The tribe only had two ways of cooking meat, grilled or boiled. Bai Shuo’s method was something Bai Xun and Bai Yun had never seen before, let alone the younger Bai Su and Bai Le.
The higher the heat, the faster a smell spreads, that’s no exaggeration, and the scent nearly made all of them lose control of their own saliva.
Bai Xun ate a piece of crackling, barely managing to hold onto his dignity as a father and not drool in front of his chicks, then asked, feigning nonchalance, “Shuo, is this the pan-fried meat?”
Bai Xun had assumed the crackling from earlier was already the most delicious thing he’d eat all day, now he realized he’d been wrong. His chick had gone and conjured up something even more fragrant. Even without tasting it yet, Bai Xun could tell from the smell alone just how delicious this food was going to be.
Their family’s chick really was the smartest chick in the whole tribe, the old man’s face swelled with pride.
Bai Shuo, unaware of what was going through his father’s head, nodded at the question. “Yes, pan-fried meat. Adding oil keeps it from sticking to the pot, and it won’t char as easily either.”
Stone pots and firewood weren’t easy to control the temperature of, so Bai Shuo didn’t put too much in at once, just five slices, flipping them once they’d set.
The slices were only about half a finger thick, sizzling away in the hot oil, the sound of cooking mixed with the sound of everyone swallowing.
Bai Le hugged a wooden bowl nearly as big as his own face, eyes glued to the stone pot, hands never idle, popping crackling after crackling into his mouth, crunch after crunch.
Under the whole family’s watchful gaze, Bai Shuo flipped the slices back and forth until both sides had turned golden brown, then lifted them out of the pot.
Grilled meat was usually wrapped in clean leaves, pan-fried slices were much smaller, so there was no need for such big leaves, Bai Shuo simply set them down on the leaf-greens his mother had already washed.
Leaf-greens were, without a doubt, a plant the Feather Clan both resented and loved. To be honest, they didn’t taste particularly good, some even had a bitter edge, but they had to be eaten anyway, since going too long without them left you feeling unwell. Plenty of strange ailments could be cured just by eating leaf-greens and fruit, but fruit was scarce, so leaf-greens became an everyday necessity by default.
To Bai Shuo, these leaf-greens were basically an early form of vegetables, the flavor was a bit different from vegetables he remembered, difficult to swallow eaten plain, but he figured they’d pair well with pan-fried meat. He laid a slice on a leaf about the size of an adult Feather Clan member’s palm, folded both sides over to wrap the meat up, and took a bite.
The marinated slice’s texture was completely different from usual, the marinade’s juices had been locked in right at the center, both sides tinged golden-brown, crisp on the outside and tender within. Because he’d used Redtop fruit, the savory-salty flavor of the meat carried a hint of sweetness and a faint, barely detectable tang, blending together without a hint of clash.
Bai Shuo had originally only turned to Redtop fruit for flavoring because he had nothing else suitable on hand, he’d never expected the final result to turn out this much better than he’d hoped. The marinated moo-beast meat had an extremely tender texture, nothing at all like the woody, chewy grilled meat they were used to.
Moo-beasts not only looked like cows, they tasted similar too, just a bit fattier than beef, and now, wrapped in leaf-greens that cut through the meat’s richness, one bite in felt like a genuine reward for body and soul.
In that moment, Bai Shuo truly understood the difference between eating to survive and living to eat.
Everyone else copied his motion, wrapping their own slice in a leaf, and after tasting it, froze up all over again, though this time their reaction came much faster, and they hurried to finish off what remained.
Bai Xun’s motions were the most decisive of all, one piece of pan-fried meat, one leaf, gone in a single bite. Only after finishing did he realize he’d eaten too fast, that one small slice hadn’t come close to satisfying him, and the second batch had only just finished cooking on one side. He’d been able to hold back before tasting it, but now that he had, Bai Xun had to actively restrain himself from blurting out something like “why don’t we just eat it raw”, the kind of line that would earn him a beating from his mate on the spot.
Bai Yun ate far more elegantly than her mate, but judging by her pace, it was plain to see she loved today’s food. Once she finished, she wiped her hands and took over Bai Shuo’s job. “Shuo, I’ll flip them, you just watch and tell me if something’s off.” While everyone else had been focused on whether the meat was done, Bai Yun had already memorized the rhythm at which her chick flipped the slices.
Bai Su wiped his hands clean and started picking out the larger leaves from the pile, setting them aside to make room for the meat later. Having eaten leaf-greens wrapped around meat, Bai Su found even the plain leaf-greens in front of him no longer tasted quite so awful, his little brother really could make food the whole tribe disliked taste wonderful. His brother truly was the smartest chick there was.
