When you cook the 牛肉麵, while medium to slow heat to bring the meat to tender, remember I told you to add water when the soup level is dropped? If you add less water, it will be more flavor in the meat because not like 牛肉湯麵, the yummy flavor cooks back to the meat when the water is less. So, if you make it almost fully cooked(after you put in the carrots, about 40 minutes later), stop adding water and let it dry to about 1/3 of the soup. Remember to gently move the meat around so every angle of the meat absorbs the flavor of soy sauce, wine, etc. You want to gently stir it from time to time because if the meat is tender, your violent movement will break the meat to little pieces. But watch out, don’t let the soup drop less than 1/3 because you still need the soup for the noodles. 

 

When the meat is fully cooked, you are done. 

 

Follow the same procedure to do the noodles and the veggie. And then voila~ you have the牛肉乾拌麵. 

 

-       Usually this is one dish to go in your dinner or lunch. You cook some rice and stir fry some veggie, then you have a not-so-bad meal. 

-       You can buy some turnip(白蘿蔔) to cook with it.  Turnip takes more time to cook compared with carrots. So, you will have to put turnip in probably 20 minutes before carrots.

-      Remember, when you chop food, you want to chop them to about the same size, so they will be fully cooked at the same time. If you have different sizes, some will be too soft when you have the big chunk fully cooked. 

-       When doing this dish, preferably I would buy meat with a little bit fat, not too much but a little bit.

-       And this dish will be about or even a little bit less or same soup level than牛肉乾拌麵. 

-       Depends on your preference, you can add more soy sauce (about 1 table spoon more) for this because turnip will absorb some flavor, too. 

 

-       It’s the same skill to cook beef or pork. The only difference is pork is much faster to be fully cooked. And usually we don’t put in carrots or turnip to this dish. 

-       To cook pork, you can add in 豆腐乾, and other 滷菜 that you can think of. 

-       If you want to add eggs, use other pot to boil the water and drop the eggs, cook for 10 minutes. I am not very good at making hard-boiled eggs. So, I usually cook longer to make sure it’s fully cooked. Turn off the heat, drain the hot water and put the cooked eggs in cold water to cool off. Peel the shells, and drop it in the pork pot. Move it from time to time, so the egg’s skin won’t stick at the bottom of the pot. 

-       What I usually do is cook the pork first, when it’s done, take them out, leave the sauce in the pot and cook the豆腐乾, 蛋 separately. Why?  The cooking time is different for each of the ingredients. 

 

To do 紅燒(cooking with soy sauce), there’re plenty of seasoning available. I am not a person who likes all the spices so I don’t add in anything else but soy sauce, cooking wine and sugar. You can add garlic, ginger, green onions, 五香and 八角, if you like it. Some supermarket even sells 滷味包 for you to just follow instructions on the package . You can experience your own preferred flavor.