What are the “Top 10 Famous Dishes” of Hunan? How many have you eaten? Netizen: It’s all about cooking

When it comes to Chinese cuisine, everyone must be familiar with the eight major cuisines, which are Shandong cuisine, Sichuan cuisine, Cantonese cuisine, Huaiyang cuisine, Fujian cuisine, Zhejiang cuisine, Anhui cuisine and Hunan cuisine. When it comes to the most delicious, down-to-earth, and most common cuisine here, I think besides Sichuan cuisine, it is Hunan cuisine.

Hunan cuisine, also known as Hunan cuisine, has gradually formed factions as early as the Han Dynasty. It mainly focuses on three local flavors from the Xiangjiang River Basin, Dongting Lake area and the mountainous area of ????western Hunan. In 2018, the China Cuisine Association released the regional classic dishes of Chinese cuisine to the world for the first time. 10 Hunan dishes from Hunan were on the list and were promoted to the world.

Next, Lamiao will tell you one by one, what are these 10 famous Hunan dishes? How many have you eaten?

Everyone knows that Chairman Mao is from Xiangtan, Hunan. When he was studying in Hunan First Normal University in his early years, he liked braised pork very much (according to historical records, his classmates Zhou Shizhao and Jiang Zhuru recalled). Later, it was said that Chairman Mao would eat braised pork to celebrate every time he won a battle.

It is said that Chairman Mao did not like to eat dishes with soy sauce, but he also liked to eat braised pork, so the chefs came up with a way to use fried sugar color and salt instead of soy sauce to color and season the braised pork. , I didn’t expect that braised pork without soy sauce can be delicious. This is where this "Mao's Braised Pork" comes from. The whole dish is bright red in color and full of meat flavor. Because of the addition of chili peppers, the salty, spicy and sweet tastes are intertwined, making it taste fat but not greasy.

Unlike other livestock, cattle have four stomachs, namely the rumen (hairy belly), reticulum (honeycomb stomach), omasum (bovine louvers) and abomasum. Beef louver actually refers to cow stomach. Haired beef louvers are made by cutting beef louvers into shreds and then frying them over high heat. The whole dish looks white in color, shaped like hair, and tastes very rich.

Hairy Beef Silhouette, a famous Hunan dish, has a long history of hundreds of years. It originated from Li Hesheng, a Muslim restaurant in the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty. It is also a time-honored restaurant in Changsha, Hunan. This restaurant has three classic housekeeping dishes, braised beef brains, braised beef tendons, and hairy beef louvers. They are all known as the "Three Masters of Beef".

Mushroom Yolk-Free Egg, as can be seen from the name of the dish, the main ingredients of this dish are mushrooms and eggs, and they are eggs without yolks. During the cooking process of the whole dish, you need to knock a small hole in the raw egg shell first, take out the egg yolk and egg white, remove the egg yolk, and add the same amount of chicken broth, lard, salt, and MSG to the egg white as the egg yolk. After waiting for the auxiliary materials, inject them back into the empty eggshells and steam them.

It’s not over yet. The steamed eggs still need to be peeled out, and after peeling they must be a complete egg, just without the yolk. Then add mushrooms and other ingredients for the next step of cooking. system. From the entire cooking process, we can see that making this dish is quite difficult, and we must pay special attention to the heat. The prepared flower mushrooms have no yolk eggs and will taste very tender.

Speaking of my favorite Hunan dish, and the dish I must order every time I go to a Hunan restaurant, it must be the fish head with chopped peppers. It is said that the origin of this dish is related to a scholar named Huang Zongxian during the Qing Dynasty. When he stayed at a house in rural Hunan, the owner made a fish head dish using fat-headed fish and home-produced chopped chilies to entertain him.

After the scholar ate this dish, he never forgot it. After returning home, he ordered his chef to copy and improve it again, so he had minced pepper fish head, which is also a dish in Hunan steamed dishes. Representative dish. Authentic fish head with chopped pepper is mostly steamed with bighead carp (fathead fish) head as the main ingredient, plus chopped pepper and other seasonings. The fish meat after being cooked is combined with the aroma of chili pepper, making it fresh and tender with a bite, salty and spicy.

