Asian Cooking Great Flavors
Published by Carolin on Tagged Beef, Chicken, Fish, Shellfish, marinade, pork
Asian cooking. It sounds like a pretty brood topic doesn’t it? Well it is and it isn’t. What I really want to talk about is Asian flavors. Now I know when I hear about Asian cooking, I automatically have certain flavors or ingredients come to mind. To me Asian cooking, it does not matter what part of Asia we are talking about has garlic, onions and ginger as ingredients. So no wonder I love cooking from all parts of Asia. I can bet a lot of you including me will have Soya sauce, fish sauce, maybe chili sauce come to mind as well. The thing about Asian cooking, it is different from country to country but there are so many similarities as well.
To me Asian cooking is light cooking as well (for the most part). The reason I say this is because in Asian cooking you use so many fresh ingredients. You take Vietnamese cooking for an example and WOW the flavors are right in your face and it is because so much of it is fresh, which makes it light as well. It isn’t heavy on the meat. Even for the most part Asian noodles are lighter.
Another aspect of Asian cooking is using quick marinades. They are not like a typical marinade where you would marinade it for 4-24 hour. They are more like a 1-hour marinade. The reason being is because a lot of the time they do contain something like Soya sauce or fish sauce. These ingredients are quite high in sodium. So for that reason alone you do not want to be marinating for to long or you will dry out whatever you are using for a protein (i.e. poultry, beef or pork).
So today I thought I would share a recipe for a marinade that my friend Marc shared with me many years ago. This recipe can be used on anything. You can us it on pork, chicken, beef or shrimp. I can tell you I use it on pork tenderloin. I have served it many times with just stir-fried bok choy and some rice and people just gobble it up.
Asian Marinade
2Tbsp light Soya sauce
2Tbsp Hoisin sauce
1Tbsp Sherry
1Tbsp Asian Black Bean sauce
1 1/2tsp minced fresh ginger
1 1/2tsp brown sugar
2-3 cloves minced garlic
1/2tsp sesame oil
Pinch of Asian Five spice
Mix all ingredients together, place whatever meat you are using in a zip lock bag pour in marinade and let stand for about an hour in the fridge (If you are using a fish I would only marinade it for 30 minutes). Cook as desire.
TIP OF THE DAY
After you open sesame oil, be sure to refrigerate, as it will spoil otherwise.
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