The Fridge and Freezer: What We Keep in Our Kitchen
When it comes to cooking, many people are aware of what they need to keep in their fridge and freezer at home. However, not everyone is aware of what our team keeps in our kitchen when it comes to food storage. This video will show you some of the items that we keep on hand for future meals.
We start with our refrigerated items, which include a few different types of meat, vegetables, fruits, and dairy products. In our fridge, you can find beef, chicken, tofu, eggs, cheese, yogurt, milk, and various fruits and vegetables like carrots, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, spinach, and so on.
Next to our stove, we usually have a few oils that we use for cooking. We keep caiziyou rapeseed oil, fragrant peanut oil, salted lard, and a neutral frying oil in our kitchen. The neutral frying oil is kept in a pot next to the stove, which can be heated up quickly when needed.
When it comes to meat, we like to pass through the oil as little as possible. However, when cooking with deep-frying oil, we usually change our oil every 2-3 weeks. We know that this depends on what you're frying and how often you're frying with it. If you can smell the oil is time to swap it out, then it's probably been a few days too long.
We also like to slow down or even stop when we're stir-frying. This might seem counterintuitive, but we find that not having to rush through cooking helps us to get better results. When filming our videos, you often notice that we take our time with the ingredients before adding them to the wok. We let the aromatics cook slowly over low heat until they're soft and fragrant.
We also use a technique called "seasoning in layers." This means that when cooking, we add different seasonings at various stages of the dish. Sometimes, this might mean that we need to adjust the seasoning as we go along. However, by taking our time with the ingredients, we can ensure that the flavors are balanced and perfect.
Lastly, let's talk about ventilation. We know that many people have strong opinions about gas stoves versus induction cooktops, but when it comes to cooking, ventilation is key. In China, almost every apartment comes with a vent that vents outside of the building, which helps to remove pollutants from the air. However, this isn't always possible in our location.
So what can you do if you don't have access to proper ventilation? The answer is simple: open your windows and turn on a fan. When we're cooking, we like to use all of these techniques together to ensure that our kitchen stays safe and healthy.
Cooking Habits That We Don't Show in Our Videos
While many people tune into our channel for recipe videos, there are some cooking habits that we don't always show. One of the most important things that we want to share is the importance of ventilation in the kitchen. Whether you're using a gas stove or an induction cooktop, it's essential to make sure that your kitchen has proper airflow.
In addition to ventilation, we also want to talk about how we slow down our cooking process when needed. This might seem counterintuitive, but taking the time to let ingredients cook slowly over low heat can help to bring out the best flavors in a dish. We also like to add seasonings in layers, which allows us to adjust the flavors as we go along.
By sharing these cooking habits with you, we hope that you'll be able to learn from our experiences and take your own cooking to the next level. Whether you're a seasoned chef or just starting out in the kitchen, there's always something new to discover. So don't be afraid to experiment and try new things – and don't forget to share your favorite cooking habits with us in the comments section below!
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enRecipes are always a simplification. You need to make decisions on what to keep and what to leave out. For example, are you going to tell people to mince the garlic, or are you gonna call for ‘two cloves of garlic, minced’? Or are you going to explicitly tell what the correct motion to knead a dough is, or are you going to assume that people would know already?So today? We want to show you eight cooking habits that for one reason or another, we practically never show on camera.Habit number one – wok washing, and we conceptualize it as three levels. Level 1, no need to wash. For example, after blanching some stuff like vegetable or toasting some spices, the wok is basically clean and you can use it straight up, or give it a super quick rinse at best. Or you give the meat a quick passing through oil, you can either scoop or wipe out the sediment at the bottom and then use the wok straight up for the stir fry.Then level 2, a rough wash. During cooking, after finishing a stir fry, there may be some sauce stuck on the wok, we usually just give it a quick scrape with the wok chan and rinse it off, and use the wok for the next dish.Then level 3, the final clean that usually happens at the end of cooking. For example, we finished deep frying some chicken wings here, so what I like to do is wiping off most of the oil with some paper. Then start a gentle scrubbing with some detergent on the scouring pad, make sure I get to all the surface, then rinse it clean. After that, either wipe it dry with a clean towel or heat up to dry over the stove.As we’re on the subject of washing things, might as well move onto habit number two – washing dishes as you go so that the kitchen doesn’t turn into a disaster zone at the end. I think most of you will wash dishes as you cook, but over the years I’ve noticed some… less than ideal dish washing practices out there, so let’s share how we do it.This is something that my parents burned into my brain when I was a kid. First, give the thing a rinse so that no food is left on it. Then, get a scouring pad, add a bit of detergent, and scrub to get foamy. Then, thoroughly scrub every inch of the dish, making sure you get the edges and the bottom (especially the bottom for those people who never wash the bottom!). Set the dish aside to give the soap a chance to emulsify with oil, working through the dishes. Then, rinse.The dishes should be squeaky clean by now… but if you’re working with something that’s super oily, you might have to give it a hot water rinse first then repeat the washing process one more time.Now of course there’s a lot of ways to wash dishes, so let us know your personal system– but I did have a question for those out there that use the ‘hot basin’ method of dish washing, how do you wash as you go? It feels like it would be really difficult to have your sink occupied all throughout cooking? … I’m not saying it’s a bad system, just curious about the logistics.Continue on the topic of washing, habit number three. Vegetable washing. I feel like I have to talk about this because when I first met Chris, he did not know how to wash herbs and vegetables… and I feels like I heard this a lot