Tangbaodujian, also called Mushroom Tangpaodu, is a soup made from pork tripe tips, rapeseed cores and dried mushrooms. During the cooking process, the processed pork belly tips need to be cut into sloped blades, blanched in boiling water and served on a plate. Then add mushrooms, ginger slices, MSG and other seasonings to the chicken soup, then add rapeseed core and cook it to serve as a soup. When eating, just pour the pork belly tips on the plate into the chicken soup and enjoy.

The color of the whole dish is attractive. The richness of the chicken soup, the freshness of the mushrooms and the crispness of the pork belly tips are perfectly blended together. The taste is refreshing and you can take a sip of the soup and it is extremely delicious. It is said that Zeng Guangjun, the eldest grandson of Zeng Guofan, composed an impromptu poem after tasting this dish, "Soaking your belly in spicy chicken soup makes you always remember Yuloudong", and it has been passed down as a folk legend.

Braised Haishuangwei is a very classic braised dish in Hunan cuisine. The "double flavor of sea" in the name of the dish refers to two kinds of seafood, sea cucumber and fish maw. According to legend, sea cucumber mats were once popular in the Changsha area of ??Hunan during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The first dish at the banquet must be sea cucumber dishes.

This dish is made of sea cucumber, fish maw, cuttlefish, rapeseed, etc., and seasonings such as salt, monosodium glutamate, and pepper are added. The finished dish fully restores the freshness and tender texture of the seafood, while also enhancing the toughness of the ingredients. It tastes salty, spicy and very delicious.

I would say that Hunan cuisine is quite similar to Sichuan cuisine. Most of the dishes are heavy on oil, salty and spicy, so there is a saying that "Sichuan food is spicy, Hunan food is spicy" . The spicy chicken dish in Hunan's famous dish is quite similar in taste to Sichuan spicy chicken. When cooking, it needs to be fried first and then stir-fried.

The chickens used in spicy chicken are young chickens. There is less elastic connective tissue in chicken, the meat fiber is easy to separate, and the taste is much more tender than that of old chicken. The diced chicken is fried twice and then stir-fried with Sichuan peppercorn oil and chili peppers. When it comes out of the pan, it is bright red in color and the chicken is charred on the outside and tender on the inside. It is really a great dish to go with rice.

As we all know, Hunan’s cured meats are famous throughout the country. The locals have the custom of pickling cured meats since ancient times. This is because the terrain in Hunan is low and the climate is relatively humid. In the past, when conditions were limited, fresh meat was not suitable for storage, so people invented the method of using preserved meats to store meat.

Double-steamed cured meat is also a classic dish in Hunan. It is steamed with cured pork, cured chicken, cured fish and other cured meat raw materials, added with chicken soup and seasonings. Although the preparation is relatively simple, the taste of the finished dish is extraordinary. It tastes full of wax flavor and goes very well with rice.

The name of the dish "Red Stewed Fish Skirt Claw" may seem a little confusing at first glance, but in fact, if you break it down, everyone will suddenly understand. "Red stew" refers to the way this dish is cooked, which requires a long period of simmering. "Water Fish Skirt Claw" refers to the turtle's skirt claw. The dish name summarizes the cooking techniques and main ingredients of the dish.

Since the turtle claws are relatively old, they need to be simmered for a long time to become tender and tasty. Therefore, when cooking this dish, it needs to be simmered for 3 to 4 hours. After being taken out of the pot, the red simmered fish skirt claws are as amber in color, the soup is thick, and it tastes smooth and tender.

Hunan’s famous dish Thunder Duck, the word “Thunder Duck” in the name of the dish comes from the fact that the duck meat looks black and shiny after being cooked, as if it has been struck by thunder. This dish uses duck as the main ingredient. The duck needs to be marinated, air-dried, steamed and then grilled. It can be said that the whole cooking process is very cumbersome.

However, the delicious taste of the Thunder Duck is definitely worth the effort it takes to make it. When the Thunder Duck is ready, the duck meat has fully absorbed the aroma of oil and spices. It tastes fragrant and spicy, and it has a unique flavor when chewed to catch up on the drama.

Lazy Meow’s Thoughts

The 10 Hunan dishes mentioned above include Mao’s braised pork, hairy beef louver, flower mushrooms without yolk eggs, fish head with chopped peppers, and tripe tips soaked in soup. , braised seafood with double flavor, spicy chicken, steamed cured meat, braised fish skirt claws, and Thunder Duck are all very famous traditional dishes in Hunan. Let me tell you, Hunan cuisine is really good, and every dish is good for cooking.