Chinese Cooking: Steam Cooking : Steamed Pork or Substituted Meats

STEAM COOKING

Steam cooking is used with rice, meat, poultry, buns, dumplings, pastries and custards as well as keeping fish moist and tender. Steamed dishes are cooked in their serving dishes and go directly table steeped in their natural juices and flavours.  Direct steaming calls for live steam to rise from the boiling water to circulate and cook the food by direct contact. Steaming can be on a rack, pot containing boiling water or a steamer. In rack steaming the rack stands two or three inches above the water. The ingredients are placed in shallow dish and set on the rack.  The pot within a pot places a bowl on the bottom of the pan surrounded by boiling water and is used for large cuts of meat.  I prefer using a enclosed steamer with water in the bottom, two trays and a covered top. Ingredient steaming may take 15 minutes to several hours.  One must periodically check the level of water and replenish the boiling water lost to evaporation.

(Paraphrased from: Gloria Bley-Miiler. (1994) The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook. New York: Simon & Shuster.)

CHINESE STEAMED PORK   by Ron Lee

INGREDIENTS:

Steamed pork only   or substitute (beef, moose or elk burgher only)

One pound minced pork (elk burgher or moose burgher should be mixed with 50% pork)

2         tablespoons of cornstarch

1     EGG

Water chestnuts (sliced in strips)

Black mushrooms (diced)

Baby corn (diced)

Bamboo shoots (sliced in strips)

1/2 cup of water

2 tablespoons of light soy sauce

UTINSELS:    Steamer,   dish to hold chopped meat pattie

PREPARATION:

1. The traditional Chinese method to make the diced pork meat was to use two meat cleavers and slice the meat into small strips and then use the two cleavers in both your right and left hands  and begin chopping the meat into a finely ground mass. (Using a Cuisinart makes the meat stringy)

2. Once the meat is chopped you would add the diced black mushrooms, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots and mix together.

3. In a measuring cup you would place one beaten egg with a half a cup of water.

4.  Take the meat mixture and slowly partially cook the meat mixture in a wok with oil in the bottom of the wok.

5. Add the mushrooms, baby corn, and bamboo shoots.  (You can add what you like) Grandpa would sometimes add minced ginger root with the egg water mixture into the meat mixture.

6.  Place the half cooked meat mixture into glass bowl or glass pie plate and place in the steamer. Flatten the meat mixture into a nice big fat meat pattie.

7. Place the two tablespoons of soy sauce on top of meat pattie.

8. Place the meat plate into your steamer.

9.  Steam the meat mixture at the lowest possible steam temperature.  The longer /slower steaming time will produce a more tender meat dish.

10. Steam for at least 20 minutes.

 

Note:   For just the steamed pork:  One stirs the two tablespoons of cornstarch into a half cup of water that is added to the half-cooked meat mixture and follow the same procedure for steaming.

I believe this is one of Lee Duck's original recipes that he taught my grandmother and his children. My mother showed me how to make this recipe. The dish is quick and easy to prepare and it is quite tasty when served with steamed rice. This a dish native to Toisan Province in Guangdong Province.