brine around the inner edge of the wok. Then, holding the wok handle with one hand, he rapidly stir-fried with a spoon in the other.

Adding oil to the water helps maintain the green color of the leaves.

The brine helps the vegetables soften and wilt quickly.

Meanwhile, the hot inner surface of the wok helps evaporate excess moisture from the leaves.

Once all the water spinach had wilted and changed color, he lifted the wok and poured the vegetables into a large colander to drain.

He quickly rinsed the wok, returned it to the stove, heated it up again, and added a spoonful of the rendered ham oil.

This ham oil contained some condensed water from the steaming process, so it needed to be heated in the wok first to evaporate this moisture.

When cold, the ham oil doesn’t have much of a scent and looks similar to regular cooking oil. But upon heating, the rich, savory aroma of ham began to waft from the wok.

This was an oil practically made for green vegetables.

It not only imparts a rich mouthfeel to the greens but also adds the unique, savory flavor of ham.

It tastes so delicious that it can even surpass greens stir-fried with lard.

Soon, the moisture in the oil had evaporated. Lin Xu then divided the minced garlic he had prepared; he tossed half into the wok along with the dried chili sections, saving the other half to add later.

Once the garlic and dried chilies released their fragrance, he added the drained water spinach and stir-fried vigorously over high heat.

The water spinach, having already released some moisture and wilted during the initial flash-fry, would cook through quickly.

After stir-frying over high heat for about thirty seconds, he drizzled a little Light Soy Sauce around the edge of the wok to add a touch of soy fragrance.

He continued to stir-fry, further reducing the moisture on the vegetables’ surface.

Finally, he added a small spoonful of salt to enhance the flavor, tossed in the remaining minced garlic, stir-fried until evenly combined, then removed it from the heat and plated the dish.

Since it was stir-fried with ham oil, no further salt was needed for seasoning.

The entire cooking process was simple and swift.

When Lin Xu emerged with the dish, the small basin of Mapo Chicken Cake he had made earlier was almost gone.

Only a few minutes, and more than half is gone?

TSK. You ladies are truly as formidable as any man when it comes to eating!

Zeng Xiaoqi exclaimed with admiration, "It has to be Boss Lin! He knew that just eating Mapo Chicken Cake might be too ’heaty,’ so he stir-fried some water spinach for us." She picked up some water spinach with her chopsticks, placed it in her bowl, and then, looking at Chen Yan and Shu Yun, said, "This afternoon, I saw your social media posts about eating tomatoes, so I went to the supermarket across from the TV station to buy some too. Why do tomatoes these days taste so awful? They’re harder to bite than an apple."

Chen Yan and Shu Yun exchanged glances. They both saw guilt in each other’s eyes.

But in an instant, as if by an unspoken agreement, they reached a consensus.

Shu Yun said, "I specifically picked a few softer ones from the kitchen, and they tasted all right. How about yours, Chief Chen? Were they good?"

"They were okay. Aside from being a bit sour, everything else was fine."

Recalling Yueyue’s social media post, Chief Chen couldn’t help but mentally re-experience the sourness of those raw tomatoes.

While Zeng Xiaoqi was muttering about how you can’t find those old-fashioned, mealy tomatoes anymore, she picked up a leaf of water spinach and took a bite.

Then, her large, expressive eyes—which netizens lauded as ’eyes that could speak’—suddenly widened in surprise. "Wow! This water spinach has a ham flavor! Was it stir-fried with ham?"