How to cook the chicken breast with velveting, the Chinese marinating technique that makes the dishes juicy and velvety

If you ask yourself how to cook ithe chicken breast To get it soft, juicy and velvety as in the best Chinese restaurants, you are ready to switch to velveting or velvetingprecisely. A technique widespread in the eastern tradition, very simple, economic and able to give proteins one texture soft and silky, improving the ability to absorb the flavors of the condiments.

What is the velveting

It is a typical marinade of Chinese cuisine, perfect not only for chicken but also for beef, shrimp, scallops and even for less valuable cuts than pork and turkey: provides for the immersion of proteins in a mixture of starch (almost always corn), liquid and oil, which helps to keep the meat tender and humid during cooking. In addition to guaranteeing an extraordinarily soft consistency, velvety is an ingenious method to improve the flavor and juiciness of more thin and fibrous meats such as the beef collar or the chicken leg. And here’s how to proceed

Chinese velvety

Ingredients for 2-3 people:

• 300 g of chicken, beef, shrimp or other protein of your choice (cut into thin slices)
• 1 tablespoon of soy sauce or oyster sauce
• 1 tablespoon of corn starch
• 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon of water or rice wine (optional)
• 1 egg white (in the case of seafood)

Procedure:

1. In a large bowl, mix the seasoning (soy sauce or oyster sauce) with a drop of sesame oil (for seafood: add a marinated egg white for an even softer effect).
2. Add the chosen protein and mix well to cover it evenly.
3. Add corn starch and vegetable oil, continuing to mix until a uniform coating is obtained.
4. Cover and leave to marinate for at least 30 minutes in the refrigerator (better still if all night).
5. When you are ready to cook, cook for a few seconds: white meats such as chicken or turkey must be blanched in boiling water; The seafood and red meats such as beef or lamb give their best in the hot oil.
6. Drain and transfer to the wok to complete the cooking with vegetables and sauces to taste.

Advice:

• Vary the ingredients: Try to enrich the marinade with Mirin or Sake for a more refined flavor. You can also replace corn starch with tapioca starch, arrowroot or potato starch to obtain different textures.
• Slice: To cut the very thin meat, put it in the freezer for 20-30 minutes before slicing it. It will be easier to work.
• Plan in advance: For optimal results, let the proteins marinate all night. This will allow the ingredients to penetrate better in the fibers of the meat.
• Choose the right sauces: For red meat, you prefer dark seasonings such as soy sauce and oyster sauce, which favor caramelization. For white meats and seafood, opt for sesame oil, salt and pepper to enhance the delicacy of the flavor.

The western variant

If you wonder instead how to cook the chicken breast – or another animal protein – to make it juicy and velvety as in China, but from western flavors: you can apply the basic technique – where the presence of starch is fundamental – in ingredients most familiar to us. For example like this.

Ingredients for 2-3 people:

• 300 g of meat (chicken, beef or pork)
• 1 egg white
• 1 tablespoon of cornstarch (or potato starch)
• 1 tablespoon of dry white wine (substitute for Shaoxing rice wine)
• 1 tablespoon of sodium bicarbonate (only for hard, optional meat)
• 1 tablespoon of seed oil (sunflower or peanut)
• ½ teaspoon of salt

Procedure:

1. Cut the meat into thin stripes or morsels.

2

3. Add the meat, mix well, cover the bowl and let it rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

4. Bring a water pot with a drizzle of oil to the boil, add the marinated meat and cook for 30-60 seconds. Drain and sauté in a pan adding vegetables and seasonings as desired.