Source: Economic Daily
A Chongqing person's day starts with a bowl of noodles and ends with a hot pot.
As night fell, a hot pot gradually boiled, and the spicy and fragrant smell spread in Chongqing. On the South Mountain, under the scattered lights, more than 700 tables of hot pot are placed on top of each other, and thousands of people gather together, talking and laughing and the mountains are full of red and noisy; Next to Longtousi Park, in the 18 air-raid shelters crisscrossing the country, thousands of people indulge in spicy food every night.
This is Chongqing hot pot, it originates from Chongqing life, it is Chongqing life.
A hundred years ago, in the waves of the Yangtze River and the Jialing River, in the trumpet of the slender man, the Chongqing dock workers inadvertently put the tripe into the spicy soup pot, and a delicious dish was born.
Nowadays, on the high mountains, in the caves, by the Yangtze River, in the streets and alleys, and beside the ladders...... In the hot and rising fireworks, people saw the bold and upright character and indomitable attitude of Chongqing people, and saw the joy, tolerance, hard work and openness of this big city.
Spicy and spicy
Walking in Chongqing depends half on sight and half on taste. Embraced by mountains and rivers and gorges, chili peppers and peppercorns meet and combine here, achieving the unique spicy taste of Chongqing hot pot, and a pot of bold and strong red soup brings the pinnacle experience of taste.
Set up the cauldron, put in the butter, simmer slowly, as the butter melts, ginger, green onion, garlic, chili, pepper and other ingredients are successively put into the pot, in the stir-fry over and over again, the numbness and spicy are fully blended and released, and the strong fragrance fills the air...... After the hot pot restaurant closes in the early morning every day, Yi Yanwu begins to stir-fry for the next day's business, and it takes 4 hours to stir-fry.
The taste of Chongqing hot pot is all in this pot base. Yi Yanwu, 58, runs an old hot pot restaurant in Chongqing's Bishan District, with a small façade and only nine tables. He is both a boss and a chef, and he personally selects ingredients, ingredients, and stir-frying, "Stir-frying is a technical job, even if the order of ingredients is different, it will bring differences in taste and flavor." ”
Chongqing people are very "tricky", especially the gourmets who grew up eating hot pot and love the taste of old hot pot, and any nuance in the bottom of the pot cannot escape their picky taste buds.
Chili pepper and Sichuan pepper are the main flavor sources of Chongqing hot pot. These two ingredients are put into the same pot, and the feeling of being so spicy that you are sweating profusely and numb out of your body makes people unforgettable and unstoppable after eating it once.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, this amazing species of chili pepper was introduced to China from the Americas across the mountains and seas. To this day, Chongqing people are still accustomed to calling chili peppers "sea peppers" and chili powder "sea pepper noodles", implying its identity as a foreign product.
Thousands of mountains and ravines, rivers and rivers, Chongqing has been warm and rainy since ancient times. Spicy ingredients can help people solve the problem of keeping out cold and dampness. It may be an allusion to the Ba people's food custom of "still tasteful, good spicy", as soon as the hot chili pepper entered the mountain city, it hit it off with the resolute and bold Chongqing people. And when the pepper meets the native peppercorn, the strong atmosphere is suddenly pushed to the top.
"Get on the pot, fire on!" At noon, Yi Yanwu's restaurant welcomed diners. In a boiling pot, the tumbling red peppers bring a strong visual impact. Chili peppers collide with Sichuan peppercorns, wrapped in the unique animal fat aroma of butter, numb but not dry, as soon as the aroma rushes up, the tip of the tongue of diners is ready to move.
The base material condenses Yi Yanwu's years of frying skills. Lao Yi, who has been making hot pot for most of his life, is almost paranoid about the word authentic. In order to make a pure Chongqing good pot base, he only uses a few ingredients such as chili pepper and Sichuan pepper, which are slowly boiled and fried by hand. His fame also spread among diners, and the small shop did a brisk business every day.
There are tens of thousands of hot pot restaurants in Chongqing, and almost every hot pot restaurant has its own base recipe, which is also the housekeeping skill of each based on the hot pot rivers and lakes.
