before the song dynasty, there were no iron pots. how did the ancients cook?
As a big foodie, no one who flies in the sky, runs underground or swims in the water has escaped from the table of Chinese people. Cooking is not difficult for Chinese people. You can cook without a pot. Here, we will simply popularize the development of kitchen utensils since the history of the Chinese people.
the stone age
it is impossible for people in the stone age to know how to cook with a pot, but when they know how to barbecue food with fire, they have been waiting for the gift of nature-thunder fire. After the forest fire animals are cooked, they go to find animal carcasses to eat. After knowing how to drill wood for fire, fire changed human civilization, so far most people know how to barbecue food with fire is more delicious. Therefore, the foundation of promoting human civilization is food.
It doesn't affect the appetite, but the cooking method of food is relatively simple. However, with the development of civilization, people have mastered at least three cooking methods of food:
Barbecue, a cooking skill that has never been forgotten since ancient times, and the ways of barbecue are more diverse now. Our compatriots in Xinjiang should be the first to make the barbecue more delicious. Those who have never eaten Xinjiang mutton kebabs really can't say that they have eaten barbecue.
hot branding, which uses slate to heat the ingredients. In ancient times, when there was no such thing as a pot, in order to prevent food from being burnt, someone came up with the idea of putting food on a slate for processing. This is also a kind of ancient pot.
how can you drink hot water and soup without a pot? Find a flat and concave ground or dig a pit, spread a hide on the pit, put in raw meat, and then put in red-hot stones, so as to make a pot of hot soup. Some people say, why not make a fire under the skins? Because skins are not burned!
how did the earliest pots come into being?
during the long-term barbecue of food, some people found that the soil next to them would be hard after being burned, so they burned it with the mud, and then it was as hard as a stone, and it would not be damaged by fire and would not be easily melted by water. Then, pour water into it, put meat in it, and you have to take it off the shelf and put it on the fire, and this simplest pot is formed.
At that time, pottery was made into pots in large quantities, and there were three styles:
The earliest rice pot was made of clay. When people had this pot, they threw everything into it and stewed it in one pot. The shape of Wei is three legs below, which is similar to a marching pot. When using it, you can make a fire directly below.
kettle: the kettle that "boils beans and burns beans, and beans cry in the kettle" is this thing, and it is also an upgraded version of Wei. But its shape is more like a pan, without legs.
retort: the upgraded version of the kettle is the earliest steamer. That is, add a kettle on top of the kettle, and there is a hole under this kettle. Boil water below and steam the food in the kettle above. The appearance of retort is that after people know how to plant grain, they cook the grain, take it out and steam it, and then dry rice is formed.
Pot in the Bronze Age
The pottery pot in front of it was formed in the Stone Age. After human beings invented metal and knew how to refine it, they entered the Bronze Age. With bronzes, there will be bronze pots made of bronzes.
However, although metals have been discovered, the output is not high, and ordinary people can't afford to use them. Ding made of bronze can only be used for sacrificial purposes. It is used in cook the meat during big-scale activities, and then distributed to the participants.
Dayu Jiuding, Dakeding, Maogongding, Siyangfangzun, Simu Wuding, etc. were all made of bronzes for sacrificial purposes. At that time, only princes and nobles could afford bronzes.
Pots in the Iron Age
The earliest ironware in China was recorded in Zuo Zhuan. There was a cast iron tripod in the State of Jin, and the Theory of Salt and Iron in the Han Dynasty, which talked about the state's control over salt and iron. This shows that iron utensils appeared in the Han Dynasty, so it was normal to have iron pots at that time. Because the output of iron was very small, mainly because the smelting and mining technology was immature, iron pots were also royal things, and ordinary people mainly used casserole as kitchen utensils.
In the Tang Dynasty, the pot was officially called "pot", and the embryonic form of cooking began to take shape. Of course, compared with the cooking in the Song Dynasty, there is still a certain gap. Because of the limitations of the pot, the Tang Dynasty was basically cooking, frying, stewing and stewing, and cooking was less.
