The top ten must-eat foods in Suzhou
It is indispensable to taste the local food when traveling to a place. As we all know, Suzhou has many special delicacies. The following are the top ten must-eats in Suzhou for everyone. Food, for everyone’s reference, welcome to browse!
1. Water shield soup:
Water shield soup The water shield soup in Taihu Lake is as famous as the sea bass. There is a record in "Book of Jin": Zhang Han, a writer in the Western Jin Dynasty, served as an official in the north. As time went by, he thought of the sea bass in water shield soup in the past, so he abandoned his official position and returned to his hometown in the south of the Yangtze River. "The Thoughts of Water Shield Perch" has also become an allusion to homesickness and love for home. In the late Ming Dynasty and early Qing Dynasty, residents along Taihu Lake had been cultivating water shield artificially, and harvested it every year from Qingming Festival to Frost Festival. Currently, in winter and spring, bottled water shields are available on the market. The bottled water shield of Wuxian Huaguo Food Factory was also awarded the title of Famous and Excellent Foreign Trade Product. Water shield is tender, delicious, and has the functions of nourishing blood, clearing away heat, moisturizing the lungs, diuresis, detoxification, etc. It is a famous soup dish in Su-style cuisine. Different auxiliary ingredients can be added to make different famous soups, such as the "Water shield Tang slices" introduced earlier, and there are also Water shield soup and so on.
2. Barbel Fei Soup:
One of the top ten famous dishes of Mudu Shijia Restaurant, and also a traditional famous dish of Suzhou. Baifei Decoction, formerly known as Bangan Decoction. Barbel fish is a specialty of Taihu Lake waters. It looks like a puffer fish, with blue-gray back and spots. Because tigers are so beautiful, it looks like a "spot fish". When frightened, its abdomen will bulge like a ball, so it is commonly known as "bubble fish". The barbel fish is about 10 centimeters thick at most, but has a big head. If the skin is peeled off, the fish meat is tender and delicious. Especially the liver is used to make soup, which is a vegetarian delicacy. The pig's lung soup is made of finely cooked spotted fish liver, shredded ham, and green cabbage hearts. The golden liver and green cabbage heart complement each other beautifully. The liver is fat and tender and melts in your mouth; the hot soup is delicious, better than chicken soup. This dish has been included in "Chinese Famous Recipes". The origin of Fei Decoction is also closely related to Mr. Yu Youren. In 1929, he and his friends dined at Mudu Shijia Restaurant and highly praised Bangan Decoction. In his impromptu poem, he wrote "Thank you for being famous". Mr. Li Genyuan also specially inscribed the words "Banfei Soup House" for Shijia Hotel. Barbel fish is very seasonal and is available from August to October every year, and the liver must be harvested from the fish live, so this dish is only available in Wuzhong. There is an old saying in Suzhou: "Eat spotted liver to enjoy the autumn."
3. Biluo Shrimp:
Biluo Shrimp is cooked with live river shrimp from the Taihu Lake Basin and Biluochun, a famous tea from Dongting East and West Mountains. It has strong local characteristics of Suzhou. Shrimps, preferably white-shell shrimps from Dongshan area, squeeze out the shrimps from live shrimps, add refined salt, egg white, and dry starch to make a slurry. When the cooked lard pan is 50% hot, slide the shrimps until they turn milky white. , drain off the oil with a colander, and then stir-fry again over high heat. At this time, add 5 grams of Biluochun tea brewed in advance and MSG. Do not stir-fry too much. Just turn it over a few times and take it out of the pot and put it on a plate. At the same time, it is decorated with soaked tea leaves, with green and white contrasting each other, making it delicious and delicious.
4. Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs:
It is said that the obvious smiling face on the back shell is one of the symbols of Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs. The green back of the Yangcheng Lake crab seems to be coated with a layer of clear oil. At first glance, it looks like gray; when you look closely, it is gray with green, green and shiny. Because this color is bright, clean and attractive, it is also called? Crab shell green?. Compared with other crabs, Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs look much more impressive, almost like a majestic and dazzling "iron-armored general". The crabs in Yangcheng Lake have four major characteristics, which the locals can recognize at a glance without having to distinguish them: first, the green back, the crab shell is green mud color, smooth and shiny; second, the white belly, the umbilical belly carapace is covered with mud, crystal white , no ink spots; the third is yellow hair, the hair of the crab legs is long and yellow, with straight roots; the fourth is golden claws, the crab claws are golden, solid and powerful, placed on the glass plate, with eight legs standing upright, two pincers in the air, navel The back is bulging and majestic. Just a few kilometers away from Yangcheng Lake, Zhicheng Lake also produces a lot of lake crabs. However, due to the influence of the tide, the belly is not white, the hair is slightly black, and the meat quality is far less delicious than Yangcheng Lake crabs. Lake crabs in the same realm are not comparable, and crabs in other areas are even more inferior.
