ebookland Chapter 103 Chili Workshop
Chapter 103 Chili Workshop
The canned food business here is in full swing, and the newly built chili sauce workshop over there is about to start production.
The peppers are ripe, quite big, and turning red and spicy. Chen Ruotong chooses the sharp peppers with moderate spiciness as the raw material for the hot and sour sauce.
Chen Ruotong recalls the process of making hot and sour sauce in her past life:
Prepare the washed red peppers and use a meat grinder to grind them into small pieces.
Heat the pan, add a proper amount of oil, add the chopped chili peppers, and fry slowly over medium-low heat until the chili peppers change color and emit a fragrant aroma. Control the heat well to avoid burning the chili peppers.
Put the fried chili pieces into a large pot, add minced ginger, minced garlic, soy sauce, sugar, apple cider vinegar and appropriate amount of salt. Then stir well until it becomes chili sauce.
Heat the pan again, add a proper amount of oil, add minced ginger and minced garlic, and fry over low heat until fragrant. Then pour in the stirred chili sauce, continue to stir-fry over low heat for a while to fully mix the various seasonings.
According to personal taste, you can add salt, soy sauce, sugar and other seasonings to adjust the salty and sweet taste of the chili sauce.
After the chili sauce has cooled, you can put it into a bottle and seal it. It can be stored for a long time in a cool and dry place.
Hot pot base, she had never made it in her previous life, but she could look for information in the space, and there was a recipe at the condiment store. When making hot pot base, use chili peppers, also known as millet peppers, which are very spicy.
Chen Ruotong printed the recipes for making hot and sour sauce and hot pot base on a booklet and handed it to Qi Qi and four others. She then took out five hand-cranked meat grinders from the space and told them how to use them.
Ginger and garlic were readily available in the farm, so they could be used locally. Chen Ruotong also took out a large amount of soy sauce, sugar, and apple cider vinegar from the space for them to use.
The workers in the chili workshop also wear white coats, fully armed, and rubber gloves. Making hot and sour sauce is different from making canned fruit. It is really spicy. If you are not well armed, it will get on your skin and burn, which is really uncomfortable!
Chen Ruotong asked the four of them to practice making it first, and after they succeeded, she passed the method to the ten servants of the Chen family who were transferred to work as temporary workers. Other non-core work such as picking peppers, washing peppers, and hand-cranking peppers were done by hired tenant farmers.
Zhou Qian, the chief steward, also supervises the work of the chili workshop.
Chen Ruotong spent a few busy days and finally ushered in the first trial production of the Chili Workshop.
She personally tasted the samples made by Qi Qi and others, and the taste was perfect, exactly the same as she remembered.
After getting affirmation, Qi Qi and his colleagues began to teach the production method to the servants of the Chen family.
Soon after, batches of hot and sour sauces and hot pot bases with good color, aroma and taste came out.
Chen Ruotong decided to open a second store on South Street, "Laweixian", to sell these special products. Of course, the hot pot base cannot be sold for the time being, and it has to be provided to Wangchunlou, and only hot and sour sauce is sold.
Chen Ruotong plans to launch other chili sauces in the future, such as: mushroom chili sauce, minced meat chili sauce, etc.
As soon as the news came out, it immediately attracted many customers to buy.
People raved about this novel seasoning, and orders came in like crazy.
At the same time, there was a bumper harvest of tomatoes, with baskets of red and yellow tomatoes filling the fields.
Chen Ruotong tasted the tomato and it was sour and sweet with a persimmon flavor. The tomato planting was very successful.
Chen Ruotong was not in a hurry to sell tomatoes. She stored the tomatoes in the cellar in the space and sold them to the nobles in winter to make some money from them. When she had enough seeds next year, she would slowly promote them to the general public.
The watermelons in the watermelon field are all fat and big, and one can weigh more than ten pounds. Chen Ruotong never thought that the seeds she spit out when eating the watermelons in the market could grow such good watermelons. It was a pleasant surprise! She would not sell any watermelons, but put them in the space, for her family to eat, or to give to relatives and friends.
