Shaanxi Province is located in the hinterland of China, connecting the two major river basins of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. It is one of the birthplaces of the Chinese nation and an important birthplace of Chinese food culture. It has both the roughness of the Loess Plateau and the beauty of a land of plenty, with rich products, outstanding people, a long culinary history, and outstanding food customs. For example, Guan Guo's stone steamed buns still have the tradition of stone cooking of the ancestors; historical records say that "the Yellow Emperor made cauldrons and steamers" and "steamed the grains to make rice and cooked the grains to make porridge"; according to the Qishan Smoky Noodles, it began in the "Yu" period of the Western Zhou Dynasty Regarding etiquette, "Book of Rites" records that "the beginning of etiquette begins with food and drink". The origin of Shaanxi’s culinary culture has a long history and its influence is profound and wide, which is evident from this.
Many of Shaanxi cuisine retain the traditions of more than ten dynasties including Zhou, Qin, Han and Tang. Especially the snacks are so beautiful. Taking advantage of the historical ancient capital, Shaanxi's snacks draw on the essence of snacks from all over the country, absorb the flavors of various ethnic groups, bring together a collection of famous domestic and foreign drinks and foods, and explore and inherit the skills of palace snacks in the past dynasties. Therefore, they are characterized by a wide variety and color. It is famous for its uniqueness, strong ethnic characteristics, different local flavors and antique charm. Especially over the past 20 years of reform and opening up, the catering industry has flourished with the economic leap, cooking technology has made great progress with the advancement of science and technology, and hundreds of well-known traditional dishes and innovative dishes have emerged. Organize banquets with dishes and orders to create banquets with different flavors and styles, and endless innovations, such as Tang Dynasty Banquet, Dumpling Banquet, Scorpion Banquet, Steamed Bun Banquet, Chang'an Eight Views Banquet, Shaanxi Snack Banquet, etc. Shaanxi-style snacks, represented by beef and mutton steamed buns, cured meat buns and cold skin buns, are famous in China and spread at home and abroad. The "Shaanxi Cuisine Encyclopedia" published last year outlines the development of food culture in Shaanxi Province and lists the famous foods, snacks and banquets in Shaanxi Province. According to statistics, there are 549 kinds of Shaanxi snacks included in the ceremony. Among them, 19 kinds of Shaanxi snacks were rated as "Chinese famous snacks" at the first national "Chinese Famous Snacks" appraisal meeting in 1997; in September this year, the second national "Chinese Famous Snacks" appraisal meeting was held In the "Chinese Famous Snacks" recognition and evaluation activities, another 60 types of Shaanxi products won the title of "Famous Snacks in China". So far, Shaanxi Province has 79 kinds of "Chinese famous snacks", ranking among the top in the country. Since 1999, in the "Shaanxi Famous Snacks" certification activity, 151 kinds of Shaanxi local flavor snacks have passed the certification and been named "Shaanxi Famous Snacks". Here, we take you into the hall of Shaanxi flavor snacks, where you can taste and appreciate the famous Chinese snacks and Shaanxi snacks with excellent color, aroma, taste, shape, nutrition and hygiene. It is both a feast for the mouth and a feast for the eyes. To taste Shaanxi’s famous food is to taste ancient culture.
I have also lived in Xi'an for a few years. In addition, I am a relatively delicious person, and I belong to the northwest region, so my taste is basically the same, so I still know a little about the snacks in Xi'an. I will tell you about them here. , if any netizens from Shaanxi read it, don’t laugh at me.
Let’s first talk about the taste of Xi’an snacks. Xi'an belongs to the northwest region, and the tastes in the northwest region are generally very strong, especially sour and spicy. Xi'an is an area inhabited by many ethnic groups, and its tastes are relatively mixed. This results in a wide variety of snacks in Xi'an, each with its own unique taste.
Among Xi’an delicacies, the most famous one is of course the soaked mutton. Lao Sun's mutton dip is famous far and wide. For those who like delicious food, if you come to Xi'an and don't eat Lao Sun's mutton dip, then you haven't come to Xi'an.
Mutton steamed buns have a long history. As early as the Chongzhi period, there was a "Tianxilou" specializing in mutton steamed buns in Xi'an, which was quite influential in the northwest region. If you go further back, its history can be traced back to the 11th century BC. There is a saying in the Book of Songs, "When you have a good time with wine and a feast, you will kill a lamb?"
Northwestern people eat noodles as their staple food and would not eat it for a whole day. If you eat noodles, you will feel exhausted (unfortunately, I have never had a decent meal of noodles since I arrived in Nanjing), so the noodles in Xi’an are of course Qishan Sanzi. The noodles are ready. The top-quality Qishan noodles must be hand-rolled, with diced tofu baked in oil, diced pork with half fat and lean meat, and a secret soup with a layer of oil floating on it. , the taste is so delicious... (It's actually very sour, and it may not suit people who can't eat sour food)
This is also a special snack, but it doesn't taste as good as ours. Delicious.
Rice skin. Just made of rice noodles.
The main ingredient of Xi'an's halal soup dumplings. Beef, mutton and rib meat are cooked with soup made from mutton bones and seasoning soup.
After steaming, it has the characteristics of "paper-thin skin, tender filling with soup, and fragrant seasonings."
