Our good buddy here Adam is an F&B industry guy, and one of his acquaintances is a chef at a highly respected establishment in town. Apparently this chef would, after service, go down to the local wholesale market (Khlong Toei) as all the fresh meat and seafood would come in after midnight, down a few Singhas, and grab some of the best stuff. So through my friend, I asked him when the freshly slaughtered pork comes in. His answer: “Interesting problem. I’d be surprised if a few hours would make a difference for you, but the pork starts to come in at 11pm, finishes up by 2am. But for pork I don’t actually buy it at Khlong Toei. I always use Sloan’s.” Hmm. Had to look up what Sloan’s was – apparently it’s a premium supplier of pork in Bangkok. They raise the pigs up in Chiang Mai and even sell some Doi Tung pork – the black haired pigs that are prized in China. It’s a nightmare getting stuff delivered to our address here, so I looked where they sold their meat and found that they were carried by a few bougie western style supermarkets around. So I took the subway down to Sukhumvit, but apparently Sloan’s only sold sausages and the like at those locations. I was exacerbated, feeling defeated again… until I saw that those supermarkets also sold some premium pork that mentioned that they were specifically a Japanese breed – Kurobuta pork (also a black haired breed). They didn’t have any of the ham cut, but they carried loin (which we sometimes tell people to use anyhow) and collar steaks (which were gorgeous), so I decided to try this all one last time using a combination of those… fully expecting failure once again. But this time? It worked! Even slicing through the pork had a sort of familiar resistance to it. Chopping into a proper looking paste was quick, developing the myosin was zero issue. And most importantly, the final result was… just like it was when we’d make it in China. I still have questions, of course. What was it about the common Thai breed of pig that seems to make it unsuitable for Chinese meat emulsions? From a quick google, it appears that the most common commercial breed in Thailand is the Large White, which is basically the same deal as the Yorkshire in North America (I think?). But when we were in the States, we’d make meat mixes all the time without much issue. And obviously, when you eat outside in Bangkok there is bouncy pork around that’s obviously still much better than what we ended up with. So how do they make that with a satisfactory result? YouTube didn’t seem to be much help, but there’s still work to do. But. Just imagine if someone living in Thailand was blindly charging forward with, say, our Siu Mai recipe! They’d have a rough time of it, and wouldn’t know if their end result was due to (1) our recipe sucking (2) their technique being slightly off or (3) something about the local produce. Of the three, if I’m trying to learn a new dish and get an unsatisfactory end result, I’d usually assume that it’s because of either (1) or (2) - variability in produce usually isn’t the first thing on the top on my head. But, especially living outside of China for the first time after over a decade, I’m thinking… maybe it should? Hell, even salt measurements here can end up slightly different because the salt can pick up the moisture from the air. And on the flip side, the white pepper here is *fantastic*, and is much more potent of a flavor than we’d sometimes use in China. Not to mention, when it comes to fermented sauces and the like, different brands are… different. You’ll get slightly different results with Donggu soy sauce than Kikkoman. Because really… recipe writing is not a science. If I tell you to mince a clove of garlic, how ‘garlicky’ your garlic will end up being’ll change depending on how recently you bought your garlic and how finely you ended up mincing it. Ingredients are different. Equipment is different. This is why recipes always end with ‘season to taste’ – it’s not just a recipe writer get-out-of-jail-free card. So. The lesson is this: trust your judgement. As people that make video recipes… we’re here to help – but you’re the only one that’s got access to the unique combination of your supermarket, your kitchen, and your cooking environment. Your senses are a much more valuable tool than our recipes. Oh, and lesson number two – for the 0.6% of our viewers from Thailand. Don’t try to make any of our meat emulsion recipes (Siu Mai, Pearl Meatballs, etc etc) blindly charging forward using the pork that you get from the market. Instead, if you’re in Bangkok, go to Villa Market or Emporium and pick up some of that Kurobuta pork. It’s pricey (~500 TBH per kilo), but not too outrageous. As I said above, using a combination of loin and collar worked brilliantly – will need to test to see if solely loin also works just as well. (Also, if anyone’s Thailand based and has any other experiences on this topic, we’re all ears. Definitely don’t take our experience as definitive or anything – we… just got here.)
