图 | TO VIS
Some people say that hot pot can be eaten anywhere.
Tiannanhai north, hilly plains, as long as you can support the stove, burn the pot hot soup, let it be the taste of the mountains and the sea, or the miscellaneous corners, smelt a furnace, regardless of each other, wait for the pot to open, put the hand to talk happy. The hot soup boiled and sang, and all the simple thoughts of life in people's hearts were "grunted", and this kind of melting and happiness was not strange to anyone.
There are also people who retort that hot pot can only be eaten locally.
The all-encompassing hot pot has the freedom to grow freely. In the long stay with each land, they slowly grew their own appearance and had their own personality.
Just as a Chongqing person will feel "something is not right" in the face of the most authentic butter hot pot in Shanghai, nowadays, if you want to eat authentic hot pot, you have to go to the local area.
If food is a language, then each kind of hot pot has gradually grown into a "dialect", which has its own "vocabulary encyclopedia", the most recognizable "tone", and the "grammar" that constitutes a unique dietary system.
And the charm of each "hot pot dialect" may only be expressed in the local area.
Vocabulary is the basis of architecture for a language, and ingredients are necessary to enrich a hot pot. When you ask a person, "What ingredients do you have to put in a hot pot?" His answer is often inadvertently revealing his hometown.
For example, if he says with a look of recollection: "All kinds of clams and shellfish are generally necessary", then he is mostly a resident of a coastal province, and if he does not intend to reveal ingredients such as "Chongwu Fish Cake", which is rarely heard by outsiders, he can more accurately judge that this 80% is a Minnan person;
And The Sichuan-Chongqing people will most likely list with flying eyebrows: "That must be a hairy belly!" Brain flower! Duck intestines and goose intestines..." After all, the hot pot restaurant in Sichuan and Chongqing, other ingredients can be dispensed with, and these ingredients must be managed enough!
If he only replied succinctly and concisely, "Shabu lamb", then he could basically lock the scope in the north, or he could make a bold guess based on his accent - you Beijinger, right?
Figure | Ai Xiaomi Mily
After all, in the old Beijingers, there is no need to use the term "hot pot", just the three words "shabu lamb", it is enough to put copper pot, clear soup, mutton, two eight sauce, leek flowers, curd milk, sugar garlic ... All included.
On the table where Beijingers shabu-shabu lamb, there are almost not many other ingredients, such as frozen tofu and Chinese cabbage, and it is a meaning to order two or three plates at random. A pot of water, no seasoning, at most throw a few pieces of green onion, a few pieces of shiitake mushrooms, dotted with two or three red dates, seven or eight goji berries, so that the visual richer - see the real chapter, but also the meat.
The first choice for shabu lamb is the west-mouth lamb, with a small tail, tender meat, and fresh cut to reflect the high quality. The next pot also needs to pay attention to, like the big three forks, the upper brain, lamb tendon, these meat parts are different, the fat distribution is different, the taste is not the same, must not be put into the pot. If it were boiled into a pot of chaotic stew, Beijingers would probably sigh bitterly: "You are a waste of things!" ”
Figure | Documentary "Flavor of the World"
Hot pot can be minimalist, and naturally it can also be extremely complicated.
In the days when the northwest wind is watching, the sauerkraut jars of every household in the northeast have been taken into place. When the temperature drops sharply, the sauerkraut white meat pot is the best weapon to resist the cold wave.
Northeast sauerkraut is different from pickled sauerkraut in other places, it is fresher, with a slightly sour aroma, and it is crisp and tender to chew, debilitating and greasy, and the taste is perfect.
The basic sauerkraut white meat pot is sauerkraut stew with skin pork five flowers, on top of this, there is a handful of noodles, a slice of blood intestine, a section of blood intestine, a frozen tofu cut into pieces, and a fried vegetarian ball can also be put in the pot and then boiled. The food grown on the black soil is both thick and simple, willing to squeeze each other and melt in a furnace, giving people the gentleness of the heart in the snowy winter.
Also good at a variety of ingredients in a unified, broth simmered and light with dust, as well as Gansu's Zhuanglang warm pot.
