Chapter 182
School will start in half a month. Su Miao has no homework during the long vacation after the entrance examination, so he lives a free and easy life. He often goes to parks, zoos, department stores, and libraries. He also went to see several movies with his family and watched a lot of TV.
During the trip, Li Yuanyuan and her parents came to Nanning to play, and the two families also agreed to spend the weekend together.
He had been doing a lot of leisure and entertainment, but hadn't eaten for a long time. Su Miao took out the notebook in which he had recorded the method of making fresh meat sausage and prepared to make it.
Su Miao asked her father to help buy the necessary ingredients when he went shopping in the morning, the most important of which was of course the meat for the stuffing.
Su Yuanzheng followed his daughter's instructions and picked five pounds of beautiful front shoulder meat, with a fat-to-lean ratio of 2:8. It is said that sausages made with this ratio will be neither greasy nor dry, and will be very elastic.
Unlike the factory, there is no meat grinder at home, so the job of chopping the meat has to be done by strong men.
But it was only 7:30 when he came back from buying groceries. It was still too early. Chopping the stuffing now would disturb the neighbors, so he just left it there and waited for Su Miao to get up before he could do it.
Su Miao took advantage of the last bit of summer vacation to sleep in and slept until 10 o'clock. He went to the store to drink a bowl of porridge and then went back to the yard to make sausages.
Su Yuanzheng followed in, took out some pork from the refrigerator, and asked, "Miaomiao, do we need to chop all this into minced meat?"
"Yes, Dad, thank you for your hard work!"
Su Yuanzheng said nothing and just started chopping, chop, chop.
What Su Miao has to do now is the more skill-intensive step, which is making sausage casings.
The casings were made from pig intestines, which were specially cleaned and left for her in the morning. However, since she didn't know how to make it specifically, Su Miao had to follow the notebook.
The outer membrane and fat adhering to the pig's small intestine had all been torn off. Su Miao pinched the pig's small intestine with his right thumb and middle finger, and pulled the pig's small intestine back with his left hand to squeeze out the fat inside the intestine.
Then use a wooden spoon to scrape the casing, pulling with one hand and scraping with the other hand, repeat this three times. The pig intestine will become thinner each time you scrape it.
After three times, the pig intestines have become as thin as a cicada's wing. Use salt to grind the casings into thinner pieces again, then put one end of the casings on the faucet, turn on the faucet, and the translucent casings will bulge out.
Su Miao was very happy that her first operation seemed to be successful, but then she found that there was a leak in one place of the casing, which meant that it was broken.
Su Miao cut the casing from the broken part and stuffed it in two batches.
The seasoning of the meat filling is much more casual, and each family is different. Su Miao integrated the methods of several families and made it according to his own ideas. Anyway, it is just a try. You will know whether it tastes good after it is cooked.
The minced meat has been placed in a large iron basin, and appropriate amounts of white wine, salt, ginger and garlic juice, soy sauce, pepper and five-spice powder are added.
Then add a small amount of water, starch and mix well and add it into the meat filling.
This right amount is always Su Miao's biggest headache. There is no standard amount, and everything depends on the feel.
If it is food that is being cooked, you can taste it to see how salty it is. If it is not enough, add more. For raw food, you just need to be bold. Just add it once and don't repeat it, otherwise it will probably be overcooked.
When mixing the filling, she had to stir it in one direction with her hands. She also learned the technique of the beef ball maker, scooping up a lump of filling and then throwing it into the bowl, which could increase the toughness of the filling.
But I didn't master the technique well, and it splashed all over my face at the beginning. But after practicing it a few times, I became proficient in it.
He took another basin and separated some of the soup out, because Aunt Zhang said that her family liked to put tofu in it, which made it tender and smooth, unlike other families, so Su Miao also wanted to try it.
The tofu used is a type between soft tofu and firm tofu. I don’t know what it is called, but it is generally called white tofu.
Use a spatula to crush it, and then mix it evenly into the meat filling. It's as relaxing as putting your hands into a rice jar to mix it with the filling.
Next comes the most skill-testing part, sausage stuffing.
I found the small funnel I usually use to pour oil, washed it clean, and first put the casing on the bottom of the funnel from one end, then tied a knot on the other end of the casing and pinched it tightly with my hands.
Su Miao carefully stuffed the meat filling into the casing, straightening it with his hands as he did so. He was in a hurry, afraid that his movements would be too big and would directly pierce the thin casing.
After finally stuffing all the meat filling in, she was already sweating profusely. She ran back to the room, took an electric fan to the yard, and then continued with the next work.
Tie the sausages into small sections with cotton string and poke some small holes with a toothpick to prevent them from breaking when cooking.
The finished sausages can be boiled, steamed, fried or grilled. Su Miao took a few to fry, and then hung a few sections under the corridor. Aunt Wu said that this could make them into dried sausages, which would also be delicious.
The rest are used for steaming. Onion segments and ginger slices are added to the water. After steaming, the leftovers can be cooled and stored in the refrigerator. It is no problem to keep them for a week.
Su Miao cut the sausage into slices and took it out for his father and others to try. Regular customers also got some, and everyone was very polite and said it was delicious.
But Su Miao knew that this was just the taste of home cooking, and there was still a big gap between it and the really delicious food from the old brands outside.
Everyone tacitly agreed not to ask Su Ji to make sausage rice, and Su Miao completely gave up the idea.
After all, after working so hard for so long, the food tasted mediocre, so there is no need to do it. I'd better buy it and eat it in the future!
But they don’t like to eat it, but some people like it very much.
The next day, Su Miao got up early. She wanted to start adjusting her schedule, otherwise the start of school would be very painful.
She was stretching her legs in the yard because her sister Jiayin said that stretching more would help her grow taller, but as she was stretching, she felt like something was wrong.
Glancing around the yard, she exclaimed, "Sausage? Where's my sausage?"
Su Yu and Su Yuan, who were making braised food in the kitchen, heard her shout and went back to the yard to check.
"Dad, Brother Yu, have you cooked the sausages hanging on the beam?"
"No, you said you wanted it to air dry, so we didn't move."
Su Yu walked around the beam where the sausages were originally hung, pointed at a nearby pillar and said, "It was taken away by a sharp beak. There are footprints here!"
Su Miao looked over and saw indeed a series of small gray paw prints.
"Ah! There's a mouse!!! The sausages I worked so hard to make!!!"
Su Yuanzheng quickly comforted her: "Miaomiao, don't be sad. There's more in the refrigerator. Dad will buy you more after you finish eating."
Su Miao said, "Dad, we have to catch mice! We can't have mice at home when we're cooking!"
So we started to have various mouse traps at home all year round, and food was hidden in the refrigerator and cabinets. At the beginning, we did catch a few.
Later, perhaps his family's bad reputation spread in the rat world, and no rats came anymore.
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