And you thought I had abandoned Chinese cookery, didn’t you?

Ha! Nothing of the sort. Just because I have started doing research on recipes from along the Silk Road for work, doesn’t mean I am going to permanently turn my back on my greatest culinary love. No–I just have to multi-task!

Morganna, who has been home from school because she was trying to pass kidney stones, (she’s fine now and is well enough to go back to school tomorrow) gave me the puppy-dog eyes and asked in a sweet, pleading tone of voice for “something stir-fried for dinner.”

How can I refuse my long-suffering child anything when asked so plaintively?

So, I asked her what, and she proposed beef, and so my imagination went from there.

I had no gai lan, so that wasn’t an option. Zak doesn’t care much for broccoli, so that was out.

Then, I thought back to Chinese dishes I haven’t eaten in a while, and my mind instantly settled on Sichuan dry fried beef.

I used to order it years and years ago at China Garden, before I even worked there. Consisting of thin strips or shreds of beef cooked to a fascinating chewy texture that was filled with strong meaty flavor in a tangy brown sauce with lots of chilies, the dish had always been a favorite of mine. It was like e ating juicy beef jerky, if you can wrap that concept around your head. It was chewy, but not dried out, and it had a very concentrated beefy flavor that was very compelling–almost like it was the essence of beef packed into little thin meat shreds. I always wondered how he got the beef to be so wonderful, and for years, he wouldn’t tell me.

Finally, he told me, and even when I found out that Huy got that interesting texture by essentially deep-frying the beef, I still loved it He’d deep fry the beef, then toss it into a wok with shreds of celery, carrots and scallions, and slivers of ginger, before building the sauce from Sichuan chili bean sauce, Shao Hsing wine and a smidge of salt.

It wasn’t until years later that I learned that the deep frying of the beef was done to emulate the traditional Sichuan cooking method of dry frying where a food item is cooked for a long time with a moderate amount of oil in a very hot wok. This process cooks most of the water out of the beef, and gives it not only the characteristic chewy quality, but also concentrates the flavor of the meat. Restaurants don’t do this because it is simply faster and more expedient to deep fry uncoated, unbattered food for a few minutes, then toss it in a wok with some seasonings than it is to stand over a wok and tend it for long, slow cooking.

I think that the texture and flavor of truly dry fried foods are superior, plus they don’t have as much excess oil on them. They are lighter and much better tasting, and certainly healthier than the dishes you get in most Chinese restaurants.

In a post written a while back, I have already covered the traditional dish of dry fried string beans (and a vegan version)–in this post, I will show you not only how to use the same method to cook beef–and then, as you see from my recipe, I combined the two ingredients to make a great contrast in flavors and textures.

The first step to a successful foray into dry-frying beef is to choose a proper cut of beef. Flank steak, trimmed of all excess fat is quite good for the purpose, as is the top round that I used. You want a cut of beef that can withstand this type of cooking, which is on high heat for a relatively long amount of time, without turning into shoe leather.

The second step to making your dry fried beef delicious is learning how to cut it up properly into even, thin shreds of meat.

As you can see, I took my top loin, which had been cut and sold as “London Broil,” and cut the slab of meat along the grain diagonally into 1/4″ thick slices. In order to get even slices, I always leave my meat partially frozen and use my sharpest knife, honed with the steel just before setting down to work.

Then, I stacked two slices together, and turning my knife on the opposite diagonal, though not at as an acute angle as before, and cut thin strips out of the stacked slices across the grain. If I cut everything completely with the grain, the long muscle fibers would all contract evenly when they cooked, causing the meat to stiffen and toughen up. If I cut across the grain, the muscle fibers are interrupted, and thus cannot toughen as easily.

Cutting shreds like this takes a little bit of practice, but once it is learned, it is a simple way to get evenly shaped and sized pieces appropriate for stir frying or dry frying.

Then, after the meat is cut, it is not marinated, which goes against most conventional wisdom when it comes to cooking meat in a wok. However, the point of dry frying is to remove the water from the food, so if that is the goal, why put extra liquid into it?

Then, after all the other ingredients are prepared and ready, the wok is preheated until it smokes and about a third of a cup of peanut or canola oil is added to it. When it is very hot, the beef shreds are added, and cooked, stirring constantly.

