I'm the Culinary God

This is the origin of monks cooking pig’s head.

The reason for using earthenware basins is that monks must abstain from meat, they cannot use their own pots for cooking, and since pig’s heads are large, ordinary containers cannot hold them, so a clean earthenware basin was used.

Earthenware basins were frequently used in temples in the past for washing hands, faces, clothes, and even urinating.

These earthenware basins were separated and not the same one.

However, those who ate the pig’s head meat didn’t care, they only felt that the pig’s head meat cooked by monks in earthenware basins was particularly fragrant and delicious, and that’s how the story of the urine basin pig’s head spread.

A while ago, Lin Xu was researching online and saw some so-called scholars solemnly analyzing the secret of why pig’s head cooked in urine basins by monks was delicious.

They even forcibly explained it as monks not eating meat and the urine basin having no urine smell.

Seeing this, Lin Xu felt like finding an earthenware basin full of urine stains to stew a pot of meat for that scholar to see if he could eat it.

It was originally a charitable act of compassion, but through misinterpretation, it became urine basin roasted meat, while more people were curious if the monks ate those pig’s heads.

If they ate it, wouldn’t that be breaking their vows?

You think about whether they broke their vows, but what they thought about was how many poor people could eat the pig’s head stewing in the basin... Different life directions, different realms, different actions.

Lin Xu actually quite liked this story, especially during the Qing Dynasty, Fahai Temple even made roasting pig’s head in earthenware basins a major dish to entertain incense guests.

This kind of behavior, if placed nowadays, would surely be scolded terribly.

But they didn’t mind, incense guests wanted to eat, so they made it for them, just that simple.

Zhu Yong, Wei Qian, and Zhuang Yizhou, after hearing Lin Xu’s telling, felt that this was indeed reasonable.

Braised Whole Pig’s Head can enter the elegant dining halls, and become the top of the Huaiyang three-head feast, it is absolutely impossible for the dish to contain a urine smell, otherwise, those literati and salt merchants would be too uncultured.

The famous Qing Dynasty gastronome, Yuan Mei, once visited Fahai Temple to eat pig’s head, and after eating, he specially asked about the method, and wrote it into "Suiyuan Food List", and there was no mention of a urine basin.

This shows how serious the misinterpretation is.

The whole pig’s head turns black from roasting, then it’s soaked in hot water for a while.

About ten minutes later, it’s taken out to scrape off with a small knife, thoroughly cleaning inside and out, even the eye sockets, earholes, and corners are all cleaned.

While busy, Xie Baomin and Dai Jianli walked in.

Today, Old Dai was originally going to Building No. 2 for tea, but when he heard Lin Xu was going to make Braised Whole Pig’s Head, he got into the car and followed.

This is a major dish in Huaiyang cuisine, must see Lin brother’s method.

"Wow, it’s cleaned so thoroughly."

Dai Jianli looked at the clean pig’s head in the basin and exclaimed with admiration.

With this meticulous attitude, the pig’s head cooked won’t be too bad.

Lin Xu said with a smile:

"Just finished cleaning, later, I have to rinse it again with warm water, thoroughly remove the dirt on the pig’s head, and then proceed to bone removal."

Xie Baomin took a glance:

"After rinsing again, you can proceed to remove the bones, don’t wash it too long, otherwise, if the pork skin softens, it will fall apart at a touch."

Lin Xu washed it again, took the pig’s head out of the basin, and began the bone removal process.

First, place the pig’s head chin-up on the chopping board, starting the cut from the chin, separate the skin and meat between the jaw and neck to expose the bones.

Then, along the bones, start to cut and remove the meat, gradually stripping the meat from the pork, exposing the bones.

At first, it’s difficult, because the whole lower jaw has many tendons, meat and bones are tightly bonded, needing to be gradually stripped with a small knife, and during this process, care must be taken not to damage the pork skin, otherwise, the appearance is ruined.

The jaw bone comes out, it gets a bit easier, as removing the jawbone exposes the whole cranial cavity, then bone removal becomes a bit easier.

As long as you’re careful to remove the cranial bone, it’s fine.

Dai Jianli held the removed jawbone, looked at it, and said to Wei Qian and the others:

"All of you watch carefully, mastering the technique of force for bone removal is important, most crucial is understanding the overall structure of the pig’s head, knowing how many bones and where each bone is distributed, only this way can you remove the bones from the pig’s head."

This requires more practice, only with enough experience accumulated can it be done skillfully.

The reason Lin Xu is so skilled is that in the system reward of the Perfect Level technique for pressing pig’s head meat, there is the whole structure of the pig’s head.

So he does not have that feeling of being at a loss now.

After the jaw bone removal, first clean the complex pig snout area, then tidy up the cranial bone.

For the perfectly presented Braised Whole Pig’s Head, the whole pig face should show a smiling face, to achieve this, the pig snout must be intact, not damaged at all.

This part cleared, next is the face part.

This is also the most challenging part of the whole pig’s head, as the skin here is relatively thin, in some parts even tightly stuck to the bone, plus the eye socket and other areas have many tendons, one careless move will cause the pork skin to tear.

Fortunately, Lin Xu is quite familiar with the structure of the pig’s head, plus his excellent knife skills, he managed to complete this part without incident.

After all this is done, the hardest part of the whole pig’s head is over.

He then removed the entire pig’s head cranial bone, cleaned up the ears, and the bone removal process came to an end.

Watching a pig’s head transform from three-dimensional to flat, everyone lamented the difficulty of this dish while feeling a growing anticipation for the cooking that follows.

Such a difficult preparation, it must be quite a delight to eat, right?

Lin Xu tidied up the pig ears, and put the whole pig head into clean water to soak, first to remove the blood water, and also to let the bone removal wrinkles relax back in the water.

Only then can the next step be taken—Braised!

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This Chapter is 5000 words, seeking monthly tickets, brothers!