Although there are a large number of chive flower sauces produced by pickle factories, I am extremely unconvinced from the bottom of my heart. There was half a bottle of soup in a bottle of sauce, leaving the yellow-green porridge, and I don't know how much water was added. It's not as delicious as home-made.

Okay, as for the production method, here’s the hard stuff. The most important chive flowers to make chive flower sauce are preferably whole buds that have not yet opened or have just opened. Only the chive flower sauce made from the flower buds in this period will not have formed chive seeds, and the taste will be more delicate. It won’t taste gritty and grainy.

Open the entire cluster of buds, remove the thick stems and yellowed parts, clean and dry them until there is no moisture but still fresh and tender. Because there is no water vapor, the chive flower sauce will have a richer and more spicy flavor. Then chop and add coarse salt, or add salt and use a food processor to make a paste.

I personally think that the best way to make it is to use a stone mortar and stone hammer to mash the chive flowers and coarse salt into a puree.

The auxiliary ingredients added to chive flower sauce vary from place to place. Some add small chili peppers to the sauce, while others break up apples and pears and mix them into the sauce.

My mother learned from an old bannerman that she mixed a little grated fresh ginger and a tablespoon of white radish puree into the chive sauce and mashed together. The proportion of the preparation is very particular. There is too much ginger and it tastes spicy, while there is too much pureed white radish and the chive flowers are pulpy and the aroma is not enough. Moreover, the ratio of chives and ginger in different periods is slightly different. About a pound of picked chive flowers requires a piece of fresh ginger the size of your pinky belly and a tablespoon of white radish puree.

Vegetable sauces mashed with a stone mortar have a richer flavor. The bottles for making pickle sauce should be rinsed with hot alkaline water in advance, then washed with clean water and scalded with boiling water. After drying, put the things that need to be pickled in and tighten the lid to store in a cool and ventilated place.

The sauce will last longer if the utensils are clean. The chive flower sauce can be salted and covered tightly for a few days. This flavor is more complex. It is simply tailor-made for the typical shabu-shabu ingredients of mutton shabu-shabu. As for the taste, it's pretty awesome. The slightly spicy ginger paste and the unique aroma of chive flowers are mixed with the freshly cooked mutton slices, alas! You have to loosen the belt every time.

Actually, the seasoning for hand-meat meat in Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia is just a plate of chive flower sauce for dipping.

My family makes several large jars of pickled chive flowers every year. My mother’s physical strength is not as good as before, so the original manual pounding has been replaced by a high-speed processing machine.