Sauerkraut
Open categories: food, food, pickles
There are two indispensable things in the homes of Northeastern people, one is the sauerkraut jar, and the other is for pickling sauerkraut. big stone. This is true for poor people, and it is true for wealthy families as well. At that time, Zhang Zuolin's mansion was equipped with seven or eight sauerkraut jars, but it was often not enough. Zhang Dashuai's son, Zhang Xueliang's younger brother, Major General Zhang Xuesi, served as the Chief of Staff of the PLA Navy. He was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. When he was dying, what he wanted to eat most was pickled vegetables.
Sauerkraut is relatively close to Chinese people, and it can be seen in mountains and rivers. Sauerkraut is one of the Sichuan delicacies called pickled fish. This is a kind of yellow-green sauerkraut made from leaf media
Large grain salt
Northeast sauerkraut corresponds to its southern brethren and naturally becomes one of the northern sauerkrauts. The raw material is Chinese cabbage, which the locals are accustomed to. In late autumn and early winter, they add water and salt and pickle it in a vat. A large stone is pressed on top of the dish, and the dish is allowed to slowly shrink and ferment in a cold environment. After twenty or thirty days, it is done. In time for the temperature to drop, I picked up vegetables from the jar through the ice. My hands were red from the cold. I went into the house and smelled the yellow-white vegetables. There was a strange fragrance of coolness. It was authentic and refreshing. This is it!
My hometown in the Northeast is too cold. There used to be no off-season greenhouse crops. I don’t know who invented (or introduced) sauerkraut to help people survive the winter. I guess it was figured out by the common people themselves. If it were done by a celebrity like Su Shi, and everyone would not forget his kindness and plunder his beauty, they would have long been called Dongpo Sauerkraut and Zuo Zongtang Sauerkraut. Most of the good things in the world were created by ordinary anonymous people, either original creations or successive ones. You add a ladle of water and I add a handful of firewood. The light is greater than the people, and the people forget each other.
Although Northeastern sauerkraut is common, it has its own personality. It is rather stubborn and does not like to be with other vegetables. Have you ever seen spinach, leeks, cucumbers and other delicate vegetables mixed with sauerkraut in the same pot?
Sauerkraut's stubbornness has its own reasons. Where are you hiding in the freezing weather? My brother is the only one left to carry it!
Of course, there are a few other housekeeping dishes in the cellar in the cold season outside Guan, such as potatoes and cabbage. It is said that potatoes are docile and cooperative, but so what? There is a saying in the Northeast: Potatoes stewed with sauerkraut - tough. It means that under the influence of the stubborn sauerkraut, potatoes cannot maintain their traditional virtues, and they can't even be cooked.
Even for his own family, Baicai, he is unwilling to perform together. I've never heard of sauerkraut and cabbage being paired together. What kind of dish is this? A battle between old and new cadres? Children don’t like to play with their parents? If I had known this, why bother?
Who is more compatible with sauerkraut? It is a meat that is not very elegant and rarely chanted. When aunties from the Northeast cook sauerkraut, they often sigh, "This guy likes oil the most." No wonder, since you are poor, you should gain some fat and calories. Meat is also strange. Once I got acquainted with sauerkraut, I immediately lost weight, got rid of the greasiness, and gained fragrance, just like a fancy woman who washes off her beauty and returns to her simplicity.
Sauerkraut not only chooses its partners, but also the cooking method. You cannot fry it, fry it, slide it, roast it, beat it, or scold it. Usually, Northeastern people have four ways of eating: one is stewing; the other is stir-frying; the third is making dumplings; and the fourth is eating them raw.
Eating it raw is the simplest way for sauerkraut to serve the people of Northeast China. The mother was washing sauerkraut in the earthen basin. When she saw the child looking at him eagerly, she chopped the vegetables into pieces to reveal the best of the vegetables - here! The child held it in his little hands and ran out into the cold wind, "skating" on the ice while chewing it with great pleasure. Children don’t know what ice cream is, so sauerkraut heart is their ice cream. The father looked at it with greed, so he also got a piece of it on the kang table, dipping it in sauce and drinking it with wine.
The highest and most classic form of sauerkraut is stew, which is stewed with meat in a hot pot, casserole or ordinary pot. It is commonly known as sauerkraut white meat, sauerkraut hot pot, and commonly known as jiu pot and jiu white meat. "氽(pronounced cuan1)" means to enter the water, so there must be a soup, often a wide soup. Learn from the "Kingdom of Tonga". It was so generous to drink it all in just a few sips. "氽" is often mistaken for "氽" when restaurants print recipes and canteens write on blackboards. Sichuan is Sichuan, it's not like taking the postgraduate entrance examination. Moreover, Sichuan is a large water, which conforms to the principle of multiple soups. The shape of the glyph is like three pieces of white meat standing sideways, which is quite realistic.
White meat - please allow me to use the professional tone of cooking lectures - is three-layered pork with skin and moderate fatness and leanness. Place it in a cold water pot and cook it until it is half done, then take it out. Slice and set aside.
Northeastern people love to use soy sauce when cooking, but this is an exception. Therefore, the meat slices are white, tender and clean, so it is called white meat.
White meat has a long history in the Northeast. Manchu emperors loved to use white meat as offerings when offering sacrifices. After the ceremony, it was given to the favored ministers to eat on the spot. Although the emperor's favor is great, the white "imperial meat" has no salty taste at all, let alone the soy sauce, which makes the civil and military officials complain endlessly every time they come to the festival. Someone who was smart or "corrupt" had an idea and bribed the little eunuch serving the meat, secretly pinching a pinch of salt in his sleeve to help. If the emperor reformed etiquette and stewed a large pot of sauerkraut with white meat, the integrity of his courtiers would surely reach a new level.
The sauerkraut used to make white meat is mainly cabbage. The well-pickled pickled cabbage itself is already very thin, which is not enough for the skilled Guandong women, so they use a knife to slice it into three or two layers. It is almost transparent and is beyond the reach of raw vegetables.
Then, cut it crosswise into very fine strips, and stew it with white meat, pepper, star anise, dried shrimps, etc. After stewing, add chive flowers, fermented bean curd, minced garlic and other small ingredients, eat it while it's hot, and you will feel comfortable and in a first-class mood. Oh, how happy it is to be a Northeastern person!
If possible, add blood sausage, vermicelli, ice crab, and oysters to add icing on the cake and make it even happier.
Special reminder: Sauerkraut can only be eaten occasionally. If you are gluttonous for a long time, it may cause urinary system stones. In addition, during the process of pickling sauerkraut, vitamin C is greatly destroyed. If the human body lacks vitamin C, it will reduce the ability to inhibit the deposition of calcium oxalate crystals in the kidney and reduce the formation of stones. Eating sauerkraut containing too much nitrite will cause the blood protein in the blood to turn into methemoglobin, which loses its oxygen-carrying function, causing red blood cells to lose their ability to carry oxygen, leading to tissue hypoxia, blue skin and lips, headaches, dizziness, and nausea. Poisoning symptoms such as vomiting and palpitation can even lead to death in severe cases. Moldy sauerkraut is obviously carcinogenic and should not be eaten.