Theoretical basis of spice compatibility and formula cracking: monarch, minister, assistant and envoy

How to improve your understanding of spices and accurately grasp the use of spices, and make your snacks or dishes more satisfying to customers through the combination of spices? ! This is a problem that has always troubled practitioners and food lovers...

Let’s cut the nonsense and go straight to the topic——

1. About the matching of spices

Whenever we want to understand the principle of a food, we must first understand how it works.

Take braised pork for analysis. What role do spices play in the entire braised pork process? The essence of braised pork is actually to cook the meat in salt water, so that's it.

Since braised pork means boiling meat in salt water, why do you still need to put so much marinade now?

The answer starts with the ingredients. First of all, when braised meat, the basic meat ingredients will have a fishy smell, so the first thing is to remove the fishy smell;

The second is the meat. If the fragrance is too simple, it will make people feel greasy after eating it, so it is necessary to add a complex aroma and relieve the greasiness.

And if you eat too much meat, it will hinder your stomach and make it difficult to digest, so you must strengthen your spleen and stimulate your appetite.

Finally, this marinade needs to be used for a long time, so it also needs to be antiseptic and antibacterial. It is impossible to make braised pork every time, so the antiseptic and antibacterial properties of the stewed soup are very important when it is stored. important. (How about it? Did you feel enlightened when you saw this?)

Let’s continue. For those who sell braised pork, they must not only eat deliciously, but also smell delicious, so it is best to have a fragrant aroma. effect.

Let’s see if there is anything missing from the above summary. To put it simply, the ideal function of a portion of marinade is to harmonize the taste, add flavor and relieve greasiness, appetizer and spleen, antiseptic and antibacterial, and float. fragrant.

This is the core role of marinated ingredients in the process of braised meat. As long as you understand the properties, taste, and effects of each marinade, I don’t even need to explain the following compatibility principles. You can prepare a marinade packet that combines your own taste based on these points.

Star anise and fennel add flavor, amomum villosum and dried tangerine peel relieve greasiness, galangal and fragrant sand strengthen the spleen and appetizer, lemongrass and coriander are antiseptic and antibacterial, etc. So everyone should keep this core in mind.

Next, let’s talk about the compatibility principle of braised ingredients. Since we talk about the word compatibility, everyone should easily think of the compatibility of traditional Chinese medicine, and 90% of the nearly 100 kinds of spices we commonly use They all have the same origin as medicine and food, and they even focus more on medicinal uses.

At this point, if you are a Chinese medicine practitioner, you can directly combine the core functions of the marinade above for compatibility.

Therefore, we will also refer to the concept of monarch, minister and assistant in the compatibility process of Chinese medicine here. Here I will only remove the parts that are useful for the compatibility of marinade and try to make it as simple as possible so that everyone can refer to it when actually using it. .

What is "the emperor, his ministers and his envoys"?

Jun material: The distinctive feature of Jun material is that it is used in a relatively large amount in a formula. Why don’t I say the largest amount. This is because marinades are seasonings that highlight spicy and other flavors, not just their "medicinal effects." For example, if 50g of star anise and 30g of bay leaf are used in the marinade, it is obviously inappropriate because the bay leaf itself is very light, so it may release much more fragrance than other spices at the same weight, so it cannot Put so much. There are many such spices, such as cloves, lemongrass, and lingcao. These relatively light spices need to be carefully controlled when using them. The biggest role of the Jun material in the brine is to increase the aroma of the braised meat, compound the aroma, and the Chen material condiments will all be developed around this theme.

Chen material: The amount of Chen material in the formula is slightly less than that of Jun material. Chen material assists Jun material to increase the aroma. For example, in our traditional sense, star anise, fennel and cinnamon are used in larger amounts and can be called Jun material, then cloves and fragrant leaves can be called minister materials. They assist the monarch material to further increase the aroma.

Condiments (condiments): Jun materials and condiments are like offense and defense in the process of fighting. Jun materials are the main force that focuses on the attack to capture the city and have no time to worry about others. Condiments are to prevent The enemy makes a sneak attack to prevent the enemy from cutting off our retreat. In the marinade, the purpose of the marinade is to enhance the flavor. The more fragrant the meat, the more delicious it is, right?

However, meat will have a fishy smell due to the ingredients (such as large intestine), nausea after eating too much meat, sour brine, etc. These are all problems that seasonings need to solve, such as tangerine peel, angelica angelica, licorice, magnolia, etc. Lemongrass has the effects of removing fishy smell, resolving greasiness, adding rich flavor, antiseptic and antibacterial effects to a certain extent. The amount of condiments used is generally small, so that it can achieve the established effect without breaking the fragrance of the ingredients.

Just find a formula and let everyone analyze it together:

This is a screenshot from the Internet. Can you roughly see the emperor, ministers and envoys in it? You can analyze it yourself!

After reading this, everyone should have a general understanding of the formula and principles of the marinade. In the subsequent braised meat process, you can flexibly match the properties and flavors of the marinade according to your own needs.

Here I will share with you a method on how to identify whether it is an "ancestral secret recipe". In fact, the technology of braised pork has been passed down among the people, and the braised pork recipe that really comes from the folk will be different from the recipe circulated on the Internet. There is a big difference.

Everyone knows that the old folk braised pork masters have been passed down for generations, and the earliest may be traced back to a hundred years ago. However, there were no precise measuring instruments at that time, so many braised pork recipes were made. At this time, we talk about "hands", such as three handfuls of star anise, two handfuls of fennel, one handful of peppercorns, etc.

And some people’s so-called “ancestral secret recipes” are always given in grams, and now the secret is revealed!