The judges stared at the noodle dish and then to Lu Xinyi. They could tell she was aware of the problem. While her noodles were almost perfect, the broth had been the disappointment. As Ye Xieren waited for their scores, he bore the facial expression of one expecting a great gift. There was a hint of the victory in the smile surrounded by his stiff cheeks— not the supple grin of a fellow examinee, but the joy of the enemy after the battle was won.
Qu Shaowei sighed. Such a wonderful noodles dish but an imperfect one. There was potential with her dish but wasn’t executed properly. It was a shame that it couldn’t compete well against Ye Xieren’s soba noodles. If Lu Xinyi had presented the perfectly cooked version of her noodles, there would be no doubt that she’d beat Ye Xieren fair and square.
“Miss Lu, we guess that you are already aware of why we cannot give you a perfect score for this round. Your handmade noodles were spectacular; unfortunately, we cannot say the same thing to your bone broth.”
Lu Xinyi was never been good at making noodles after all. At first, she thought that she could use pastry and bread flour for her noodles because it had higher gluten content and would require less kneading, but doing that would also require more water content and longer resting time. The time that was critical for this round.
She chose to use regular flour instead and spent more time kneading and less resting time. When the judges mentioned that the problem lied in her bone broth, she knew that the way she cooked it had caused the problem. The broth that she made had a more complex, meaty flavor when it should be a broth with a cleaner and purer flavor.
Her noodles required a bone broth simmered and cooked for long hours, but she used a pressure cooker to fasten the cooking time. When making bone broth, one should keep the heat to around 180F (82C) and not let it get to an aggressive boil. It will emulsify the fat into the broth, and it would also lose flavor and nutrients through the boiling process.
Pressure cooking was, by definition, cooking at a higher temperature than normal simmering or boiling. The pressure buildup inside a sealed pressure cooker actually went past the boiling point, and a higher temperature meant generally-faster cooking. What a lot of people missed or didn’t understand was that the collagen they were trying to extract from the bone could easily be destroyed at higher temperatures.
In other words, when she chose to use a pressure cooker, it raised the temperature so much that it could actually damage the collagen she was trying to extract over a longer cooking time—even as it took less time to extract in the first place. She wouldn’t have a problem if she had enough time with an extended simmer on the stovetop with a regular pot. The temperature wouldn’t be so high enough to cause much damage. As a matter of fact, it never would—because it’s limited by the boiling point.
A pressure cooker would allow one to produce broth comparatively quickly, but it introduced the risk of overcooking. For a beef or pork broth, where there was much more collagen to be extracted—using a pressure cooker was still faster but almost counter-productive. One couldn’t fully extract all the collagen without damaging some.
If the chef really wanted full extraction of all the collagen present, a traditional simmer was a way to go—even though it would take longer. This was why some restaurants prefer to produce their broths hours or a day before to make sure they would extract the collagen and the flavors from the meat and bones.
The scores were flashed on the screen, and Lu Xinyi wasn’t surprised to see that she received a lower score than Ye Xieren. Ye Xieren punched his hand in the air as he saw the scores. He received his second perfect five score while Lu Xinyi got a 4.7.
“Yes!”
Xiao Lan pouted at the audience area. Lu Xinyi lost this round again, but at least, she’d be advancing to the last round. “What a bummer.”
“That’s alright. The last round would be desserts, and we do know how Lu Xinyi makes them. This should be easy for her.” Yuan Jin reassured her.
Then again, there was this ominous feeling around them, telling Yuan Jin how wrong he was.