Use This Chinese Technique for Perfect Shrimp, Every Time | Why it Works with Lucas Sin

welcome we are back at the food 52 Test Kitchen and today we are dealing with shrimp the recipe we're making is called crystal shrimp with dragon well tea which is a classic hjo style dish it's all about the preparation process this technique if not these techniques for dealing with shrimp you can apply to almost any shrimp recipe here's what I hope that you take away from this video is how we like to process shrimp to get nice bouncy delicious flavorful shrimp okay let's talk about shrimp first so this shrimp here here is 7190 frozen shrimp that we've defrosted first things first for this recipe traditionally the shrimp that we're supposed to use is a freshwater shrimp specifically a river shrimp those shrimps in China tend to be much much smaller and the reason why we use them is for their delicate flavor but also because this is called a crystal shrimp recipe we don't want that shrimp at the end to look orange depending on the diet freshwater shrimp will come out a different Hue after you cook them so specifically this the idea for crystal shrimp is that after you cook it after you process it and it's nice and um glassy both in texture and that it's crisp in a sense but also the look you should be able to see through it this shrimp is not going to give us the same result because this is number one the saltwater shrimp which means that it eats a lot of algae um which is going to give it that orange color but it's also going to cook and become opaque nothing you can do about it if you don't have River shrimp I will say for all shrimp recipes whether you use these techniques are not if you don't have nice fresh shrimp that's processed properly you're not going to get delicious results uh frozen shrimp often times is better than fresh shrimp that you buy because at some fish mongers you'll find that that fresh shrimp is actually just defrosted shrimp or um they've been sitting out for a little while the best way to defrost shrimp as is the case for almost anything else is to defrost it at a slightly lower temperature not room temp but within the fridge overnight that slow slowly bringing up the temperature of something Frozen in a fridge allows it to retain its texture because you lose less moisture as that temperature comes up I'm going to add two things into this shrimp first baking soda and salt this is sort of our dry brine as you can see it's a huge amount of salt it's also a huge amount of baking soda but what we're going to do is we're going to massage it and because it's a very quick 5minute brine we're going to be washing as much of this surface salt and baking soda off now let me talk really quickly about salt and baking soda salt really important for brins helps lock in the moisture helps season your protein gives you really nice texture in and of itself this works for chicken beef fish everything like this baking soda on the other hand raises the pH of the shrimp and is actually the secret to making the strip really nice and glassy and bouncy we cannot let this over brine if you brine this for too long it's going to be too too salty and there's going to be too much baking soda the problem with baking soda at this quantity is this soapy bitter flavor it's really nasty you'll spot it immediately so on the dot 5 minutes we need to rinse this out cold water you're really really really rinsing this continually move the shrimp in a professional Kitchen in Cantonese kitchens we call this be so so bear so refers to the motion of the water as you're moving that water around yes you're rinsing off the salt and the baking soda but you also want as much surface area contact between the shrimp and the cold water as possible and the final step and the other thing I will say handling this with your hands it's bounce like it it's bouncier than it was before it's firmer than it was before and that's a good thing what you should end up with nice bouncy shrimp that we're going to do one more thing to to ensure its texture and that thing is water velveting so water velveting really delightful technique very popular in Chinese cooking specifically also Southern Chinese cooking the idea is that you want to coat the outside of your protein with starch and egg white and then you're going to pass it through either water or oil to seal in that outside coating what does this do first thing it gives you a nice slippery texture starch has that ability to protect the outside during violent cooking methods such as stir frying and VI violin I just mean high temperature and second it gives you a little a little bit of that what in cese you call watt which is Silky or slippery it's really a Hallmark part of what makes dishes like beef and broccoli so delicious because the beef which could end up being overcooked and rough on the surface end up being silky slippery and delicious so in a bowl we're going to add some egg whites and let's just whip up these egg whites a little bit just to loosen them up until they barely begin to foam second critical ingredient starch get that in there this is corn starch today cornstarch is good potato starch is better cornstarch is more likely available and a little bit of shaing wine which is a Chinese rice wine yellow rice wine classic ingredient for getting rid of gaminess by covering it up with a little bit of alcohol and floral sweetness so shrimps go in and we are going to be mixing this with our hands to coat every single piece of shrimp moving it around is going to really allow all those liquids to