#我来唠家常#
▲ Big iron pot stew. Photography/Hot Wind Photography, Picture/Huitu.com
-The Legend of the Gentleman of Things-
Nothing icy or snowy
It's a big pot of dishes that can't be melted
For northerners, the most soothing thing thing for the heart and stomach in the cold and windy winter is not only hot pot, but also steaming cauldron dishes.
The big pot dish has different names in various places: "big stewed dish" is a familiar name for people in the Central Plains of North China, "stew" is the main body of Northeast China, and some places in Hebei and Shandong call it "boiled vegetables". Braised stew, stewed, boiled, the name is different in different places, the cooking process is similar, the core is the big pot of boiling soup soaked into a hill of all kinds of side dishes.
There are also differences in cooking: when this pot is a "stew", side dishes such as potatoes and meatballs are fried or blanched for pretreatment; "Boiling" is as its name suggests, focusing on the process of "boiling" in a large water and fire; "Stew" does not pay much attention to the preparation of ingredients, but it will take more time to simmer on low heat until the flavor is absorbed.
▲ Cabbage vermicelli and pork belly are the three pillars of the big pot dish. Photo/Visual China
In the old days, when there was a shortage of ingredients in winter, the iron triangle of potato and cabbage vermicelli can be combined by itself or with any other ingredients, such as radish, potatoes, tofu, beans, ...... Paired with thick or light penetrating gravy, it can bring joy to the monotonous taste buds of winter.
What can be boiled in a hot pot can basically be stewed in a large pot of dishes. Compared with hot pot, the big pot dish is not afraid of leftovers, and even the leftovers are more flavorful, and the simplicity of its production itself, as well as its convenience of "stewing a pot for three days" make it a frequent guest on the daily winter table of many families.
▲ The old-fashioned stove of bricks, the iron pot is embedded in the stove. Diagram / Diagram Worm Creative
For many children who grew up in the north, the big pot dish is accompanied by the big stove with distant memories at the grandmother's house, or the figure of parents hurriedly adding vegetables to the big iron pot in the narrow kitchen of the unit building, which expresses the taste of winter home.
Shaanxi, Jinyu, the soul hometown of stew
If you ask where people love to eat stewed vegetables the most, Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi and other people in the Central Plains, no one may be convinced, and stewed vegetables originated in the Central Plains.
Legend has it that "stewed vegetables" was originally called "fried juniper vegetables", it was the Southern Song Dynasty, the people were angry at Qin juniper for harming Zhongliang, and when cooking, vegetables, meat and other vegetables were fried and stewed together, and it was regarded as Qin juniper, eating its meat and drinking its blood to vent its anger.
In most parts of Henan and Shanxi, the meat flavor in traditional stews comes from pork belly. The pork belly is thinly sliced and oiled, and the oil in the pan and the oil that overflows from the meat are mixed together, and the fat gradually turns from white to clear, and the aroma is immediately covered with side dishes, and the aroma of the broth slowly seeps into the side dishes during the stew. In the age of material scarcity, this little bit of oiliness in vegetables is a double salvation for the taste buds and stomach.
▲ Some methods will separate the fat and lean meat of the pork belly, and stir-fry the fat meat to get the oil first. Picture/Screenshot of the video of the Up main "Delicious Cottage" of Station B
As the substance gradually became richer, meat began to occupy more and more portions in the risotto. Fried meatballs can be seen in stews all over the country, and the crispy pork with special characteristics in Henan and Jinnan is also a frequent guest in local stews. Whether at home or in a restaurant, crispy pork is often eaten in two ways: when it is freshly cooked, it is dipped in salt and pepper to make it crispy, and the rest is simmered in the pot before the stew is cooked, and the crispy puff pastry is soaked in the soup to taste its soft and juicy taste - this thought on the way home in winter can often become the motivation for people to speed up their pace on the road.
▲ Freshly fried crispy meat, dipped in chili noodles or salt and pepper is a common way to eat. Figure/Marketchart.com
In Shaanxi, meat has changed from a supporting role to a main coffee, and there is no need to be humble like pork belly in the past, just to blow up the sporadic taste of meat. The most common pork ribs and mutton have occupied a place in the name of the stewed dish, and they have a stronger presence than the meatballs and crispy pork in the braised vegetables in Shanxi, Henan.
Taking mutton stew in northern Shaanxi as an example, the mutton should be stewed in advance, and the mutton soup should be kept as a soup for the stew; The cooking method is generally similar to that of stewed mutton, except that the mutton is stewed in the first state of the side dishes to exhaust all kinds of nutrients needed by the human body.
▲ Shaanxi's mutton stew. Figure/Marketchart.com
No matter how much meat there is, whether it is the protagonist or the supporting role, what has always remained unchanged is the strong table status of stewed dishes in the North China Plain - it is not only the guardian of the daily dining table, but also an indispensable "big dish" in the banquets of various celebrations of red and white ceremonies in the Central Plains countryside.
In the Northeast, everything can be stewed
In the Northeast, the phrase "stew everything in an iron pot" is definitely not for nothing: in many places, what is stewed depends entirely on what you have at home, or what you want to eat today – "simmering" vividly describes the state of the ingredients in the pot and the dynamics of how they are cooked.