The poet Chen Yu wrote in "Living in the Old Residence": "In the past, Yan Hui's house is now a rice wrapper. I didn't smell the words, but I saw Nanyouma. The soy sauce pot is boiling, and the cake is on the table. Only get up early in the morning, and the eaves are self-contained. "
With the rapid development of metallurgical technology in the Song Dynasty, iron pans officially entered people's homes. After the iron pans were available, various cooking modes became popular among the people. In the first year of Yuanfeng, Song Shenzong, the annual output of iron reached 15, tons, which exceeded the total in Europe before the 17th century. Therefore, it is not surprising that every family in the Song Dynasty had iron pots.
At the very most, from 14 BC to 96 AD, the mutiny in Chen Qiao, Song Taizu, people in China rarely used iron pots for more than two thousand years. After all, the iron production in ancient times was too small, mainly used to make weapons and farm tools.
before the song dynasty, the royal family used bronze or copper pots, while the people basically used casserole and crock to cook. It was not until the mid-Song Dynasty that people used more iron pots because of the increase in iron production. Before the Song Dynasty, there were no iron pots. How did the ancients cook?
kings regard people as the sky, while people regard food as the sky. China's food culture has a long history, extensive and profound, such as Beijing Roast Duck, Lanzhou Lamian Noodles, Xi 'an mutton and bread in soup, and so on. It is difficult for a clever woman to cook without rice. The manufacture of food requires not only good materials, but also good tools, such as a good pot. But there was no iron pot before the Song Dynasty, so how did the ancients cook?
Let's take a look at the evolution of cookware in the history of China. For the first time, human beings learned to use fire, put food on branches and bake it before eating, and the first generation of cookware-"barbecue grill" was born.
Wei is a very representative ceramic cooking utensil in Longshan culture period. It has three "short legs", which is very cute, but it just shows that people are not limited to "barbecue" and have started cooking.
In the early Shang Dynasty, Tao Ge was a bag-shaped foot, and in the middle period, there were more Tao Ge, which raised the toes of the bag-shaped foot, and some Tao Ge necks were decorated with circular patterns, while in the late period, the number of cooking utensils was still the largest, the difference from the middle period was that the crotch became lower and more toes were not added.
In the Spring and Autumn Period, cooking utensils mainly included cooking pots and kettles. The baggy foot developed from a stout baggy foot in the early Spring and Autumn Period to a symbolic nipple-shaped baggy foot until it gradually disappeared. With the development and progress of society, the kettle was gradually replaced by the kettle in the Warring States period. The kettle shape in the Central Plains is basically the same as that in Tao Ge in the late Spring and Autumn Period, except that the low nipple-shaped bag feet have disappeared. The function of Tao Ge's leg gradually faded, so it became a pot kettle. "Historical Records of Xiang Yu's Biography" once mentioned that when Xiang Yu led his troops to cross the river, "all shipwrecks were broken." The kettle and retort are complete sets of cookware. The kettle is on the lower floor, which is used as a water pot to hold water, boil water and make the steam rise. There are fine holes in the bottom of retort, which is put on the kettle and used as a steamer to steam rice and fish, which is simple and convenient. The kettle and retort are separated by a porous grate, which is not only convenient for steam to rise, but also prevents the rice grains from leaking from the upper layer to the lower layer, which is quite scientific. The kettle is directly placed on the stove to cook food, which can use firepower more effectively and save time and fuel than the tripod and the tripod, so it gradually replaces the tripod and the tripod and becomes the main cooker. The appearance and shape of the pottery kettle have already begun to take shape of the pot we use today. From this point of view, no iron pot can stop people from wanting to eat and come up with various cooking methods.
