I remember as a kid over 55 years ago going to Chinese banquets and being served abalone. We used to say it was like bubblegum due to chewy texture. It was one of my favorite dishes.
Since it was such an auspicious dish my mom always made this for the Lunar New Year. It was my favorite but I never got the chance to learn the recipe.! Thank you Daddy Lau for helping to keep these memories and traditions alive.
Thank you so much for sharing this recipe, I have been looking high and low and watched so many others but I found this is the simplest and the best! Many thanks!
My parents would make use of canned abalone back in the day! At a restaurant in Southern China, I had a dish of 3 small abalone for about $1.75. Delicious and the shells were so pretty.
Thanks for this recipe! I have two cans of abalone in my pantry. One I bought at Costco for under $30. It is from Australia. I will definitely try it with this recipe.
Cooking the abalone for 5 minutes along with the dried black mushrooms made the abalone tough. To prevent abalone from getting tough, for canned abalone, since they are cooked, just throw them in after the sauce added and switch off the fire and cover up the wok with lid and let in simmer for a 3 minutes. This will ensure the texture of abalone not tough. Also, I learn too that people actually boiled the whole can of abalone to ensure the texture of abalone is not tough.
Hello Lau family! Does your mom or dad have any recipes for healthy "soups" (汤) and "teas" (药茶)? My parents (mom especially) would make them all the time for us growing up to drink with various ingredients and herbs and touted many health benefits but I'm afraid that sort of cultural knowledge will get lost as time goes on.
A couple of things. I bought the butane burner than you use and list on your videos. It works easily and well and outside of the cans of fuel is pretty inexpensive. As I was cleaning up the packaging though, I noticed it said "for outside use only." I bought it especially to use with my wok. I have a small electric stove and as you probably know heat changes dialed in on an electric stove happen slowly in both directions. Not normally a disaster because I can just pick the pan up off the burner if it's too hot and put it back on for short periods to control the pan heat as the burner cools down. HOWEVER, I have a hammered carbon steel wok and it's pretty heavy. I absolutely have to use both hands to control it if I pull it off the stove. With a flame heat those heating level changes are pretty much instantaneous. So I have to ask, is it OK to cook indoors with this or am I limited to only using it outside. A second thing is that I grew up in California and in my younger days I used to scuba dive from time to time. Much of the California coast had a good population of abalone at the time. They live on the rocks where they can quite quickly suck themselves down on the rock with that foot that covers the entire bottom of the abalone. It's a huge muscle and when they clamp down, you can't get them off. On an exceptionally low tide the abalone would be exposed and you could pop them off without free-diving or scuba diving for them. We would take a tool that looks like a miniature crow bar and when we found one that looked like it was the legal size we'd quickly slide it under the foot and pop the abalone up off the rock. If you didn't do it all in one smooth motion, the abalone would clamp down on the rock and you not only wouldn't get him off the rock, you wouldn't get your abalone pry-bar back either. I was never really excited about cleaning them and beating the heck out of that foot muscle to tenderize it, so I'd watch folks do it but never collected them myself. My uncle, on the other hand, didn't dive, but he knew when those really low tides were and he'd go harvest abalone anytime those tides happened by just scrambling over the rocks. Currently abalone in California can not be harvested until 2026. They can't be taken in Washington State either. The minimum size limit for red abalone (the predominant species of abalone in CA) was 7" across the longest part of the shell and that is also the size specification for the expected re-opening of abalone season in 2026. Most of the ones I'd see harvested in the late 60's when I was scuba diving were typically 7" to 9" in diameter across the longest section of shell. So I was shocked when I saw the ones that you can buy, looking like large light-tan mushrooms. Looks like I should have been keeping and eating abalone when I had the chance! It was illegal to sell them back then back then so you couldn't make any money off of them, but you were allowed to take a number of them each day.
One of my favorite chinese cuisines. It is just amazing, hard to explain how good it is. My mum cooks it in her rice porridge and it feels like you’re on a hunt for gold each meal😅 DELICIOUS! ❤
Thanks for the recipe. I can remember eating these during special occasions and CNY. The price for abalone has really skyrocketed in price and I don’t mean recently, like most our our food supplies. It’s been expensive for quite some time now.