What will happen quite soon is that the liquid in the wok will increase and become cloudy, and then great gouts of steam will billow forth from the wok, right into your face. Persevere and keep stirring. What is happening, as you can see in the photo, is that the water is being forced out of the tissues of the meat. It clouds the oil by creating a temporary emulsion or mixture of water and oil, and as it boils out, it evaporates into steam. Keep stirring, and cooking and stirring. If you have a very high gas flame under your wok, tiny droplets of oil may splatter with the steam and be ignited–be prepared for that and don’t get burned! (Unfortunately, since I was cooking and taking photos at the same time, every time there were flames, I couldn’t snap a photo fast enough!)

Keep stirring until the liquid begins to clear again. At this point, the meat will, instead of gently burbling and hissing with steam, begin to actually sizzle as it begins to be cooked completely by contact with the hot oil and wok, and not by being boiled in its own juices. The liquid clears because the water has boiled away, leaving only the oil, and tiny particulate matter from the meat which browns in the oil, flavoring it deeply of beef.

At this point the formerly grey and unappealing beef will undergo a transformation, as it becomes browned and chewy.

Once the meat is chewy and somewhat crispy, I removed it from the beefy oil, and drained it on paper towels. Then, I threw in the string beans, and cooked them in the same manner until they were done.

Then, I put the meat back into the wok with the now very deeply browned and fragrant oil, and added chile bean paste, Shao Hsing wine, soy sauce and salt, along with aromatics (ginger, scallion, garlic and fresh chilies) and two other vegetables–shredded carrots and sweet red pepper. I finished it by sprinkling it all with roasted and ground Sichuan peppercorns, just before giving the contents of the wok a few more turns and then scraping it out on a platter.

It was delicious. The beef was just as chewy and flavorful as I could want, without being drowned in oil, and the string beans were quite velvety with a deep flavor from their long cooking in the beef-flavored oil. The other vegetables were crisp from just a quick stir fry in the wok, and the sauce was delightful–savory and spicy, with the aromas of ginger, garlic and scallion throughout and the tingle of Sichuan peppercorns like a biting grace note at the end.

I must admit that this is a rather demanding recipe–standing for twenty minutes over a hot wok, stirring beef and then green beans over hot oil that bursts into flame now and again is not for the faint-hearted or impatient cook. As such, I would categorize this as a recipe to be made only for special occasions.

But for those special meals, this dish is sure to impress guests who will wonder how it was you got the beef and string beans to have such unusual textures, and such deep flavors.

You can tell them, or let it be your secret.

Sichuan Dry Fried Beef

Serve immediately with plenty of steamed rice–this dish is intensely fiery and flavorful–and well worth the trouble of cooking it.

Chow fun is a transliteration from the Cantonese, which means “stir-fried rice noodles;” the Mandarin transliteration would be “chao fen.” It does not have anything to do with the English slang word, “chow,’ meaning “food” and “fun”, meaning “fun.” No, it does not mean “food that is fun,” though I do think it is fun to eat and now I am pretty sure it is fun to cook, too.

The Cantonese name is the one by which this dish is most commonly known in American Chinese restaurants, however, in large part because the first waves of Chinese immigrants to the shores of the United States came from Guangdong Province, formerly known as Canton. Thus, much of what many Americans think of as “Chinese” food is Cantonese food that has been adapted to Western tastes and available ingredients; the deep influence of Cantonese cuisine upon our perceptions of the myriad cuisines that make up Chinese food in the US is hard to overstate.

Chow fun is one of the dishes that is often found on Chinese restaurant menus here in the US, and it is properly made with soft, fresh rice noodles cut into 1/2 to 3/4 inch widths. These noodles, known in Cantonese as “ho fun” or “hor fun,” and in Mandarin as “shahe fen” or “he fen”, are soft, chewy and have a special stretchy texture which is distinctive and very interesting on the tongue. Most restaurants use a great deal of oil in cooking these noodles, because in part, they require a good bit of lubrication to keep them from sticking to a hot wok. They can be served either “dry” where they are cooked with a meat and vegetables and no sauce to speak of, or “sauced.” where the noodles, meat and vegetables are moistened with a savory sauce.

