Fishing Livestream
Chapter 798: 782: Stewing Bear Paws in Clear Water?

Chapter 798: Chapter 782: Stewing Bear Paws in Clear Water?

The atmosphere in the live streaming room soared to a small climax due to Yue Feng’s professional handling of the game. Yue Feng unceremoniously picked up a massive bear paw and swaggered over to the cabin.

The presence of the fireplace made cooking much simpler. Yue Feng inspected the bear paw and used his exquisite skills to meticulously remove fine hairs and other details. After briefly rinsing it in a pot of water, he set the bear paw to stew!

Although Yue Feng boasted of having both fish and bear paws, the bear paw was much larger than most people would imagine—a single paw nearly filled the camp pot!

Given the limited conditions, it was not possible to finely process the ingredients. After adding some salt and water, Yue Feng started the stew. According to the knowledge passed down from hunters, bear paws required careful cooking and needed to simmer for several hours. While it stewed, he took the opportunity to smoke and preserve the meat as soon as possible.

After preparing the firewood and stove, Yue Feng, armed with tools, returned to the initial site of game processing.

“Brothers, the bear paw is stewing already. It won’t be ready for a few hours. While we wait, let’s further process the meat and start setting up for smoking!”

After greeting everyone, Yue Feng pulled out his hunting knife and got busy, smoothly cutting the game into five or six large pieces of meat from the forelegs, hind legs, and joint areas.

“Huh? Wasn’t the game already processed? Why is it being dismembered further?”

“Sure enough, I wasn’t mistaken. He’s really fast at de-boning, so quiet that I didn’t hear a thing!”

Yue Feng grinned, “The earlier step involved removing the organs and skinning, which were the main parts. What we’re doing now is the final processing before smoking!”

Why do this?

Actually, the reason is quite simple, just like dividing a pig into different parts at home—front rack, rear rack, loin, and shoulder, different parts have different quality, fat content, and texture. During the smoking process, the heat required varies slightly as well! By processing them separately, we can preserve the best flavors of the meat as much as possible! Let’s get started!”

Soon, Yue Feng, carrying an ax, arrived next to the woods and quickly chopped down many pine logs about the thickness of a bowl.

Using these logs, he quickly constructed a triangular frame.

With his dagger, he made an incision in different parts of the meat, hung them with thin branches, and soon, many pieces of meat of various sizes were hanging from the frame.

After the preparations, the critical part of smoking began. Yue Feng lit fresh pine needles with dry grass, and dense smoke soon began to rise from under the fire.

Pine needles have a high oil content and can ignite even when wet, but they produce a lot of smoke!

If one were making a regular fire, one would not add too many needles at the start as this could make it hard for the flames to catch and affect the subsequent burning!

However, for smoking meat, the strategy is completely the opposite. From the beginning of making the fire, Yue Feng intentionally added a large amount of fresh pine needles to keep the fire smoldering without open flames. Once he felt the temperature was about right, he added a few more logs, maintaining a very steady state!

In this relatively low-temperature baking and smoking state, the surface of the meat slowly evaporated, becoming firmer, and more smoke particles adhered to it, quickly changing the color of the meat’s surface.

Yue Feng gently poked with a small knife and checked the details, saying, “See! Smoking meat is not as difficult as everyone thinks! In just a short time, a thin film of pine smoke has already formed on the surface!

The general technique is to keep the parts with a higher fat content closer to the core of the fire where the temperature is higher, and the parts with more muscle content a bit further from the fire!”

After the initial moisture had been roasted off and the pine smoke had enveloped the meat, creating a barrier against bacteria, the meat smoking process was nearly completed! The previous smoked fish was based on the same principle!

We have a considerable reserve of meat, and the temperature will soon drop, so a rough processing is enough! If it were in regions like Sichuan within our country, a whole pig could be smoked and preserved for many years!”

Watching the numerous chunks of meat slowly turn from bright to dull colors, there was quite a sense of accomplishment. Yue Feng casually chatted with his online viewers while adding fresh pine branches or occasionally switching the positions of the meat, busy yet enjoying himself.

Once the meat smoking was nearly done, Yue Feng went back to the cabin to add some firewood!

As he had expected, one couldn’t say whether bear paws were delicious or not, but they were certainly tough to cook. The water in the field pot was nearly boiled dry. He poked it with a knife, and it was still not tender! It was still far from being ready to eat!

Well! Add more water and continue boiling!

He stayed busy until after one o’clock in the afternoon when the meat smoking was completely finished. Yue Feng piled up the remaining pine branches for the final wrap-up, and in the field pot, the bear paws were finally tender enough to be prodded!

“Brothers! I promised you guys fish and bear paws! But the bear paw is quite a hefty portion, hard to finish all at once! Let’s taste the bear paw first!

This time, it’s the fattiest right front paw. A small knife can now move through it. It’s boiled quite mushy, I’ll taste it for everyone! Sorry about this!”

After calling out, Yue Feng poked at the bear paw with his military knife and started gnawing on it.

Actually, when he was in Russia, Uncle Victor had already served him bear paw. His first impression was more about the novelty than its deliciousness.

This time, after taking a bite, Yue Feng almost spat it out!

Fishy! Very fishy!

The initial taste was a bizarre mix of blood and grease, and the scarce addition of salt made this flavor even more intense.

“Uh! No blood was drained in advance, nor was it soaked in clean water! Our attempt at cooking bear paw this time was a bit of a failure,” Yue Feng said after forcing himself to chew and swallow the bite, shaking his head.

“What does it taste like? Such a big bear paw must be thrilling to bite into!”

“Yeah, Feng bro, how does it taste? Tell us brothers! It’s one of the eight culinary treasures of the mountains, really want to try it!”

“Really want to try it, I’m drooling here!”

Yue Feng did not continue gnawing, instead, he held it with his left hand and used the military knife in his right to shave off the surface layer in front of everyone.

The surface layer was mostly fat, and below it were tissues like tendons and cartilage.

“Perhaps in everyone’s mind, a bear paw should be an incredibly delicious delicacy! But in reality, it isn’t like that!

Previously in Russia, I tried bear paw made by Uncle Victor. The sensation was similar to gnawing on a pig’s trotter at home! And lacking careful processing and culinary ingredients, the bear paw we cooked honestly tastes very poor!