5. Eel paste with oil ringing:
It refers to the eel paste that is cooked and brought to the table with the hot oil still on the plate making a sound. It is known as a special famous dish. In the water towns of the south of the Yangtze River, eels are found all over rivers, beaches and even in fields and ditches. There are many Suzhou dishes that use eel as raw material. The most popular ones include eel tubes, fried eel slices, fried eel shreds, etc. The famous eel paste is "xiangyou". Take the live eel and blanch it in boiling water, cut out the eel shreds, heat the cooked lard in the wok until it is 70% hot, add the chopped green onion and stir-fry it, then add the shredded eel and stir-fry it thoroughly, add Shaoxing wine and simmer briefly, then add the stock Cook for about 2 minutes, add refined salt, soy sauce, and sugar. Cover the pot and cook for 10 minutes. After it thickens, use wet starch to thicken it. When taking it out of the pot and serving it on a plate, make a groove in the eel paste, add chopped green onion, and shredded ginger, Garlic paste and ham are not made into triangular trim. At the same time, heat a spoonful of sesame oil in another pot. When it is 80% hot, quickly scoop out the eel paste and put it on the table immediately, and sprinkle with pepper. This dish requires a tacit understanding between the chef and the waiter. Otherwise, there will be no sound as soon as the oil temperature drops, which will disappoint the guests. There is a folk proverb in Suzhou: "Eel in Xiaoshu is better than ginseng". Monopterus eels in June and July are highly favored as a delicacy.
6. Osmanthus chicken head rice:
Osmanthus chicken head rice is a traditional dessert in Suzhou. Chicken head rice has nothing to do with chicken. It is just a kind of water grown in Fengmen Nantang, Suzhou. A rare specialty, also known as Gorgon fruit. Chicken head rice is also related to chicken. Since the vestigial part of the calyx on the gorgon fruit is shaped like a chicken's beak, people gave it the affectionate and appropriate common name of "chicken head rice". Its flesh is jade-white in color, with pearl-like particles, sweet and soft, which is called chicken head meat. It is peeled out of the fruit shell manually by peasant women. Because it requires labor and the chicken head rice itself is a tonic comparable to Tremella fungus, it is relatively expensive. Osmanthus chicken head meat is made with chicken head meat, osmanthus sugar and soft white sugar as the main raw materials. It is sweet and delicious after being made. It is a very popular dessert among local people. In the past, chicken head rice was only available in the autumn when it was in season. Now, you can also buy some dried chicken head rice in some Nanhuo stores, making it easier for tourists to carry it with them during their travels.
7. Changshu Beggar’s Chicken:
Changshu Beggar’s Chicken, also known as braised chicken, is a legendary Wudi dish that is famous at home and abroad. It is said that Qian Muzhai and Liu Rushi lived in seclusion in Yushan Mountain in the late Ming Dynasty. One day while walking on the mountain road, they smelled a strange fragrance and saw a beggar roasting a chicken on pine branches. The chicken body was covered with mud. After roasting, the mud was peeled off, and the chicken feathers were removed with the mud. , the chicken is roasted over fire and the aroma is fragrant. The beggar has no cooking utensils and no condiments, so it is so wonderful to grill the chicken with mud. After Qian returned home, he ordered the chef to prepare the chicken in the same way, but with seasonings added to the chicken tripe. After tasting it, Liu Rushi sighed: "I would rather eat Yushan chicken for a lifetime than Songjiang fish for a day." ?Later, the famous Shanjing Restaurant in Changshu elaborated and created this famous dish. Because the squires thought that "Beggar's Chicken" was immodest, it renamed it Stewed Chicken, but people used to call it Beggar's Chicken. The beggar chicken is made from the famous local Luyuan chicken (i.e. Sihuang chicken). After slaughtering, the feathers are removed and washed, the armpits are opened, the internal organs are removed and washed, and scallops, mushrooms, dried shrimps, ham slices and other accessories are added to the chicken chamber, as well as green onions, Ginger, wine, sugar and other seasonings are tied with lotus leaves and wrapped in yellow cloth, then simmered in the oven. When eating, crack open the mud shell, put it on a plate, drizzle with sesame oil, and serve with sesame sweet sauce and white scallions for dipping. The skin of the simmered chicken is shiny and fragrant. The chicken is crispy and tender, with a clear and tender taste. The bones and meat are separated immediately when you put the chopsticks on it. The ingredients are hidden in the belly. It is extremely delicious and has a unique flavor. Beggar's chicken is not only a famous product in Changshu, but also listed as a famous specialty product in Jiangsu Province.
