I'm the Culinary God-Chapter 545 - 267 The Temptation of Fried Pork Chop, Irresistible to All Girls on a Diet! [Seeking Monthly Ticket]_2
"Boss, is this really meant to be eaten with Fried Pork Chop? Eating a pork chop coated in breadcrumbs with Soy Sauce feels odd..."
Che Zai had never had spicy soy sauce before and thought it was just a type of regular Soy Sauce.
Lin Xu said, "It’s a translation issue. To be precise, it should be called a sweet and sour spicy seasoning sauce. Honestly, I’ve had Japanese pork cutlet rice a few times, but I’ve never tried the Fried Pork Chop dipped in spicy soy sauce in Shanghai."
After some thought, he felt that a chef should always seek knowledge and truth, so he instructed, "Why don’t we just fry some pork chops and try them with this spicy soy sauce?"
Mere guessing wouldn’t allow him to grasp the sensation, so he decided to get hands-on. After all, pork chops weren’t exactly a rare ingredient.
Upon hearing this, Che Zai immediately responded, "Alright, Boss, I’ll start preparing now!"
The raw ingredients for Fried Pork Chop are simple: just raw pork chops, seasoning, and the ’pork chop trio’: flour, egg wash, and breadcrumbs. With these, you can make delicious, crispy Fried Pork Chops.
However, the specific seasonings and frying techniques vary from place to place. Even in Shanghai, each restaurant’s method and ingredients for Fried Pork Chop are secret recipes, not publicly disclosed.
For others, trying to fry pork chops hastily would be difficult. But Lin Xu had no such trouble. He directly exchanged points for the Superior Cooking Technique for Fried Pork Chop.
"He spent 500,000 points and acquired the Superior Fried Pork Chop Cooking Technique. This triggered a Skill Task: The host must attract more than six customers with the Fried Pork Chop within five hours and successfully change their dining plans. Otherwise, the Superior Fried Pork Chop Technique will be downgraded to an Excellent Level Technique."
Well, this is a Skill Task to change dining plans. This task should be easy to complete. During peak meal times, if I just carry a plate around downstairs, I should be able to attract quite a few customers who want to try it. Once they’ve had the Fried Pork Chop, they’ll definitely change their minds about eating other dishes. Then the task will be as good as done. Simple!
Lin Xu, like a master planner, quickly had the task figured out.
Before long, the meat for the Fried Pork Chop was delivered.
The so-called pork chop is actually the loin meat attached to the Pork ribs. If it includes the ribs, it becomes a tomahawk pork chop. Once prepared and posted online, it would undoubtedly attract a wave of likes. But to get a tomahawk pork chop, you’d have to notify Old Hu, the butcher, ahead of time; otherwise, it would be pre-sliced. For instance, the loin delivered today had the ribs and spinal bones already removed.
After taking out the meat, the first step was to trim off the surface fascia. Then, cutting crosswise at about three centimeters thick, he sliced the loin into thick pieces.
"Boss, can something this thick be fried all the way through? The pork chops I see on TV are all very thin."
Lin Xu sliced as he explained, "This meat can’t be fried directly. It has to be flattened first, and the tendons broken. That way, the Fried Pork Chop will come out fluffy and delicious—the more you eat, the better it tastes."
Once all the loin cuts were ready, Lin Xu swiftly punctured the meat slices with the tip of his knife. The purpose of this was to cut the inner fascia, enhancing the meat’s fluffiness. If he had a tendon-breaking tool, he would simply use it to pound the meat a few times. Unfortunately, since the restaurant lacked Western kitchen tools, Lin Xu chose to use the tip of his knife.
After puncturing the meat, he switched to a meat mallet to flatten it. The reason why fried chicken, pork, and beef steaks you buy outside often look bigger than your face is mostly because they’ve been pounded out. Using a meat mallet fluffs up the meat to the maximum extent. This not only improves the pork chop’s texture but also ensures it cooks through evenly during frying, preventing the outside from burning while the inside remains raw.
Flattening pork chops isn’t done haphazardly; it requires Technique. You have to pound from the center outward, ensuring each strike of the mallet overlaps slightly with the previous one to maximize the meat’s fluffiness. After pounding, an originally three-centimeter-thick pork chop would be reduced to half its thickness, while its surface area could increase two to three times. This is because the meat has been loosened, so the area of the meat slice increases substantially.
"Damn, no wonder the chicken steaks on the street are so big! So they’re all pounded out," Che Zai remarked.
Wei Qian compared the flattened pork chop with an untouched one and found not only had the size increased, but the shape had also changed. Looking curiously at Lin Xu, he asked, "If you pound it in a specific way, can you make a heart-shaped pork chop?"
Lin Xu paused at this comment, thinking how Wei Qian always had such a unique perspective. Yet, after some thought, he realized these pork chops could indeed be pounded into heart shapes, since the meat is malleable.
He said with a laugh, "Too bad my Yueyue is on a diet recently, or I’d really want to research the pounding Technique... What made you think of that, Wei Qian? Planning to fry a heart-shaped Fried Pork Chop for your sweetheart?"
Wei Qian, holding the tea prepared by the kitchen staff, replied, "Sweetheart my ass. Without a car or house in Beijing, love is just a luxury. As for my hometown, ever since I stopped slaughtering pigs, the girl my dad matched me with when I was a kid doesn’t acknowledge that relationship anymore. Around the Spring Festival, I heard she got engaged to a guy who sells animal feed..."
Curious, Lin Xu asked, "She didn’t go for a pig butcher but chose someone who sells animal feed? What business is her family in?"
"They run a pig farm!" 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶
Tsk, if the downstream connection didn’t work out, they went for the upstream one. They seem quite desperate to form a powerful alliance.