from people who’re married to westerners. In some ways, I get it – in Thailand you can also get this kind of shrink-wrapped vegetables at 7-11, courtesy of everyone’s favorite mega corporation CP, which is conveniently owned by Thailand’s richest family.And these do look pretty clean… but (1) you��re not always going to get this sort of produce and (2) vegetables have pesticide. You need to wash them. If they join at the bottom like this, it can be a good idea to snip it off, loosen up the leaves, soak it for 5 to 10 minutes and the mud in between will come off. Then grab a small bundle, jiggle to wash, align them in the basket so that they don’t turn into a twirl of mess, water your plants with the water, (rinse off any mud in the basin), toss the vegetable back in and repeat one to two more times depends on how dirty the vegetable is. And the same method applies to herbs as well, just separate at the bottom, soak, jiggle, and repeat to get rid of mud, bugs, pesticide, and preservatives.Ok, last bit on washing, habit number four: hand washing. I think everyone watching this video washes their hands but we did want to talk about a question we hear a lot – which is meat handling. Whether it’s at our old daipaidong in Shunde or when we’re marinating meat in our own kitchen, often people will be grossed out when they see us handling meat with our hands… and I guess which’s why a lot of people on YouTube use those sort of cool bro kitchen gloves.First off, you’re handling meat, not polonium. NileRed needs to wear disposable lab gloves, Wang Gang doesn’t. After you handle the meat? I think it goes without saying that you should thoroughly wash your hands. And when you’re handling the meat, one small tip is to only do so with one of your two hands – clean hand, dirty hand – this way you can still have a touch of maneuverability before you wash your hands.Alright, habit number five… aromatics prep. I like to think that we’re pretty solid cooks… but we’re not professional chefs. What we do well is research and translation… and we do have a lot to share when it comes to recipes, cultural background… but, if you want to learn knife skills, you should watch professional chefs…Wang Gang’s got a whole series on it. But today we do think it may be interesting to share how we personally handle… garlic, ginger, and pork.So suppose you want to use garlic. For a stir fry, you usually have three options: crushed, sliced, or minced. And I’m not sure who needs to hear this, but… IF LAZY, CRUSH. Just cut off the root, and smash, remove the peel, done in ten seconds. If you want it a little finer, cut in half and smash it like this. From there if you want to mince it, give it a few chops in one direction, and a finer mince in the other.For ginger, there is, at least for us Cantonese, a ‘culturally-correct’ way to peel. You slice the amount you want, and then you scrape with the knife to peel it. But I’ve been lazy recently, so I usually just take a hunk, and slice off the peel. There’s a touch of wastage, but I think it’s ok especially when the ginger is getting a bit too old and the skin gets a bit too thick to just peel it off like that. And we don’t microplane or anything… again, if lazy, smash. If you want to mince, you get a smaller, ~1cm sections, smash those, chop in different directions, done.For pork, or really any meat, we do show cutting it on camera but we’ll have quick cuts because we’re not as fast as a chef and we respect your time. However, what we do not show is… this. I think a lot of people may know this already, but if you pop your meat in the freezer, it’s going to be a lot easier to slice thinly. This is some pork that’s straight from the fridge, while this one was in the freezer for 30 minutes, and this one was in it for 75.And talking about meat? Let’s talk frying oil. We do a lot of passing through oil and deep frying on this channel. If your kitchen’s not set up for that, I get it, this isn’t the video to convince you otherwise. But let’s show you what we do for our oil.Next to our stove, we usually have a few oils. We have caiziyou rapeseed oil, a fragrant peanut oil, some salted lard, and… this. This is our frying oil pot, we’ll usually keep about a liter of neutral oil in there – especially with a round bottomed wok, you don’t need too much oil usually… if you’re just passing through oil you’d only need to keep a couple cups on hand.After frying, we’ll let the oil cool down a touch, then strain it into the oil pot. If you have something that’s got a very… starchy coating, you’ll need to give it some time, let the starch settle to the bottom. You then strain the oil, leaving the oily sludge behind… if you’ve got a lot of coating you might have a little wastage, it is what it is, just tie it well in a plastic bag.As for how long the deep frying oil keeps? Well, it depends. Depends on what you’re frying, and how often you’re frying with it. For us, we usually change our oil every 2-3 weeks. You’ll know it’s time to change your oil when you can smell it’s time to swap your oil – trust your nose. What we’ll do is usually keep the original oil bottle around, pour it in, and then this can just be tossed.Next, I feel like something that’s not communicated a lot with stir frying is that… you can slow down or even stop when you’re stir frying. You don’t have to go full blast, full heat, quick motions all the time. Restaurants do, because time is money, efficiency is life, and they need to pump orders out quick.For us, like you might notice in our recipes, we like frying minced aromatics over a low flame at first so that it doesn’t scorch if we need to do something else, then up our flame to high.But something that you don’t know is that when we’re seasoning, the flame is either low or off. Because filming adds a lot of extra time between steps, or when cooking, you don’t always season perfectly at your first try… you add things in, taste it, think if it needs anything, add that… and you can’t do that on full blast.And lastly? Let’s talk ventilation. I know one of the bigger cultural arguments in the US right now is over gas stoves, and we are squarely on team NO2-inhaler. But it honestly doesn’t matter if it’s gas or induction, you should ventilate. In China, almost every apartment comes with a really strong vent that vents into a tube that goes outside of the building. Here in Thailand, the place we’re renting has a vent that goes outside the place, but it’s not completely up to our standards. So there’s also a low tech solution – which is… open the windows, turn on a fan. When we’re frying, we do all of the above.So right, these are some of the cooking habits that we don’t show in our videos. What’re some of your favorite cooking habits, share it and let us learn about it in the comments section! So right, no recipe this time, but as always, thank you for everyone that’s supporting us on Patreon, and of course, subscribe for more Chinese cooking videos.\n"