A black sand warm pot, loaded with a belly charcoal fire, around the chimney stuffed with a circle of potato chips, vermicelli, radish, cabbage, fungus, tofu, topped with a thick layer of oiled pork belly, and finally filled with special broth.
Although these are not uncommon ingredients, they are the most delicious crops grown in the northwest land, just a potato, who has not eaten potatoes? However, the potatoes grown on the land of Gansu are soft and delicate, not "things in the pool", especially in the warm pot for a long time, the taste of the sand sponge, the sweet taste, take a piece of pork belly is not changed!
Figure | Hey small meaning
The most distinctive hot pot in each land is actually grown according to natural customs and eating habits. It is the ingredients that rely on the local terroir and climate, and the most characteristic cooking methods that the locals have explored over the years, which are concentrated in a hot pot.
It is the natural outpouring of the land and the "vocabulary encyclopedia" of the hot pot.
Just like the most intuitive and profound impression left by a dialect is the unique tone, in the jianghu of the hot pot, it can help a certain faction establish a distinct temperament, and can "set the tone" for each hot pot.
The richness of the base is enough to constitute a "kingdom" of taste, although it is nothing more than a mixture of sour, sweet, bitter, spicy and salty, but the "master" of each flavor can only be seen in the local area.
Figure | A flower, a flower
Let's start with acid.
Speaking of acid, we cannot but say Guizhou. How many kinds of sour soups are there in Guizhou? Clear acid soup, thick acid soup, high acid soup, shang acid soup, Miao acid, Dong acid, aquarium acid, Buyi acid... If you don't shout stop, I can count another five minutes.
Sour soup is different, but the heart that loves to drink sour soup is the same. A pot of sour soup is served, fish, beef, lamb, chicken, eat anything, but be sure to drink a bowl of sour soup before you start.
Guizhou people eat acid, because of the lack of salt in the early years, only to "replace salt with acid". Almost all of these acid substrates come from fermentation, but they grow different styles in the ditches and bumps. Or stronger, or fresher, or spicy, or mellow, it is difficult to say which sour soup can represent Guizhou, because each of them is very different, and each one is also sour on the tip of the local people's heart.
A bowl of sour soup poured in, guest officer, appetizers are not available? Order another spicy pot to be brutal?
fine? Let's go to Chengdu!
Looking at the whole country now, which city can't find a spicy hot pot restaurant? Even those who directly hang the Sichuan signboard are "big people", but as long as you go to Chengdu to eat a local meal, you will find that just the taste of the bottom of the pot, the difference is big.
Chengdu hot pot pot bottom commonly use rapeseed oil, stir-fry all kinds of peppercorns and sea peppers and other spices, spicy and fresh flavor in one furnace. A hot pot shop owner who wants to play his own signature must not only know the characteristics of dozens of common chili varieties on the market, but also have the kung fu of "Junchen Zuo", what hemp with what spicy, what spicy to use, one move and one style, all of which are left and right.
So, don't blame the "foodies" who grow up in Sichuan are too picky about spicy hot pots in other places, after all, even in the local area, their tastes are "diao"!
Figure | Cute can eat
However, it is not only the complicated bottom of the pot that can impress people's appetite, sometimes, no tricks, better than tricks.
Hainan coconut chicken hot pot is a simple and harmless face standing in the forefront of the hot pot industry "net red".
Coconut chicken hot pot, the pot as its name suggests, a clean pot to serve up, involuntarily poured into the water of three coconuts, boiled, freshly cut chicken under the pot, sprinkled with a little salt to enhance the taste, in addition, there is nothing else, but the chicken cooked out of this is fresh and tender, the chicken soup is clear and sweet, it is all burdensome to eat, and it is very delicious.
Coconut chicken soup base to use fresh coconut green coconut water, and Hainan coconut green is the best, less coconut meat, coconut water enough, the taste is sweet, neither widowed, nor too sweet to steal the limelight, stew chicken, is really a perfect match.