In the evening, at No. 86, Loquat Mountain Street, Yuzhong District, Xiaoyu hot pot main store was full of diners. "It's enjoyable, it's spicy, it's very good!" Most of the customers who come to the restaurant are repeat customers, and they are not hesitant to praise the taste and dishes. If you use a Chongqing post-break phrase to describe it, it is "the stall on a rainy day - no more!" ”
"The ingredients are good, the taste is good." Zhang Ping, 53, the founder of Xiaoyu Hot Pot, has strict standards for the choice of chili peppers and peppercorns. "The chili pepper only selects the first stubble Shizhu red pepper in Shizhu County, Chongqing at an altitude of more than 1,000 meters, which has a strong spicy taste and strong fragrance; Sichuan pepper must be grown at an altitude of 2,000 meters above sea level, Hanyuan pepper, rich aroma, mellow and refreshing. ”
In the past 29 years, Xiaoyu Hot Pot has grown from a small shop with only 4 tables to a catering enterprise with more than 100 stores. The business is getting bigger and bigger, and Zhang Ping has no more time to fry the ingredients by hand, "boiling an all-night fried base is only enough for a store for 5 days at most."
In order to unify the taste of all the stores, he and his wife Xiong Xiaoyu discussed and invested in the construction of a hot pot base processing factory in Jiangjin District, Chongqing. After more than a year of repeated debugging, Zhang Ping has transformed his more than 20 years of frying technology into more than 10 automated processes such as frying and stuffing, leading the company to embark on the road of standardization, digitalization and process-based development.
The base material is the "confidence" of Chongqing hot pot. A pot of spicy base, see the real chapter in the subtleties.
Eight directions to "material"
Chongqing people call eating hot pot "hot pot". The word "hot" is warm and expressive, which makes the recognition of Chongqing hot pot stand up all of a sudden.
If you ask, what kind of dishes can be scalded in a hot pot? The answers can be endless. The locals wittily said: "What flies in the sky, runs on the ground, swims in the water, grows in the soil, and knots on the trees, all the ingredients that can be eaten can be eaten in the pot." ”
The warm climate, diverse terrain and abundant rain have bred rich products and diverse ingredients for the vast land of Bayu, and also provided important basic conditions for the evolution of Chongqing hot pot.
The all-encompassing ingredients are churning in the boiling red soup, showing the infinite tolerance of Chongqing hot pot.
"Blanch the middle, shabu-shabu." Chongqing hot pot should be eaten to taste, the order of ingredients into the pot is particular, as an old diner, Chen Shunxing has a soft spot for the traditional "nine-square grid". "Generally, meat is eaten first and then vegetarian, meat dishes are put into the pot to increase the mellowness of the bottom soup, crispy and soft ingredients such as hairy tripe and duck intestines can be eaten in the middle of the hot lattice for a few seconds, and some experienced bean sprouts and green onions will be put to enhance the aroma of the hot pot."
Among the many hot pot ingredients, hairy belly is the absolute number one. Hairy belly is actually a part of the cow's stomach, and Chongqing hot pot was called "hairy belly hot pot" at the earliest.
Tan Xinyi, who grew up in Chongqing, is an avid hot pot lover, "not eating hot pot for three days is like losing her soul." She called the hairy tripe "soul dish", and she must order it at every meal, "the best buffalo hairy tripe has clear particles, the meat is spine, and it has many flavors after being scalded, thick and mellow."
Scalding hairy belly, what you eat is crispy, and what you want is a bite of freshness. Sandwich a piece of chilled fresh hairy belly, "seven up and eight down" in the hot and spicy soup base, sink and float for 10 seconds and then take it out, and then dip it in garlic paste and sesame oil to cool down and enhance the fragrance, the entrance is crisp and tender, and the spicy aroma instantly awakens the taste buds. In order to pursue the ultimate fresh taste, many Chongqing hot pot restaurants serve hairy tripe, which generally takes no more than 4 hours from the slaughterhouse to the table.
In the eyes of some senior gourmets, the taste and flavor of a piece of hairy belly directly determine the overall level of a hot pot restaurant. According to incomplete statistics, Chongqing people now burn off more than 80 tons of hairy tripe every day on average, which is equivalent to eating nearly 10 million cows' hairy tripe every year.
Sorting, disinfection, cleaning...... Before dawn, the workshop of Chongqing Sha Princess Food Co., Ltd. was busy. This is a company engaged in hairy tripe processing, and the founder Zhou Wei is a native of Hechuan, Chongqing.
As early as 1989, Zhou Wei saw the huge business opportunities contained in the little hairy belly. That year, at the age of 19, he went to Gansu, Xinjiang and other places to buy hairy tripe, processed it and shipped it to the Dayanggou Farmers' Market in Yuzhong District, Chongqing to set up a stall and sell it.
Chongqing hot pot is getting more and more prosperous, and Zhou Wei's hairy belly business is getting hotter and hotter. In 2016, he returned to his hometown of Hechuan and founded Chongqing Sha Princess Food Co., Ltd., which covered an area of more than 80 acres of hairy belly finishing base.
