When it comes to Guizhou, many people are confused about what kind of place this is.

But when it comes to Guizhou delicacies, Guizhou snacks, and Guizhou hot pot, the taste of Guizhou gradually becomes clear, the scenery comes alive in your eyes, and the taste jumps between your lips and teeth.

Fresh, fragrant, spicy, refreshing and sweet, we can’t wait to stroll around Guizhou and look for the taste of Guizhou.

Salt substitute culture When talking about Guizhou cuisine, we have to talk about Guizhou's salt substitute culture. Salt is not produced in Guizhou. Historically, the government imposed heavy taxes on salt entering Guizhou. As a result, salt has become a "luxury" that is beyond the reach of ordinary people.

As a result, Guizhou cuisine has gradually formed a unique cultural feature in the evolution process-salt substitution culture.

From a historical perspective, the ancestors of Guizhou went through three stages in order to find food that could replace salt.

Replacing salt with plant ash. Yu Shangsi, a Guizhou official in the Qing Dynasty, wrote in "Mandong Bamboo Branch Cave" that "the fern roots are soaked in water and tasted instead of salt": the former seedlings filtered the burned fern root ash and used cleaner gray water to replace the salt water.

Fern root ash is actually a kind of plant ash, mainly composed of potassium carbonate and potassium chloride, and some sodium elements, which can supplement the required potassium and sodium electrolytes.

Although potash salt tastes bitter, it can make the diet less bland and is good for the nervous system.

Substituting acid for salt and ash for salt is the oldest alternative. With the development of technology, local Guizhou farmers gradually learned to use pickled sour soup and sour food as the main method of replacing salt.

The pickling here is different from that of Northeastern sauerkraut. The Northeast uses salt, but Guizhou itself lacks salt, so Xianmiao creatively invented fermented pēi vegetables, or yìn vegetables.

Nalan Chang'an, a native of the Qing Dynasty, mentioned in his "Notes on Official Travels": "The Miao territory is difficult to deal with salt, so fern ash is used to replace it. Dead birds, beasts, and all crawling things are collected and mixed into an urn, which is called 'fermented vegetables'."

Volume 7 of "Guizhou Tongzhi" records that "the bones of cattle, horses, chickens and dogs are mixed with rice grits, and the best is to make them sour and smelly".

That is to say, the Miao people used animal bones and plant ash to pickle a kind of sour and smelly rotten food as a delicacy.

The longer it is stored, the more valuable it becomes.

From a nutritional science point of view, during the production of fermented fermented vegetables, the brine fermentation of plant ash produces a large amount of potassium nitrate and other nitrates, which can replenish the body's electrolytes.

From a food perspective, the sour taste produced by fermentation is also helpful in increasing appetite.

More importantly, people can preserve food for a better time through this type of pickling and fermentation, which was extremely important in mountainous areas with low productivity levels at that time.

Chili peppers, which are spicy instead of salt, are not native to China and were probably introduced to China in the late Ming Dynasty.

At first, because of the bright red color, other Chinese people mainly watched peppers, but Guizhou people, who are far away from the sky and the emperor, were the first to eat peppers.

In the 61st year of Kangxi's reign, there is a record in "Sizhou Fu Zhi": "Sea pepper, the common name is spicy fire, and soil seedlings are used to replace salt."

During the Daoguang period, in northern Guizhou, "everything eaten must have peppers".

During the Tongzhi period, Guizhou people "eat sea peppers at all times."

From a scientific perspective, Guizhou people love to eat chili peppers not only because of their pungent taste, but more importantly because chili peppers are a typical high-sodium food and can well supplement sodium.

Of course, the ancestors did not know that chili peppers can well supplement the nutrients that people lack. Maybe they just accidentally ate the beautiful red lanterns, and gradually their legs became stronger, their heads stopped being dizzy, and they were able to hold their hands.

People spread the word by word of mouth, and by extension, chili naturally became the main taste habit here.

The growing environment of peppers is high, not too cold, not too dry, and suitable for mountain cultivation. This is completely consistent with the terrain of Guizhou. Therefore, peppers quickly began to be planted and spread in Guizhou, and later became a local flavor that spread across the country.

After introducing the unique dietary characteristics of Guizhou, let’s introduce some representative delicacies of Guizhou.