#我来唠家常#
▲ Have a hot mutton hot pot in winter. Photo by Wu Xuewen
-The Legend of the Gentleman of Things-
Yunnan-Guichuan
Sheep sheep sheep
When it comes to where the sheep are delicious, it seems that people can only think of the competition and scuffle in the five northwestern provinces and regions: Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai and Ningxia, the five seeded players sharpened their knives and rushed to be the first; Zhejiang, as a member of the southern team, occupies a track. But in fact, not far away in the southwest region, there is a hidden treasure land that is seriously underestimated by foodies, and the people of Yunnan, Guichuan and Yunnan, Guichuan who "eat big sheep in a muffled voice", also have a deep love for sheep.
▲ Winter and mutton go well together. Photo/soogif
Mutton powder & hot pot, competing for the stomach of Guizhou people
Guizhou people eat mutton in a variety of ways, mainly in two categories: mutton powder and mutton hot pot. Guizhou people eat mutton powder, that is, morning and evening, hot and cold, no three meals, no four seasons, as long as there is a mutton powder shop at the door, there is nothing to prevent a Guizhou person from eating mutton powder. For mutton hot pot, Guizhou people not only distinguish between light and rich at the bottom of the pot, but also pay great attention to dipping water.
▲ Authentic Xingyi mutton powder covered with coriander. Photo by Wu Xuewen
Mutton powder丨Four major factions compete for dominance in Guizhou
Guizhou's mutton noodles are extremely lively, and there are at least four major schools of Zunyi mutton powder, Xingyi mutton powder, Shuicheng mutton powder, and Jinsha mutton powder.
Zunyi mutton powder with sour powder is a kind of coarse rice flour that has been fermented and tastes slightly sour, paying attention to the original taste of the soup. Xingyi mutton powder is a sauce fragrant sect, the taste of the powder is good, thanks to a mouthful of sauce, the mutton powder shop can often see the boss set up a big pot to fry the sauce, the sauce fragrance can float two streets. The mutton noodles of Shuicheng and Jinsha all take the road of oil chili peppers, drying and roasting the chili peppers and then grinding them into thick or fine chili noodles, mixed with mutton fat to make oil chili peppers, and many mutton powder shops are enough to make a fortune by selling oil chili peppers.
▲ Fragrant mutton powder sprinkled with red oil chili peppers. Photo by Wu Xuewen
In the life of a Guizhou person, mutton powder is a down-to-earth food, and it doesn't even matter if the place where mutton powder is eaten is refreshing and bright. If a shop can give people a "greasy" feeling as soon as you enter the door, the soup pot is oily, the cutting board with mutton is shiny, the powder is oily, and there is still a little oil left on the table that just finished eating a second ago - the mutton powder in this store is absolutely unpalatable, sit down, order a bowl, and you can't stop as soon as you enter it!
▲ The mutton powder with a rich soup base makes the coarse powder taste smoother. Photography / Returning to the People on a Stormy Night 879, Picture / Picture Worm Creative
A bowl of good mutton powder, the bowl is covered with red oil, coriander, green onions, garlic sprouts float on the surface, and red and green are the main colors. Then on one side of the bowl noodles on a thick layer of thinly sliced cooked mutton slices, the mutton slices must also be skinned, and if you have a good appetite, you can also add mutton trotters, sheep brains, mutton blood and haggis to the powder.
The other side is reserved for kimchi, and Zunyi's mutton powder prefers pickled lotus white, that is, cabbage. Xingyi mutton noodles are paired with pink pickled radish dices, in addition to pickled folded ear roots, pickled green peppers and other types. Finally, sprinkle a spoonful of pepper noodles and paste chili noodles, the sour and spicy condiments are matched with the smooth and delicate fresh rice noodles and the thick and mellow aroma of the lamb soup base, which makes people stunning!
▲ Mutton powder, the first choice of Zunyi people for breakfast. Photography / Foodie Yumo Travel Notes, Picture / Picture Worm Creativity
Mutton hot pot丨There are light and thick
In addition to being obsessed with mutton powder, Guizhou people are also very intoxicated with mutton hot pot. The clear soup in Guizhou's mutton hot pot is very common, but there are many parts of the pot, a mutton hot pot, from mutton head meat, mutton hooves to mutton liver, mutton tripe, mutton intestines, mutton blood, can be included in one pot.