A plate of hairy belly has to go through 3 selections from the farm to the table, and the size, weight, color, thickness and freshness of the hairy belly are all the criteria that Zhou Wei considers. With the spirit of hard work, he has developed more than 20 hot pot ingredients, and more than 100,000 catties of hairy belly are sold from the company to hot pot stores around the country every day.
The wisdom and hard work that Chongqing people pour into hot pot is touching.
The Yangtze River is flowing endlessly, and the shabu-shabu boundary of Chongqing hot pot is also expanding. Many hot pot restaurants are actively innovating dishes, such as "beautiful frog fish head hot pot", "tender beef hot pot", "waist slice hot pot" and "soft-shelled turtle hot pot", which are derived from traditional hot pot, but different from traditional hot pot, so that Chongqing has formed a hot pot system with diverse styles.
If you broaden your horizon and look deeper, it is not difficult to find that behind the Chongqing hot pot of "one pot to cook the world", there are dozens of food industry chains with huge potential, and a huge market is slowly emerging.
In the view of Chen Guohua, president of Chongqing Hot Pot Industry Association, Chongqing hot pot "everything can be hot", which can not only burn food, but also burn out culture, economy, industry, and employment.
The abundance of products and the accumulation of history have given Chongqing the ambition to climb the peak. "In 2027, the output value will be 500 billion yuan!" Not long ago, Chongqing set the development goal of the hot pot industry and made efforts to build a global hot pot ingredient production and distribution center. Hechuan, Qijiang, Banan, Liangping districts and counties rely on their respective resources and supporting advantages to lay out industrial parks, attract leading enterprises, and accelerate on the track of hot pot ingredients.
There are only the unexpected, and there is nothing that can't be burned. A pot has scalded out a big industry, and it has also scalded Chongqing's economy.
Globally scented
In Chongqing in May, the river breeze is light. This season, the sun sets a little later.
Eating hot pot in Chongqing is actually regardless of the season. Look, the sky hasn't darkened yet, and in the Qin Ma hot pot restaurant on Nanbin Road, more than 30 tables of eight immortals are full. In the collision of different ingredients and hot and spicy red soup, diners ate heartily and enjoyed it.
Eating Chongqing hot pot also has no borders. The Qinma hot pot branch in Toronto, Canada, is full of people every day, and overseas Chinese and foreign friends gather here to eat crispy raw hairy belly, eat fragrant beef, and feel the unique charm of Chongqing cuisine. The skin color is different, the language is different, and the same is the unstoppable love for Chongqing hot pot.
Since the 90s of the last century, Chongqing hot pot has gone abroad and conquered the stomachs of more and more foreigners with the original spicy soup and authentic Bayu ingredients.
Openness is the greatest desire of inland cities for the world. The superposition of national strategies such as the joint construction of the "Belt and Road", the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and the new land-sea corridor in the western region has brought Chongqing from the "periphery" of opening up to the forefront. Benefiting from this, the pace of overseas expansion of Chongqing hot pot enterprises has accelerated, and bags of local hot pot base have appeared on the tables of foreign consumers.
"Going abroad not only meets the needs of enterprise expansion, but also spreads the Chinese catering culture." 60-year-old Li Jie is the founder of Qinma Hot Pot. In 1998, he and his wife Qin Yuanhong started from a 6-table stall hot pot, and after more than 20 years, Qin Ma hot pot not only laid out more than 600 chain stores across the country, but also opened overseas branches in more than 10 countries and regions such as Canada, the United States, and Australia.
According to incomplete statistics from the Chongqing Hot Pot Industry Association, Chongqing hot pot enterprises have opened more than 200 stores overseas, distributed in more than 20 countries and regions.
As one of the earliest Chongqing hot pot brands to "go overseas", Liu Yishou Hot Pot has opened nearly 80 stores overseas. Talking about the overseas market, Liu Mei, the founder of Liu Yishou Hot Pot, is full of ambition: "About 70% of the customers we receive in our overseas stores are foreigners, and through hot pot, they fall in love with Chinese food and even Chinese culture. ”
Goods pass through the world, and all directions come to "material". Since last year, Jiangjin District has organized the opening of the "hot pot ingredients" import train of the new western land-sea corridor. Brazilian chicken feet, Vietnamese fish, Spanish pork, these hot pot ingredients from abroad "sit" on the cold chain train across the mountains and seas to Chongqing, and confirmed the name of Chongqing hot pot "one pot to cook the world".
The two rivers flow eastward, and the mountain city looks like a brocade to see the present dynasty. Boil, hot pot! Boil, Chongqing! (Author: Wu Lumu Source: Economic Daily)