I'm the Culinary God-Chapter 684 - 312: Wow, isn’t this Spicy Chicken too delicious? Director Shen’s first crew meeting! [Subscribe please]

Chapter 684: Chapter 312: Wow, isn’t this Spicy Chicken too delicious? Director Shen’s first crew meeting! [Subscribe please]

In the kitchen, Zhu Yong watched Lin Xu enter and asked curiously, "I’ve seen some chefs simmer the seasoning sauce when making Spicy Chicken. Don’t we need to do that now?"

Lin Xu lifted the pot lid and said with a smile, "We have to wait until the chicken is cooked because the seasoning sauce needs the original stock... Oh, Zhu Yong, a cold front is likely coming in a few days. You should make some Lotus Root stewed with Pork Ribs. Everyone can eat and sip the soup to their heart’s content."

"Sure, no problem."

For someone from Hubei, making Lotus Root stewed with Pork Ribs was as simple as drinking water.

The chicken in the pot was still simmering gently.

Actually, to improve the color, one could add a couple of smashed gardenia fruits or Curcuma powder, but I feel it’s unnecessary for our own enjoyment. Using gardenia fruit to color the broth seems like a lack of confidence in the ingredients.

Good ingredients don’t need any superfluous additions.

After checking on the chicken in the pot, Lin Xu went downstairs to the braised foods section to check on the stewed chicken slowly cooking in the jacketed pot. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

The aroma of the braising liquid is already apparent. However, because this is a fresh batch of stock, the flavor of the spices is still a bit sharp.

With the next batch, the flavor of the braising stock will mellow, and the fresh stock will transform into a rich, aged stock.

「Ten o’clock in the morning.」

Lin Xu once again lifted the lid of the pot cooking the old hen, and a rich, savory aroma wafted out. After the steam dissipated, he saw a layer of yellow chicken fat floating in the pot. This layer of yellow chicken fat was a hallmark of a well-cooked old hen. He took a chopstick and poked it into the thickest part of the chicken thigh. Seeing no blood seep out confirmed the chicken was thoroughly cooked and ready to be taken out.

Using a slotted spoon, he carefully lifted the chicken out. Without pausing, he immediately placed it into a basin of ice water. This was done to make the chicken skin crispier and the meat firmer. The chicken shouldn’t soak in the ice water for too long, or its savory flavor would be diluted. A quick plunge was enough before taking it out, draining any water from its cavity onto a tray, and then processing the next one. After all the chickens were removed and briefly cooled in ice water, they were taken to the cold storage to cool naturally.

Restaurants typically prepare shredded chicken this way: cooking the chickens all at once and storing them in the refrigerator. When an order comes in, a chicken is taken out for processing. The whole chicken is shredded and mixed with onion slivers, cilantro segments, and green onion strips. Then, it’s drizzled with the spicy and numbing seasoning sauce and tossed. Just like that, a delightfully spicy and tingling Spicy Chicken is officially complete.

Now that the chicken was cooked, it was time to make the spicy and numbing seasoning sauce.

For Spicy Chicken, the seasoning sauce is the soul of the dish—the key to transforming an old hen from something ordinary into a treasure.

Since it’s the soul, the method naturally becomes intricate and particular. For instance, it required three kinds of specialty oils—chicken oil, Seasoning Oil, and Sichuan peppercorn oil. Additionally, it called for more than two types of chilies and three types of Sichuan peppercorns. The process also involved simmering and frying these chilies and Sichuan peppercorns.

In short, this seasoning sauce is quite a hassle to prepare.

Luckily, Lin Ji’s Food has a well-stocked supply of all three required Seasoning Oils. Otherwise, I would have had to start from scratch, beginning with rendering chicken oil.

He gathered the necessary Seasoning Oils and added some rapeseed oil, commonly used in the Northwest Region. Then he took some dried string chilies and King Chili. String chilies are aromatic but not very spicy. To make the dish more satisfyingly hot, he needed to add some King Chili to increase the heat.

As for the three types of Sichuan peppercorns needed in the seasoning sauce, they included red Sichuan peppercorns, Sichuan peppercorns, and fresh Sichuan peppercorns. Fresh Sichuan peppercorns contributed a vibrant, clean, numbing flavor that made the dish more refreshing. However, using only fresh Sichuan peppercorns wouldn’t provide a lasting numbing aftertaste. Therefore, it was necessary to add two types of dried Sichuan peppercorns to deepen the numbing sensation, creating that feeling of your tongue dancing from the intensity.

With everything ready, Lin Xu set up a wok, filled it with water, and added the dried chilies and dried Sichuan peppercorns, bringing it to a boil over high heat for five minutes. This boiling process removed any harshness from the dried chilies and Sichuan peppercorns, leaving behind only their pure aroma. Moreover, this pre-cooking step made them less likely to burn when simmering the seasoning sauce later.

Once boiled, he removed them from the water, drained them, and then cut the softened dried chilies into segments. Dried chilies shouldn’t be cut before boiling, or their spicy flavor would leach into the water. Cutting them after boiling ensures the flavor is retained within the chilies.

With the cutting complete, he began the process.

This is the most critical step in making Spicy Chicken.

He added a large spoonful of chicken oil to the wok, followed by half a spoonful of Seasoning Oil and half a spoonful of rapeseed oil. The combination of these three oils provided not only savoriness and fragrance from the oils themselves but also the aromatic notes of ingredients like Scallion and Ginger, effectively concentrating all the delightful scents.

When the oil reached medium-low heat, he added the boiled dried Sichuan peppercorns and simmered them on low heat.

This step requires patience, to slowly coax the numbing aroma of the Sichuan peppercorns into the oil. That way, the sauce will be numbing but not bitter, just fragrant and delicious.

At first, the oil boiled vigorously due to the moisture content in the Sichuan peppercorns. After simmering for a while and the vigorous bubbling subsided, he added the prepared fresh Sichuan peppercorns to introduce a clean, bright note to the numbing flavor. Once the fresh Sichuan peppercorns had released most of their moisture and turned fragrant, he added the cut chili segments and continued to simmer.

Each time new spices were added, the oil would bubble intensely. This vigorous reaction not only helped to more effectively release the aromas from the ingredients but also allowed any harsh, acrid notes from the Sichuan peppercorns and chilies to evaporate, resulting in smoother, more rounded spicy and numbing flavors.

"Damn, this aroma! Even if you just mixed it with some shredded radish, it would taste amazing, wouldn’t it?"

The combination of chicken oil, Seasoning Oil, and rapeseed oil, simmered together with three types of Sichuan peppercorns and two types of chili, created an aroma that reached an entirely new level of mouthwatering intensity.