Mention the Kaifeng Ma Yuxing barrel chicken, people in the south and north of the sky love to eat. Bucket chicken has been given many weighty titles: "China's Top Ten Famous Chickens", "Chinese Famous Dishes", "Chinese Famous Snacks", "Chinese Time-honored Brands", provincial and ministerial "high-quality famous products" and so on.
The production technique of barrel chicken has a long history, according to historical records, as early as the Northern Song Dynasty, there were restaurants in Kaifeng to cook barrel chicken. Later, the restaurant moved south with the Song Room, and many people who cooked bucket chicken also went to Nanjing to operate. In the third year of Qing Xianfeng (1853), due to the turmoil of the times and the decline of Nanjing's commerce, the owner Ma Yongcen returned to Kaifeng with a bucket of old soup of brine chicken to resume his old business, and the bucket chicken reappeared in Kaifeng.
Why is it called a bucket chicken? It is a name that depends on its shape. The barrel chicken has a round and beautiful shape, hollow as a barrel, so it is called "bucket chicken".
The barrel chicken selection is fine, and the chicken is selected from 2 to 3 years of live tender hens with full ribs, oily breasts, round and beautiful body shape, and hair weight of more than 3 and a half pounds. The lotus leaves filled in the abdomen should be both lotus and unfrozen, so that they can be processed into dry lotus leaves with a fragrant smell as a filler. Therefore, when purchasing lotus leaves, the time must be accurately grasped. The time is early, the leaves of the unripe lotus are too tender, clear and fragrant. It's late, the unprocessed has fallen, and its taste is completely lost.
When the bucket chicken is cooked, the chicken is not opened, but a small opening is made from the right arm to remove the internal organs, and then the processed lotus leaves are stuffed from this mouth, and the sorghum stalks are used to support the chicken body in the abdomen, and finally put into the aged soup to marinate. The old soup of the brine bucket chicken is the most magical, "three nine cold is not frozen, three volts of heat is not rotten". This "century-old soup" never adds water, and the brine bucket chicken tastes mellow, fat but not greasy, tender and crispy.
According to legend, during the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, Xiangfu County made Chen most fond of eating bucket chicken, and every meal was necessary. Ma Yuxing barrel chicken is regarded as a must-have delicacy at the banquet of guests and friends. What's more, staff guests, merchants, and common people, who seek each other for reasons or because of lawsuits, etc., all enter with bucket chickens. The bucket chicken has become a superior gift for relatives and friends. In the early years, the ancient city of Kaifeng circulated such a folk song: "Take a string of seven in your hand, come to the west of the drum tower, Ma Yuxing's family is a good bucket of chicken!" "Kaifeng Ma Yuxing barrel chicken was rated as a provincial intangible cultural heritage.
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This article is excerpted from Elephant Publishing House's "Rare Things in Bieliang City"