I prefer the sauced version myself, as I have found that the unsauced noodles to be a bit too greasy feeling for my taste, but there are others who swear that the dry versions are best.

A classic Cantonese teahouse dish is chow fun made with beef, mushrooms and bean sprouts, stir fried in a light sauce. It goes very well with pu er tea; a fermented, aged tea that has an earthy, deep aroma and flavor that goes very well with rich foods. It is said to help the digestion and it is believed to help lower cholesterol, though I have not seen any peer reviewed articles on that particular claim in any medical journals, so don’t take my words as gospel truth.

My very favorite version of it is the decidedly untraditional but delicious one at Noodles Corner in Columbia, Maryland, with beef, fermented black beans and broccoli. It is delicious, filled with the bittersweet savor of the broccoli and the strong flavor of the beef, tied together with the funky and fantastic aroma of the fermented black beans.

I have to admit to making my version of chow fun with half inch wide dried rice noodles; fresh rice noodles of the type used to make real chow fun are nearly impossible to come by in my section of Ohio. I was concerned about that, thinking that I wouldn’t be able to make a good chow fun without the proper fresh noodles, but none other but cooking teacher and cookbook author Florence Lin said that she preferred dried rice noodles to fresh because they were more consistent and versatile to work with. She gave a chow fun recipe in her seminal work, made with rehydrated rice noodles. Taking my cue from her experience and wisdom, I decided that just because I couldn’t get proper ho fun, didn’t mean I couldn’t have fun with making my own chow fun at home.

I decided to eschew the traditional mushrooms and bean sprouts since Zak doesn’t care for either of them and replace them with gai lan and sweet red pepper. This would approximate the flavor and color palette of my favorite chow fun at Noodles Corner while using my favorite Asian vegetable of all time–gai lan is the best green in the world, as far as I am concerned. I kept the fermented black beans in the dish, and added onions, garlic, ginger, a single fresh chili from my Kung Pao chili pepper plant, and a good amount of ground bean sauce to the aromatics in the stir fry. These combined to make the noodles rich with umami scent and flavor, with tender beef, crunchy gai lan stalks and pepper slices, and velvety gai lan letaves.

Though the noodles lacked the slightly stretchy, chewy quality that fresh ho fun have, they were still wonderful, soft and slippery, soothing and yet still toothsome ribbons that carried the other flavors beautifully, contrasting with all the other textures like a symphony in the mouth.

When the dish was done, I was pleased to discover that I could use much less oil than traditionally called for in the cooking of the fresh noodles, which lightened the finished flavor considerably. Al though my first impulse was to call these noodles “faux chow fun,” I changed my mind and called them “fun chow fun” because I liked playing with the homophones which have different meanings but still point to a singularly good kitchen experience.

Lighter it may have been, but Zak and I discovered that this version of beef chow fun still went hand-in-hand with pu er tea. The dark forest flavor and scent of the tea cut through the vivid flavors of the noodles, cleansing the palate and allow us to savor each bite as if it were our first.

Fun Beef Chow Fun

This makes enough for 2-4 people, depending on appetite and whether or not you are serving other dishes with this as a meal. With this as a one dish meal, Zak and I ate comfortably, and there was enough left over for Morganna to take to school for lunch the next day. It is good at room temperature, or reheated in the microwave.

Zak and I were sitting with Kat, all of us with a bowl of roast pork noodle soup in front of us (well, Kat had noodles with minced up bok choy, finely minced roast pork and a bare dribble of soup in her bowl) and we were eating happily.

Zak looked up thoughtfully from his bowl and said tentatively, “You know, this is awesome–but there is something not perfect about the broth. It is missing something.”

Now, he wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. The broth was excellent, very flavorful, meaty and rich, with great body and aroma. It was a dark golden color from the soy sauce and Shao Hsing wine and the drizzle of toasted sesame oil gave it just the perfect tinge of nutty smokiness.

But still, there was something missing.

It wasn’t sugar–there was just enough in it to enhance the pork and bok choy flavors without making it taste like “candy soup,” which has a definitely unappetizing sound to it. It wasn’t lack of white pepper, nor was it that the stock was too weak–the main flavor was meat.

