The history of Chaozhou cuisine can be traced back to the pre-Qin period. In 214 BC, Qin Shihuang sent troops to garrison Lingnan, and one of them was sent to Chaozhou. As a result, the eating habits from the Central Plains collided and blended with the cooking methods of the indigenous Baiyue people, thus forming the prototype of Chaozhou cuisine.
Since then, several southward migrations in history have once again promoted the integration of the local food culture between the north and the south: during the “Yongjia Rebellion” in the Western Jin Dynasty, a large number of the Central Plains nobility entered Fujian and then moved to Chaozhou, which brought the splendid eating habits of the literati class. At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, the Song family who moved south went into exile in the Chaozhou area, allowing court dishes to enter the homes of ordinary people…
Today’s Chaozhou taste, on the one hand, has a food code that has been passed down for thousands of years, on the other hand, it has not stopped exploring food for a moment. Behind the taste of Chaozhou, what is hidden is the enthusiasm of Chaozhou people for life.
Fish food is not containing rice
Fish, shrimp, crab and clams are the staple food
In the early morning at the Sanbaimen Fishing Port Wharf, baskets of sea and river fish piled up like mountains, and the shouts of fishmongers came one after another. When you hear “Balang”, “Yougan” and “Monkey Water”, don’t be surprised. This is the special name given to sea fish by Chaozhou people. A Balang fish rice is the most delicious taste in the hearts of many Chaozhou people. Teochew people liken cooked fish to rice because they don’t rely on rice and eat fish, shrimp and clams as their staple food. How important is fish on the table of Chaozhou people? According to locals, in Chaozhou’s vegetable market, if fish are in short supply, the prices of other vegetables will rise by a fifth.
Balang fish belongs to the family of perciformes, with high yield but easy to spoil, so it must be processed into fresh and sweet fish rice on the day of salvage. The fish does not need to go through the processes of descaling, belly cutting, gill removal, etc. It is only supplemented with sea salt and boiled in sea water. The sea salt fully penetrates into the fish body, making the fish more delicious; after cooking, it is naturally dried, the skin is firm, and the meat is elastic . Cooked fish rice can also have a second sublimation – dried fish and stored for a long time. Balang Fish Rice is also one of the most representative Chaozhou dishes in Chaoshan cuisine.
△Sea fish is not cut open, scaled, or gills removed. It is placed in a bamboo basket, cooked in a large pot with salt water, and then cooled naturally.
The hot and humid climate, the long tortuous coastline, and the dense network of fresh water have made Chaozhou people “reliant on water for water” since ancient times. Han Yu, a great poet who was demoted to Chaozhou, was given a very high courtesy from the local people: a table with seafood and fresh river dishes as the theme. In addition to being frightened and shocked, he recorded the details of this banquet in “Chu Nan Food: Eighteen Synergies of Yiyuan”, so that future generations can feel the special flavor of ancient Chaozhou cuisine that is different from the Central Plains from the poem. As early as the Tang Dynasty, there were dozens of meats such as king crab, oysters, catfish, clams, octopus, and scallops on the tables of Chaozhou officials. Excellent cooking skills.
Food Kueh shared by people and gods
Nostalgic Memories Across the Ocean
△ A simple “kueh”, Chaozhou people have invented hundreds of ways to eat it.
Kueh is an offering made of rice and noodles. It originated from the sacrificial rituals in the ancient Central Plains and has survived several times of population migration. When traditional festivals come, every family will worship their ancestors. In addition to the three sacrificial fruits and vegetables on the offering table, Kueh Pin played a very important role. It represents people’s gratitude and nostalgia for their ancestors and their nostalgia for their homeland.
There are many kinds of kueh, the common ones are steamed sweet kueh, red peach kueh, cabbage kueh, rat kueh and so on. Among them, the rat kueh and the red peach kueh are one green and one red, and the difference between them is distinct. In the early spring, people will use rat kueh, glutinous rice flour, lard and red bean paste to make rat kueh. This fragrant kueh has become a must-have offering for ancestor worship during the Spring Festival and Qingming Festival. Making shi kueh according to the season is a major event in the Chaozhou family. At the end of the year, the red peach kueh will take over.
△ The pink and tender red peach cake is shaped like a longevity peach.
In the ancient village of Longhu with a thousand-year history, grandma Xiao, the inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage, showed me how to make red peach kueh. The charming cherry-like color of Hong Tao Kueh comes from natural red yeast rice powder. Grandma Xiao mixed the noodles with red yeast rice powder and rice dissolved in water in a ratio of one to two. The gouache and powder blended together, and the white rice noodles melted into pink, and the massage brought the two closer together and gradually thickened.
Grandma Xiao found the right time to pour water on the dough again to ensure that the kueh skin was flexible and elastic. With her skillful technique, the cakes were shaped like bowls. Glutinous rice, shiitake mushrooms, diced meat, shrimps, and peanuts make up the delicious and delicious kueh filling. The pink kueh skin has not yet completed its external evolution after wrapping the kueh filling.
The kueyin is peach-shaped, with auspicious patterns and longevity characters engraved on the inside. With one click and one button, beautiful patterns are printed on the kueh skin, expressing people’s good wishes for good luck and longevity. The formed red peach kueh is put into the steamer and steamed over high heat before serving.
Kueh is not only a food shared by people and gods, but also a nostalgic taste that many Chaozhou people living overseas cannot give up. When they went to the Nanyang with vigor and vigor, when countless Chaozhou people traveled overseas in red-headed boats to make a living, the bamboo baskets they took with them were the food that their families prepared for them. No matter how far they go, time and space are separated from the taste of home; even if they have not returned home for many years, the kueh in their memory is enough to support them through the difficult years of starting a business.