Xi'an Mirror Cake. A traditional snack in Shaanxi, steamed with glutinous rice as raw material and shaped into a round shape Mirror cakes. Most people who sell mirror cakes sell them from a stall. There is a poem in the Qing Dynasty that goes: "The clear day is long under the willow shade, and the fragrance of mirror cakes is also produced." (If you go to Xi'an and say you want to eat mirror cakes, you may never be able to eat them. If you say you want to eat steamer cakes, they are all over the streets. Accent problem haha)
The best places to eat snacks in Xi'an: Muslim Street - Beiyuanmen, although it is only a small street of only a few hundred meters, has gathered nearly a hundred snack restaurants of different styles, permeating the unique local cultural atmosphere of the ancient city of Xi'an. Almost all the people in these restaurants and shops are Muslim friends. Halal snacks can be said to be the representative of Xi’an snacks. Friends who have been to Xi'an Beiyuanmen all have the feeling of "a great appetite but a too small stomach".
Shaanxi is located in the hinterland of China, connecting the two major river basins of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. It has both the extensiveness of the Loess Plateau and the beauty of a land of plenty, rich in products and outstanding people. Its catering has a long history and culture as its foundation, silently nourishing food, and forming a highly distinctive "Qin Food Culture" on this land.
History - profound, elegant and profound
During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Shaanxi was governed by the State of Qin, so it was referred to as "Qin". On this basis, the ancient and young Shaanxi Province originated and grew up. The combination of food flavor and history and culture is called "Qin Food Culture". It is centered on Shaanxi and its geographical location can be extended to the entire northwest region. Historically, due to the development of politics, economy, culture, and trade at that time, Shaanxi, especially Xi'an, formed many scenic spots, and exchanges between internal and external parties were quite frequent, which also brought about the progress and development of Shaanxi's food and beverages.
The representative "Qin Food Culture" recipes mainly consist of Yamen cuisine, merchant cuisine, shop cuisine, folk cuisine and halal cuisine. Yamen cuisine, also known as official cuisine, has a long history, is elegant and rich, such as "Daibao elbow", "Zi Touchun", etc. Shangjia cuisine is famous for its high value, such as "Qianqian Nostoc", "bergamot shark's fin", etc. Restaurant dishes mainly focus on delicacies from famous buildings and stores in the centers of Xi'an and other important towns. To attract customers, competition is fierce, such as "Ming Si Xi", "Milk Soup Pot Fish", "Simmered Shredded Squid", "Braised Pork and Three Delicacies", etc. . Folk dishes are affordable and full of local flavor, such as "bald meat slices", "roasted eggplant with shredded pork", "gourd head", etc. Halal cuisine developed through the Ming and Qing Dynasties and began to take shape, such as "mutton steamed buns" and "whole lamb mat", which are famous far and wide.
Shaanxi’s catering and food culture retain the legacy of more than ten dynasties including Zhou, Qin, Han and Tang, with exquisite features and beauty. Leveraging on the advantages of history and ancient capital, Shaanxi's catering is rich in the essence and delicacies of various ethnic groups. It is a collection of internal and external, exploring and inheriting the skills of the palaces of past dynasties. It is famous for its wide variety, strange colors, strong ethnic characteristics, different local flavors, and antique charm. famous.
However, the overall development of Shaanxi's catering industry was relatively slow in its early stages. Since the 1930s, with the opening of the Longhai Railway and the rise of the Anti-Japanese War, Shaanxi became China's rear area, and the population from various places migrated to Xi'an sharply. With the increase in the number of restaurants, various flavored foods have also settled in Xi'an, and Shaanxi's catering industry has flourished. Later, since the 1980s, Xi'an has gradually become a tourist destination, and domestic and foreign exchanges have become increasingly frequent and close, which has promoted the rapid development of Shaanxi's catering industry. With the discovery and release of classic banquets such as "dumpling banquet", "snack banquet", "imitation Tang banquet" and "palace banquet", a number of innovative dishes that meet the needs of tourists from all over the world have also emerged, further increasing the popularity of Shaanxi catering .
Current situation - competition for success and brilliance
As early as the Tang Dynasty, Xi'an (known as Chang'an in ancient times) was the largest and most open city in the country and the center of the country's catering and food culture. Bai Juyi, a great poet of the Tang Dynasty, wrote a poem "Sending Flax Cake to Yang Wanzhou": "The flax cake is similar to Kyoto, with crispy noodles and oily aroma freshly baked. I sent it to the hungry Ambassador Yang, and the taste seems to be a supplement." In fact, the "sesame cake" in the poem is the sesame cake we eat today.
The land of the Three Qin Dynasty is a glorious chapter, and the famous food and drink have been preserved for thousands of years. All kinds of snacks spread in Shaanxi, whether they are from the court or among the people, are huge in quantity and exquisite in workmanship, and are very popular among Chinese and foreign people. While Shaanxi people excavated, sorted out and preserved these traditional meals, they also added new connotations to them. For example, various traditional dumplings and snacks are combined into eye-opening dumpling banquets, snack banquets, imitation Tang Dynasty banquets, and palace banquets. Here, people not only eat a few dishes, but also taste culture and tradition, and feel the historical context and national customs.
Halal cuisine also occupies a very important position in Chinese cuisine. Shaanxi's halal catering, represented by beef and mutton steamed buns, has become more popular in recent years. Lao Sunjia, Tong Shengxiang, etc. in Xi'an , is a well-known gourmet restaurant and has become a delicious place for tourists from all over the world.
The catering industry is a multi-faceted shining mirror. If managed smoothly, it can not only bring the most direct consumption, but also be of great significance in promoting agriculture, food processing industry and solving social problems such as employment. Therefore, vigorously developing the catering industry and promoting "Qin Food Culture" have become a highlight and feature of Shaanxi's economic development and tourism promotion.