Old Beijing eats fried sauce noodles, and pays attention to fried sauce and noodles.
Beijing shoppers pipe fried sauce is also called small bowl dry frying. The full name of the small bowl of dry fried is the small bowl of dry fried sauce. Because Beijing's spoken language pays attention to crispness, the private city has omitted the word "sauce". Omitting a sauce word, instead of affecting the semantics of this thing, that is, fried sauce, it is concise and profitable, and it sounds energetic.
Small bowls are dry fried, in which "small" and "dry" must be said more. Regarding this "dry", the author has heard two explanations, one is that the meat of the fried sauce must be dried and sautéed, which is named dry fried; the other is that the finished fried sauce should be "dried" to the extent that a seam is not closed, so it is called "dry fried". I don't agree with either of these claims. The so-called dry, should refer to the frying sauce when the heat, that is, with 30% or 40% of the fire, slowly dry the water in the sauce (or like the "dry" of dry roasted yellow fish), until the thickness concentration is appropriate. But it must not be to the extent of drawing a slit in the middle and not closing it, otherwise the sauce will become a hard block, and the plug will not be opened when mixing the noodles.
Say "small" again. Some people interpret small bowls as frying only one small bowl of sauce in one pot. This statement is clearly far-fetched. In the old days, Beijing mostly had a large court, ranging from seven or eight mouths to dozens of mouths. The whole family eats fried sauce noodles, small bowl after bowl of fried sauce, and the sauce alone has to be fried for a day. Such a "small bowl", the whole family to eat a fried sauce noodles to consume two days, always unreliable. The so-called small bowl is actually the name of the store. Guests order fried sauce noodles, and the sauce served is served in a three-inch pier bowl, so it is called a small bowl. But the sauce in the back kitchen must be fried in a large pot and divided into small bowls. The restaurant is particular about the size of the dishes. The three-inch bowl of the old Beijing pipe high pile is called the pier bowl to distinguish the general three-inch flat bowl. The word "small" in the small bowl of dry frying is a three-inch bowl of fried sauce per guest.
In this way, the fried sauce and the small bowl of dry frying may be clear. Fried sauce is the name of the family, small bowl dry fried is the hospitality of the restaurant, the same thing.
It is rumored that the origin of fried sauce noodles is not Beijing. In the year of The Qing Dynasty (1900), the Eight-Nation Alliance entered Beijing, and the Guangxu and Cixi Emperors hunted in the west. One day in Xi'an City, I overheard the streets and alleys full of sauce, and looked up to see that it was a noodle restaurant. The two of them went in to taste it, and they felt very delicious, so they brought the fried sauce noodles back to Beijing and entered the Forbidden City. However, I have also entered Xi'an City several times in the past hundred years, and I have never seen a Beijing-like fried sauce noodle. The origin and origin of fried sauce noodles, the author did not examine in detail.
The term "fried sauce noodles" is also popular in other provinces in northern China, but the ingredients, methods, colors, and quality are very different. The author believes that the old Beijing fried sauce noodles should be the most authentic and pure. (This statement is only a personal opinion, and does not offend the meaning of "fried sauce noodles" in other provinces.)
The yellow sauce used for dry frying in small bowls is the best dry sauce. Among them, Liubiju, Tianyuan, Gui Xinzhai and other old-fashioned dry sauces are preferred (the color of these dry sauces is also far from that of decades ago). The selection of Liubiju and Tianyuan dry sauce is based on personal taste. The dry sauce in Tianyuan Sauce Garden is slightly sweet, and the dry sauce of Guixin Zhai is mostly eaten by the practitioners (halal). In addition to the dry sauce, it is necessary to accompany the sweet noodle sauce. The rough ratio of dry sauce to sweet noodle sauce is 4:1. Before frying the sauce, first use warm water to turn the dry sauce apart, stir with the water, and do not leave hard pieces in it. The pork used, preferably pork belly or the tip of the front rump, is peeled. Fat to lean ratio of four or six (must have fat meat), cut into three-point square dice pieces. On high heat, put more oil, add 60% hot oil to the large ingredients and chopped green onion and ginger, and sauté the diced meat. Then add the sweet noodle sauce with the mixed dry sauce and stir-fry with cooking wine. After two or three minutes of fire, change the text to grunt and stir at any time. After 15 minutes of simmering, the water in the sauce gradually dries, the sauce is ochre and the oil slowly emerges. The aroma of meat sauce then spread out and greeted the nose. Finally sprinkle with a little fresh chopped green onion and a little MSG. There are also a few people who have mixed a little pepper water (before using boiling water to soak a few peppercorns for later) to taste fishy.
