Sichuan · Starter
Fuqi Feipian
- Advanced
- 45 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with toasted, nutty warmth throughout, aromatics blooming from the first bite, finishing long and savory.
Ingredients
- 600 g beef shin
- 300 g beef tripe, cleaned
- 300 g beef tongue
- 200 g beef heart
- 3 L water
- 40 g ginger, sliced
- 3 spring onions
- 8 g huajiao, whole
- 2 star anise, 5 cm cassia bark, 2 bay leaves and 1 cracked caoguo
- 20 g salt
- 120 ml hongyou, with its sediment
- 40 ml light soy sauce
- 10 g sugar
- 3 g ground roasted huajiao
- 60 g roasted peanuts, crushed, and 20 g toasted sesame seeds
- 30 g celery leaf, roughly chopped
The skills inside
Brining & curingSkimming: foam, fat and a clear brothResting meat & slicing against the grainThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · nuts · peanuts · soy · sesame · celery
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Bring shin, tripe, tongue and heart up from cold water, skimming the grey scum until the surface runs clear, then rinse each piece and rub the skin off the tongue while it is still too hot to hold comfortably.
- Build a brine from fresh water, ginger, spring onion, whole huajiao, the spices and salt; simmer the offal 60 to 90 minutes and the shin about 90, pulling each piece the moment a skewer meets no resistance. 90 min
- Turn off the heat and let everything cool in the brine to room temperature, then chill. This is the step people skip and the one that decides the texture.
- Slice every piece cold and across the grain, thin enough to read light through: about 2 mm for shin and tongue, wider ribbons for tripe.
- Dress with hongyou and its sediment, soy, sugar and ground huajiao, turning until every slice is lacquered, and scatter peanuts, sesame and celery leaf only as it goes to the table.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Resting meat & slicing against the grain 56 recipes
- It came off the heat BEFORE the target temperature, measured with a probe rather than by time, because carryover keeps driving the inside up after it is out.
- The probe went into the coldest likely part rather than the easiest one to reach: the reading that matters is the lowest one, not the first one.
- Rested for a time matched to its size, somewhere warm, and not cut into partway through to see how it is doing.
- The board is nearly dry when it is finally cut. A spreading pool means it was cut too early, and that liquid should have stayed inside.
- The grain was found and the knife went ACROSS it, so the fibres are cut short, and the blade was sharp enough that the slices hold together rather than tearing.
Where it goes wrong It was cut straight off the heat, usually because everything else was ready. The muscle is still contracted and the juice still driven to the centre, so it runs out onto the board; the meat is drier than it ever needed to be, and the flavour that left it is sitting in a puddle under the knife.
Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth 73 recipes
- It is held below a rolling boil for the whole time. Agitation drives fat and fine protein into the liquid as an emulsion, and nothing skimmed afterwards will take them back out.
- The grey foam that rises in the first minutes is lifted off and discarded rather than stirred back in.
- Fat is taken from the surface where it gathers, the pot moved off the centre of the heat if that is what it takes to collect it in one place.
- The liquid is visibly clearer at the end than it was at the start: it is possible to see down into it.
- Nothing lifted off goes back in. What was skimmed is discarded, not tipped back once the ladle is full.
Where it goes wrong The pot was allowed to boil, usually while something else was being attended to. Fat and protein emulsify into the liquid under agitation and cannot be lifted off afterwards, so the finished broth stays cloudy and greasy however patiently it is skimmed from then on.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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