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A daily article on global humanities and geography
Earth Knowledge Bureau- the best lamb in winter, who invented it?
NO.1691 - It's time to eat shabu lamb
Author: Narisu
Proofreader: Stu the Cat / Editor: Yakult
Recently, the temperature in the north has cooled down significantly, and the autumn mood is gradually thickening. But handsome men and women are still reluctant to change into thick autumn clothes, and supplementing calories through food is a way for young people to resist the cold.
It can be just right all year round, especially in winter
(Photo: Big Green)▼
If you give a seat to the food that people most want to eat when it is cold, the hot pot will definitely come first. Different from the spicy and fragrant special hot pot in the southwest, the first thing that comes to mind in the north (especially in the northeast, Inner Mongolia and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei-Lu region) is the copper pot shabu lamb.
Warm-up delicacies in the cold winter
(Image: onlyyo / Figureworm Creative)▼
Nowadays, shabu lamb has become one of the representatives of Beijing cuisine, but there have been many opinions about its origins.
Winter Day Fireplace
In a literal sense, shabu means to put something in the water and swing it, and it is also the easiest way to eat hot pot. When eating, boil the soup and use chopsticks to remove the ingredients in the soup for a few seconds and then eat. After shabu-shabu, it is dipped in sauce and eaten, which has the advantages of convenient preparation, simple utensils and fast cooking. Most of the hairy belly and goose intestines commonly found in Sichuan-Chongqing hot pot are eaten in this way.
Seven up and eight down for 15 seconds, crispy and delicious
(Photo: Little Brave Industry and Commerce / Figureworm Creative)▼
In shabu lamb, the lamb is first sliced into thin lamb rolls, which helps to heat up and allows the lamb to ripen quickly.
Unlike the southwest hot pot, shabu lamb does not pay attention to the bottom of the pot. Traditional shabu lamb is a water pot, the water is put a little green onion, ginger slices, goji berries, guiyuan, etc., the role of these materials is to bring out the aroma of the lamb itself when boiling, rather than adding some other flavor to the ingredients under the copper pot.
Simple soup, the umami taste of lamb will not be robbed of the limelight
(Photo: Yakult)▼
Therefore, shabu lamb has special requirements for the quality of sheep, and the lamb of Beijing shabu must be a sheep outside the mouth. The area outside the mouth refers to the area west and north of Zhangjiakou.
Zhangjiakou, located in northern Hebei, has long been between China's farming areas and nomadic areas, unlike the sheep raised in captivity in Guannei, the free-range sheep from the grasslands outside the mouth use more succulent grass instead of hay, and the nomadic life also makes the sheep's movement more full, bringing a unique taste to the sheep outside the mouth, and the aroma is more intense after being boiled in water.
Hand-cut fresh lamb pays attention to a dry plate hanging meat, standing on the plate does not fall
In addition to lamb, traditional shabu lamb also pays attention to ingredients other than cabbage, tofu, vermicelli and other types of lamb. Now, due to convenient transportation and frequent commercial exchanges, the northern shabu lamb is also generally added with some beef rolls, mushroom platters, lettuce, artemisia annua and fish balls and other ingredients from all over the world.
These three dishes are generally given with the pot
All belong to the light mouth, and will not be noisy
In addition to the quality of the ingredients themselves, the sauce is also an important indicator of the taste of a meal of lamb shabu. The sauce of northern shabu lamb is generally composed of sesame paste, leek sauce and curd milk, and the three are mixed well before eating, and a little salt, sugar, oil consumption and other condiments are added according to personal taste.
Among them, leek sauce can be described as the finishing touch, leek sauce is derived from wild leek flowers, the preparation method is to crush the wild leek flowers, destroy the cell wall, so that the sulfur-containing compounds are released freely, bringing spicy taste.
Sending you a smile
The pungent smell of leek sauce mixed with the slight smell of the lamb produces a wonderful taste that makes the population feel warm and warm. When the two are stirred together, the tender taste of the lamb can be maximized, and the delicious bloom between the lips and teeth of the person can be produced.
The leek flower sauce is slightly spicy, just enough to suppress the smell of lamb
(Photo: Chen Fengchen / Figureworm Creative) ▼
At the same time, because the living standards of the people in the past were generally not high, there were very few people who could often afford to eat meat, and sometimes the people would take the copper pot of shabu lamb to shabu some other ingredients, so many places in the north also called shabu-shabu lamb.
