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Text: Wordy Shoko
Editor|Akiko long-winded
Preface
China's food culture has a long history, from ancient times, people learned to use drilled wood to make fire, and the birth of cooked food also made people start to delve into a variety of cuisines.
But making food is indispensable tools, especially pots, without pots, many delicacies can not be made, so the question is, when there is no wok, how do people stir-fry vegetables?
Could it be that the ancients before the Song Dynasty only had two cooking methods: roasting and boiling?
The Northern Song Dynasty people who can eat
In fact, the iron pot had a prototype as early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, but due to the underdeveloped iron smelting technology at that time, the iron pot was not popular, and at this time people did not know that the iron pot could fry vegetables, and the function of the pot was only stewing and boiling.
The stir-fry was only seen in the Song Dynasty, and the people of the Song Dynasty could eat it, and they were able to count the number in all dynasties, due to the special social environment of the Northern Song Dynasty, the entire government and the opposition were indulged in peace and pleasure.
In addition, the economic level of the Song Dynasty was extremely developed, so people's dietary requirements were no longer just for the sake of satisfying the stomach, and a variety of delicacies were also made.
In addition to food, people also put a lot of effort into the preparation of food, before the Song Dynasty, people mostly cooked food roasted, stewed, and boiled.
The people of the Song Dynasty, who knew how to eat, directly researched the new cooking method of "stir-frying", and the iron-pot stir-fry directly brought the deliciousness of the dishes to a new height.
And the iron pot also has a new branch, that is, the wok, the emergence of the wok, people's diet has been greatly improved, and all kinds of stir-fry have also been invented by people.
I don't know if you have noticed that many of the dishes we eat today are inseparable from the word "stir-fried", such as the fish-flavored shredded pork, kung pao chicken, sweet and sour tenderloin, and back to the pot meat that we often eat today are inseparable from this wok.
So before the Song Dynasty, what did people use to cook, was it really only roasting and stewing?
Changes in appliances
In ancient times, the ancestors were all hairy and drank blood, and it was precisely because of raw food that people generally did not live long during this period, and it was not until the advent of fire that people learned to eat cooked food.
Soon, it was discovered that cooked food not only tastes better, but also kills most germs in food through high temperatures, so after learning to eat cooked food, human lifespan has also increased greatly.
At this time, there were no utensils for making food, and the cooking method was only simple grilling, and in the Yanhuang period, people began to grow their own grains, but soon people encountered problems again.
That is, there is no container to collect food, and without a container, the food will not last long before it spoils, and at this time someone discovered that it was possible to make containers from clay, so pottery was born.
After the advent of pottery, people finally had a real sense of cooking utensils, with cooking utensils, the Yellow Emperor invented the stove, compared with the direct fire barbecue, the stove is obviously more convenient and safe.
The advent of the stove also gave rise to new cooking methods, that is, "steaming" and "boiling", putting an appropriate amount of water in a clay pot, and then putting the grain into the clay pot, so that the food produced is similar to porridge and is more easily absorbed by the body.
Later, in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the utensils were improved again, and bronze ware appeared, which was much stronger than clay pots, and people no longer had to worry about the container being burned and broken during the cooking process.
With the continuous development of civilization, bronze ware also took on more forms, starting with the most common bronze tripod, which was the most commonly used cooking tool during the Shang and Zhou dynasties.
The bronze tripod can be stewed, boiled and steamed, so it was very popular with the people at that time, and during the Zhou Dynasty, the royal family often used the bronze tripod in the sacrifice, so the bronze tripod was also a symbol of power in the Zhou Dynasty.
During the Warring States Period, King Wu of Qin Yingdang went to Luoyang in order to show his martial arts, preparing to raise the Jiuding representing "Kyushu in the world", but as everyone knows, King Wu of Qin died and died young.
So in this period, the meaning of the bronze tripod is not only used to cook food, but was given a lot of meaning by the people at that time, and later in the Qin Dynasty, people invented a tool similar to a pot called 鍪.
The appearance of the pot made cooking more convenient, in addition to the spoon, people invented all kinds of tableware, bowls, plates, chopsticks, spoons and other tableware appeared in this period.
However, at this time, people's cooking methods were still very monotonous, and most of the food was made by stewing and boiling, but the ancients who could eat learned to eat "yusheng", which is sashimi.
Yusheng is also called "sashimi", and it is said that when eating raw meat, the finer the better, and it can be seen that the history of eating sashimi on the mainland is many years earlier than that of a certain country.
When the iron pot appeared, it was already in the Wei and Jin dynasties, but at this time, people's iron smelting technology was not high, so the iron pot was not popularized in society, and people did not know much about the cooking method of the iron pot.
It wasn't until the Song Dynasty that the iron pot began to be gradually used by people, but the iron pot was not available to every household, and some of the poorer people at the bottom could not afford to use the iron pot, and most of their cooking utensils were still crockpots and other utensils.
Iron pot has a very important position in ancient times, in the Song Dynasty, iron pot was very popular with the Persians, and the Song Dynasty people who were very experienced in trade also saw the huge business opportunities of iron pot.
So the iron pot of the Song Dynasty became a sought-after commodity for their foreign trade, but in the Ming Dynasty, because he was afraid that there would be criminals who would melt the iron pot to make weapons, Zhu Yuanzhang directly ordered a ban on the sale of iron pots.
This is a bolt from the blue for the Mongols, because they don't know the technology to make iron pots, so they can only buy from the Central Plains, and now they have lost the purchase channel, so they can only grab it.
Therefore, Mongolia plundered the people on the border of the Central Plains many times, and what did they plunder? An iron pot can also be seen from this.
From raw food to today's major dishes, our dietary level has been upgraded and improved, and food has gradually evolved from the beginning of the stomach to the enjoyment of food.
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