Although Bai Le was the youngest, his eating speed was no slower than either of his brothers’, he licked the sauce off his hands clean after finishing and, recalling the taste from a moment ago, said with sparkling eyes, “Brother, I like pan-fried meat the best!”
Bai Shuo used a piece of hide to wipe his little brother’s greasy, chubby hands, not believing a word of it, half an hour ago this kid had claimed crackling was his absolute favorite. After wiping him down, he saw Bai Le’s eyes were glued right back to the stone pot again. Bai Shuo glanced around, then pointed at the stone slab they used for cutting vegetables and said to Bai Xun, “Papa, could we set up another fire and put the slab over it? Two going at once would be faster.”
Their stone pot had decent capacity, but a pot was still a pot, the bottom only had so much surface area, and frying five or six palm-sized slices at once was already its limit. At this rate, Bai Shuo suspected they’d still be eating meat come sunrise, so they needed another tool in play.
The stone slab was large, besides cutting meat, it usually served for setting down bowls and spoons, functioning essentially as a table. Remarkably, it was also quite thin, even thinner than the stone pot.
Bai Shuo hadn’t been confident enough before to risk using this important piece of family furniture, but now that the stone pot had worked out so well, and tasted this good, it seemed reasonable that frying on the slab would work too, so he confidently requisitioned it.
Thinking of the taste of pan-fried meat, Bai Xun agreed without a second thought, the slab mattered, but it could be traded for from someone else, even if they couldn’t trade for one, they could always make a new one themselves, just a bit more trouble. Right now, eating meat was what mattered most. With that settled, Bai Xun grabbed the slab without another word and went to wash it in the river, bringing back a few large stones on the way.
Watching him casually haul back a pile of rocks that could double as stools, Bai Shuo once again gained a new appreciation for just how strong the Feather Clan really was.
Whether for the stone pot or the stone slab, the base underneath was always made from riverside stones. Bai Xun arranged stones of matching height into a ring, set the slab on top, pressed down and gave it a shake to confirm it was sturdy, and started building the fire.
He pulled a few burning branches from the nearby fire, added some thinner dry sticks, and before long, the flames beneath the slab had grown strong.
Once the water marks on the slab’s surface had dried off from the heat, Bai Shuo poured some oil on top, and once the oil had warmed up, he spread the slices out across the whole slab, and instantly a chorus of sizzling filled the air.
The massive stone slab was basically a giant griddle. Bai Shuo laid out and flipped the slices with real focus, taking the occasional bite of the wrapped meat in his hand, this one Bai Su had wrapped for him, while at their little side operation, the stone pot had already turned out two more batches, each one carefully rationed to one piece per person.
Bai Shuo ate slowly, a habit built over years, and even turning human hadn’t changed that. As he ate and flipped the slices, he suddenly felt something wasn’t quite right around him.
Why was there so much swallowing going on?
Bai Shuo looked up and found that, without him noticing, a whole ring of Feather Clan members had gathered around their family, every single one of them wide-eyed, staring intently at him, or rather, at the massive slab of meat in front of him.
The stone pot’s base wasn’t very large, and though it smelled good too, there just wasn’t much of it, but their family was gathered close, so they caught the fullest hit of the smell, while Feather Clan further away only caught a passing whiff before it dissipated before they could pin it down.
The slab was different, every last corner of it could be put to use. On this one slab, Bai Shuo had laid out over twenty slices, each one the size of a chick’s palm.
A griddle the size of a table, covered entirely in meat. With no pot rim to trap the smell in, the aroma spread out in every direction, lingering endlessly.
At first, the Feather Clan closest to them had simply grown curious about what they were making and wandered over to look, and once they looked, they couldn’t tear themselves away. Then those a bit further out followed the scent over too. After that, so many people had gathered that they blocked the smell from spreading further, but a crowd that large drew the attention of Feather Clan whose focus hadn’t even been on this spot to begin with, and the crowd just kept growing.
So when Bai Shuo looked up, what he saw was his own family, thoroughly surrounded by onlookers.
Even knowing full well these were all fellow tribe members, watching them all stare with such hungry, gleaming eyes, Bai Shuo still couldn’t help averting his gaze, wanting nothing more than to hide behind his parents.
Bai Xun, noticing his chick’s discomfort, grew irritated, waving people off like shooing flies. “Go on, go on, scatter, what are you all doing crowded around here? Not eating dinner?” Bai Xun didn’t mind being watched himself, the whole tribe could stare at him and he wouldn’t bat an eye, but his chick clearly wasn’t used to it, and a protective father naturally had to shoo the crowd away.