Figure | Crazy teenager
In addition to the sour and spicy, in addition to the sweetness, there is also the Guizhou "beef hot pot" with bitterness, known for its strangeness, and the Guangxi "snail duck foot pot" that loves its fragrance and hates its smell... Every kind of hot pot soup base is the essence of local flavor, it makes you happy, makes you sigh, makes you frown, and makes you fall in love.
It carries a unique geographical marker and gives everyone who comes to this land a cheerful hug.
The bottom of the pot is there, the ingredients are on, the small two, can you open the fire?
You wait! Eating hot pot, although the cooking technique is very simple, but there are also exquisite and rules. Just like without grammar, there are no rules in language, the hot pot in every place has a way to eat in every place, if you want to eat authentic hot pot, the authentic way of eating can not be.
Figure | Ran Sihui
Friends once admired the big name of Chongqing hot pot special trip, found a restaurant with a good reputation, dared to order heavy spicy, with a life-threatening posture to eat, vowed to feel the most authentic Chongqing flavor, but after eating it was a little lost - delicious is delicious, but it seems to be a little far from the imaginary taste.
When her Chongqing classmates heard this, how could they sit still? So he personally led the way, found an old hot pot restaurant hidden in a residential area, pointed to the tattered shed, and wanted to "justify the name" of Chongqing hot pot.
As soon as the ingredients were on, the students found out where the "crux" was. Friends love to eat potatoes, potatoes are not cooked, as soon as the pot is opened, she will put potatoes into it, this can not be! Starchy ingredients such as potatoes and lotus flakes will thicken the whole pot of soup and wait until the second half. The correct order to eat hot pot is to first take the offal, then the meat dishes, and finally the vegetarian food. Especially in Sichuan and Chongqing, the first to walk up must be the hairy belly duck intestine yellow throat, and finally with baby cabbage, pea tip to finish.
Figure | Pantin Dang-
Some hot pots, the rules are in the order of putting ingredients, some hot pots, but you can not care about this, such as Cantonese side stoves.
The content of the side stove is also not complicated, a pot of broth, boiling a pool of ocean. It doesn't matter if you are a raw fish shell or a sea cucumber crab, no matter how expensive you are, you can put it in. There is no order, but it is beautiful enough, no need to add any more spice MSG, this pot of soup cooked to the end, rich, delicious, mellow, layer by layer on the tip of the tongue, the aftertaste is endless. Therefore, after eating the side stove, the authentic way is to throw a koway into it, eat it together with the soup, and do not waste a drop - know how to appreciate the deliciousness of this pot of soup, and only then can you understand the soft heart implied in the old Guangmao.
Sometimes, to see if a person knows how to eat, it is often not in the preference of taste, but in whether the way of eating is authentic. This pursuit of authentic taste is not only to eat enough, but also a kind of acceptance that abandons stereotypes, a kind of mind that embraces the differences in food culture.
In fact, nowadays, logistics is so developed, many delicacies can go out of the place of origin, go to another city, and be tasted by more people, and hot pot is no exception. Formally, hot pot is easy to be "reproduced", it is originally an extremely simple existence, and the threshold of cooking is not high compared to other dishes.
But I believe that many people will also have such a feeling: "the same hot pot, eaten in other places, it seems that there is always a little wrong", because there are too many factors that can affect the flavor of a hot pot, and changing a certain point may lead to a deviation in taste.
The reason why regional food is interesting is because people's sense of taste is very persistent about "familiarity", often a person leaves his hometown for many years, and even his hometown dialect is not very good at speaking, and the favorite things to eat and favorite tastes are still the same as when he was a child.
The reason why the authentic hot pot should be eaten locally is because in the hometown of each hot pot, there are those who resolutely guard the flavor of this pot, and they are the people who live in each land, so that each hot pot has a unique color and charm.
Hot pot, ever-changing, can not escape the customs and customs of the story. Go to the local hot pot, eat not only hot pot, but the temperature of a side of the water and soil, a little bit of human softness, and a sense of food, enthusiasm for life.
Do you have any hot pot in your hometown, which you only have in your hometown and can't eat outside? Welcome to leave a word in the comments section, hungry everyone!
Source: Who is the most Chinese
Editor-in-Charge: Xiao Nuan