Chapter 363 - 153: Boss Su, Wanted All Over the City

Chapter 363: Chapter 153: Boss Su, Wanted All Over the City

When he first served Jiang Wensheng, Su Chen had made a pot of chicken stock, and from then on, made it a habit to use the stock in his cooking instead of MSG.

After serving Cui Yufen, the chicken stock in the Delicious kitchen was replaced with S Level clear stock and milky stock.

Even Zhang Heping, when cooking for the children each day, used nothing but S Level stock.

After Su Chen improved them, these two types of stock could be made by following a specific ratio. He no longer needed to prepare them himself; as long as anyone followed the steps he had written down, they couldn’t go wrong.

Of course, the prerequisite was that they had to be a decent chef, with at least a clear understanding of heat control.

’What if I use the clear stock directly to make the filling?’

This was Su Chen’s idea.

Clear stock is a closely guarded secret of Lu Cuisine. The fact that it’s a crucial benchmark for judging whether a Lu Cuisine restaurant is authentic is a testament to its deliciousness.

It was so delicious that you could simply cook vegetables in it and create an exquisite worldly delicacy!

There are three steps to making soup dumplings: the aspic, the filling, and the wrapper.

’There’s a reason Fang’s Meat is 30% more expensive.’

Su Chen took a piece of fresh pork skin from among the many ingredients and examined it closely for a long while.

The meat summoned in the Gourmet Practice Room was nearly identical to what Fang Chang supplied. The entire sheet of pork skin was pristine and white, with almost no visible stray bristles.

According to Fang Chang, his family had a dedicated workshop just for this kind of processing. After bringing the meat back from the slaughterhouse, any cuts that weren’t visually appealing had to be processed in the workshop before being sold in their shop.

The original recipe called for simmering a stock with large pork bones, pork skin, and fresh water, but Su Chen just...

’I’ll just f*cking use the S Level clear stock to stew the pork skin!’

He poured two kilograms of the summoned clear stock into a stainless steel pot, added four hundred grams of pork skin, and brought it to a simmer over medium heat. This step required no further action.

Because the weather in Jingzhou was still quite warm, the pork skin only needed to be cooked until it was about seventy percent done.

He scooped out the cooked pork skin.

’Wild Blade Technique!’

Inside the Gourmet Practice Room, Su Chen held nothing back. His cleaver rose and fell in a blur, and the large sheet of pork skin, curled from the heat, was instantly diced into soybean-sized bits.

He placed the diced pork skin into another pot and poured in the original clear stock it had been cooked in.

Only then did he begin to follow the recipe’s instructions, adding shrimp roe, *dachuanfen*, and fine salt in sequence, then letting it simmer slowly over low heat.

As for the *dachuanfen*... Su Chen had actually looked it up. It turned out that back in the 1950s, this was the name for a mix of black and white pepper.

This step didn’t require much technical skill. He just needed to watch the pot, simmering the liquid until it thickened. After cooling, it would naturally set into an aspic.

And with that, the aspic was complete.

Su Chen didn’t rush to the next step. Instead, he stared at the simmering pot and began to think.

’The clear stock is already the epitome of delicious, savory-sweet flavor. Adding the shrimp roe will make this aspic even more intensely savory.’

’The pepper and salt add another layer of flavor. It’s that saltiness that makes food truly delicious.’

’With crab roe soup dumplings, you drink the soup first, then eat the bun. Making the aspic this way should be fine, then...’

Confident there were no major issues with his approach, Su Chen turned his attention to the next step: preparing the filling!

’For traditional crab roe soup dumplings, the filling is made by steaming crabs and then picking out the roe and meat.’

That was also how those restaurants could justify selling a single dumpling for over a hundred yuan.

If anyone questioned the price, the owners would just point to their ingredient list. "We use nearly two whole crabs in a single dumpling. Is a hundred yuan really that expensive?"

But Su Chen didn’t see it that way.

’If it’s just a dough wrapper filled with crab roe and meat, plus a little stock for flavor...’

’Can you even call that a dumpling?’

This was Su Chen’s point of contention.

Take Delicious’s own specialty, the SS Level Pork Knuckle Buns, for example. From a customer’s perspective, every bite is a mouthful of rich meat!

But in reality, only the chef would know that it wasn’t just pork knuckle.

When making the pork knuckle filling, aromatics like onion, hot peppers, and shiitake mushrooms were also used. In the final product, these ingredients were no longer visible, but they left their flavor behind in the meat, which is what made the buns so delicious.

’So, to be blunt, what’s the difference between the crab roe soup dumplings on the market now and just eating the meat and roe from a pre-picked crab?’

You’re just taking the picked meat and roe, adding the aspic, and wrapping it all up. Then you put it in a steamer, where the main goal is simply to cook the dough.

’If that counts, then you could wrap literally anything up and call it a dumpling.’

Su Chen didn’t much care for the traditional method of making crab roe soup dumplings.

’So, what if I incorporate techniques from Lu Cuisine... Ah, who cares. If I fail, I can just start over!’

With the Gourmet Practice Room, failure was the one thing Su Chen wasn’t afraid of!

He immediately grabbed a strip of fatty pork belly, one with more fat than lean meat. He minced it into mung bean-sized pieces and placed them in an earthenware bowl.

Following the Lu Cuisine method for making buns, he sequentially added soy sauce, chopped scallions, minced ginger, white sugar, and cooking wine.

At a glance, it looked very much like the filling for a traditional pork bun.

But Su Chen wasn’t worried.

He mixed the filling in the bowl, set it aside, and sat down at his workstation. Then he took a steamed crab and began to pick it clean.