HANXIAO

酱肉和酥肉是我们家从前过年必备的饮食，近年却逐渐从餐桌上淡出了。一是由于酱肉和酥肉的做法繁杂，准备酱肉要花好几周的时间，酥肉虽说是相对简单，但也极其耗油；二是饮食商务日益发达，腊肉、酱肉、香肠都能轻松买到，也不必亲自烹调了；三是出于健康的考量，从前餐桌上传统的荤腥似乎也日渐被所谓的“健康菜”、“创新菜”所取代。

然而，时代的进步却改变不了味蕾的记忆。比起如今口味齐一的腊制品与炸物，外公腌制的酱肉、油炸的酥肉始终是我尝过的最好的美食。这次回国，特意跟外公要了菜谱，扫描成了电子版并捎回了芬兰。

The preserved meat with Tianmian sauce and the crispy pork were the necessities in my family during the Spring Festival. However, the 2 dishes have gradually disappeared from our festival dining table in the recent years. This is because, firstly, the preparation is complicated. It takes several weeks to get the preserved meat ready, while the crispy pork is relatively quick but requires a large amount of oil. Secondly, the gastronomic commerce has been growing prosperously, enabling us to easily purchase any food used to be homemade only. Meanwhile, some traditional cuisines heavily involved with salt and oil are not considered healthy nowadays.

However, the development of the gastronomic preference does not change the memories in my taste buds. Compared with the industrial tasted cured meat and pork tempura, the ones made by my grandfather are peerless.

During my trip back home, I especially inquired the recipes from my grandfather, scanned and brought it back to Finland.

菜谱一：酱肉 preserved meat with tianmian sauce

食材 Ingredients

• 二刀座蹬肉或五花肉，带皮，注意肥瘦比例为7（肥）：3（瘦）或者6（肥）：4（瘦）
• 花椒
• 盐，盐肉比例：12克盐腌制一斤肉
• 白酒
• 永川甜面酱

The “Preserved Meat with Tianmian Sauce” is equivalently translated as “Cured Pork with Sweet Flour Sauce” in the book The Food of Sichuan by Fuchsia Dunlop (page 427), which is the best book that I think introduces the Sichuan cuisines and recipes in English.

Ingredients include:

• Ham / pork leg, the criteria is: (1) with skin, (2) the fat-lean ratio should be roughly 7:3 or 6:4.
• Sichuan pepper
• Salt: 500g pork requires 12g salt
• Tianmian Sauce (sweet sauce, my grandpa uses the Yongchuan Tianmian Sauce): a bottle, usually 400g, of Tianmian sauce can take care of 4kg meat
• Chinese baijiu grain liquor: 400g Tianmian sauce requires 50g baijiu

1. 腌肉 Seasoning

花椒、盐巴放于锅中，中火炒热炒香，停火。把肉置于锅中，四面翻滚，沾上盐巴和花椒，涂抹均匀，直到盐巴用尽。然后放置于大盆中腌制三天，每天上下翻动一次。三天之后取出晾晒（用绳子穿上）。

提示：必须在冬天腌制，且不能腌制超过三天，否则会臭。

Stir-fry the Sichuan pepper and the salt in a wok with medium heat, until it smells delicious, switch off the heat. Place the meat in the wok while the heat remains, and roll over the meat to enable the Sichuan pepper and salt evenly cover the surface of the meat. Keep rolling the meat until the salt in the wok has been used up. Then remove the meat from the wok to a big container (without lid), season the meat for 3 days. Turn over the meat once per day. After 3 days, pierce the meat and hang it with a meat hook or straw, in a shady and well-ventilated place.

Note: The preparation should be in the winter, because the cold weather preserves the meat well. The seasoning should be no longer than 3 days, otherwise the meat could get odorous.

2. 风干 Drying

晾晒通风一周左右，把水气晾干。

Air dry the seasoned meat for 7 days, until dry to the touch.