Zak and I talked about it while we each offered Kat spoonsful of broth from our own bowls to slurp. He said, quite clearly as he took another sip, “It has something to do with the meat flavor–it is almost right, but not quite.”

I finally stood up and sighed. “I bet I know exactly what it is,” I stated, as I strode purposefully to the kitchen, opening the spice cabinet. I plucked out a jar I have had for ever, but which I have never opened.

I carried it back to Zak and cracked it open. Over my bowl of broth, now swept clean of noodles, pork and greens, I sprinkled a few grains of sparkling crystalline white powder.

“What’s that?” Zak asked.

“MSG,” I said. I handed him the jar, and said, “I kind of wondered when I was cooking this if I shouldn’t add some, but it goes against my nature to do it. I thought about using Chinese black mushrooms or kelp to get enough glutamates in the broth, but they both have their own flavors which come along for the ride, which would clash with this dish.”

He sprinkled a few grains into his bowl, stirred it and took a sip. The umami flavor which had been missing–that meatiness, that savory component–it had arrived.

His eyes lit up. “It is almost like a whole new broth. You are right. It’s perfect.”

I tasted mine. He was right. The broth was taken to another level: it was meaty and savory and wonderful, with all of the natural flavors enhanced perfectly. That was the not-so-secret secret ingredient to make my soup taste just like the ones from our favorite noodle shops. A little tiny sprinkle of MSG. It is amazing how little was needed to add that last bit of oomph.ZZ

So, what do I suggest you do if you want to recreate this recipe?

Well, if you are opposed to MSG as an ingredient, or are sensitive to its effects, I suggest you just do without. In truth, the soup tasted plenty wonderful without it, such that Zak kept repeating as he ate his first bowl of it, “I love you, I love you. Oh, I love you.”

So, the soup was fine, really.

But, if you want it to taste just like you remember from some noodle shop somewhere, wait until you have poured the hot soup over the noodles, pork and greens in a bowl. Then, sprinkle a few grains of MSG, known in Japanese as Aji-no-moto, over the broth and give it a stir with a chopstick. I am of the opinion that it is easier for you to season it by the serving than by the potful–it would be too easy to end up using too much MSG if you try to season several quarts of soup broth at a time.

Remember, you want to use as little MSG as possible if you use it at all. If you overuse it, instead of enhancing the flavor of your food, it will flatten it out and make it one dimensional. And you might end up unintentionally giving your guests a headache.

And if you don’t want to use it–that is fine, too. Your soup will still be good without it.

For thoughts on MSG and health, check out my earlier posts:Let’s Talk About MSG and More on MSG and Glutamates

In many cultures around the world, a steaming bowl of noodle soup is the next best thing to a mother’s embrace. Noodle soup can be spicy or mild, filled with vegetables, or meat, or seafood or tofu, or made of just broth and noodles–it can be simple and stark, or elaborate and dressed to the nines with garnishes. Whatever form it takes, noodle soup is nothing less than comfort in a bowl for countless people across the world.

One of my favorite versions is the Chinese noodle shop standby, roast pork noodle soup. Made with thin fresh or dried wheat and egg noodles and a chicken and pork broth simply seasoned with a bit of salt, sugar, soy sauce, and toasted sesame oil, with thin slices of char siu, Cantonese roast pork, and blanched greens of some sort, this soup is an amazing restorative. If I feel under the weather it perks me up, if I am down, it makes me smile, if I have a headache, it clears my sinuses (especially if I add chile garlic sauce or chili oil at the table!) and if I am nauseous, it settles my stomach.

It does the same for Zak who loves the soup even more than I do. Something about the sweet barbecued pork combined with the savory broth, firm, springy noodles and sweet, lightly crisp greens just sings to him, and he tells me he would eat this dish every day if he could.

If we lived nearer to a noodle shop, I reckon he would, but since I have to make it from scratch, we eat it now and again, and treasure it all the more.

In truth, once the soup stock is made and the pork is roasted, the soup is simplicity itself to put together. All you need to do is pick out a nice green to be blanched to go in the soup, and cook some noodles.

