Chapter 324 - 211: How Delicious Can It Be? (Part 2)

Chapter 324: Chapter 211: How Delicious Can It Be? (Part 2)

Returning to the stream, Lin Chen shone his Hat Lamp on the bamboo tubes standing on the ground, one by one. The liquid inside each had already separated into layers.

The top layer was clear liquid, while the bottom was settled potato pulp.

"Come help me. Pour off the clear water on top. It’s fine to go slow."

"Okay, I know~!"

She had paid close attention to his various cooking techniques back when Lin Chen was in Alaska, and his method of extracting starch through sedimentation was particularly amazing.

Working together, they quickly poured all the water out of the bamboo tubes.

Next was separating the potato bits on top.

The potato particles were much larger than the starch granules. Even after soaking for over an hour, they still retained their original size and firmness.

The starch, however, was different. After settling, it had congealed into a single mass. Poking it with a finger even produced a peculiar sensation, as hard as a wall.

They scooped out the top layer of potato pulp and set it aside, then consolidated the potato starch. In total, they filled over a dozen bamboo tubes.

About four-fifths of them contained potato pulp, while only a couple of tubes held the starch, and even those weren’t completely full.

He filled the remaining empty bamboo tubes with stream water and brought them back as well.

Even now, Erica had no idea how Lin Chen was going to use these ingredients to simulate the look and texture of octopus balls.

Her standards weren’t high; as long as they were round balls stuffed with octopus meat, she’d be happy.

As the two descended the hill, they caught the smell of heavy smoke from a distance.

"Why is the smoke so thick?"

Lin Chen stared strangely at the smoke vent Bartel had dug in the ground, then glanced at the one he had dug nearby. Something felt off.

"What happens if the smoke is thick?"

"Thick smoke means a higher temperature, and the smoky flavor will also be stronger."

Lin Chen patiently explained, "Smoking meat works on a similar principle to sous-vide. You use low heat over a long period to cook the food through and quickly dry it out."

"If the temperature is too high, it accelerates the evaporation of moisture from the meat. To put it bluntly, you can’t smoke it for too long, or it will become too dry and tough to chew."

"And if the smoky flavor is too strong, the meat won’t taste good either. Just imagine chewing on a piece of jerky that tastes like a cigarette."

"Ew... That’s disgusting. Is that even edible? Does he even know how to smoke meat? Isn’t this just a complete waste of meat?"

"Well, you can’t exactly say that. A hot smoke actually has its advantages. When you’re short on salt and spices, a hot, heavy smoke can further extend the preservation time of the meat. And because of the large volume of smoke, the temperature is higher, which shortens the smoking time."

"For example, fresh venison will start to spoil if exposed to these relatively warm temperatures for more than four hours. The bacteria on the surface and inside the meat will begin to multiply rapidly, eventually causing it to go bad."

"To prevent that, you have to cure the meat first, then either smoke it dry or sun-dry it."

"So what method are you using? It’s a smoking method too, right? How come your smoke looks so thin?"

"I’m using a cold smoke method—low temperature, slow smoking. The downside is that it’s time-consuming and labor-intensive, usually taking more than a day. But meat smoked this way has a better texture. It won’t be tough like with a hot smoke, and the smoky flavor isn’t overwhelming."

"Unless you’re in a real hurry, I personally don’t recommend hot smoking. The main reason is that it just tastes pretty bad."

How Bartel chose to do it was his own business. Lin Chen had no right to interfere, merely casting a few glances from afar as he passed.

Bartel seemed to be enjoying some roasted venison. A piece of meat was skewered on a branch, charred black and cooked to the point that it was impossible to tell what cut it was.

But judging by the way he was tearing off small bites, it was most likely overcooked.

Seeing the two of them return with a load of bamboo tubes, Bartel’s attention was once again drawn to them.

Making no effort to hide his curiosity, he stood up, grabbed his skewer of roasted venison, and started walking toward their cave shelter, tearing at the meat as he went, wanting to see what the heck they were up to.

