Xinjiang covers an area of 1.66 million square kilometers, accounting for one-sixth of China's total land area, and is the largest provincial-level administrative region in China by land, and some of them can only be eaten here.
Starting in November every year, if you are careful enough to walk through the streets of Xinjiang, you will find a unique landscape, which is a lot of horse meat products, horse meat, horse intestines, minced meat, pieces of meat, each with a unique style and a strong taste.
Kazakh smoked horse intestines, smoked horse meat, air-dried meat, but also let people eat and forget, the aftertaste is long.
The vast grasslands of the northern foothills of the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang are always ridden with countless herds of horses, which are fat and strong, running freely, and the breeds of these horses in history have penetrated into the blood of Mongolian horses and horses in Central Asia, and are now widely distributed throughout northern Xinjiang.
Xinjiang horses mainly include Kazakh horses, Mongolian horses, Yanqi horses, Bari Kun horses, the ancient Wusun horse is the Western Han Dynasty Western Heavenly Horse, later renamed the Western Pole Horse is the predecessor of today's Kazakh horse.
My hometown of Ili is the central production area of Kazakh horses, with a total of about 500,000 horses in the Ili region, accounting for about 50% of the total number of horses in Xinjiang, known as the hometown of Tianma.
Traveling to Xinjiang, in addition to the beautiful Xinjiang green mountains and green waters, blue sky and white clouds, lush grass and trees, wildflowers, everyone's eyes will also be attracted by the solid physique on the vast grassland, the body of the well-proportioned Kazakh horses galloping on the extreme knee green grass, they heroically raise the slender neck, the mane is thick in the wind, the hair color is mainly horse, chestnut, black, it is a beautiful landscape.
People can't help but want to step on a horse and experience the feeling of galloping. The horses used in the horse meat of Ili Kazakh are these horses that are stocked in the mountains, maintaining the wild nature of running freely, and the tough and high-quality horse meat is more able to chew vigorously. Horses are herbivorous, and the horses in the mountains eat a variety of precious herbs on the grass, drink mountain spring water, of course, the meat quality is not ordinary, are real green food.
From ancient times, the hard-working Kazakhs, in order to withstand the cold winter, slaughtered not only cattle and sheep, but also horses, and stockpiled meat as a necessary food for the winter. So there is the delicious taste of the people in Xinjiang, the birth of horse meat.
Xinjiang smoked horse meat, is a must in Kazakh cuisine, in Kazakh language called Surget, smoked horse meat is a special meat that people in Xinjiang must have in winter and New Year, and it is also a necessary ingredient for Kazakhs to spend the winter.
Horse rib sausage, commonly known as horse intestine is the most famous, horse rib sausage with fat and tender horse flank meat with bone sausage processing and smoking, is the top of the bacon, Kazakh people called Gazi.
Every year from November to December is the kazakh herdsman bacon season, this time is the most fattening and the best time for cattle, sheep and horses, so only from November to December every year the weather is slightly cool, and there is smoked horse meat on the street.
Looking at the people of the whole world, in fact, horse meat is cooked in many places, such as France and Belgium in Europe, horse meat is a very common meat, and even Japan has a famous horse meat sashimi, called cherry blossom meat, the reason is that fresh horse meat is brightly colored, like blooming cherry blossoms. But the world's main place to eat horse meat is central Asia, which is just China's Xinjiang.
Because this part of Central Asia is basically a people on horseback, horses are not only the main means of transportation, conquest mounts, but also provide nomadic meat to replenish energy. Therefore, horse meat has become the most important food for many peoples in Central Asia, especially the Kazakhs. The most famous of these are Kazakh smoked horse meat and smoked horse intestines.
After all, horse meat contains more than a dozen amino acids and essential vitamins. It is high in protein and also contains minerals such as calcium, zinc, iron, and selenium, and is rich in content. It has the effect of tonifying qi, nourishing the liver and replenishing the blood, keeping cold and preventing cold, strengthening the muscles and bones, and can promote blood circulation, prevent arteriosclerosis, and enhance human immunity, but horse meat is hot, and eating more will catch fire.
This is also why winter is the best time to eat horse meat, three or nine severe cold, come to a lump of horse meat, or a horse intestine, and then warm a little wine, next to the roast is a warm fire, this scene in the world several times, and in Xinjiang, if you want to every day can be.
Most of the people in Xinjiang are carnivores, no meat is not happy, horse meat is rich in fat, made into smoked horse meat oil but not greasy, not only the color of dark red brown pleasing to the eye, but also high nutritional value, flavor is also unique.
Horse meat unsaturated fatty acid content is high, lean and fat, extremely beneficial to the human body, can dissolve cholesterol, so that it can not be deposited on the blood vessel wall, has a special effect on the prevention of arteriosclerosis, and is food and can be beneficial to health, why not enjoy it?