We started to harvest potatoes. Five acres of land was actually a lot of potatoes, so we hired many tenant farmers.
The tenant farmers carefully pulled out the potato vines first, then dug the potatoes with small hoes and hands. Because the soil was good, fertilizer was applied, and there was moderate rainfall this year, the potatoes were very large, each one was as big as an adult's fist.
Old man Chen held a potato in one hand and smiled. "So this is what potatoes look like. They really look like lumps of earth! Grandson, if this is cooked, will it really taste good?"
Chen Ruotong giggled, "Why would I lie to you? Grandpa, it's really delicious, floury and fragrant. I'll take it back and boil it for you!" Chen Ruotong carried a basket of potatoes and went back to the house to boil them.
Magistrate Zhang knew that potatoes were being harvested today, so he came to join in the fun. He wanted to see how many kilograms of potatoes an acre of land could produce.
The prefect also picked potatoes with the tenant farmers and chatted with them, being very approachable.
The tenant farmers also loved the prefect very much. They were a little scared and nervous at first, but later when they got familiar with him, they dared to chat with Prefect Zhang.
Everyone benefited a lot from the business of Old Man Chen. The tenant farmers were willing to work for the Chen family. The Chen family paid high wages and did not exploit the tenant farmers, so everyone worked very hard.
Soon, one acre of land was harvested, and Old Man Chen took a large scale and weighed the potatoes piled up into a small mountain, bag by bag. The final calculation showed that the yield per acre was more than 2,500 kilograms, which could be considered a high-yield crop.
Magistrate Zhang was naturally overjoyed. Being able to have such high-yield crops within his jurisdiction was also his achievement!
At this time, Chen Ruotong had already asked Feng Liangyu to bring a large bowl of boiled potatoes to Magistrate Zhang.
After washing his hands in the bucket, Magistrate Zhang picked up a peeled potato and ate it. The first bite he took was soft and fragrant, and it was really delicious.
Prefect Zhang gave a thumbs up and said as he ate, "This tastes really good. Even though this potato looks like a lump of earth, it's really delicious. I'll have another one!"
Magistrate Zhang ate three large potatoes in succession, burped, and said, "That's great. I'm full with just three potatoes. If this is planted on a large scale, the people's food and clothing will be solved. Guchuan, you really did a great thing!"
Chen Ruotong shook her head and smiled, "Master Zhang, please stop praising me. This is all thanks to Grandpa and Dad. I didn't do any work at all. It's because of their good management that we can grow such high-yield potatoes. If you want to praise me, you should praise them!"
Chen Ruotong flattered Old Man Chen and Chen Jianshu so much that they all smiled happily.
Old Man Chen and Chen Jianshu also ate two potatoes and praised them highly.
Chen Ruotong broke open the remaining dozen potatoes and distributed them to the tenant farmers for them to taste. Everyone praised them unanimously, saying that such delicious food should be promoted as soon as possible.
In one day, five acres of land were harvested, and a total of more than 12,500 kilograms of potatoes were collected.
In the evening, Chen Ruotong personally cooked a potato feast.
Shredded potatoes with vinegar, potato slices with chili peppers, stewed chicken with potatoes, candied potatoes, fried potato strips, scrambled eggs with tomatoes, tomatoes with sugar, stir-fried pork with chili peppers, and a jar of the hot and sour sauce.
A large table was laid out with new dishes. Magistrate Zhang and the Chen family sat around the table and tasted the new dishes.
Every dish is unique and tasty, especially the chili sauce, which is sour, sweet, spicy and salty with all kinds of flavors, and it goes very well with rice.
After the meal, Chen Ruotong brought out another big watermelon. A watermelon weighed 15 kilograms, which was really rare in the Daliang Dynasty. No one had ever seen such a big watermelon.
When Chen Ruotong cut the watermelon in half, the red flesh and black seeds made people drool, and the fragrant and sweet smell rushed straight into the nose.
This watermelon tastes really good, sweet and juicy. Although not as sweet as the watermelons in the space, it is much sweeter than the winter melons in the Daliang Dynasty. This is real fruit!