The fried sauce should not be salted, the sauce itself is salty enough. If you add salt again, a small bowl of fried sauce is enough for 20 people to eat, which is equivalent to brine mixing noodles. In the past, there was an old saying in Beijing called "sauce fried salt". Invited to dinner, the host's dish is salty. When eating, it is inconvenient for guests to say, after going out, others ask him what he eats, and guests are allowed to say "fried salt in the sauce I ate today.". Stir-fried salt in sauce, subtle humor and sharpness, permeated with the unique strength of Beijing dialect.
After the frying sauce comes out of the pan, serve in a sea bowl. The meat inside is tender and the sauce is dark ochre, and the top is covered with bright oil and full of flavor. Some good two-bite old Beijing especially like to pick the meat in the sauce with wine. Whether the meat is fat or thin, mellow and delicious, the more chewy the more fragrant. A few diced meat cubes are enough to go down two or two wines.
Eat fried sauce noodles, small bowls of dry fried of course, the noodle code is not inferior. Comprehensive spring, summer, autumn and winter seasons, the fried sauce noodle code is roughly as follows: toon minced (boiling water to brew the toon, cover the lid for 10 minutes and then chop the minced), celery minced (boiled water), minced garlic, boiled soybeans, boiled green beans, pinched vegetables (mung bean sprouts de-glued and blanched), water radish shreds, cucumber shreds, cabbage shreds (Cabbage hearts shredded or can be blanched), lentil shreds (blanched shredded), garlic cloves, etc. The owner of the meal can be selected according to taste and season.
With a small bowl of dry fried, the noodles are of course based on "put the noodles" (my "Old Beijing Dumplings" article is described separately), followed by hand-rolled cut strips, the machine cut noodles are the worst ("hanging noodles" is an urgent chapter, unconventional eating, not described here). Most old Beijing pays attention to eating "pot pick", that is, directly fishing out the noodles from the pot, but water. "Pot Picker" can best bring out the aroma of meat and sauce from small bowls of dry fried meat. The short point is that it takes a lot of time to mix the noodles. If you want to keep the sauce fragrant and refreshing and easy to mix, you can prepare a pot of boiling water to "pick the pot" once. The noodles mixed with the noodles, the moist taste, the sweet and sharp tendons, the extreme beauty, really make people feel sorry for what they want to say.
Although there is minced garlic in the dough, it still needs to be accompanied by a few cloves of garlic or more fragrant. In the past, old Beijing used to say that "it is better to eat noodles than garlic, it is better to eat a bowl of rice", which is the fun of garlic.
There is also a derivative of the small bowl of dry frying, namely shrimp skin fried sauce. Only the diced meat is replaced by shrimp skin, and other ingredients and methods remain unchanged. Shrimp skins should be selected as small and even, dry and loose and fresh shrimp skins. Shrimp skins need to be soaked in warm water for an hour in advance to remove saltiness, and then dried. The fried sauce is delicious and refreshing, and its unique taste guarantees that you can add a bowl of noodles.
Finally, by the way, at present, the fried sauce noodle restaurants in the streets of Beijing, the author has not yet looked at one, so he can not give a strategy to all the eaters.