My favorite greens for this soup are choy sum and baby Shanghai bok choy. Shanghai baby bok choy are the ones that have pale jade green stems and dark green leaves, and are only about two and a half inches tall; regular baby bok choy has white stems and deep, almost pine green leaves. I think that the Shanghai variety has more flavor and is slightly sweeter.

This time around, I used baby bok choy; they were extremely fresh and are very sweet this time of year and are so easy to prepare. Just cut off the bottoms of the tiny cabbage cousins, where the leaves all come together. Rinse them well under cold water and bring a big pot of salted water to a brisk boil. Dump the bok choy in, and stir to get them covered with the water. As soon as they wilt a bit–which will take all of a few seconds, pour out the leaves and water into a colander in the sink and rinse them thoroughly with very cold water to instantly stop the cooking. The result should be leaves that are barely cooked and softened with lightly wilted stems which have darkened slightly. The stems should still have a nice tender crunch to them.

After you deal with the greens, you need to pick out your noodles. My favorite for this soup are fresh thin wonton noodles from Twin Marquis. They are available in the refrigerated sections of many Asian markets, and they are the closest to the very thin, flavorful, pliant yet springy egg noodles used in Chinese restaurants and noodle shops. I neglected to photograph the package before I tore it open to cook the noodles, but there is a photograph of these noodles as you will see them in the stores on the Twin Marquis website–just look at the noodles on the extreme right in a styrofoam tray wrapped in plastic wrap.

If you use these noodles, be very careful–when the cooking instructions say that they cook in 60 seconds, they are not kidding. Have a big pot of water boiling, then take each of the four bundles out of the package and carefully detangling the noodles with your fingers, sprinkle them over the boiling water into the pot. Work quickly, stirring between bundles, until they are all in the pot, then start timing. I take them out at fifty seconds, personally, just to be certain.

I scoop them out with a skimmer and tongs, and instead of putting them into a colander, I set them in a very large metal bowl. (This is because they are so fine, they would slither right through the holes in most colanders!) When they are all out of the water, i rush them to the sink, and rinse them in very cold water, filling the bowl up and swishing them around with my hands to make sure they are all separate and not sticky with starch. Once they are cold, I drain out the water, and toss the cold noodles with about a teaspoon of sesame oil to keep them from sticking to each other. (This entire process works with many kinds of Chinese wheat noodles and is outlined here. In addition to rinsing the starch from the outside of the noodles, soaking them briefly in cold water brings a great chewiness and resilience to the noodles without making them tough or gummy.

Once you have the soup stock flavored and boiling, and the pork sliced, the greens prepared and the noodles cooked, you are ready to put everything together. But, before you do that, you might want to add one more little fillip, one little grace note that I add to my own version of Roast Pork Noodle Soup. I cut a single peeled fresh garlic clove and a similar sized piece of peeled fresh ginger into tiny julienne–pieces as wide as a blade of grass–to be sprinkled on top of the noodles. These tiny aromatic bits cook instantly as soon as the boiling hot soup stock hits them and give just another layer of nuanced flavor. If you don’t mind the cutting, give my idea a shot and see what you think.

After this–it is all a matter of assembly. Pre-warm the bowls by running hot water into them and then pouring it out. Set them on the counter next to your soup pot. Layer a serving of noodles (the Twin Marquis twelve-ounce package of thin wonton noodles is enough to feed four adults and a baby) into the bowl, and then top with a tiny sprinkle of the slivers of garlic and ginger, if you are using them. Arrange thin slices of pork over the noodles artfully, and drape the blanched greens along the interior edges of the bowl. Drizzle a scant 1/8 teaspoon of toasted sesame oil over the noodles, and then carefully ladle the boiling stock into the bowls–using enough to cover the noodles, pork and greens fully, without completely drowning everything in a tide of soupy goodness.

That is it. The only thing left is to season your individual bowl to taste with garlic-chili sauce or chili oil, and then slurp and enjoy.

Roast Pork Noodle Soup

Serve with chili garlic sauce and chili oil so each diner can add as much or little as they desire.

Normal people have cookouts on Labor Day weekend. They gather around the grill with their buddies for a day of beer, beach volleyball, and burgers.