When overseas, if they are unable to make kueh due to lack of raw materials and utensils, they will also make kueh teow which is easier and easier to obtain to ease homesickness. In cooked food centers in Singapore, Malaysia and other places, many overseas Chinese set up stalls to sell kuey teow. They either heat up a pot and stir-fry it with soy sauce, or cook the kuey teow in fish balls and beef ball soup. Nostalgia.
They know the secret of meat
Braised goose, beef balls, beef hot pot…
In Chaozhou dialect, “to invite guests with goose meat” means that whenever there are guests at home, parents will ask their children to cut a plate of braised goose meat to entertain them. In Chaozhou, a plate of braised goose is the most popular, whether it is for guests or three meals a day. In the countryside of Chaozhou, every household keeps geese. Almost every alley in Chaozhou City has goose stalls.
Braised goose is a technical job, and the owner of each goose stall has a unique secret recipe. The brine recipe is roughly soy sauce, galangal, garlic, star anise, cinnamon, bay leaves, etc., but the proportion of which is unknown to outsiders. A good goose meat stall often has a long queue. In addition to the frequent neighbors, there are also many foreign diners who drive here. The types and parts of goose meat are classified into fine classification. Goose meat, goose feet, goose head, goose neck, goose liver, goose intestines, and goose blood are all treasures. The goose skin is crispy and delicious, the goose is fat but not greasy, and the goose meat is firm and smooth. In order to neutralize the greasyness of the stewed goose, the Chaozhou people who are not tired of eating essence also specially prepared a dipping sauce made of garlic and white vinegar.
△Which place in Chaoshan is most famous for its braised goose? 80% of Chaoshan people will answer you “Xikou Braised Goose”.
Teochew beef hot pot is the white moonlight in the hearts of diners, and it is impossible to eat the same taste in other places after tasting it. This share is irreplaceable because the industry chain of beef hot pot has already matured. The beef slaughter factory in Chaozhou will transport the cut beef to the beef hot pot restaurants in the streets and alleys as soon as possible, and it will not be frozen during the period. In the suburbs, there is also a mode of slaughtering before the store, ensuring that the time difference between the slaughtering and selling of beef is within four hours, and the maximum freshness is locked.
Like eating geese, diners are free to choose different parts of beef. Many hotpot stores will provide anatomical beef cross-sectional drawings as a guide to let diners order meat according to the map. In order to highlight the flavor of beef to the greatest extent, hotpot soup is usually boiled with beef bone clear soup and white radish. Almost every table will be served with a “hanging dragon” (a small muscle on the back of the cow that grows on the ribs). Just put it into the pot and scald it for about ten seconds, and then add it with a secret Sha Cha sauce. In one bite, the satisfaction spreads from the taste buds to the heart.
Tough parts such as beef shank are generally not used as hot pot ingredients, but they are especially suitable for making another famous food – beef balls. Beating beef balls is a work that combines skill and strength, but it is the insistence of many beef paving chefs. The chefs rolled up their sleeves and thumped the beef on the cutting board with wooden sticks. The molecular structure of beef gradually changes in the imperceptible, becoming beef sauce. But it’s not over yet. The beaten meat sauce will be moved to the basin, add the seasoning and stir well and continue to beat until the meat sauce is thick and will not fall off when picked up.
“Duck shit fragrance” is vulgar and elegant
How to drink tea
Chaozhou, where mountains and hills account for 65% of the total area, is rich in oolong tea. The Shancong tea in the Phoenix Mountains is the most famous, and it has been listed as a tribute by the courts of all dynasties since the Song Dynasty. “Duck Shi Xiang” is the most popular Phoenix Dancong tea in recent years, and it has the reputation of “big vulgarity is elegant”. Produced in Fenghuang Mountain, Chao’an District, it is planted in tea gardens shaped like “duck feces soil” (yellow soil), and the tea leaves are dark blue. It is said that the first tea grower who unearthed this treasure tea came up with a nickname to protect it, lest others steal it. After brewing, the aroma of duck feces floats up and down in the tea cup, exuding a complex aroma of honeysuckle and almond, which quickly becomes the favorite of Chaoshan people on the tea table. In addition to the traditional drinking method, young people innovatively use it as a base tea for milk tea, which is very popular.
Yu Jiao’s “Dream Factory Miscellaneous Works: Chaojia Fengyue” in the Qing Dynasty was an earlier work that recorded Chaozhou Gongfu tea: “Gongfu tea, the method of cooking and governance, is written in Lu Yu’s “Tea Classic”, and the utensils are more delicate.” Meng Chen Cans (small pots of red mud), Ruochen ou (cups), Chaozhou stoves (small red clay stoves) and Yushu simmers (that is, sand churns, also known as tea pots) are the “four treasures” of tea drinking for Chaozhou people. In particular, the jade book simmer and the red clay stove are affectionately called “wind stove thin pots” (also called tandoor sand chuan) by the locals. The way of drinking Gongfu tea is: first take 8~10g of tea leaves and put them into a red mud pot, rinse with boiling water, pour boiling water over the teapot in the brewing room, and the tea will be full of fragrance; after a few seconds, pour the tea around and sip it.
Chaozhou people regard tea as rice, and the dialect calls it “tea rice”. Therefore, in Chaozhou Jing people, it is common to place a small table at the door with a simple tea utensil. The owner sees people passing by and says, “Come and drop (drink) tea!” Anyone who comes can sit down. When the water is boiled, you can make tea. Have a few cups of tea, chat a few times, shake hands and make friends. So you understand that tea drinking is not a ritual for Chaozhou people, but a way of life.
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