Best way to cook mutton in winter
By admin on 2014-12-23

With sweet and warm characters, containing abundant fats, protein, carbohydrate, inorganic salt, calcium, phosphorus, and iron, etc., mutton is popular in winter. Besides rich nutrition, it can also prevent and control impotence, prospermia, scanty menstruation, infertility, postpartum deficiency, bellyache, hernia, gastric cold, dyspepsia, asthenia of lung energy, cough and asthma, etc. However, what should be noted when we eat the mutton in winter?
 
The best choice is to braise. Being braised, the mutton is tender and fresh and is easier to mush and digest whilst the soup is good for health. If added proper traditional Chinese medicines or foods which have complementary effects in nourishment, the soup will be more nutrient. For example, mutton soup with angelica, mutton soup with medlar, mutton soup with astragalus, mutton soup with radish, mutton soup with bean curd, and mutton soup with pig trotter.
 
Reasonable collocation can prevent from the internal heat. With warm character, the mutton is easy to cause the internal heat if people eat it frequently. So the collocation with vegetables in cool and sweet characters, such as wax gourd, towel gourd, spinach, cabbage, golden mushroom, mushroom, water bamboo, bamboo shoot, etc., can play a role of detoxification, keeping cool and clearing the internal heat. The best ingredient with mutton is the bean curd, which can not only supply various micro-nutrient elements; the gesso within it also has the effect of getting rid of internal heat, dysphoria, and sputum. The dish of mutton with radish can fully exert the effects of the radish such as cool character, elimination of stagnation and sputum. In addition, it is not advisable to eat the mutton with pinellia ternate and acorus calamus.
 
It is not advisable to boil the mutton in a short time. The active nourishment within the instantly boiled mutton can be kept well. However, the fresher the selected mutton slices are, the better. They should be cut thin and be boiled in the boiling soup for about a minute. It can not be eaten before the color changes from fresh red to hoar. The time should not be too short, or the bacilli and ovum of the parasites in the slices would not be completely killed. The soup in the hotpot should keep high temperature and boiling.
 
It is not advisable to drink the soup that is used to boil the mutton. Many people think that there is abundant nourishment in the soup. In fact, it is on the contrary. The dinner of boiled mutton usually lasts for over an hour. During the boiling, various substances such as ingredients and mutton that still remain in the pot are mixed in the high temperature for a long time with chemical reactions among them. Researches have proved that the substances generated by the reactions between the foods do not have benefit the human body, but even cause some diseases.
 
It is not advisable to eat the mutton with vinegar, pumpkin or tea. "Compendium of Materia Medica" claimed that "Eating mutton with vinegar will do harm to the heart." The mutton has heat character and the vinegar is warm, which is similar to the wine. If they are boiled together, it is easy to generate heat and influence blood. So the vinegar should not be added into the mutton soup. The mutton contains abundant proteins and there are many tannic acids in the tea leaf. If you drink tea after eating the mutton immediately, the substance which is called tannic acid protein will be generated and constipation will be caused; if it is eaten with pumpkin, jaundice and beriberi will be caused.
 
Eat the delicious mutton moderately. With sweet and warm characters, the excessive eating of the mutton can cause the development of some focuses to aggravate the state of illness. In addition, after large amount of the protein and fats are absorbed, owing to the illness of the liver, they cannot completely or effectively finish the destabilization functions such as oxygenation, decomposition, and absorption, etc., but aggravate the liver burden, which can cause the illness; the patients with frequent erosion of mouth and tongue, red eyes, bitter mouth, dysphoria, dry and painful throat, edema pain in gum and diarrhea should not eat mutton too much.
 
The copper pot is forbidden to be used to cook the mutton. According to the "Compendium of Materia Medica": "if the mutton is boiled by the copper pot, it will do harm for both men and women’s health; it should be noted with the change of the characters.” The truth is that: if the copper meet acid or alkali in high temperature, chemical reactions will be caused to generate copper salt. As high-protein food, when mutton is boiled in copper pot, some poisonous substances will be generated, which will do harm to the human body. So it is not advisable to use the copper pot to cook the mutton.