You can get farmed frozen (maybe even fresh) abalone now (the wild is the one that you have to have a special license for and limits etc). Hong Doy speaks!!
I remember in the 90s that you couldnt drive more than 3 miles in OR or WA without seeing a billboard advertising "all you can eat" geoduck. Seems like nobody really cares for it any more....weird, I thought it was awesome deep fried. 🤷♂️
I was a chef in SF at a seafood restaurant and became OBSESSED with Geoduck! My favorite hand down was geoduck ceviche, very thinly sliced. I also had the pleasure of trying a giant fresh abalone that I cooked for a guest that was a diver. He harvested the abalone and called my restaurant to ask if we could cook it for him. I still have the abalone shell on my dresser as a catch-all bowl😅.
@@DB-xo6xh Hah! I have a fairly big abalone shell, too. It has six holes in it, which is supposed to mean that the animal was six years old. I don't know if that is true.
Also hoping one day Daddy Lau will make the silky green tofu dish one day... I don't know what the name of the dish is, but it is tofu that has a green colour on one surface (from nori or preserved vegetables), usually served cubed and with the same oyster sauce mix. I heard it is difficult to make but seriously so delicious with the stir fry shitake mushrooms. One day please
@@jw7268 cheers, might have to give it a go next week. They're all medium sized green lips in shell, so I'm guessing 30 minutes is best. I've only ever cooked abalone in Japanese dishes, and that's all about keeping it as raw as possible
Thanks for the Recipe Lived in Singapore for about 2.5 years 11yrs.to13 and a half years Went to school there too Great schools!absolutely Loved it. Especiall the food stalls and the night markets! wonder if the Paridise Chinese restaurant is still there or just a memory
Wow, that's crazy, it's hard to get live/fresh abalone in the US? Here in Melbourne, in Australia, I can order frozen online (AU$30/kg), or buy them live from either the Queen Victoria Market (AU$10/each) or from the Footscray Live Fish seller (AU$15/each). Or, I can legally take 10 from the waters around Victoria. Of course, I can get cans or dried from the local Asian grocers.
@@MadeWithLau 😊 The club is a happy place for me. I'm so encouraged and jazzed about what we are learning that last night my daughter and I made gyoza and rangoon for the first time. I used some techniques from your Dad's videos and it was delicious! :)
With abalone being so expensive, and tragically over-harvested / poached here in California, I'm wondering if Conch or Whelk or other large snail would be a suitable ingredient for this preparation.
When I was a kid, we sometimes had fresh abalone that was taken from the ocean by our next-door neighbor, who went scuba diving. I think it's illegal now to do that, or you have to purchase a license. I think my mom just fried in it butter.
It is normal for Chinese people to use their chopsticks to pick the food from common dishes? Better to use one common chopstick or spoon so It doesn't affect people's feelings. Otherwise, The cooking technique is good and the food looks very delicious.
You know, those abalones look like the gold ingots used in ancient China (at least in the movies I've seen). Maybe that's another reason for their inclusion in this dish. Personally, I never cared either way about abalone; it was sort of like chewy on rubber, with that canned taste. Dungeness crab and spot prawns for me! Oh, and the flavour of shark fin soup! Just leave out the fin bits; they were worse than abalone for tasteless chewiness. lol
Granger Jung, you are so wrong about it was chewy on rubber with that canned taste!!!!! You must have managed to buy those very low quality canned abalones. In the USA the super awesome ready to eat canned abalones come with delicious gravy too. The abalones taste is super awesome due to the chewy texture. There is no way that it’s chewy on rubber!!!!! Of course, not all abalones are of the super high quality big abalones that come from Mexico. That being said, however, small or big canned abalones are equally super awesomely delicious. I don’t know about the shark fin bits, but you are so wrong in saying that the fin bits were worse than abalone for tasteless chewiness!!!!!!! In the first place, abalone is never tasteless, the chewiness makes it super awesome tasting!!!! Shark fin soup is super awesome too. Ginseng congee or soup is awesome. Of course, Dungeness crabs and lobsters are wonderfully delicious seafood.