At least, that is what most folks did when I was growing up.

I have long since given up on pretending to be normal; everyone who knows me terms me what was politely called “different” in my hometown of Charleston West Virginia. In the UK, they have a more melodious term for it which I prefer: eccentric.

So, what do eccentrics like me do on Labor Day?

We kick back for a relaxing day of making Cantonese Roast Pork Noodle Soup.

Why bother to make a noodle shop classic on a holiday?

Because it may well be a noodle shop classic, but as there are no classic noodle shops here in Athens, Ohio, eccentrics like myself take up the challenge to make it at home.

And really, it isn’t such a bother as all that. It just requires that you make a couple of elements of the recipe in advance: roast pork, and proper Chinese stock, in order to make the soup taste right.

I have already taught you how to make roast pork, also known as char siu, so this post is going to cover the basics of making Chinese style chicken and pork stock in your very own kitchen.

Really traditional Chinese chicken and pork stock is essential to making excellent Chinese noodle soups. With hot and sour soup, which has so many other flavoring elements, a plain chicken broth or stock can be used, but noodle soups rely less on seasonings and more on traditional meat stocks for flavor. I have found over the years that taking the time to just go ahead and make the proper Chinese stock makes more sense in the long run, than it does to start with a substandard packaged broth.

Besides, it is easy to make lots of stock at once and then freeze the excess for use in soups and other recipes later. So long as you have freezer space, this is a good plan–and frankly, after tasting good homemade stock, lots of folks will -make- freezer space for it.

For those of you who have read my post on making classic French style chicken stock entitled, “Making Stock: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” you have a good working knowledge of how to make basic stocks. If you haven’t read it, or have never made stocks before, please follow the link and read it; I explain very carefully the science behind making stocks, and all of the whytos and wherefores about working with bones and animal parts with which one may not be familiar.

The Chinese method is very similar to the French method, but it is much more usual for there to be a mixture of meats and bones in the basic stocks of the Chinese kitchen. Usually the mixture includes parts of chicken and of pig; chicken and pork are the basic meats of most of China, so they are what is used on a daily basis in the kitchen. Chinese Muslims will exchange the pork for lamb or beef, while strictly vegetarian Buddhists will eschew meat stocks all together and will make vegetable, mushroom and seaweed based broths.

The amounts of pork bones and meat to chicken bones and meat are roughly 1:2; the types of pork and chicken bones and bits you use are up to you. I like to use pork neck bones and country ribs with thick slabs of meat on them. I also learned the trick of using a slice of ham with a bit of bone in it from reading Florence Lin’s excellent books on Chinese cookery and I wholeheartedly agree with her; the slight smoky flavor the ham imparts to the stock is perfect. The chicken I use tends to be whole chickens (giblets removed–organ meats make stocks somewhat bitter) and chicken feet. I like the flavor and body that chicken feet give to the stock, though backs and necks are good, too.

Whatever you use, be sure and rinse the meats and bones thoroughly with cold water and trim away excess fat, as well as any obvious bloody spots.

Blanching the Bones and Meat

One other major difference in the Chinese method of stock making and the French method is that the bones and meat are always blanched before they are made into stock. This means that you put all of your bones and meat into the pot, cover them with cold water and bring them to a slow simmer, then allow them to boil for about ten minutes. At this time, a great amount of blood, fat, and other impurities (connective tissues, proteins and the like) will be pulled out of the bones and flesh and will result in a large amount of scum rising to the surface of the pot. Skim the scum as you do in French stock making, and then, after fifteen minutes, turn the heat off of the pot, remove it from the stove and pull out the bones and meat. Rinse all of them under cold water, scrubbing them with your hands well to remove the flecks and bits of ick that have stuck to them.

I know for a fact you won’t want to do this, and since the French chefs don’t do it, I can sense folks thinking, “Why should I?”