What's shabu-shabu
(Photo: Black Pupil Rayleigh / Figureworm Creative) ▼
The use of lamb or beef blind leaf eating method, low price and unique taste, thus evolving another way to eat, is the Beijing snack shabu, it also has a more well-known name - pop belly.
Military promotion of science and technology
The technique of shabu meat is very simple, and it does not require very complex kitchenware technology to achieve, so the history of shabu meat is also very long. It was born out of the ancient cooking method of boiled meat, and is likely to coincide with the emergence of human metallurgical technology.
As early as 3,000 years ago, the Bronze Ding of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties was used for boiling food; the mane (lì) is an earlier cooking cooker, with a hollow abdomen and three legs under it for heating, and the earliest pottery mane unearthed now comes from the late Neolithic period.
Classic mane shape
Modern cookware styling has also evolved from this
However, this kind of cooking cooker does not have the use of heating and eating, the ancients used Ding to cook the food, but also into the matching guise to facilitate the meal and eat.
The extremely time-saving way of eating shabu-shabu meat rolls is likely to come from the military life of the nomadic people in the north.
The simple ingredients and easy cooking are quite in line with the needs of nomadic life
(Photo: hrboy / Figureworm Creative)▼
One of the most widely spread theories about shabu lamb comes from Kublai Khan, the ancestor of the Yuan Dynasty. Legend has it that when Kublai Khan was on a campaign south, he was once hungry and asked a chef to cook lamb. But the war on the front line was urgent, and it took at least half an hour to cook the leg of lamb chops until they could be eaten, and even Kublai Khan, who came from the steppe, could not digest the half-raw lamb no matter how informal.
Although the ancestors are brave, they are also human bodies
(Photo: Trilobite / Figureworm Creative)▼
So the chef used a knife to cut a large piece of lamb into thin slices of meat, put it in boiling water and blanched it, and it only took a few seconds to burn until it was edible. After Kublai Khan finished eating, he was full of might, and he was victorious. After returning to the camp, the class master still missed the deliciousness of the boiled lamb slices, let the chef make it for the generals to enjoy, and gave it the name shabu lamb.
It's time-saving, filling, and delicious
(Photo: __Sourire / Figureworm Creative)▼
Another theory is related to the Changchun Zhenren Qiu Chu ji, the historical Qiu Chu Ji once went to the western region at the age of 74 to persuade Genghis Khan to stop killing the people, spanning 35,000 miles, and became famous in the world in one fell swoop.
According to legend, when Qiu Zhiji followed Genghis Khan on his western expedition, there was a soldier who mistakenly opened the gang due to personal affairs, and when he wanted to eat, the troops were about to pull out, so he took off his iron helmet and boiled water to prepare to cook meat, but he could not cook a large piece of lamb in a short time. Qiu Saw this, so he helped the warrior use his sword to cut the lamb into pieces and down into his helmet, and the meat was quickly cooked.
Now there are thin sheets from the machine in the store
But most of the gourmets choose this hand-cut fresh meat
The palate is thick and full of meat
(Photo: Matcha is not sweet / Figureworm Creative)▼
But the meal was over, and the warrior could not ask for salt from the cook, and seeing that he could only eat the tasteless lamb, he sighed and sighed.
The compassion of the real person suddenly emerged, and he sighed on the midsummer steppe.
Suddenly, a pungent aroma penetrated his nose, and the momentum rushed from the spring to the Heavenly Spirit Cover. The real person looked around. Seeing that the wild leeks with dewdrops in the distance bloomed, he followed the smell up, took one or two leaves and put them in his mouth to chew carefully, and found that its taste was spicy and salty, and it had the effect of activating blood and scattering, removing stomach heat, and antidote to poison.
In the poem, it is written that "the lamb sacrifices the leek"
It can be seen that the combination of leeks and mutton has a long history
(Photo: Muzi Xiaoyi / Figureworm Creative) ▼
Qiu Zhiji then greeted the soldier, and the two of them worked together to pick a large handful of leek flowers and eat them with the lamb, and the two complemented each other perfectly, far better than ordinary sauces.
Later, this method of eating was popularized in Genghis Khan's army and has survived to this day.
The above two statements can often be seen in hot pot restaurants everywhere. But like almost all historical references to snacks, these allusions can only be treated as stories, neither prove nor falsify. So what is the real origin of shabu lamb? At present, there is a research view that the real invention of shabu lamb in history is actually Battu.