3. 刷酱 Coating

一瓶永川甜面酱兑一两白酒，和匀，再均匀涂抹在肉的表面。一瓶甜面酱可以刷肉8斤左右1-2遍。刷一遍也可以。如果刷两遍，则需再风干3天，等水气晾干后再刷。

Mix a bottle of Tianmian sauce (400g) with 50g Chinese baijiu. Then evenly brush the mixed paste on the surface of the meat. The combination of 400g Tianmian sauce and 50g baijiu can coat 4kg pork once or twice thoroughly.

It is an option to brush the meat twice to increase the flavor. The key is, after the first-time brushing, hang the meat again for 3 days until it dries to the touch, then you can process the second-time brushing.

4. 收藏 Collecting

酱肉在外风干大约20天左右，等水气干到80%左右，取下，用食品袋分装、冷冻。食用时刮掉表面的酱，用火灼烧表皮，洗净。蒸一个小时，即可以食用。

蒸好的酱肉可单独切食，也可同辣椒、蔬菜炒制；还可以切成小丁，作为酱肉包子的馅儿料。

After brushing the Tianmian sauce & baijiu mixture, let the meat cure in a shady and well-ventilated place for around 20 days, which ensures the moist in the meat to evaporate up to 80%. Then you can collect the meat and preserve it in the freezer. Before you use it, you need firstly scratch away the coating, sear the skin and wash the surface thoroughly. Steam the cleaned cured meat for 30 mins, it is ready to serve.

The steamed meat can be sliced thin and served straight, and it can be stir-fried with chili and vegetables as well. It is also common to cut it into tiny cubes and serve it as the filling for the cured-meat baozi.

备注 Notes

该方法通用于：酱牛肉、酱排骨、酱猪蹄、酱香嘴、酱猪耳朵、酱猪肝、酱猪肚等。

猪二刀肉，我们那又叫坐板肉，指的屠夫旋掉猪尾巴那部分肉后，靠近后腿的那一块肉。因屠夫杀猪以后，习惯从尾部开始处理猪肉，第一刀处理的是尾巴部分的肉，肥肉较多，第二刀处理的是靠近后腿部分，肥肉四成瘦肉六成，所以又叫猪二刀肉。

如果要做腊肉，就不用抹酱，改用柴火与柏香（柏树的叶子）来熏制。熏制（非明火，只需高温的烟）约7-8小时，直至水分进一步蒸发。熏制完成后肉块略带金黄色。再悬挂于通风处，食用时取下，清洗，蒸一个小时即可。

The method is commonly used for making preserved beef, pork ribs, pork trotters, pork snout, pork ears, pork liver and pork tripes.

The recipe of smoked bacon shares similarity with the Preserved Meat with Tianmian Sauce. To make the smoked bacon, you don’t need to brush the meat with any sauce. Instead, you need to prepare firewoods and cypress leaves (platycladus orientalis) as the smoking materials. Burn the materials until it is almost exhausted with high-temperature smoke; the meat should be placed in a rack or hanged above the smoking materials, and gets smoked for 7-8h until the moist is largely evaporated, caramelizing the surface with dark-golden color. Then follow the step 4 for collecting and serving.

菜谱二：酥肉 crispy pork

食材 Ingredients

• 夹子肉（猪前腿上方，猪脖子后面的肉），带皮，注意肥瘦比例为7（肥）：3（瘦）或者6（肥）：4（瘦）
• 花椒
• 盐
• 白酒或料酒
• 鸡蛋
• 红薯粉
• 菜籽油

Ingredients include :

• Picnic shoulder cuts 500g, better with skin: the fat-lean ratio should be roughly 7:3 or 6:4.
• Sichuan pepper
• Salt
• Chinese baijiu grain liquor
• Eggs: 3 eggs for 500g meat
• Sweet potato flour: 1/3 package for 500g meat
• Rapeseeds oil

1. 备料 Pork cuts

选夹子肉（猪前腿上方，猪脖子后面的肉），肥瘦比例为三分肥、七分瘦。洗净切成长5公分、宽3公分（原菜谱为2公分，后修订为3公分）、厚0.5公分的长条。

Choose the picnic shoulder cuts (above the upper limb and behind the neck). The fat-lean ratio is suggested as 7:3. Clean the pork and slide it into 5 cm * 3 cm * 0.5 cm (length * width * thickness) stripes.