Lin Chen placed his Hat Lamp at the cave entrance, dimming the brightness until it just illuminated a two-to-three-meter radius around them.

He didn’t plan on adding any more firewood to the fire pit. In the wild, without proper cookware, an open flame isn’t ideal for cooking. Embers, on the other hand, made it easier to control the heat and maintain a constant temperature.

He sliced off two octopus tentacles, which had already been cleaned, and placed them on a bamboo-strip grill rack to roast.

The octopus Erica had caught wasn’t huge—about average size. With its eight tentacles spread out, it was roughly the size of a basketball. Two tentacles were more than enough to make several large octopus balls.

While the octopus tentacles were roasting, he also propped up the bamboo tube filled with potato pulp.

The potato pulp, having been soaked in water for a long time, cooked quickly—even faster than the octopus tentacles.

The bamboo tube, saturated with moisture, created a natural steamer when heated. The high temperature of the steam, combined with the pressure in the confined space, steamed the potato bits until they were cooked through and tender in the shortest possible time.

He poured the mashed potatoes onto a banana leaf to cool, allowing them to absorb some of the leaf’s fresh fragrance at the same time.

The octopus tentacles also had to be turned from time to time to ensure they cooked evenly without getting charred.

Tentacles of this thickness needed to be roasted for at least 15 minutes to cook through. Scoring them would have sped up the process, but he chose not to.

Scoring would indeed make it cook faster, but it would also cause too much moisture to be lost, affecting the texture.

The spread-out mashed potatoes cooled quickly. They didn’t need to be completely cold, just cool enough to handle.

While they were still warm, he sprinkled in some salt, then grabbed a pinch of the damp starch and mixed it in thoroughly.

The warmth would make the starch sticky, and with the help of the moisture, the mashed potatoes would gradually become moldable like dough, preventing them from cracking.

"The starch slurry has to be added in batches. Our goal is to give the mashed potatoes better elasticity and cohesiveness so we can roll them into balls to simulate the outer shell."

"What happens if you don’t add enough starch?" Erica asked earnestly.

"Starch slurry, not just starch," Lin Chen corrected. Instead of answering, he pinched off a small piece of the not-yet-fully-mixed potato mash, flattened it, and pretended to wrap it around his thumb as if it were a filling.

"Go ahead, try poking it."

Erica glanced at him, then poked the potato mash with her index finger.

To her surprise, the seemingly dense potato mash immediately split, forming several cracks.

Without needing Lin Chen to prompt her, she immediately poked the well-mixed potato dough next to it.

Just like well-rested dough, the potato mash simply yielded, leaving a finger-shaped indentation without any cracks. Its elasticity was excellent.

She seemed to understand something, nodding thoughtfully.

’Mashed potatoes were a staple in North American households. After steaming the potatoes, you could add any number of flavorings and sauces to create different varieties.’

’Of course, she knew what mashed potatoes made from whole potatoes were like—creamy, soft, and easy to shape, like wet sand.’

’But they had a drawback: no elasticity or stretch. To put it simply, you couldn’t knead and shape them like dough and expect them to hold that shape.’

’Even if you baked them in an oven for ten or twenty minutes, you’d still end up with mashed potatoes that would crumble at a touch, not a material that would set firmly like dough.’

’This method—filtering out the starch and then adding it back in as a slurry—seemed like an unnecessary extra step. But after feeling the difference with her own hands, she finally understood the meaning behind it.’

"By extracting the starch from several potatoes and adding it all into one batch, you increase the starch content beyond its normal level, creating this dough-like state. Is my analysis correct?"

"Not bad," Lin Chen gave her a thumbs-up. "You’ve only been learning for a few days, and your culinary thinking has already improved by leaps and bounds!"

"Of course! I’m pretty smart, you know!"

Once the potato dough was kneaded evenly, the octopus tentacles were also just about roasted. He cut them into knuckle-sized pieces and set them aside on a banana leaf to cool.