Speaking of braised sauerkraut in Inner Mongolia, many people will salivate and never forget, and the people who will make this dish are basically Inner Mongolians, in addition to children, men and women will do it, and the methods of cooking are also different.
Braised sauerkraut, originating in the Hetao region of Inner Mongolia, is also a colorful branch of the Yellow River culture.
The Hetao Plain, which is vast and sparsely populated, is also known as the "bright pearl" on the golden belt because of its unique geographical location and climatic conditions.
The vast Hetao Plain is also china's main grain producing area, relying on the irrigation of the Yellow River, which produces high-quality wheat, corn and sunflowers.
Over the past century, people here have worked hard for generations to transform a salty and grassless tidal flat into an endless river of rice grain.
Because there are few people and many lands, in addition to growing wheat and corn, people will grow a small amount of cabbage and potatoes for their own families to eat. In the past, sugar vegetables were also cultivated in a large area, a kind of teat vegetable that can be extracted from white sugar, and after the autumn harvest, people sold most of them for a part of the living expenses, and the remaining vegetable towers and sugar vegetable leaves were used to feed a few pigs.
The braised sauerkraut in Hetao is delicious, but it is inseparable from the pork unique to Hetao. The pigs in Hetao are all grown up eating corn and sugar vegetables, drinking the water of the Yellow River, and they are all pigs that have been fed for at least one year, also called pigs in the next year.
A long time ago, except for cabbage and potatoes, basically no one grew other vegetables here, and because the vegetables were of little value and difficult to manage, wheat, corn and sunflower became the main economic crops of this yellow land.
In order to produce a variety of grains, the older generation of Hetao people spent all their time in the fields, and even watered this fertile yellow land with sweat.
During the busy season of farming, get up at dawn, eat some corn flour nests or white-faced steamed buns and hurry to the ground, until one or two o'clock in the afternoon, come back and burn two oil pancakes, fry a plate of potato dumplings, and then boil two bowls of corn batter, which is fragrant and debilitating.
When it is almost winter, there is no agricultural work in the field, people will cut off the cabbage in their own fields, cut off the roots, a layer of vegetables, a salt yard in a large ceramic water tank, and then compacted with smooth and large pieces of river pebbles, about a month or so, the golden sour cabbage will be pickled, the pickled cabbage yellow yellow transparent, like white jade carving, the part with green leaves is like emerald crystal clear.
The sauerkraut is pickled, and it is almost into the waxing moon.
In the winter, the Hetao Plain is also relatively dry and cold, and people who have been busy for a year can finally enjoy this season, slaughtering pigs and sheep, preparing for the New Year, and eating a hearty pig-killing dish by the way.
From the tank, a large pot of golden sauerkraut with a faint sour taste is cut into thin wires, freshly killed pork is cut into thick slices of meat for more than ten or twenty pounds, peeled potatoes are cut into large pieces of hobs, and the onion, ginger, garlic seasoning is ready to start painting.
Light the firewood of the earth stove, pour a large pot of fat and lean pork into a huge iron pot and stir-fry, at this time, a strong pork aroma overflows the whole house, until the pork is fried golden, sprinkle the onion ginger garlic into the pot to continue stir-frying, and then pour the cut potato pieces into the pot, put salt and stir-fry, add water until the meat pieces are not passed, and then sprinkle the sauerkraut shreds evenly in the pot, cover the pot lid, boil on high heat, and simmer over medium heat.
The water in the Loop area is high in alkali, so the braised sauerkraut is particularly soft and rotten, the sauerkraut is soaked with the aroma of pork, and the pork is not chai, not hard, and adsorbs the faint sour taste of sauerkraut, not oily, not greasy, eating the mouth sour and delicious, cool to unparalleled.
Only in the winter of each year will people's faces show the joy after the harvest, and the days will be loud and colorful, easy and relaxed.
