Zongzi

Zongzi is a festival food of the Dragon Boat Festival, which was called "Jiao Shu" in ancient times. Legend has it that it was invented for the sacrifice of Qu Yuan who threw himself into the river, and it is the traditional food with the deepest cultural accumulation in China history so far.

historical records

the historical records about zongzi were first seen in Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi in the Han Dynasty. The word "Zongzi" is written as "Yi", and "Shuo Wen Xin Fu"? "Mi Bu" means "Sui, reed leaves are wrapped in rice. From the rice, it is squeaky. " "Shuo Wen? Yan: "Hey, it's enough." When a bird flies, it converges its legs and claws. "set rhyme? Send rhyme: "hey, the corner is also." Or make dumplings. "

zongzi, also known as "jiaoshu", was first recorded in the local customs of the western Jin dynasty and Zhou dynasty: "it is the fifth day in midsummer, and Fang bo is extremely harmonious. Enjoy corn and tortoise scales in Shunde. Note: the end is also the beginning, which means the fifth day of May. Four zhong is Fang Bo. The custom is heavy on May 5th, the same as the summer solstice. ● (the same as "duck"), Chunfu chicks are all allowed to eat during the summer solstice. First of all, the first two festivals are one day, and then sticky rice is wrapped in leaves, mixed with millet, cooked with pure gray juice, and the second festival is still good. ..... wrapped in sticky rice, a' glutinous rice' and a' horn millet', covering the image that Yin and Yang are still intertwined and wrapped up. "

In Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica in the Ming Dynasty, it was clearly stated that millet was wrapped in leaves of Zizania latifolia and cooked into food in the shape of sharp corners or palm leaves, so it was called "angular millet" or "zongzi".

after the Ming and Qing dynasties, zongzi were mostly wrapped in glutinous rice. At this time, they were called zongzi instead of horny millet.

Folklore

Since the Northern and Southern Dynasties, it has been said among the people that Zongzi originated from the people to pay homage to Qu Yuan.

Wu Jun (467-52) of the Southern Liang Dynasty wrote in "Harmony in the Continuation of Qi": "Qu Yuan died in Miluo on May 5th, and the Chu people mourned it. Every day, rice is stored in bamboo tubes and sacrificed in water. During the Han Dynasty's military construction, Changsha returned to Europe. During the day, I suddenly saw a man who called himself Dr. San Lv and said,' You should see the sacrifice. It's very kind. But it is often left behind and stolen by bitter dragons. If there is any benefit today, you can put neem leaves on it and tie it with colorful silk. These two things are also feared by the dragon. " Back to his words. The world makes zongzi with five-color silk and neem leaves, all of which are the legacy of gurgling.

Another saying is that people are afraid that Qu Yuan's body will be eaten by fish in the river, so they wrap zongzi and throw them into the river to feed the fish.

The idea that Zongzi is associated with Qu Yuan is widely spread because of its romanticism. Zongzi often appears in literati's poems.

Yuan Zhen wrote in his ten poems about the summer: "Colorful wisps of blue clouds and fragrant white jade balls."

In the Song Dynasty, Yang Wuxia wrote in the Dragon Boat Festival in Qi Tianle: "Spare a few Huang Meiyu. It's noon again. The corn is covered with gold, the calamus is full of jade, and the scenery is still beautiful. Shirt cut Ai Hu. More hairpin curl Zhu Fu, arm wrapped in red ray. Float powder and fragrant cotton, and call the wind to fan the small window at noon. "

anecdote about zongzi

the oldest zongzi is the honey-cooled zongzi in Xi' an, which was published in Tang Wei Juyuan's cookbook. It is characterized by using only glutinous rice without stuffing, cooking it, cooling it in the air, pulling it into thin slices with silk thread when eating it, and pouring it with honey and yellow osmanthus sauce-white sugar pickled osmanthus sauce.

The largest zongzi, Darou Zongzi, is produced in Nanning, Guangxi, each weighing about two Jin. It is filled with fat pork and mung beans, and it is fragrant, soft, waxy, sweet and not greasy.

The smallest zongzi is found in Shanghai Chenghuang Temple, Green Wave Gallery and Huxin Pavilion. About an inch long, shaped like a pillow, with ham as stuffing, small and fresh; The lake pavilion thinks that tea and food are wonderful.

Zongzi genre

Zongzi in the north are mostly simple white rice, or mixed with red beans and dates dipped in white sugar.

Zongzi in the south of the Yangtze River is the most famous, and its practices are also complicated, especially the stuffing, which is changeable. A major difference from the northern rice dumplings is that the glutinous rice raw materials of Jiangnan rice dumplings are mostly soaked in soy sauce in advance and steamed with meat stuffing, which is fragrant.

Zongzi in China is the most famous one produced in Jiaxing, south of the Yangtze River. Jiaxing Zongzi enjoyed a high reputation as early as the Qing Dynasty. The food book records the types and practices of Jiaxing Zongzi:

"Bamboo leaves Zongzi": "Take bamboo leaves and wrap them in white glutinous rice Zongzi and cook them, and their tips are like raw water chestnuts."

