Chinese Cooking Techniques: Dry-blanching, Slippery-Coating, and Velveting

Chinese cooking uses many simple techniques to prepare meat for a stir-fry, or stewing. Dry-blanching, or blanching with oil, is an important first step: this ensures the meat remains tender and flavorful. Before blanching, the meat is coated with starch: this protects the flavor and texture. When stir-fried, or stewed with a small amount of water, the starch on the blanched meat will thicken the broth in the wok. Slippery-coating and velveting refer to two methods of preparing the meat for dry-blanching. The essential difference is that velveting mixes egg with the starch and slippery-coating does not: the deciding factor is the texture you want in the finished dish.

Learning how to cook all over again

When I started working with Jing, my experience with Chinese cuisine was limited to the stir-fried Americanized dishes served at many Chinese takeout restaurants. I actually thought that’s what a wok was for: stir-frying. I had a lot to learn! There are eight major cuisines in China, and several other regional cuisines, which have developed over 5,000 years of history. Chinese cuisine focuses on contrasts and balance, including contrasting textures (crispy and tender, for example), contrasting colors, and a harmonious contrast of flavors.

Have you ever made a Western beef stew? This is a great way to make tougher cuts of beef tender and palatable, and results in an easy one-pot meal for the family. The first step is to coat the meat with flour. Then the coated meat is browned (braised) in a bit of oil or fat. Once braised, the meat is covered with boiling water and simmered for a long time. During the simmering process, the meat becomes tender, and the water is thickened by the flour to become a gravy. Coating and braising the meat first preserves the flavor while the simmering tenderizes the meat.

Learning Chinese Cooking Techniques

The Chinese cooking technique of dry-blanching with velveting or slippery-coating produces similar results for texture and flavor, in less time, and is essential when stir-frying. For example: Beef Tenderloin with Green Peppers and Professional Style Kung Pao Chicken. Chinese chefs also have a technique called dry-braising, typically used with seafood, which reverses the Western approach to braising: the ingredients are first blanched in water or oil, then braised. For example: Dry-braised Jiwei Shrimp and Jing’s own Dry-Pot Braised Shrimp.

So, it follows that there are many ways to prepare meat for cooking, depending on the desired texture and flavor. The late Irene Kuo discusses these in her master work: The Key to Chinese Cooking. It is out of print now, but you can find copies for sale online, and I highly recommend this book, as it is written for Western audiences to understand the methods and subtleties of Chinese cooking.

Slippery-coating and velveting

Slippery-coating and velveting are used to prepare meats, poultry, and seafood for stir-fry. The goal is to protect the moisture and flavor of the ingredient, while partially cooking the ingredient before being added to the intense heat of the stir-fry. This results in tender cuts of meat or seafood that are not over cooked or burned on the outside. Slippery-coating gives a satin texture. Velveting, as the name implies, yields a fluffier, velvet-like texture.

Increasingly, the term velveting is being used to describe any meat coated with starch before blanching. However, in traditional practice, there is a difference. Irene Kuo explains:

Velveting means coating an ingredient with egg white, corn starch, and oil after it has been seasoned. It is usually done with such delicate ingredients as chicken, shelled shrimp, and fish fillets. The ingredient is given at least 30 minutes to sit in the refrigerator so the coating will adhere to it. It is then scattered into either warm oil or hot water to firm and partially cook. After being drained the ingredient is ready to be stir-fried.

Slippery-coating is almost identical to velveting, except that the egg white is omitted. The coating then becomes satiny and slippery rather than fluffy….it is especially good for beef, making less expensive cuts, such as flank or prime shoulder, as tender as fillet.

Both can be done either in oil or water, and you must always use water if you’re going to refrigerate or freeze the ingredient–the chilled oil would harden the ingredient.

Kuo, Irene (1977), p. 65. The Key to Chinese Cooking. Alfred A. Knopf.

Dry-blanching

Dry-blanching (or oil blanching) in Chinese cooking uses warm oil instead of boiling water to blanch ingredients as a preliminary step to stir-frying, simmering, or dry-braising. I say warm to emphasize that this is not deep-frying, which is done at high temperatures. Blanching in oil is performed at about the same temperature as boiling water (212 F / 100 C).

By contrast, batter-dipped ingredients used in a stir-fry are deep-fried at high temperature (for example: Deep Fried Shiitake Mushrooms, or Sweet and Sour Pork) to set and brown the batter coating.

Another interesting exception is Dry-braised Carp, which is deep-fried without any coating prior to being dry-braised in a spicy broth.

Slippery-coated or velveted meats are blanched before being stir-fried, simmered, or dry-braised (for example: Dry-braised Shrimp with Cucumber, Diced Pork and Vegetables, or Diced Beef and Peppers).

Summary

The differences between blanching and dry-blanching, or braising and dry-braising, are subtle. What’s more, skilled chefs mix these Chinese cooking techniques, for example, sometimes deep-frying is used instead of blanching. The essential factors are that blanching is done at lower temperatures (boiling water) than frying (deep- or stir-) to partially pre-cook ingredients, preserving texture, moisture, and flavor. Braising is done to brown the surface of an ingredient. When braising is done before stewing or simmering, the cooking process takes longer. When braising or stir-frying after blanching, the high-heat phase of the cooking is done very quickly.

Velveting is a blanching method using a starch coating mixed with egg white and oil for a fluffy texture on the blanched ingredient. Slippery-coating is a blanching method using starch and oil without egg white, to produce a satin texture on the blanched ingredient. Both are essential techniques when using meats with stir-frying, to preserve tenderness, moisture, and flavor while cooking the ingredient thoroughly.

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