2. 腌制 Seasoning

肉中加盐少许，多加花椒，适量白酒或料酒，也可以添加少许蚝油，搅拌均匀。腌制20分钟。

Add salt, Sichuan pepper, baijiu, (oyster sauce can be an option), mix it properly with the meat stripes. Season for 20 mins.

3. 蛋液裹粉 Wrapping flour

另用一盆，打入鸡蛋，比例为一斤肉对三个鸡蛋，充分搅拌。再加入红薯粉，一斤肉对1/3袋红薯粉，搅拌均匀。

把腌制好的肉倒入其中，使肉的表面均匀裹上蛋液和红薯粉，干稀适度，用筷子挑起来流动性低。如果过稀，再适量加入红薯粉。

Beat eggs in a separate container. 3 eggs are suggested for 500g meat.

Add the sweet potato flour into the beaten egg liquid. 1/3 of one package of sweet potato flour is suggested for 500g meat.

Place the seasoned meat stripes into the sweat potato flour & egg liquid mixture, and let the meat get evenly coated. Noted that the mixture cannot be too running, if so, add more sweat potato flour.

4. 炸制 Frying

根据肉的多少，在锅中加入适当的菜籽油，一般在一斤到一斤半左右。用中小火加热油温，至四到五成热（一成为30°C，此处指120°C到150°C）。将火候调小，用筷子挑上肉搅成团（五公分大小的肉团），一个一个地放入锅中，不能盛太慢，大致装满油量的70%为例。转中火，按入锅的先后顺序将肉团慢慢地不断翻动，肉的水气将会不断蒸发。当水气蒸发到一定程度，肉团将会先后浮在油的表面，此时将火候调为中小火，观察肉表面的颜色不断加深，直到变为金黄色，此时将火力调为最小，再翻动几次，使肉团熟透。用漏勺捞起，沥干油，放入筲箕中。

如此分批炸制第二锅、第三锅，直至炸完。

结束后将锅中油温加至六成热（180°C），将之前油炸好的酥肉分几次放入锅中复炸10到15秒，即捞出。如此才能滗出肉中多余的油，使酥肉外酥里嫩、色泽金黄。

如果要吃“小酥肉”（通常作为下酒的零食），则下肉时不用筷子搅成肉团，而是仅将2至3条肉一起入锅炸制。

Add 500g – 750g rapeseeds oil into a wok. Heat the oil with medium-low heat until the temperature is up to 120°C – 150°C, then switch the heat to the low.

Pick up a mass of wrapped meat stripes with a roughly 5cm diameter, with chopsticks, carefully place it into the heated oil one by one, until it takes up around 70% of the oil volume.

Turn the heat back to the medium, keep rolling and frying the meat in the oil. When the meat has floated on the surface, it means the moist has been evaperated, and now you can switch the heat again back to the low. Keep rolling and frying the meat for several times until the color turns shining golden. Take out the fried meat with a strainer, rest the meat in a place.

Heat up the oil in the wok up to 180°C. Re-fry the meat for 15 seconds. You are suggested to re-fry the meat in several small batches, to ensure the re-frying time is quick enough. This step makes the surface of the pork crispy and the inside tender (according to my grandfather, the re-frying process with a much higher temperature also helps squeeze out the extract oil in the meat from previous frying step). Take out the crispy pork with a strainer, rest and cool it, then it is ready to serve.

If you would like to make the crispy pork into a snack, not serving it as a main course, when you pick up the stripes from the flour & egg liquid mixture, you can simply pick up the stripes 2 or 3 together, instead of wrapping a bunch of them into a mass. The snack is tasty to go with beer or strong liquor.