"Ai Xiang Zongzi": "Wash glutinous rice, add dates, chestnuts and mung beans, wrap it in mugwort leaves and cook it in a pot."

"Mint-flavored zongzi": "Mint-soaked rice is steamed until soft, mixed with foreign sugar, wrapped in bamboo, and then boiled."

"red bean paste dumplings": "red bean paste, sugar and fat are boiled in small dumplings."

"Lotus seed dumplings": "Peel the heart, mix with foreign sugar, and wrap the dumplings."

"Songren Dumpling": "Dumpling without leather bag"

"Ham Dumpling": "Dumpling with ham, if the ham is Jinhua, the fine fertilizer should be even. Also, diced meat can be wrapped in dumplings. "

among Jiaxing zongzi, Wufangzhai is the most famous. Fresh meat dumplings in Wufangzhai, Jiaxing, are supplied in four seasons. They are divided into four pieces with chopsticks. Each piece looks like meat, fragrant and moist, crisp and tender, and fat and waxy but not greasy. The oldest rice dumplings in Huzhou are good at washing sand and sweet rice dumplings. It is not uncommon to fill them with red bean paste and diced pork. What is rare is that red bean paste is washed sand-boiled and shelled, and then fried with sugar, cooked lard and rose juice until it is dark and bright. This kind of red bean paste is delicious, moist, fine and smooth.

The shape of zongzi

There are great differences from materials to leaves in different regions, and even the shape of "wrapping" is very different. For example, in the early days, it was popular for people to worship the sky with horns, so in the Han and Jin Dynasties, zongzi were mostly made into horns as one of the articles for ancestor worship. In addition, there are generally regular triangles, regular quadrangles, pointed triangles, squares, long shapes and so on.

the practice of zongzi

(1) in ancient times

in Han dynasty, zongzi was "rice wrapped in reed leaves"; In the Western Jin Dynasty, it became "sticky rice wrapped in leaves, mixed with millet". Jia Sixie in the late Wei Dynasty recorded it in more detail in Qi Min Yao Shu:

The Book of Eating says: "The method of millet: take the rice first, and then release it when it is soaked. Counting two liters of rice, a bucket of millet, a row of rice, a row of millet, wrapped and tied with rope. The ropes are different from each other. It must be cooked in the kettle, and it can be cooked in ten stone meters. "

"Food Times" says: "●: Use glutinous rice powder, silk, water and honey, such as strong soup cake noodles. Hand-held, making it more than a foot long and two inches wide. Four broken, with jujube and chestnut meat all over the place, wrapped with oil-coated bamboo, rotten and steamed. I can't open the second drink, but I broke both ends and untied the bundle. "

In the Ming Dynasty, Li Shizhen recorded in Compendium of Materia Medica:

"Zan, the custom is to make zongzi. The ancients cooked it with reed leaves wrapped in millet, with sharp corners, such as the shape of the heart of a palm leaf, so it was called glutinous rice. Glutinous rice is widely used in modern times, but it is thought to be a festival on May 5th. Or as a sacrifice to Qu Yuan, he threw himself into the river to feed the dragon. "

It can be seen that glutinous rice has become the main raw material of zongzi in the Ming Dynasty.

(2) Modern

The traditional method now is to soak the leaves of zongzi (reed leaves or bamboo leaves, etc.) first, then soak the glutinous rice in water, then take meat, red bean paste and jujube kernels as stuffing, wrap them into triangular, square and pillow shapes, and steam and cook them. The specific methods are as follows:

1. Meat brown

A, 5 kg of fragrant glutinous rice, soaked in warm water (not too cold or too hot, the water temperature is a little hot to the touch but acceptable) for 2 or 3 hours (scratched once or twice during the period to make the rice better soaked), and drained with a small dustpan or filter basket.

B, 2 kg peeled mung beans, soaked in the same warm water for the same time, and drained.

C, 2kg of semi-fat lean pork (zongzi cooked with lean meat is not smooth and fragrant enough), cut the meat into strips with a width of 2cm, a thickness of 1cm and a length of 1-15cm, then add a little salt, monosodium glutamate (chicken essence), cooking wine, ginger slices, 1 tsp of light soy sauce, 1 tsp of sesame oil, and mix well with chopsticks for later use.

D, boil the zongzi leaves in water for 1 minutes, then take out cold water, wash the excess at both ends of the scissors and drain.

E, cut several pieces of cotton thread, each about 2cm long. Put a towel on your leg (knee) in case you get wet.

F, take two pieces (both tails) of zongzi leaves, which overlap in the opposite direction (incompletely), put them in a small bowl (125g) of rice, lightly draw a word in the middle of the rice with your index finger, put in 1 or 2 spoonfuls of mung beans, then put the meat strips, put the same mung beans on the meat strips, and then fill in 123g of rice to cover the mung beans.

G, first, the right hand folds the outer leaves of zongzi inward and backward, then wraps one end and completes the other end in the same way. To tie zongzi once in the middle, then tie it from one end to the other to prevent deformation. The rope should not be too tight (boiled) or too loose (flooded), so it can be pulled lightly and not moved.