In the existing archaeological research, iron farm tools first appeared in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, so it is not accurate to say that "iron pots" only appeared in the Song Dynasty. Due to the low output of iron ore in the initial period, iron was directly controlled by the state until the Han Dynasty. Among the unearthed cultural relics of the Han Dynasty, there is an iron cooker shaped like a kettle. Although it is far from the modern iron pot, it also proves that there were iron cookers in the Han Dynasty. However, these luxuries belong to the aristocratic class, which can only be enjoyed by the court and the royal family. There will be no iron cookers in ordinary people's homes. It was not until the Song Dynasty that iron production surged and forging technology improved that iron pans became cheap and durable before they entered thousands of households. However, it is worth noting that the shape of the iron pot in the Song Dynasty is also different from the past. In the Song Dynasty, there was a "shallow-bottomed wok", which had a thinner bottom, better conductivity and larger heating area. Because of this, it was not until the Song Dynasty that China people really realized "frying and frying" in cooking.
nowadays, our cookers are ever-changing. Ovens, microwave ovens, induction cookers and gas stoves are dazzling. However, many delicacies in the Song Dynasty are still very popular in modern times, such as the ham recorded by Su Dongpo in "A Rough Talk on Diet"-"The ham is cooked with pig pancreas and the oil is exhausted. Tibetan ham in the valley, not oily for decades, a cloud of bran. " For example, Lin Hong wrote "Hot Pot" in "Shan Jia Qing Gong"-"Shi Yun: Only thin batches are used in the mountains, and the wine sauce and pepper are alive. Put a stove on the table, use half a cup of water, and after the soup rings, give each one a stick, so that you can put it in the soup and cook it. If you spit it, you can give it to each one at will. " Wait. The Song Dynasty was really a food manufacturing camp, a paradise for foodies, and the iron pot was a tool. Even if it didn't exist, it couldn't stop the wisdom of the people, but the advantages of the iron pot made it a historical choice and a historical inevitability. Before the Song Dynasty, there were no iron pots, so how did the ancients cook?
"Food is the most important thing for people", and eating is the first factor for human survival and reproduction. When people eat food, they take in the necessary nutrients to maintain human survival, and human beings can only survive, only organic survival and reproduction. Before the use of fire, human ancestors, like the common Oshima, would eat fruits from trees and some leaves. If small animals were caught, they would "eat" blood raw. When our ancestors left the forest and began to walk upright, they had the opportunity to find that their food tasted better and was easier to digest, so "barbecue" was the main cooking method of our ancestors for a long time.
With the development of productivity of ancient murals, people found that clay was used to make various utensils and burned with fire. Clay has become very hard after treatment, and it can be preserved well even with water. This is pottery. The first man started cooking with pottery and added water to cook food. With the development of smelting technology, bronzes appeared and people began to cook with bronzes. Gui and Ding were symbols of power in the Zhou Dynasty, mainly bronze cookers, in which Ding was used for cooking. However, bronzes can afford a noble, and folks still use pottery to cook things.
according to the current archaeological excavations, the ironmaking technology in the warring States period is relatively mature, but it is not universal. Iron is also used to make weapons and even farm tools. Iron corrodes more easily than bronze and is more difficult to preserve. The number of ironware unearthed in the Warring States period is far less than that of bronze wares. Before 218, in Hebei Museum, I saw a large number of Warring States, including Zhongshan (state) barbecue plates, swallow helmets and various agricultural tools and iron swords.
There are not many iron cookers in this period, and people still use pottery as the main cooker. Nobles use more bronzes, but there are also cookers that can be used for steaming. The agricultural tools of the Warring States period, the iron sword of the Warring States period, and the iron mold of the Warring States period unearthed by Sun Wangcuo, were further developed with the development of ironmaking technology in the Northern Song Dynasty. A large number of tin cans were found in the sinking of Nanhai No.1, which further proved that the ironmaking technology in Song Dynasty was highly developed. At this time, the weapons are all made of iron, and the export of "iron" is also prohibited. Nanhai No.1 iron is suspected of smuggling.