Roast duck can definitely represent the taste of Beijing, and it can also be accepted by most people in the country and even the world. But even if it is the same As Beijing roast duck, it is actually divided into two major genres: hanging oven and stewing oven.
To put it simply, Beijing oven roast duck is represented by cheap shops, which basically belongs to the only one. The hanging oven roast duck is represented by Quanjude, and the follow-up emerging Dadong, Liqun, and Four Seasons Minfu also belong to the big school of hanging oven roast duck.
What is the relationship and difference between these two major genres, let's take it slowly.
Roast duck originated in Jiankang (present-day Nanjing) during the Southern and Northern Dynasties of China. At that time, it was called "hot duck". In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, after Zhu Yuanzhang fixed the capital in Nanjing, he once "ate a roast duck", and in order to please the emperor, the imperial court cook developed a new way of eating duck every day, and finally gave birth to the famous Nanjing roast duck.
After Zhu Di moved the capital to Beijing, he also brought the habit of Nanjing roast duck and the roast duck in the imperial palace to Beijing. Nanjing roast duck is made of fat grass duck as raw material, and after arriving in Beijing, a kind of white duck fattened by filling method was found, which is the so-called filling duck. Compared to grass duck, stuffed duck has more grease and tastes better when roasted.
Nanjing's roast duck was originally divided into fork roast duck and oven roast duck. The oven genre in Beijing roast duck is the development and continuation of Nanjing roast duck in the north. The cheap shop that Yongle opened in the capital in the fourteenth year is the unyielding shoulder handle of this faction, and it has almost become the last insistent at present.
Quanjude, which opened in 1864, its founder Yang Quanren developed the roast duck technology to the state of "hanging oven", which made the roast duck technology have a great innovation, and the reputation has continued to increase, and finally the name is full of Beijing, enjoying a national reputation, and also making the hanging oven school almost synonymous with Beijing roast duck.
The oven used to roast duck in the oven is made of brick directly from the ground, and there is a door under a brick wall, which can roast 5-7 ducks in the oven. The roasted duck in the oven is not an open flame, but the straw is put into the stove, lit and the inner wall of the oven is heated to a certain extent, gray and white, the fire is extinguished, and then the duck blank is placed on the iron cover in the furnace, the door is closed, and the charcoal fire in the furnace and the hot furnace wall are simmered. In the middle, you can't open the stove door, you can't move the duck, put it in once, take it out once, and have a certain degree of certainty. Therefore, the oven is the key, if the stove is overheated, the duck will bake paste; the heat temperature is not enough, the duck is raw, so in the oven, the furnace wall is burned to gray white, quickly put the raw duck blank into the furnace, half an hour later, you can come out of the oven.
The hanging furnace is uneasy about the furnace door, using jujube wood, pear wood and other fruit wood as fuel for open fire roasting, causal wood burning, smokeless, the bottom fire is strong, burning time is long. And because there is no stove door, hanging oven roast duck in the roast can be viewed and flipped at any time, after the duck into the oven, to use the pick rod to regularly change the position of the duck, such as also have a "crotch" technical operation, so that the duck heating evenly. Because of the strong firepower of the hanging oven, the fat under the skin of the duck is reduced, and the skin of the roasted duck is crisp and tender.
In terms of texture, the skin of the hanging oven roast duck is more crisp, while the meat of the roast duck in the oven is more tender. Therefore, there is also a saying that the stove eats the skin, and the stew stove eats meat.