3 days ago I'm clamming at the lowtide for the first time, much strange creatures I saw there.......and I wonder I saw a creatures like a snail.....I make videcall to my Sister in law, ask to her....what is the name of this creature, canbI eat this? My sister in law reply.....Hey....that is Abalone, one of most Expensive Seafood.......Since that time....I am regularly go to the beach finding Abalones....😊
Abalone is way too overpriced & serve little purposes, no doubt about that… I heard that there’s a can of abalone selling for a ridiculous $250 and even $25 for a can is too expensive. They’re using a $77 can of abalone?!?! It should’ve honestly been $7.70 which is a fair price NOT $77.
That depends on the size of abalone, some of the bigger size abalone with just one abalone in a can, those are the most expensive, especially if it is the Calmex brand from Mexico
It's not always about how foods/ingredients serves little or more purpose, it's more about the connection you have with different foods. Plus, there are plenty of other ingredients that could be considered overpriced and serve little purpose (every culture is different). Btw, abalone is considered a nutrient dense food, so it's not really a little purpose food (if that's what you mean by your OG statement).
Costco in NYC sells canned abalone for about $33, a can of 6 from Australia. You can also buy smaller ones from China in some Chinese supermarkets. Korean H Mart has live abalones for about $5-$7 each.
I guess you don’t know anything about seafood. The most expensive seafood is Japanese dried abalone. Single 1 pound weight is about $400000. Two feet in length dried shark fin is about $ 100000 if you can find them.
With the radioactive water release , contamination of ocean around Japan , still got people eating Japanese abalone ? I see many Japanese abalone in can having massive discount while others still remain same price
Hi, not pertaining to this video but I was watching your video of dads addictive salt and pepper wings and I was scared for you when you were cutting the food with.your dad as you were not using the proper hand technique for holding and chopping vegetables. You could easily lose a finger or part of a finger. Watch how your dad holds his hands when chopping. There is a particular hand technique for cutting/chopping. I'm sure RU-vid has one somewhere. Check it out it will save your fingers.
It’s hardly the most expensive. The abalone in the video are quite small and I’d be embarrassed to serve this to guests. The abalone need to be at least palm-sized. The wild-caught ones from Mexico are the best. When it comes to the most expensive, that will be the “holy trinity” of braised abalone, sea cucumber and 花胶. I don’t think that’s a recipe we’ll see on Made with Lau any time soon since prepping the dried abalone and sea cucumber will take days, as will the braising.
Tbh, this is NOT the most expensive seafood dish in Chinese cooking, not even close. There are lots of other dishes way more expensive in Chinese cooking. The kicker is that the abalones you used are not even the highest grade. I used to like made with lau because of the in depth research and excellent techniques shown by Chef Lau. But the title is really quite mis-leading. Probably doing it for the click bait, which is disappointing.
Cans of abalone were on sale at Costco the week before CNY. We bought some for the convenience but we were already rehydrating the dried ones (multiple day process plus a very lengthy braise) so we haven't even tried them yet. Also, what is with that weird pronunciation of geoduck? What kind of West Coast Asian doesn't know it's pronounced "gooey-duck"??
It's a traditional dish for CNY. Technically today is the 7th day of the 'new' year hence it's called everyone's birthday. It's a day still celebrated in many parts of the world where Chinese lives
Jolanda, I realize canned food sounds bad!!!!! Canned abalones are Not your standard canned food. And you can easily afford it. The super awesome ready to eat that comes with delicious gravy canned small abalones are usually 2 abalones or 4 abalones in each can that sell for $10.00 or $13.00 US dollars. You have to go the Chinatowns in major cities such as the Flushing Chinatown in New York City. If you buy them online on Amazon, then it is close to $20.00. The big cans that have more than 10 small abalones is more expensive at $30.00 and up. Abalone with the chewy texture is awesomely delicious even though it comes out of a can!!!!! If you live in a big city, you can get fresh abalones from the Chinese supermarkets in the many Chinatowns. Big cities do have a few Chinatowns these days.