▲ Black goat meat, which is popular among Guizhou people. Photography / 5cc7d073, Picture / Picture Worm Creative
If you eat mutton in clear soup, you have to be particular about dipping it in water. It is also interesting to say that the popular dipping taste of mutton hot pot in Guizhou is basically the same as the local mutton noodle style. The dipping water of the Xingyi mutton pot also has to contain a spoonful of sauce and a spoonful of finely chopped pickled sour radish.
Red oil mutton soup pot is popular in northern Qianbei. After the mutton and belt soup is stewed, mix rapeseed oil and mutton fat, add Sichuan pepper and sea pepper noodles and stir-fry the red oil base, then add mutton soup, and mix into a pot of red oil pot bottom. When eating, the green vegetable leaves are soaked, and when they are clamped out, they are also red and oily. In Guizhou, where everything can be sour soup, you can also eat sour soup mutton, with red sour soup as the base, with fermented bean curd and chili dipped in water, the mutton soaked out has the pink color of sour soup, like a layer of pink sauce.
▲ Black goat meat in northern Qianbei is generally eaten with skin. Photo by Wu Xuewen
Whether it is mutton powder or mutton hot pot, they prefer to use local black goats in Guizhou to make it. Black goat meat is firm, lean and fatty, not oily or greasy, and it is also rich in glutamate, that is, mutton with "its own monosodium glutamate".
Don't drink lamb soup? Sichuan people can't survive the winter!
Sichuan has been a large sheep producer in the south for many years, and the number and breed of goats have always been among the best in the southern provinces.
▲ Mutton and haggis in the mutton soup, dip in chili dishes and eat. Photography / Bingling Ling, Picture / Picture Worm Creative
Sichuan, which is flooded with food, is also full of attention to "eating sheep", braised sheep, braised in yellow, steamed with powder...... The eighteen kinds of martial arts of Sichuan cuisine can be performed on the little sheep, but if you want to talk about the Sichuan people's love for "what sheep" is the most specific, it must be the mutton soup in winter. Sichuan people are full of obsession with drinking mutton soup before and after the winter solstice, without that bowl of mutton soup, Sichuan people's winter is incomplete.
How much do Sichuan people love mutton soup? According to statistics from West China Metropolis Daily, Chengdu people drank mutton soup around the winter solstice in 2013, spending nearly 1.3 billion yuan and eating 1.15 million sheep. Even the boss who sells mutton can say that if the price of mutton in the market is not doubled in any year, it means that the Chengdu people of that session are "not good at fighting".
▲ The winter solstice of Sichuan people is inseparable from a bowl of mutton soup. Photography / Lan Lan, Picture / Picture Worm Creative
Sichuan's most famous mutton soup is Jianyang mutton soup, which is also included in the list of intangible cultural heritage, and this small city near Chengdu has become famous for its bowl of mutton soup.
Jianyang mutton soup is only made with big-eared sheep that looks cute, and the soup is milky and white, and the soup is thick and mellow. In order to hang out a good soup base, Jianyang mutton soup is mostly stewed with pork bones and mutton bones, and two extra fried crucian carp with crispy skin must be added to add color and flavor, and the fish and sheep are made up of a "fresh" word in a pot.
▲ The mutton soup stewed with pork bones and mutton bones is milky white in color. Photography / Spiral of Silence, Picture / Picture Worm Creativity
After hanging the soup, put in the cleaned mutton, haggis and the secret spice bag of each household to stew together, and then slice the stewed cooked mutton. Then, start another hot pot, add mutton fat and stir-fry until fragrant, stir-fry the stewed cooked mutton in the pot, and then add another pot of mutton soup.
It is said to be mutton soup, but when you actually eat it, it is more similar to how to eat hot pot. The milky white hot soup pot, with dark red fresh sheep blood and bright green peas, is put into the pot together, and the mutton in the pot is scooped up and dipped in the bright red dried sea pepper dish to eat. Don't forget to put a bowl of mutton soup in advance and let it dry on the side, and eat a bite of meat to take a bite of soup.