3 years ago | 814
This is why you guys are at the top of the game. Only a lunatic would travel down the road you guys just did, i respect the hell out of and thankful you did. It's something that I've been thinking about and continue to think about. Local Supply chain and logistics dictate how "authentic" you can make some thing. And for some reason, chinese people keep building amazing local supply chains around the world. Every chinatown is a testament to it. A couple lifetimes ago, ginger wasn't available in the West. Imagine cooking chinese food without ginger!
3 years ago
| 121
One oddly simple lifehack I've found as a South American with no access to any of these ingredients is to befriend the local Chinese restaurant folk and ask all sorts of questions. They'll give you all kinds of pointers and ideas for replacements that they found work with the stuff that is common in your country and, even if not entirely authentic as in "actual Chinese people in China showing you how to make stuff" you'll end up with the next best thing
3 years ago
| 10
I hear that. Most Chinese recipes I make, regardless of what else they told me to put in, get a sauce that includes: -Sugar -Salt -Soy sauce(s) -Chicken powder -MSG -Oyster sauce, if I think it needs it Chicken/MSG gets left out of recipes by a lot of people. Sometimes I'll even watch videos where people put it in and they just don't mention it.
3 years ago (edited) | 8
I'm one of your 0.6% of viewers in Thailand. I recently moved back here and I'm glad you all decided to follow me. My chance of replication success just shot up lol. It still feels a bit weird seeing local products in your videos. Big C would not be the place for higher-end products; it positions itself as the cheapest supermarket option. Kurobuta, or at least what's labelled as such, has recently become available at many supermarkets in Thailand, but I wouldn't trust some of those widely available brands that do pre-packaged Kurobuta. (My family has witnessed workers changing the labels just to extend the expiration dates. Yikes!) The places you listed are higher-end places and a little more trustworthy, in my opinion.
3 years ago
| 61
Honestly one of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten on cooking thank you for this
3 years ago | 21
I found this to be a similar problem as someone who was having issues with pork belly in South Korea and outside of South Korea; For example, here in Italy supermarket pork belly were absolutely too fatty, or when I tried pan frying them, the proteins would break down into liquid form like they were previously frozen. Lidl and Aldi were definitely no go's, while Conad I had better luck in. Closest equivalent I could find were some Chinese butchers but even then I think the pigs here are inherently different or are more suitable for- turning them into pancetta or something. Who knows. But lessons learned!
3 years ago | 40
Ha! I introduced the same conceptual problem several years ago. I firstly was wondering why the Europeans cooking food in no time, for example, the same dumplings they were cooking in 15 minutes, while in Central Asia we used to cook 45 minutes. Then I realised that the problem was an altitude. The same goes how much water to add to the dough, because it depends on humidity. And, of course, the taste of salt and other groceries are not the same. Since that in my blog I always write to add spices/salt, etc. to taste and show what kind of consistency should have subproduct, while preparing and cooking.
3 years ago | 8
This was a fantastic read and an issue I've come across even state side when it comes to sourcing ingredients from different grocery stores in the same city, but not to the same degree as what you're describing, that's nuts!
3 years ago | 10
And this is why you two are so fantastic. You're humble and curious and like to problem solve! I know cooking is more art than science, but sometimes a methodical approach when things just aren't right is so helpful!
3 years ago | 2
As an Italian living in central Europe, I've experienced this several times. Pizza is one of those things. I remember your rant about the "no pineapple on pizza" thing. Even the tomato is different, like your meat mixture. It looks almost the same, but texture, aroma and flavour is really different. In Italy the standard peeled tomato can is made from sun ripened San Marzano tomatoes, which carries a basil aroma, a saucy texture and a rich umami flavour. In central Europe the standard tomato can has pieces of a more watery and acidic tomatoes, more similar to the ones we use in Italy to make salads. No wonder people in central Europe use to add starch, sugar and/or quite a lot of salt in their tomato when they are going to use that on top of a pizza. The final taste of this sauce is sometimes not far away from ketchup, sometimes desperately packed with origano, thyme or other Mediterranean herbs to make it feel "Italian" (like putting soy sauce to make a dish taste "asian" or curry powder to make it taste Indian). And I'm not going to talk about mozzarella and about bread flour, also different in a noticeable way, so that you get a different result even if you know what you are doing and have your goal in mind. That's why I think that pineapple on pizza is just the last domino, because a pizza with just mozzarella, tomato and some basil leaves (margherita) in Naples can make your day, while the same product in central Europe is just "meh!". The problem is not being reluctant about evolutions or improvements of a dish, but about missing its essence white doing that.