Batu was the grandson of Genghis Khan and the second son of Shuchi. He was a great warrior in his lifetime, conquering Kiev, annihilating the Kingdom of Poland and the Germanic allies, and capturing the Hungarian capital of Buda. He eventually founded the Khanate of Chincha and became one of the most remarkable military figures of the 13th century.
Batu loves lamb for sure, I don't know if he also likes sesame sauce
(Image: Vikiçizer / Wikipedia)▼
He, like napoleon, Manstein and others in later generations, pursued extreme marching speed. At the time of the Western Expedition, in addition to lightly armed and well-stocked horses, the details of all the soldiers' lives were regarded as part of the war, including diet.
The Mongol soldiers fed on beef and mutton, and Batu believed that the time wasted to cook mutton in large chunks affected the speed of the march, so the master of time management ordered the soldiers to thinly cut the meat and cook it, cook it and eat it in salt.
The traditional arts of nomadic tribes?
Whether it is from Kublai Khan, Qiu Zhiji or Batu, it seems to prove the indisputable fact that shabu lamb came from Mongolia.
Even marco Polo, a traveler from Italy, confirmed this, and he once described the scene of eating hot pot in the royal palace of the Yuan Dynasty in his "Travels of Marco Polo".
To this day, there are many yakiniku shabu shops in Japan and South Korea that are directly named after Genghis Khan, and in Hokkaido, "eating Genghis Khan" means eating grilled meat directly.
Genghis Khan seems to have become synonymous with meat
But as archaeological excavations progressed, it seems that the Mongol theory was no longer valid.
Cooking maps of Liao tomb murals unearthed in Balin Right Banner, Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia, Liao Dynasty grassland feasting and drinking maps excavated from Weng Niu Te Banner, and food preparation maps painted on both walls of the Yongdao Tomb of Kangyingzi Liao Tomb in Ao Han Banner have all appeared similar to hot pot utensils and cooking methods.
Although the lamb rolls do not appear directly, the scene of boiling water while lowering the ingredients to eat is very similar to modern hot pot.
Moreover, the meat of sheep and other livestock in the mural is not boiled in large pieces, but is cut into thin strips and placed aside, which is quite similar to the ice-boiled sheep in Inner Mongolia recently. This makes people have to suspect that shabu lamb has already swept through northern China as early as the Liaojin Dynasty.
Cook the lamb while boiling the ice water
You get both a pot of fresh soup and a delicious lamb
(Photo: Vigus / Figureworm Creative)▼
On the other hand, in ancient China, whether it was an agrarian people or a nomadic people, since the Han Dynasty, copper was rarely used as a cooking utensil. The vigorous development of iron smelting technology has promoted social progress, and copper is more circulated between the markets as a tradable precious metal.
The shabu lamb must be made in a copper pot, with an empty carbon stove in the middle and built-in charcoal. So where did the copper pot tradition of shabu lamb come from?
Even if the tricks are done, it is essentially a copper pot
(Photo: Mirko Kuzmanovic / shutterstock)▼
The answer can still be found in the fuselage of Qiu, who recorded the wind and objects along the way when he accompanied the Mongol army to the west. He once wrote: "Huiqiu Ruins are thousands of miles, and the city in the river is the strongest." The city is full of bronze vessels such as gold vessels, and a city is dressed like a Taoist costume", and said that the people of the Western Regions "all use stone and copper as vessels".
At that time, copper was widely used as an instrument in Central Asia and West Asia due to high copper production and smelting technology. During the Jin and Yuan dynasties, a large number of Western Muslims moved inland, especially in the Yuan Dynasty, when "Semu people" were appointed as officials and merchants in the interior, and western merchants brought the habit of using copper pots to China.
Technological improvement and increased production are the premise of widespread use
(Photo: Afshan Jafari/shutterstock)▼
As a result, the shabu-shabu technique of the nomadic people in the northwest has been completely shaped into the current shabu-shabu lamb, which has become a commoner delicacy that every household can feast on in the cold autumn and winter.
Come on meat.~
(Photo: Happy photo shoot / Figureworm Creative)▼
Amid the tumbling of hot pot soup and the lively reunion atmosphere, the cold festivals also have a little warmth.
*The content of this article is provided by the author and does not represent the position of the Earth Knowledge Bureau
Cover image @ Big Green