Does Asian cuisine have "slow cooking"?!


Question: Does Asian cuisine have "slow cooking"?
It seems that most Asian cuisine that's made it to the west involves the sort of fireworks in a pan type cooking (which I LOVE) but what I'm curious about it if there is any analogue in Asian cooking to American slow cooking. Is anything ever put into a pot or a smoker or anything similar for two hours or more?

Thanks much!
-Fox

Answers:

Yes, slow cooking exists.

The Chinese smoke meats, although they use different spices, the idea and method is the same. If you go to an Asian market you can buy a large jar of Pork Sung, which is smoked dried pork that's then shredded until it looks more like packaging material than meat. It's commonly eaten on rice, or sprinkled onto heavily buttered bread for a sort of east/west type of breakfast or snack.

There are a lot of slow-cooked meat stews and dishes - a necessity since some of the meat they use is quite tough until it's been braised for hours so the connective tissues break down and become soft.

Also in the South Pacific Islands, there's a cooking method called the imo (In Hawaiian) An imo is a large shallow pit into which you put charcoal embers and rocks you've heated up near the fire, then you wrap your food (like a whole pig) in banana leaves, put it on top of the rocks, cover that with more hot rocks and then fill in the pit with sand. 6 to 8 hours later you dig up the pit, and remove the now perfectly roasted pig (or whatever) for that night's dinner/feast.



Alot of Asian cuisine has stewed, pot braised and slow cooked dishes, especially with some beef and pork dishes where they use belly, brisket, shank, tripe and other innards, not much in the way of fish or seafood's this way as they will go tough, with the exception of squid, octopus and cuttlefish with any of this it has to either quick cooked and fried or long braised to get them tender and not be like shoe leather.



Indian, Persian and Iranian foods often use something similar to a Tandoor, (as in Tandoori).
A big clay pot where the meat is cooked (originally over an open fire), often for long periods of time. Sometimes it is even cooked once in the Tandoor, and then has further cooking in sauce

So you see, Asian cuisine is not all about flash frying, and big flames :-)



Japan and Korea both use slow cooking in forms of nabe or hot-pots. These hot-pots contain different types of meat and vegetables and can either be sweet or spicy in flavour. My favourites include sesame flavour hot pot from Japan and kimichi hot pot from Korea.

Japan Australia Blog
http://japan-australia.blogspot.com/sear…



Yes, there are.

Chinese medicinal soups with chicken, ginseng, goji berries, red dates, etc.
Homestyle Chinese soups are usually cooked on low heat for hours, using soup bones, winter melons, dates, carrots, etc.

Some curries are meant to be cooked over a long time to concentrate the sauce & tenderise the meats, eg. beef rendang.



Yes especially Korean and Japanese
they have wonderful slow cooked stew like dishes that are spicy and wonderful like ths recipe

http://www.nibbledish.com/people/kimmall…

YUMMMMM! -O



Yes. Barbecue




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