Many friends will have such a question after eating steak, why Chinese not have the habit of eating large pieces of meat?
This is related to the history of our Chinese food culture.
Chinese food culture was formed around 3,000 years ago during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, when Chinese generally used Ding to cook meat.
Collection of the National Museum of Simu Pengding
The picture above is the Simu Pengding excavated from the Yin Ruins, the capital of the Shang Dynasty, with a height of 133 cm, a mouth length of 110 cm, a mouth width of 79 cm, and a weight of 832.84 kg. The number one big ding like this is called "wok ding", which is mainly used to cook large pieces of meat, but unlike the current stew, white water clear soup, without seasoning.
At that time, the Chinese popular meal sharing system, the distance between the kitchen and the banquet hall is relatively far, and after the large pieces of meat are cooked, they must be transported from the kitchen to the banquet hall.
Bronze Ding Collection of Hubei Provincial Museum
This is a bronze ding excavated from the Chu Tomb of Jiuliandun in Hubei Province, with a height of 41.8 cm, a caliber of 42.2 cm, a belly diameter of 45.2 cm, and a distance of 53 cm between the ears. When the large pieces of meat are cooked, they are cut into medium pieces of meat and placed in this kind of meat and sent to the banquet hall.
The meat was transported to the banquet hall and delivered to everyone's table before it could be eaten.
Collection of the National Museum of Dyeers
This is called a dyeer, and the middle piece of meat is transported to the banquet hall, and then cut into small pieces of meat and sent to each person's table. Don't forget to cook the meat when the soup white water, the meat has no taste, then to put it in this Henan Shaanxi County Houchuan unearthed dyeing vessel, with seasoning seasoning to taste delicious. The seasoning process is also done with a trumpet, and the smallest seasoning is called "shy ding". When seasoning, if you want to eat salty, put salt, if you want to eat sour, put sour plum sauce, if you want to eat sweet, put honey, chili peppers have not yet spread to China at that time. After adjusting the taste, the fork puts the meat in the mouth and chews. Confucius once said that if you don't cut it right, you don't eat it, that is, you don't eat the meat that is not cut well; you can't eat the sauce, the seasonings are incomplete, and the old man doesn't eat it.
Wait, just talk about forks, modern chopsticks we commonly use, there are also some.
Bronze chopsticks were also unearthed in the Yin Ruins, but not for meat, but for the vegetable leaves in the porridge into the spoon, and later in the day, some people said Song, some people said Yuan, chopsticks became the most important Chinese tableware.
Large pieces of meat are not good for taste, nor are they good for the mouth, so it is still small and delicious. After the Tang and Song dynasties Chinese invented this cooking method of stir-frying, and the meat should be cut smaller, otherwise the stir-frying will not be cooked. Thinking back to the Hongmen Feast more than 2,000 years ago, Xiang Yu gave Fan a whole pig's elbow, the block is not small, "Fan covered his shield on the ground, added his shoulders, drew his sword and cut it." Fighting rough guys like Fan Duo have to cut open their big elbows to eat, not to mention us modern Svens.
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Author | Spiral truth
Editor| Yang Yichen
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