How to boil spices to make them fragrant

Spices are common condiments. Whether you are cooking or making braised products, spices are indispensable. If spices are used properly, the food produced will taste very good. Braised products are a very common food in life. When traveling or watching TV at home, braised food can not only be used as snacks, but the strong aroma of braised food can also increase people's appetite.

How do you boil spices to make them fragrant?

The aroma mainly comes from cinnamaldehyde, eugenol, pinene and other flavor components. Although cinnamon has less odor and bitterness, its cortex is oily and difficult to remove odor and release fragrance. It needs to be soaked in high water temperature of 70 degrees for 4 hours. It is best to break the cinnamon into pieces.

The aroma comes from ingredients such as eugenol, caryophyllene, vanillin, and acetate. Because cloves have a strong fragrance, do not use too much, otherwise it will produce a suffocating smell. At the same time, because it has less odor and bitterness and is more oily, the water temperature for soaking should be controlled at around 40°C and the soaking time should be 3 hours.

The aroma of fennel mainly comes from anethole, as well as other ingredients such as fenchone, anisaldehyde, and pinene. The aroma of bay leaves is fresh and attractive, with a mixed scent of cinnamon and camphor. Its function in cooking is mainly to deodorize and secondly to enhance the flavor. The aroma of lemongrass mainly comes from citral, and there are also small amounts of citronellal and other ingredients. When soaking these three spices, the water temperature should be around 30℃ and the time should be 2 hours.

Because bitter spices contain a lot of odor and bitter impurities, they are generally soaked in white wine to remove the odor. This is because the volatilization and penetration of alcohol make it easier to remove the unpleasant smell and bitterness in the spices. But when dealing with different spices, the length of soaking time also needs to be flexibly controlled.

The aroma components are relatively complex, mainly including pinene, camphene, dipentene, linalool, myristic ether, etc. Cardamom has a stronger aroma, but also has a stronger odor and bitterness. Because the fruits are large, plump and firm, they should be smashed before soaking in white wine, and the soaking time is usually 2 hours. Note: First use clean water to rinse off the sulfur smell remaining on the surface of white cardamom, and then soak it in white wine.

The aroma mainly comes from aromatic components such as linalool in volatile oils. The aroma of cardamom is quite strong, and it also has a certain deodorizing effect, but the odor and bitterness of cardamom are relatively strong. Therefore, when processing, you should first use clean water to rinse off the smoky smell on the surface, then crush it and soak it in white wine for 2 hours.

The aroma of kaempferia galanga mainly comes from ingredients such as borneol and kaempferol. Amomum villosum contains a certain amount of oil components, and the aroma comes from various aroma components in Amomum villosum oil, including right-rotating camphor, borneol, borneol acetate, linalool, nerol, etc. The fragrance of Angelica dahurica comes from ingredients such as angelica dahurica ether, bergamot lactone, and angelicae dahuricae. The aroma of galangal comes from ingredients such as camphor alcohol, eugenol, and eucalyptol. The four spices are soaked in white wine for about 1 hour.

After the spices have been removed from the aroma treatment, if they are used directly to prepare marinade, the aromatic substances will not be fully released. Therefore, before use, you can first stir-fry them with an appropriate amount of oil to allow the aroma to be fully released before using them to prepare hot pot or marinade.

Note: When frying spices with oil, use low heat and low oil temperature (even cold oil), and avoid frying the spices until they are burnt or burnt (producing a bitter taste). In addition, different spices not only require different frying times, but also require the following principles to be followed.

Aromatic spices and bitter spices should be fried separately, and the frying time of aromatic spices is longer, while the frying time of bitter spices is shorter. This is to avoid the bitter taste of the bitter spices from seeping out due to the temperature rising due to long heating time.

When frying spices, you should put them into the pan in order according to the fact that each spice releases its fragrance at different speeds. In other words, spices that release fragrance slowly should be put into the pan first, and spices that release fragrance quickly should be put into the pan later. This way, the fragrance of the spices will be similar, thus ensuring the flavor of the hot pot or brine.