▲ When eating mutton soup, it is very similar to how to eat hot pot. Photography / Xu Xiaohezi, Picture / Picture Worm Creativity
In addition to the abundance of big-eared sheep in Jianyang, the varieties and output of peppers are also among the best in Sichuan. The dried chili dish served with Jianyang mutton soup should not be underestimated. Red peppers with the right balance of aroma and spiciness are selected and dried and crushed to bring out a fragrant but not choking, spicy but not dry flavor, and the cooked lamb slices are just right to roll in a circle in the hot soup.
In addition to Jianyang, the mutton soup in Longchang, Weiyuan, Shuangliu and other places in Sichuan is also outstanding, and the practice is similar to the mutton soup in Jianyang, mainly because the sheep breeds used and the types of dipping sauces are different, such as Shuangliu mutton soup is mainly made of locally produced jute sheep, and Weiyuan's dipping sauces are not only dried dishes of sea pepper, but also wet dishes made of chili noodles and soy sauce.
▲ Haggis is also in the team of mutton soup. Photography / Yingshan Vision, Picture / Picture Worm Creativity
"Boss, come to a pot, half meat and half miscellaneous." In the wet and cold winter, the only thing that can wake Sichuan people up from the spicy hot pot table is mutton soup!
Yunnan people's mutton and mint are more compatible
The umami glutamate of Yunnan black goat is the same as that of Guizhou black goat, which has good umami characteristics. The black goat of Huize has been registered as a trademark early on, and it has become the loudest signboard of the black goat.
▲ Black goat is the main force of Yunnan hot pot. Photo/Visual China
Sichuan people love mutton soup, and Yunnan people also have their own mutton soup pot. The Sichuan people's mutton soup is a combination of hot pot and soup pot, while the Yunnan people's mutton soup pot is more like a complete soup dish served in a soup pot, which is a complete dish that has been prepared. Guizhou people are "on the top" of mutton noodles, while Yunnan people prefer mutton rice noodles. Guizhou mutton powder relies on sour powder or kimchi to relieve greasyness, while Yunnan eats mutton, whether it is in a soup pot or rice noodles, the most inseparable thing is mint.
▲ Take out a piece of tender and juicy lamb from the mutton pot. Photography / F777, Picture / Picture Worm Creative
In a pot of boiling mutton soup, a layer of mint must have been sprinkled on the surface, so that even the meat under the pot could not be seen. The mint is delicate, and after a short while, it all wilts into the soup, dissolving the refreshing flavor into the thick white soup base, and the air is filled with the fragrance of mint. When eating, the mint relieves the greasy, retains its own unique and crisp taste, and at the same time absorbs the umami soup of the mutton soup, with dipping water, and fully stages the golden supporting role in the mouth of the diners.
▲ Yunnan mutton hot pot has a lot of copper pots that resemble old Beijing shabu-shabu. Photography / Little Pink Fan Meng, Picture / Picture Worm Creative
The dipping sauce in Yunnan is paste chili pepper dipped in water. Paste pepper is the dried pepper roasted over the fire, the heat is very particular, it is necessary to be slightly blackened on the outside, the fragrance is the most intense in the second before the complete paste, the first second is not fragrant enough, and the later step is bitter.
▲ Dried red peppers are made into paste peppers. Photography / Tan Hua Broken Dreams, Picture / Picture Worm Creativity
At this time, the roasted dried chili peppers are pounded into large grains of noodles, and they are made into paste chili noodles. With paste chili noodles as the base, you can go with green onion and garlic coriander, you can pair it with mashed tomatoes, you can put some tempeh or bean curd, mix well, and then add a spoonful of the hot soup just scooped out of the pot, and dip it in water.
In addition to rice noodles and soup pots, Yunnan people often eat black goat hot pot, which resembles the copper pot of old Beijing shabu-shabu, with a raised carbon fire in the middle, but Yunnan's black goat hot pot is not like the old Beijing shabu-shabu mutton, but eats cooked meat with skin slices.
▲ Mutton balls are a common shabu-shabu in mutton hot pot. Photo by Wu Xuewen
Counting the Dafa of eating sheep in the Yunnan-Guichuan area, there are more exciting, and there will be more legends on the sheep-eating rivers and lakes. There is no distinction between high and low sheep eating, only love it or not. Whether it's mutton soup or mutton powder, or roasted whole lamb, hand-handled meat, mutton skewers, shabu mutton...... It can make people exhale that cold breath on a cold winter day, give people the thought of their hometown, and give people warm comfort, which may be the biggest meaning of food!