8. Cherry meat:
What are the specialties of Soviet-style dishes? The four seasons are different, and they are available according to the order. The same is true for dishes using pork as raw materials. In winter, it is a delicious sauce recipe, and in spring, it is delicious. Recommended cherry meat. Wash the five-flowered rib pork, add water to a pot and cook over high heat until the skin is soft, take it out, and then use a knife to make cross patterns on the skin, making the knife marks as deep as the first layer of lean meat. Then place a piece of bamboo in the pot with the meat skin side down. Add pork soup, green onion knots, ginger slices, refined salt, Shaoxing wine and red yeast water. Cover the pot and cook for 30 minutes. Add rock sugar and simmer over low heat until crispy. Rotten, add rock sugar and thicken over medium heat, take out the meat, remove the ribs, remove the green onion and ginger, put the skin side down into a covered bowl and pour the marinade, cover the bowl and place it in a cage to steam for 5 minutes, take it out and pour it into a plate. At the same time, stir-fry pea shoots with vegetable oil, and surround the plate with green pea shoots. The plate looks like cherries just picked from the tree. This dish looks like red dates, with rotten skin and crispy meat that melts in your mouth and is salty with a hint of sweet and sour.
9. Pan-fried pancake:
It has been spread in Wudi for hundreds of years. ?In Suzhou, this kind of folk food with golden yellow steamed bun bottom, hard and crispy, white steamed bun body, soft and cute, and the soup is full of soup when you bite it, sometimes you still want to eat it... This is in Dumb Shengjian From the media introduction in the Linton Road branch, it can be seen that raw pancakes are a treat for Suzhou people. When it comes to Suzhou’s fried steamed buns, Dumb Fried Steamed Buns are undoubtedly the most famous and delicious. The reason why it is called Dumb Pancake is because the boss is an honest and kind-hearted deaf-mute old man. Because the pancakes he makes are so delicious, diners gradually forget his name and call him Dumb Pancake. Dumb Pan-fried Pancake is not only a well-known snack in Suzhou, but also a well-known signature in Suzhou's catering industry. Its 60-year operating history is enough to qualify it as a "time-honored brand". The old dumb fried dumpling shop opened in Gaoqiaotou, Changmen in the early years. During the Cultural Revolution, it moved to Su'an New Village on Donghuan Road (opposite Building 24, Su'an New Village, Industrial Park). Now there are many dumb fried dumpling branches, including Linton Road (Linton Road). The branch at No. 12 Wenjia'an, Dun Road) is the most popular. It is common for people to queue up, and business is booming.
10. Squirrel mandarin fish:
Squirrel mandarin fish is made from mandarin fish (also known as mandarin fish and mandarin fish). After killing it alive, the spine is removed and placed on the fish meat. Knead it into a rhombus-shaped knife pattern, deep enough to reach the skin. After being dipped in dry starch, it is fried twice in cooked lard. It is golden all over, the meat is open like hair, the head is raised and the mouth is open, and the fish tail is slightly raised, making it look like a squirrel. , when the marinade is poured over the body of the mandarin fish while it is hot, it will make a chirping sound, just like a squirrel chirping. Because of its excellent color, aroma, taste and shape, it can be called one of the protagonists of Su Bang's famous dishes. It is said that squirrel mandarin fish evolved from squirrel fish carp. When Emperor Qianlong went to the south of the Yangtze River and strolled to Songhe Tower, he insisted on eating fish in order to entertain the emperor. The chef suddenly got the idea and fried and cooked the carp that was served on the altar of Marshal Zhao Gong. Later, carp was replaced by mandarin fish with thin bones and tender meat, and squirrel mandarin fish became a famous banquet dish.
Suzhou's famous chefs strive for excellence in cooking. The condiments include river shrimp, diced cooked bamboo shoots, diced mushrooms, green peas, pork soup and wine, vinegar, salt, sugar, lard, sesame oil, scallions, and garlic cloves. , dry starch, wet starch? There are as many as fifteen or six kinds. Squirrel mandarin fish was hailed as the "chief famous dish" of Songhelou by Japanese friends who filmed "Three Flavors of China". In November 1983, it was listed as one of Jiangsu's performance dishes at the National Culinary Masters Technical Performance Appraisal Meeting. There is a poem in the Tang Dynasty that says "peach blossoms and flowing water, mandarin fish fat", so the best time to taste squirrel mandarin fish is March and April every year.
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