3 years ago (edited) | 4
I loved reading about your experience. I'm an ingredient hunter too. When it comes to pork I usually grind my own and keep it super cold like my life depended on it. The Chef I worked with doing sausage meat impressed upon me that unless the meat mixture is super cold, (like from the freezer but not frozen solid) the fat can melt too easily and create a soft and dry but greasy mouthfeel. The problem you guys had sounds a bit different but sometimes technique can make not great meat a little better. That's just what I learned about sausage mixes and grinds though. I love your channel and glad you're getting settled into Bangkok.
3 years ago | 1
That reminds me of when I was at a friends house in a rural area with several guests. I do not eat pork but I know how to cook it. The home owner came in the house and said "here is some freshly ground pork. It's directly from the farmer and you have to add a lot of seasonings and salt to it to make it taste like store bought ground pork." He then walked away. They tried to cook some and they could not eat it because it tasted awful. So then I walked over and took the rest of the ground pork and poured salt into it, and seasonings into it, and cooked them some delicious home made pork sausage. They were amazed at the amount of salt I put into it, unaware of how much salt they add to ground pork in the USA to make it taste the way it does. Then I fried some greens and onions in the pork grease and they had never seen anyone do that either, apparently nobody ever cooked them a traditional American breakfast like they eat in the southern states. A lot of pork in the USA is frozen to kill parasites, even our local organic farmers that sell their own pork freeze it before selling it. To get pork like that in the USA you have to actually know a farmer or live near a Chinatown in a big city where it's sold. The last time I was in San Francisco there were traditional butcher shops in Chinatown where a man was hacking up a whole pig behind a counter and they sold every part of the animal, and also had whole fish and shellfish in tanks and all kinds of meat you would not find easily in the USA. If you live near a place like that, try that.
3 years ago | 2
Boy do I understand pork frustration. When I was growing up on Long Island in the 70s and early 80s, we used to buy regular old pork chops from the supermarket, dip them in milk, roll them in seasoned breadcrumbs and slap them onto a cookie sheet to bake in the oven. They always came out crispy, juicy, tender, and tasty. I live in San Francisco now (though I don't think this is about location) and I don't think I've had a decent pork chop in 30 years, cooked that way or any other way. I know (in the US at least) commercial pigs are bred much leaner nowadays but even expensive "heritage" pork was only marginally better. I still cook pork chops once in a while, but man I miss 70s pork.
3 years ago | 1
“You should always trust your judgement and senses” Annnnnnnd that's how we got chilli jam fried rice
3 years ago (edited) | 16
Cooking is a reflection of life. It's all in the details. Great write-up.
3 years ago | 0
Just wanted to say this was a fascinating read and glimpse into the process behind all this. You guys are awesome, thanks for doing the legwork.
3 years ago | 0
Chinese Cooking Demystified
This is a story about how difficult it can be to make recipes for international replication, and why – when in doubt – you should always trust your judgement and your senses over a written recipe, even if you otherwise like the source.
As many of you know, we recently moved from China to Thailand. Whenever you move, it always takes a bit of getting used to where and how to buy the ingredients you need – and that goes double for international moves. Luckily, Bangkok is probably the best place for us to do what we do outside of China – there’s a fantastic Chinatown, a lot of the produce is quite similar to south China, and when in doubt we can send stuff from Taobao here. Basically, we’ve been able to cook here without many snags, which is awesome.
Now, for our recent video on how to use Dried Shiitakes (out a couple days ago), one of the recipes we wanted to include in the video was stuffed shiitake mushrooms. Awesome dish, totally in our wheelhouse – we barely even left any time to test the recipe because we were just that confident in it. After all, Chinese meat mixtures are something we’ve made practically a million times – they were one of the very first things me and Steph ever learned how to make really *well*, and a recipe featuring a meat mix was even, like, the second video ever on this channel.