Except the onlookers didn’t budge an inch. The Feather Clan member closest to the slab crouched down and asked, “Bai Shuo, why does the meat you’re making smell so good?” His eyes stayed fixed on the slices Bai Shuo was flipping the whole time he spoke.
Bai Shuo hadn’t planned on keeping the method a secret to begin with. Hearing the question, he pointed at the oil beside him and explained the process: “Cut the fatty part of the moo-beast into chunks, put it in a pot with a little water, and cook it together. Once the water boils off, this kind of oil slowly renders out, you scoop out the extra oil and leave a thin layer in the pot, then put the sliced meat in to fry. This oil works for frying other foods too. If you want it to taste even better, you can do what we did, mix the slices with mashed Redtop fruit, oil, and ground salt, and let it marinate for a bit.”
Knowing not everyone had enough Redtop fruit and salt on hand to marinate meat, Bai Shuo deliberately separated the marinating step from the frying step, otherwise, given how the Feather Clan tended to take things literally, they’d probably assume marinating was a mandatory part of the process.
Even so, after hearing this whole elaborate procedure, the surrounding Feather Clan members’ heads were spinning, but the never-before-smelled aroma kept tempting them all the same. A few who still had fatty meat left went back to fetch it, determined to try Bai Shuo’s method for themselves.
The rest either had no fatty meat left, or had gotten thoroughly lost in the complicated steps and hadn’t taken action, but they still lingered around the slab. Even if they couldn’t eat any right now, smelling it a bit longer was better than nothing! A few Feather Clan members who were already eating grilled meat simply found a spot within range of the smell and gnawed on their own meal while breathing in the aroma of the pan-fried meat, and somehow, with that scent drifting by, even their own grilled meat seemed to taste better than usual.
The slices slowly cooked through in the hot oil, and the fragrance drifting off them grew richer and richer by the moment. One of the onlookers finally couldn’t stand it any longer and blurted out, “Bai Shuo, can I trade meat for your pan-fried meat?” The smell of pan-fried meat was simply too tempting, he genuinely wanted to eat some, but he hadn’t picked fatty meat today, and he’d already eaten through all his Redtop fruit, so he figured he’d trade meat for it instead.
As for why he was asking Bai Shuo specifically, Bai Xun’s family had never cooked this way before, and today, the moment Bai Shuo turned human, their household had switched to this new method of cooking, the method had obviously been Bai Shuo’s idea. Asking Bai Shuo was a safe bet.
Hearing this, the surrounding Feather Clan suddenly latched onto a new idea. That’s right, they could trade meat with Bai Shuo for pan-fried meat!
Bai Shuo started doing the math on his family’s marinated meat supply. He’d only marinated five pieces of meat to start, the Feather Clan had no upper or lower limit on appetite, when hungry, they could eat a dozen-plus jin in one sitting, and go without eating at all for the next several days without any trouble. Right now it was growth season, prey was plentiful, and they basically ate once a day. During this stretch of the year, an adult Feather Clan member ate one to two pieces per meal, and a chick could manage half a piece.
Still, this was the first time their family had ever eaten pan-fried meat, so appetites tonight would naturally run a bit higher than usual, and on top of that, he still needed to set some aside for Wu Yan, so odds were there’d be no leftover marinated meat at all tonight.
Bai Shuo didn’t immediately agree to the trade, instead, he proposed a new arrangement. “Once we’re done eating, I can process some for you all. Two pieces of raw meat for one piece of pan-fried meat. One piece of raw meat gets you about this much.” Bai Shuo pointed at the slab, indicating the exact portion one piece of raw meat would yield, he planned to keep half the raw material as his fee for the marinade and the processing labor.
“No good.” Before any other Feather Clan member could speak, Bai Xun, having worked out what his chick meant, immediately spoke up to refuse. Their family had enough food, as one of the tribe’s strongest Feather Clan members, he and his mate were perfectly capable of providing their chick with all the food he needed, there was no reason for their chick to have to work for food.
But Bai Xun had only gotten those two words out before his mate clapped a hand over his mouth. Startled by the interruption, Bai Xun was utterly baffled, why cover his mouth? Did his mate actually want their chick to work?
Bai Yun didn’t explain, she simply stopped whatever Bai Xun had been about to say. She sensed her chick had ideas of his own, she didn’t yet know exactly what they were, but that didn’t stop her from backing his decision.