"Wild stew" has more names in the Northeast, such as "a pot of stirring horse spoons" that accurately describes the dynamics of its production, and the more festive "big harvest".
Whether it is stewed vegetables or boiled vegetables, they are known for their "large amounts" in all parts of the north, while in the northeast, "messy stew" not only inherits the tradition of "large amounts", but also has the characteristics of "large blocks": cabbage and lentils do not need to be cut with a knife, and they are directly torn into the pot by hand after washing, and their forms are coarse; Potatoes, eggplants, and peppers appear in the form of "big hob blocks", which have a rough appearance but a wonderful and delicate taste.
▲ Northeast sauerkraut stewed white meat and blood sausage. Figure/Marketchart.com
Compared with the quick and convenient "stew" in the Central Plains, "stewing" is more of a coarse and fine process: after adding soup or water, it has to go through a process of boiling from high heat to low heat and slowly simmering - so even if the potatoes, buds, and eggplant pieces are cut into large pieces, the taste will be stewed thoroughly.
"Stewing" in the Northeast is an art: there are classic combinations, such as sauerkraut stewed pork, potato stewed beans, chicken stewed hazel mushrooms, and "everything is stewed in the pot" with random beauty: red and green large pieces of vegetable meat are tumbling in the hot soup, and are stirred up by the "horse spoon".
▲ The farmer is "out of one pot". Figure/Marketchart.com
The staple food is also an important difference between the Northeast cauldron dish and other places. Unlike the people of Henan and Shanxi, who often use steamed buns and oil cakes with stewed dishes, in the Northeast, the Northeast rice, which has always been proud, cannot be regarded as a golden partner for "indiscriminate stew", and only potsticker cakes are the perfect match for stewed in a large iron pot.
▲ Cornmeal potstickers and flatbreads surrounded by "iron pot stewed goose". Figure/Marketchart.com
The cornmeal is in harmony with the white flour, fermented until it is paste, and it is taken out by hand and patted left and right, and then thrown to the edge of the iron pot with meat and vegetables, and the lid is uncovered when it is steamed, and the mist and aroma rise out at the same time, and the soft and glutinous and sweet corn tortillas on one side are stewed with soft and rotten vegetable meat, and it is not a problem to resist the cold of minus 30 degrees.
In short, in winter in the Northeast, "stewing" is right.
Hebei and Shandong, "boil" out of the taste
In some parts of Hebei and Shandong, a larger amount of water is added to the final simmering process than in other regions, so the regional characteristic name of "boiled vegetables" is also quite expressive.
The "boiled" dishes don't look too good: the leaves are wilted, and the color is boiled into a brown yellow by soy sauce. However, the practice of "boiling" makes the dish easier to cook and taste faster.
▲ There is a lot of soup in "boiled vegetables". Figure/Marketchart.com
With the migration of people, the food habits of various places have been constantly converging: home chefs everywhere have begun to pre-fry tofu and potatoes in order to "boil" or "stew" them for a more flavorful taste; Sauerkraut in the Northeast and crispy meat in Henan began to tie the knot; Fresh dishes from all over the world have also joined the army of stewed vegetables.
▲ Handan, Hebei's "stewed kelp with skin residue". Figure/Marketchart.com
In Hebei, this attempt of innovation and integration began to be practiced as early as more than 100 years ago, and it is still the identity of official cuisine, called Li Hongzhang stewed dish. In this pot, the cabbage vermicelli has been relegated to a supporting role, sea cucumber, fish maw, and hoof tendons have become essential ingredients, and pork belly, chicken, and ham have to be steamed with green onions, ginger, and Shaoxing rice wine to taste - this traditional folk home-cooked dish has suddenly become expensive and grand.
▲ "Li Hongzhang stewed dish" made of heavy materials such as sea cucumber and hoof tendons. Figure/Marketchart.com
As for how "Li Hongzhang's stewed dish" got its name, a common saying is that Li Hongzhang missed his hometown cuisine when he was in Europe and the United States, and after returning to Zhili Mansion, the catering supervisor specially developed it in order to please him, and also added some characteristics of Li Hongzhang's hometown Anhui.
"Li Hongzhang stew" is now the top brand of Hebei restaurants, but it is too cumbersome for ordinary people, and the delicacies of the mountains and seas "go down" to the stew, which always seems a little out of place, and it is not as fragrant and friendly as the pot that boils out.
▲ "Braised four-flavor dishes" in Kaifeng, Henan. Figure/Marketchart.com
Whether it is boiled vegetables or stewed vegetables, for a long time, it has been a dish for the people in difficult times in order to simplify their lives, and the common people try to improve their lives in the midst of hardship. In northern China, pork and cabbage are the two protagonists of risotto: a few slices of meat provide the oil for an entire pot of vegetables, and cabbage is the guardian of the longest winter in the old north.
In today's abundant material life, no matter how many ingredients or how much the price is, the big pot of dishes in the north is shrouded in a layer of "home" atmosphere: when we return home through the cold and fatigue, the family sits around the table, a pot of steaming stewed vegetables stands on the table, the food is warm from the stomach to the heart, and any troubles and troubles can be thrown away.