Delicious but also can not eat more, because of its sexual heat, should not be too much.
To prepare the bacon meat:
First of all, the Kazakh people selected fat and strong foals, the horse meat was cut into pieces and sprinkled with salt and mixed evenly, the ingredients could be used to assist the peppercorns to marinate, and the taste could be aggravated according to their own preferences. After that, it is hung with ropes in a place where there is no sunlight, and the ancient tradition is to hang it on the wooden shelf of their own earthen house, which allows the water to dry naturally.
Kazakhs pay attention to the firewood of bacon, if you want to taste fragrant, you can pick cedar branches in the pine forest, like to choose fresh pine branches, river willow branches, especially the branches and leaves of the climbing pine.
This kind of firewood smoke has a special aroma, and the smoked meat has a strong aroma and is resistant to storage. The small fire is slowly fumigated, this smoke is also the key technical work, ordinary people go in for less than a minute, will be smoked by the eyes and throat are very uncomfortable. This kind of smoking lasts overnight, and it is necessary to pay attention to the smoking situation and add firewood at all times.
At the end of the smoking, the smoke in the smoking room is completely dissipated. In the morning light, after a night of smoking, the chubby horse intestines are brightened, and the unique aroma of horse meat fills the entire smoking room.
Until the horse meat is dried, the surface is black and red, and after smelling the strong smoke smell, it can be taken out and hung in a place without sunlight, preferably indoors, and after a few days the smoked horse meat is finished.
The smoking of horse meat and horse intestines was originally mainly for the convenience of preservation, so the more primitive method must be that the above smoking is heavier.
But for modern technology, the problem of preservation is not difficult, so the smoked horse meat and horse intestines on the market today are deliberately reduced by a little smoke to better meet the tastes of the public.
Horse intestines are divided into pieces of meat and minced meat.
Kazakh herders make their best horse intestines, select fat and strong horses after processing, take their horse intestines and wash them, and then cut the horse's ribs into strips of meat, along with the ribs sprinkled with salt, pepper and other condiments, poured into the horse intestines more than 3 feet long, tied at both ends, hung in the house to dry, about a month.
Smoked horse intestines are a must, the essence of the horse lies in the horse ribs, fresh horse meat together with horse ribs into the most tough horse intestines, red willow branches smoked, smoky color, the best of the best, taste a bite is really the more chewy the more fragrant, can't stop feeling.
The characteristics of Xinjiang smoked horse meat: strong smoked taste, bright color, strong meat flavor, aromatic overflowing, and without any added preservatives, pigments and other chemicals, is a true sense of handmade traditional green food.
If people with bad teeth feel that the chewing of the piece of meat is difficult to chew, or the teeth are stuffed, then they also use a kind of intestine that uses minced meat to enema, and the difference with the piece of meat is that the minced meat, as the name suggests, is to crush the meat and add ingredients, as well as the garlic aroma of garlic, go home and steam it in the pot to eat.
And I myself especially like minced meat, always feel a large section into the stomach, but the mouth can not stop, want to continue to cut again. Just eating horse intestines alone can eat a lot.
The simplest way to eat horse meat is to steam and cook, the smoked piece of meat of the horse meat is relatively dry and salty, only boiled with water can be, because the horse intestine itself is already salty, so there is no need to add salt, cook for more than three hours, and then you can smell the aroma of the room.
After cooking, you can slice breakfast, lunch, dinner, home or restaurant can come to a little.
Naren, a common pasta in Xinjiang, usually cooked with horse meat soup, is a flavored food of Kazakh, Kyrgyz and other ethnic groups. The trick to this kind of noodles is to use an appropriate amount of salt water to make the noodles hard, and the second is to make the horse broth thick. In the past, there were distinguished guests, and the herdsmen made this kind of meal to entertain.
After the soup meat is salted, onion, meat is taken out, the noodles or noodles are cooked in the original broth, fish out the serving plate, put the noodles on the bottom of the plate, put the pieces of meat on top, and finally mix the meat with the noodles, you can also sprinkle some spicy noodles, minced onions and other condiments according to personal preferences.
Count nine cold winters, get together, use horse intestines and horse meat to make a large pot of fragrant Na Ren, and eat a meal with beauty, what a beautiful picture. After eating, it was hot and warm, and it was very comfortable, as if it had dispelled all the cold in northern Xinjiang.
In Xinjiang, many specialty grab restaurants also use smoked horse meat to make pilaf, and the small partners who come to Xinjiang for tourism must try the special food of horse meat, not to Xinjiang, really can't eat Oh.
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If you like the beauty and food of Xinjiang, just pay attention to it