bind to that starch which itself will bind to the surface of the shrimp the water velveting mixture the egg white has foamed you can't feel any corn starch between your fingers it's really well mixed that's exactly where you want it to be chiny chefs will also tell you that the cornstarch in here after we poach it is going to help clean the shrimp a little bit um and adding cornstarch actually is a typical way of helping you get a little bit of that grit out of that shrimp we're going to be poaching these shrimps at a relatively low temperature basically water Ving so we're going to wait for this pot to to come to a simmer Water velveting Works for almost any proteins it's most commonly used for sliced Meats like uh chicken beef and pork uh shrimp works great you can do it for fish even um especially if fish is particularly flaky and you want to protect it during let's say a stirfry or something like that very common technique the other thing I will say about velveting is that one of my favorite things about Chinese American culinary history is that water velveting is an English word that denotes a process that isn't exactly describe in Chinese what I mean to say is in Chinese we don't say water velveting we might say blanching we might say marinating with cornstarch we might said we might say add an egg white in there and whip it up and then pass it through water but there is no term that I am aware of that means water velveting the first time that I know of that this term was coined was by Chef Irene K in the 1970s one of those amazing thing that happens to understanding Chinese culinary techniques only via the export of that culture and that technique into another country I will say by the way in most Chinese professional restaurants we wouldn't actually pass through water and we would pass through oil in the home cooking context it's very similar in the results in my opinion but uh in a professional restaurant oil a little bit more conductive than water so you can first of all get the oil hot faster and second of all uh chefs are consistently reusing that oil for different purposes so it's just a little bit more efficient for them now in terms of boiling water itself I want to show you something very fun a little secret tidbit is um Chinese chefs don't really often to this day use thermometers and they like to tell the temperature of their liquids specifically water and oil with metaphors the different temperatures of water before they reach a boil are described as uh shrimp eyes crab eyes and fish eyes so shrimp eyes this is the idea that you want to see bubbles the size of shrimp eyes roughly speaking you're looking at something something like 80° C for that and then 90° is start of when it becomes a crab boil or a crab eye boil um and that's closing to 90 95° C and then fishee boil is the size of fish eyes which is right before that water comes to a full rolling boil knowing that it's helpful with a little bit of experience to be able to look at a pot of water and know what temperature it's at without sticking a thermometer in there just a little bit of convenience what I'm looking for here is for bubbles to come up to the surface and they're kind of smallish in my experience these bubbles form around 65 70 degrees and then they get to about 80° C and you know at you're at the right temperature caveat is if the water's already been boiled there isn't sufficient gas within the water itself for you to gauge what temperature it is what we're looking for today by the way is around 80 C 175 fit shrimp ice the reason why we're poaching the shrimp is because we don't want to cook it at a rolling boil we're not cooking it at a rolling boil because we don't want the outside to be tough before the inside is cooked we're cooking it at a very low temperature slowly bringing it up to temperature slowly trying to get that shrimp to change color make sense okay we're going to poach it now water's at the right temperature we're going to lower the shrimp in there we don't want to get all of that egg white and that marinade in there uh we're also going to want it to get rid of it later so and we're looking at just a couple of minutes here I'm just scooping off the stuff at the top so I can see what's going on but on your regular home stove you're looking at something like medium medium low slowly cooking it until the colors change and it's barely cooked keep in mind this is going to cook one more time this is going to get stir fried so we don't have to cook it all the way otherwise it would end up being tough so it's been about 2 minutes and the shrimp now has changed color it is Orange it's just a couple of minutes but this is what you're looking for by the way I will say if I were a Chinese Master Chef I would be yelling at myself because the shrimp that we purchased was already dained via slicing the back which is the most convenient way to do it honestly but it does change the it does change the shape of the shrimp and it's not ideal for the most traditional version of this dish now that we've washed it this is what barely cooked bouncy shrimp looks like actually I wonder if it's going to bounce okay we just finished poaching the shrimp now we just have to cook it before that happens me tell you about this dish so this is a hjo dish in Chinese called L which is Dragon well shrimp Dragon well is longing um which is a type of tea that you see here it's a green tea that is toasted by hand made specifically in longing which is a place in Jang Province Eastern China it's a very very delicate tea it's quite difficult