There is a very good reason for it, and it is this: simply skimming the scum from the top of the stock as it simmers never gets all the floating particulate matter out of the stock. The French get past this by either refrigerating the stock over night and skimming off the rest of the particulate matter, which floats to the top and adheres to the fat layer. Since the French remove most of the fat from the stock and tend not to use it for anything else (this is generally true, but not in every case), this works well. However, Chinese cooks and chefs leave some of the fat intact, and when they skim the rest, they tend to save it for use later. (There is another French method for clarifying stock that is an utter pain in the rear end to do: it involves using ground veal, egg whites and egg shells to make a floating “raft” which draws the impurities to the top of the stock, where it all floats together and becomes trapped in a big glom on the top. Then, you remove the raft, and voila–clear stock. What a pain!)

So, rather than make rafts or waste fat, the Chinese get rid of the nasties before they make their stock, and the result is a much clearer product with what turns out to be less work in the end. It just doesn’t seem that way when you are doing it the first time or two.

After you have rinsed all of your bones, bits and meat, drain out the rest of the water. You will notice a big layer of scummy, icky mess all over the inside of your stock pot. Scrub it clean! You don’t want that in your stock!

Then, after you have rinsed the bones, bits and meat, -and- scrubbed your pot clean, put everything back, along with your vegetables: I use scallions and fresh ginger, which is traditional, along with a few carrots, which is not traditional, but which gives a nice subtle sweetness and color to the stock. Put the pot on the fire, bring it to a simmer, and let it cook at a bare shimmering simmer for about six hours. Eight is better. Nine is best.

Skim the tiny bits of scum that float to the top of the pot and get rid of them. You won’t have to do this very much–most of that stuff was blanched away in the first step.

After six to nine hours of simmering, it is time to pull the bones, bits and meat out, and then pour the stock through several layers of cheesecloth. I always save the meat bits for later uses–even if it is just as a treat for the kitties–and then I wash the stockpot again, then put the stock back into it and cool it off before refrigerating it overnight.

Skimming the Fat

After the stock has been chilled overnight, you will find that the fat has congealed on the top in a velvety pale yellow layer. You will also find that the stock has most likely congealed into a mass of pale translucent gelatin. That is good! That means you made a great stock filled with body and vitality that any Chinese chef would be proud of. The pale color is fine; the color of Chinese soup stocks comes from the soy sauce that is added later; for basic stocks, only a small amount of soy is added and only after it has cooked all the way. The solidified cold stock occurs because of the natural gelatin that is present in bones and connective tissue, and has been extracted by the cooking process. Gelatin gives stock a special body and feel that is delicious on the tongue, and gives a velvety feel to soups and sauces made with it.

Skim most of the fat off the top of the stock; when I am dealing with a solid gelatin layer beneath the fat, I find that it is easiest to simply “slice” the fat off with a wok spatula.Take almost all of the fat off and don’t worry if you get some bits of the gelatin with it. Save the fat and stock chunks you skim off; for one thing, you may want to add a tiny bit more fat to your stock after you have reheated and seasoned it to give it further richness. For another thing, you can stick it in the freezer, and if you are using commercial chicken broth for a Chinese recipe and want to give it a bit more flavor and oomph, you can add a bit of the stock and fat to it.

Finishing the Stock

Once most of the fat is off the surface of the stock, reheat it on medium heat, stirring it as the gelatin and fat melt into a pale liquid. At this point, season it with some thin or light soy sauce and some Shao Hsing wine, and bring it to a simmer What you will find is that you have a lovely, fragrant amber stock filled with the essence of both chicken and pork, which is barely salty and has the depth of Shao Hsing Wine. Golden droplets of fat bead up on the top in ephemeral bubbles of iridescence, and this stock is now ready to be used as a basis for soups, braised dishes, sauces or any other use in the Chinese kitchen.

Making Soup from the Stock

Making a basic, neutral-flavored soup stock from the plain chicken and pork stock is simple: After bringing it to a second simmer and seasoning it, allow it to reduce by about 1/4. This will strengthen the flavors of the stock a bit and give it a better, more luxurious mouthfeel. At this point, season it to taste with light soy sauce, salt and a tiny bit of sugar. This is now a basic soup stock that is ready to be simmered with whatever flavorings are needed for a particular soup, or to be used as is.

Chinese Style Pork and Chicken Stock

If you want, follow the instructions above to make the stock into a basic soup stock, or package and freeze it as is for use in soups, sauces and braised dishes later.