I'm the Culinary God-Chapter 628 - 294: The Soul Dipping Sauce That Gets You Hooked at First Bite! Geng Lele’s Promotion Feast! [Subscribe Please]

Dips, also known as sauces, are the soul of dipping sauce dishes and are found all over the country. For instance, there’s the ginger sauce used with Plain Chicken in Cantonese cuisine, the oil sauce and dry sauce in Sichuan cuisine, as well as the sesame paste dipping sauce for Northern mutton hot pot, and the indispensable Shacha Sauce for Chaoshan Beef Hot Pot; all of these are very famous. But if you ask where the most dipping sauces are found, the Yun Gui Region takes the lead. Here, the types of dipping sauces number in the thousands, and new ones are created daily. All kinds of sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, numbing, and fragrant dipping sauces not only enhance people’s appetites but also enrich the flavors of the dishes.

When he exchanged points for the steam-pot chicken recipe, it came with a related dipping sauce. However, Lin Xu felt it was too restrictive. Considering the reasonable prices of Yunnan-style dipping sauces, he exchanged points for an Excellent Level collection of Yunnan-style sauces. The collection cost less than 300,000 points but included several thousand sauce recipes, as well as techniques and tips for mixing dipping sauces. Breaking it down, each type of sauce cost only a few dozen points—even cheaper than those "historically low" games on Steam that sell for 1% of their original price.

Back in the kitchen, Lin Xu prepared the ingredients for the dipping sauces. There are many ways to make Yunnan-style dipping sauces, but the fundamental principle is that they must be delicious. To ensure northerners could also adapt to the taste of Yunnan-style dipping sauces, Lin Xu specifically chose one with a sour and spicy flavor profile. This sauce, named "Nanmi," primarily used ingredients like tomatoes, tree tomatoes, purple eggplants, Thai chiles, and garlic. The so-called tree tomato is a plant unique to Southern Yunnan, also known as a tomato tree. It is rich in pectin, has a sweet and sour taste, and is a main ingredient in making jam. The reason for using tree tomatoes in this sauce, aside from adding sourness, was mainly to act as a thickener, making the dip’s texture more captivating.

Once the ingredients were prepared, he placed a frying pan on the stove and began to Dry Burn it. After it was hot, he added the various ingredients one by one to blacken their skins. Finally, he grabbed a large handful of dried chilies and added them to the pan, similarly charring them until their skins were slightly blackened. Then, while they were still hot, he pounded them into fine fragments in a mortar, creating the pounded charred chilies that are an indispensable part of nearly every meal in the Southwest Region. These chilies, charred to an almost-black state, might look unassuming, but they possessed a rich fragrance and were one of the essential ingredients for dipping sauces.

He scraped the pounded charred chilies out of the mortar. Next, he peeled the charred skins off the main ingredients, also placed them in the mortar, and used the pestle to crush them into a mush, which he then transferred to a small bowl. He added cilantro and chopped thorny celery, followed by salt, sugar, Flavoring, chopped garlic, and the freshly made pounded charred chilies. After mixing everything evenly, a rich Dai-style "Nanmi" sauce was ready. Lin Xu tasted it; the sour and spicy flavors were intense but acceptable. Originally, he hadn’t planned to add sugar. He worried that the strong sour and spicy taste might be too much for the others, leading to an awkward scenario where everyone just watched Mrs. Huang eat by herself. So, he added some powdered sugar to balance the flavors. And indeed, it tasted great. The sour, spicy, and slightly sweet profile gave this dipping sauce a unique character.

Carrying the dipping sauce back to the private room, he took a stack of small saucers from the serving cabinet and gave everyone a spoonful of this Dai-style sauce.

"Come try this. The sour and spicy flavor is quite strong, so don’t take a big bite all at once," he warned.

His last remark was directed at a certain gluttonous girl.

Shen Baobao stuck out her tongue. That Xu Bao is too much! Don’t I, the executive chef of Lin Ji’s Food, have any dignity?

But despite her grumbling, she was the first to take the saucer of dip and place it in front of herself. Having already downed two bowls of chicken soup, it was time to taste the chicken. Shen Baobao, who had no anxieties about her appearance, didn’t think drinking a lot of chicken soup was all that beneficial; she just wanted to heartily devour the meat.

She picked up a large piece of Chicken Thigh from the steam pot, dipped it in the sauce, and eagerly popped it into her mouth. The chicken was a bit hot, but that wasn’t important. What mattered was the intense sour and spicy taste of the dipping sauce, like biting into a green apple covered in chili. The sourness made her grimace, while the spiciness made her want to cry. However, when she bit into the chicken, its fresh, savory flavor and tender texture greatly neutralized the intense sour and spicy taste. The previous assault of sour and spicy sensations seemed to lose its sharp intensity. Instead, it had an appetizing effect.

"Wow, I didn’t expect people from Southern Yunnan to handle sour and spicy flavors as well as those in the Northwest!" Shen Baobao exclaimed.

Mrs. Huang, however, didn’t dip the chicken directly. She first used her chopsticks to pick up a little of the thick dipping sauce and taste it. A surprised expression immediately appeared on her face. "This dipping sauce is really delicious! But compared to chicken, this kind of sauce would be even better with grilled eggplant, grilled Pork Skin, or beef skin. That would be even tastier."

Usually, steam-pot chicken just needs a ginger-garlic sauce, she thought. However, considering Brother Lin isn’t from Southern Yunnan, making it this well is quite remarkable. Plus, after drinking that delicious chicken soup, having a sour and spicy dipping sauce with the meat is quite appetizing. When she arrived, she had been somewhat apprehensive, fearing that the steam-pot chicken made by Lin Xu, a Northerner, wouldn’t be authentic, or that it might have a gamey taste like her own attempts. But after trying it, she realized his skill was comparable to those masters of steam-pot chicken in Southern Yunnan. Not only did it lack any gamey taste, but he had also used Ham to make the soup incredibly savory. Drinking it hot was so comforting, warming her entire body. No wonder he became a consultant at Fishing Platform at such a young age. His skill was truly excellent. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

The men at the table each finished a bowl of chicken soup and then resumed drinking their alcoholic beverages. The women, however, generally had more than two bowls of chicken soup. When they occasionally scooped up pieces of Notoginseng, some even attempted to chew and swallow them. But they soon realized their teeth were likely no match for the hardness of the Notoginseng, so they eventually gave up.