to grow so there are a couple things about this tea number one because of how delicate it is what I've been told by these tea Farmers last time I was in Hong Joo was that any addition of pesticides will kill the plant so unlike a lot of other types of tea you can't add too many chemical additives to it during the growing process a lot of people who drink Dragon well tea don't rinse that tea before they bre it properly second of all it's a very very delicate tea it's folded up naturally like this because of the toasting process you have a guy in a pan he's like slowly moving this pan slowly moving this tea around the sides of the pan to get them to this delicate delicate texture and flavor it's really sweet it's really nice it's really delicious a second thing about Dragon well tea is that because of the delicacy of the tea leaves this is one of the few types of Chinese tea that is brewed without straining it so the idea is that the tea leaves themselves are edible if you want to eat it um but when you're drinking Dragon w tea in the glass they don't strain out the tea leaves before you start sipping it the history of this dish goes only back to the Chang Dynasty like very many of our other favorite dishes this is one of the dishes that has roots in the dynastic court it's like a royal dish it's a showoff dish it's a technique dish showing off how great we dealt with the shrimp and how nice the tea is so just because we're going to put be putting the tea inside of the Stow frry itself and we don't want the tea to burn we do have to activate it first with a little bit of hot if not warm water I am not Brewing the tea now I'm just getting the leaves to soften but not quite open because once they open they start to release all of that flavor so just a couple of seconds this is water that came to a boil that I then let sit for about a minute couple of seconds usually Brew time for green tea ranges between 2 minutes and 4 minutes I know that's a huge thing I'm not a tea expert but now that it's softened I'm just going to pour this through I don't want to lose all that flavor okay softened Dragon well tea not quite totally open when they to open they are going to unfurl but this is a good state for um pre- stir fry um one thing I will say for this dish before we get going is you're going to need a little bit of oil just to stop your shrimp from sticking you also want to give it a little bit of shine with that neutral oil you can have salt and sugar on the side in case you need to season it but in my opinion the sweetness of the shrimp should come from the shrimp itself and the saltiness is already in there because we did a beautiful dry brine I'm going to have a little bit of water on hand just in case this sauce over reduces as my pan is too hot but the only other seasoning is shaing wine again our Amber yellow Chinese rice wine if you get nice shashing wine specifically juo it's going to give you a really nice sweet floral fragrance that's going to compliment the shrimp itself if you water velveted your other types of protein say chicken beef or pork I would not recommend doing this dragon wall dish with it because the delicacy of the Dragon Ball tea is not going to stand up to the intensity of those animal proteins um for seafood like shrimp this is a perfect pairing we're cooking at a relatively low heat for Chinese cooking um I'm looking for something like medium just a little bit of oil about a tablespoon and we're cooking in a beautiful pan that you can buy on food52.com um we're just looking for that oil to Shimmer because we're cooking at a lower temperature um you don't necessarily need to use a walk of course a walk is traditional something naturally non-stick is great shrimp's going to go in toss it get everything nice and even tea is going to go [Music] in loosen it up a little bit de glaze it with shashing wine get that alcohol to boil cook some of it off get it to reduce a little bit of sweetness smell it it's delicious just toss and that's good to go if at any point during this 5sec process you realize that your pan is a little bit too dry feel free to give it just a splash of water not too much cuz you don't want to dilute that tea flavor but you do need a little bit of liquid for that tea to activate how's it smell so good so good delicate toasty tea it's almost like I mean the the tea is toasted in the first place so it gets activated again in a hot pan nice dry on the bottom a little bit of gloss from that oil but it's a very very simple dish food is done time to [Music] taste actually not that bad I mean I'm the least effusive person in the Test Kitchen um it's good no it's really good because it's super nice and bouncy a little bit of bitterness from that tea but mostly sweet fragrance floral the wine just curbs everything we didn't add a single pinch of salt to this during the cook process but it's like perfectly seasoned through and through I think this is the best way and my go-to way to prepare shrimp for any application if you like recipes like this this recipe can be found on food 52 it's also in the description box below there is a related dish that comes from the same region of hjo called The velvet egg white is actually a mock crab dish really interesting check that one out as well like comment and subscribe and let me know if you use this shrimp technique for any of your shrimp recipes in the [Music] comments

Channel: Food52

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Id: sZgauQe1pwY

Length: 16min 45sec (1005 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 28 2024