So we settled into our first test… hand mincing and vigorously stirring the meat filling like we always do. It’s always a little bit of work going that extra mile, but hey, you’re rewarded with a juicy, bouncy filling in the end. And stuffed shiitakes are one of my absolute favorite dishes in the world, so you can’t help but get a little excited for them.
But after steaming? They… sucked. We forgot to marinate the mushrooms (gah, easy thing to forget), but the biggest issue was the pork filling. The filling wasn’t bouncy and juicy – it was dry and kind of… mealy. Stuck to your teeth when you bit into it.
In a word, wrong.
So thinking about where things might have gone awry, I thought back to all the musts when it comes to meat emulsions – fresh meat, cool environment, vigorous mixing. I was a little lazy with the mixing (we’ve gotten less obsessive over the years on that front), but I should’ve still been in the same rough ballpark. Regarding temperature, while Bangkok is hot, it’s basically the same as summer in Guangdong, and we usually run the A/C while we’re cooking anyway. That left the pork.
Looking at the bag, it dawned on me that the meat that we’d purchased had probably been previously frozen pork. In China, frozen meat stalls are popular at local markets too (cheap meat from USA and Brazil!), but thinking back to our walks through the Khlong Toei wholesale market here… in Bangkok they seem to like to thaw out the frozen stuff before purchase. Not to mention, the pork that we used was actually from our freezer, so this was actually pork that’d been frozen twice! No wonder!
So this time, I decided to go to the supermarket to pick up some pork. Down the road from us is a Big C, which’s a Thai hypermart that’s owned by Carrefour. And while I *hated* going to Carrefours in China (they’re designed like a maze, worse than an Ikea), in fairness they always had some quality pork. So I went to Big C (a more pleasant experience by and large), grabbed some of our trusty ham/leg cut of pork, and we tested it again… confident that the filling would come out bouncy and juicy like usual.
Nope. Same problem – dry, soft, mealy.
Ok. Now we were starting to get a little worried – Big C pork definitely wasn’t the answer. That said, generally speaking, in China at least it’s markets where you get the good stuff, not supermarkets (Carrefour pork and beef aside). So who knows? Maybe the supermarket stuff was actually previously frozen too, and with our beginner-level Thai we just didn’t see it on the label?
So we resolved to go back to the market, but this time I didn’t do it blindly. I scouted out our local market, and if you get there early there definitely *are* shops that sell freshly slaughtered pork – you can tell from the bottles of fresh blood that they sell on the counters. But to really make sure no stone was left unturned, I decided to enlist the help of our neighbor here, who’s a vendor at the local night market. Thai cooking also has a similar concept for these meat mixtures – they call it “bouncy pork” (‘หมูเด้ง’). So between my painfully rudimentary Thai, her slightly better English, and a healthy assist from Google Translate’s ‘conversation’ feature… I described to her our problem.
She immediately understood. Waved her hand and told me in English “yes, many market pork is not good”. She walked with me one morning to the market (as she has to go anyway), and led me to a specific vendor. This was one of the fresh pork vendors that I’d seen earlier – perfect. The vendor grabbed a cut of the pork and told me that this was the cut that you use to make หมูเด้ง, the bouncy pork. That cut? The ham/leg, same as we’d always used in China. Effusively thanked them all, went back to test. *This time* I was confident.
But… while it was *better*, at its core it still had the same textural issues.
My mind was spinning. This pork was gaslighting me. Tried to search YouTube for Thai bouncy pork recipes… they all used food processors as a base. Maybe that was my problem? Or maybe the Thai bouncy pork just… isn’t as bouncy sans additives? I seemed to remember some of the snacks here didn’t seem to have *that* juicy of a filling. Or maybe this was why all those classic Teochew dishes like Guorou – in China stuffed with pork – were stuffed with seafood here? Or maybe it’s a breed thing? Or maybe it’s a time-from-slaughter-to-market thing? Maybe we should just throw our hands in the air, and accept that we just… *can’t* make juicy Chinese meat fillings here in Thailand?
There was one route left before giving up though.
(continued in pinned comment below)
3 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 1,423