I do that. But I never seem to get the sauce quite right. What I cook is good, but usually comes out too salty. Any tips?
Errata: In my previous post I meant to type 'We made a dent in it, not ‘Me made a dent in it’.
Pork chops and potatoes au gratin. Salad with homemade parm-peppercorn dressing.
And cheesecake for dessert.
I’ve been having the same problem. Planning on trying:
A little less soy sauce? Some other liquid. Dry white wine? Hoisin sauce thinned out?
I’m assuming you’re probably using too much soy sauce or something like that for the amount of protein and vegetables you’re using. The only bits of salt in my dish are from the soy sauce and the oyster sauce (I use unsalted chicken broth that I usually have around from making my dog boiled chicken thighs and carrots for food), so I have no issue salt-wise there.
You can always use reduced sodium soy sauce, too. But there’s only so many vectors for the salt, so it’s a matter of figuring out which one it is in your case. The type of Chinese I was going for here was basically along the lines of saucy, relatively lightly flavored, take-out Chinese dishes like chop suey or kow (don’t know how widespread kow is, but here in Chicago, it seems all the takeout places have beef kow, chicken kow, shrimp kow, etc., which is a vegetable heavy, chicken broth/stock & cornstarch thickened stir fry with a light hand of soy sauce, maybe one tablespoon in a half cup of broth.) So it wasn’t particularly difficult to keep salt levels low. I think I ended up having to adjust the salt levels at the end with a little more soy sauce.
Oh, and one tip I discovered for getting that Chinese-takeout-style-textured beef. Yes, there’s a method called “velveting” that works well, but can be a little fussy, requiring you to twice fry or boil and fry your meat, depending on whether you’re doing oil velveting or water velveting. I’m not talking about that.
First, you buy thin sliced beef (I got something called “sandwich steak” at $3.99/lb last night. It may have been top round from the looks of it.) Cut into strips against the grain. Then mix up about 1/4 - 1/2 tsp of baking soda with a quarter cup of water (for about 1-2 pounds of beef), and coat the meat thoroughly with it in a bowl. Wait about 15-30 minutes. The alkalinity makes the proteins at the surface of the meat more difficult to bond, or something like that, so the beef comes out more tender.
After the soak, rinse very well. Like I’ll rinse it through four or five changes of water to make sure I get all the baking soda solution off. Then continue your recipe as usual. (If you got a marinade step, go right on ahead with that.) My results is that I get that tender, Chinese take-away beef I’m so used to. I’ve tried before with tenderizer, but just turned the meat to mush. (Maybe I should have kept experimenting with shorter tenderizing times, but I never bothered.)
It works surprisingly well. I can’t remember where I first came across this tip, but I’m pretty sure it was while looking up some Chinese take-out recipes many years ago, but it’s also been shared in Cooks Illustrated and things of that nature.
After yesterday’s Chinese pig-out (leftovers for tomorrow) today is all about vinegar and olive oil grazing.The pantry and fridge were getting cluttered with half-empty jars of pickles, olives, etc. and the pantry was over-run with unopened jars of tapenade, chutney, etc. So we just set everything out, grilled up some French bread and let it go. The day will be spent grazing as our whims desire. Cream cheese stuffed pepperoncini, marinated mushrooms, bits of cheese and sausage left over from previous dinners, gardinera, all washed down with Bloody Marys and later on decent beer.
Today will be leftover adovada made into burritos.
We had planned steak, broccoli/prosciutto salad with balsamic dressing, and broiled tomatoes, but we both developed sinus issues and lay around feeling like crap all day. We finally dragged ourselves to the store around 7:30 last night, so all we had time for was ham steak, polenta, and asparagus. Still pretty darn good.
How did you prepare/serve the polenta?
I buy it prepared in a tube, then I just slice it up and fry it. My own attempts at making it from scratch have not gone well.
Yeah, I get it in a tube too. Cheap and easy. I like to slice it up and put it in a baking dish with spaghetti sauce, Italian sausage slices, and cheese.
French toast tonight. I’d really like sausage, too, I have a craving and I don’t eat it very often. Anyway, I don’t have any and it’s raining, I don’t feel like going to the store. Maybe next time.
Tonight I’m planning artichokes and hollandaise sauce.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any classic polished hubcaps for the sauce.
And thus was tonight’s dinner at Casa Silenus born.
BTW, that joke almost got me kicked off a Vegas message board. Something about “egregious abuse of the English language” or some such rot. 
Grilled sea bass - lightly tossed in soy-honey-garlic sauce - on a bed of couscous with vegetables (broccoli, carrots, celery) and roasted chestnuts. I really should go to the store to buy some canned pineapple, but I probably won’t.
I have a passion for traditional Southern cooking, not only the fancy metrosexual dishes of the grand restaurants of New Orleans and Charleston and Savannah, but for the real gutbucket “soul” and “white trash” cuisine. Fried baloney scrambled into eggs; mac and cheese baked with browned ground beef and onions, chicken-fried anything, including chicken, etc. Aside from many cookbooks, my go-to is the “South Your Mouth” website and blog, which has incited many fattening meals.
http://www.southyourmouth.com/. (Be curious to see if actual southern people respect her ideas and recipes. Many of her dishes don’t seem authentic to me, but Lordy does that woman love to eat)
Tonight I’m browning a 1/2 lb hamburger patty in a HOT HOT 8 inch skillet with a little butter for two minutes on a side, enough to give it a brown tasty crust but leave it raw in the center. In the resulting grease, cook a half onion, sliced thin until soft and brown. Stir in a tablsp of flour and let it go a bit brown. Add one cup of beef stock. Keep on a low simmer, putting the meat back in towards the end of cooking to finish it. Oh, yeah…I seasoned the meat and onion both with Slap Ya Mama Cajun seasoning.
I was going to mash a potato with this, but a package of locally-made potato-onion pierogi called to me like the Sirens of old. So I’ll simmer a half dozen until hot through and eat ‘em with the beef and under the onion gravy. And a green salad. And a cheap Spanish Rioja.
That sounds:
a. Yummy
b. Like it would send my wife screaming into the woods
Tonight was French toast and thick-cut Applewood-smoked bacon with fresh blueberries on the side. I usually use challah to make French toast, but didn’t feel like driving over to the co-op to get it, so I used some Pepperidge Farm apple/cinnamon swirl bread I found at the grocery store down the street. Not bad, though I need to open the package and let the bread dry out a titch beforehand. Bread that’s slightly dry makes better French toast, imo.
Friday will definitely be Chinese Food Day, as that is now lodged in my head due to silenus’ thread. I may also go over to TJ’s on Wednesday and stock up on their frozen Chinese meals so I can fix something up on the fly.
I was going to say…
I think my wife would eat the beefy mac, but only a little and she’d give me the :rolleyes:. I keep thinking about it though, and I might make some one day when I’m telecommuting and she’s at work. I loves me some beefy mac. With garlic.
Same here, but at least she doesn’t make sardonic comments when I eat it.
Tonight SHE had a raw vegetable salad dressed with nonfat sour cream, plus a four ounce piece of sirloin I grilled medium-rare for her and served with a sarcastic “Here’s your SLAB OF MEAT.”