H, tie them and put them into the pot one by one, then put cold water over the rice dumplings for about 1cm, and light the fire ... After the water boils for 15min, change the positions of the rice dumplings in the pot, and then cook them on slow fire for 1h.

2. Jujube Zongzi

It's not difficult to make sweet jujube Zongzi after knowing the method of meat Zongzi. The biggest difference: jujube is soaked in warm water, seeded and cut into bean granules, and then mixed with dried glutinous rice. As for seasoning, you can put some sugar

3, mung bean duck egg dumplings < P > 75g of glutinous rice and mung bean, 25g of peanuts and 5 cooked salted duck egg yolks. Chop egg yolk and mix well with glutinous rice, mung bean and peanut to make stuffing. Fold the soaked leaves of zongzi shell into a bucket, fill in a proper amount of stuffing, wrap them, put them in a pot and soak them in cold water, boil them for 1 hour, and then cook them on slow fire for 1 hour.

4. Dried beef dumplings with dried tangerine peel

Soaked glutinous rice and mung beans are 1g each, beef and dried tangerine peel are 1g each, minced pork is 5g, chopped green onion, Jiang Mo and salt are appropriate. Stir-fry chopped green onion with lard, add beef, dried tangerine peel and minced pork in turn, stir-fry for half a minute, and then pour sesame oil to serve as stuffing. When wrapping, first fill in the well-mixed glutinous rice and mung beans, put the stuffing in the middle, and then cook it in the above way.

5. Baiguo Zongzi

75g of glutinous rice, 25g of green plums, 25g of pineapple meat and 25g of wax gourd strips, 15g of watermelon seeds, 15g of walnuts, 15g of raisins and 3g of white sugar. Firstly, the green plum, pineapple meat and wax gourd strips are boiled with white sugar, drained, and then pickled with white sugar for 24 hours, which is the stuffing. Wrap it into a dumpling with a square bottom, boil it for 5 minutes, and stew it for 4 minutes from the fire.

6. Salty chicken dumplings

Ingredients: 6g of glutinous rice, 8g of chicken, 4g of potato, 8g of dried shrimp, 1 tbsp of garlic, half a tbsp of soy sauce, onion, salt, chicken essence, some raw flour, appropriate amount of dumplings leaves and rope.

Practice:

(1) Chop chicken, potato and onion, add salt, garlic, chicken essence, cornmeal and other seasonings and mix well.

(2) Wash the glutinous rice and soak it for half an hour. Heat a wok, saute with onion, ginger and garlic, add glutinous rice and soy sauce, and stir well.

(3) Fold 2 zongzi leaves into a leaky shape, add 1 tbsp of stir-fried glutinous rice, add the stuffing that was dressed evenly in the first step, and then add 1 tbsp of glutinous rice on it.

(4) Tie the zongzi with zongzi rope, put it in a high-pressure cooker and cook for 3 minutes, then eat it while it is hot. If it is an ordinary pot, it must be boiled for about 2 hours.

7. Authentic gold-medal steamed dumplings

Ingredients:

(1) 5g of glutinous rice, 1 dried mushroom, 4 lotus seeds, 1g of dried shrimp, 5g of mung bean kernels, 2 chestnuts, 1 dried lotus leaf, 6 dried bamboo leaves and 2 dried alkali grass.

(2) 1 salted egg yolk, a little pepper, 3 grams of taro, 1 grams of ribs and fat meat; Spiced powder, scallion oil and monosodium glutamate.

Practice:

(1) Soak the materials in Material 1 in water for at least two and a half hours, and then marinate them with pepper, scallion oil, monosodium glutamate and salt. Cut the taro and fry it. Set aside.

(2) Cut the fat meat and marinate it with spiced powder for about 3 minutes. Chopped ribs are marinated with black vinegar, soy sauce, salt, monosodium glutamate and flour for later use.

(3) Tear the lotus leaves in pairs, with the rough side facing down, spread three bamboo leaves and put half of glutinous rice. Then add mushrooms, lotus seeds, dried shrimps, chestnuts, salted egg yolk, fat meat, ribs, taro and mung bean kernels. Put the other half of glutinous rice and cover the other three bamboo leaves.

(4) Fold the left and right sides of the lotus leaf tightly, then fold it back and forth to wrap it into a quadrangle, and tie it tightly with alkali grass. 5. Boil dumplings in water for four hours before serving.

Precautions

When eating zongzi, you can drink some tea or sugar water properly to help digestion. It is best to eat it with some vegetables and fruits, which is more nutritious. In addition, people with chronic gastrointestinal diseases should not eat more.

foreign zongzi

The fifth day of the fifth lunar month is the Dragon Boat Festival in China. Eating zongzi on the Dragon Boat Festival is a traditional custom in China and a unique seasonal food in China. But you know what? Although Zongzi is not a specialty of China now, many countries in the world also have the custom of eating Zongzi, but it all originated in China.

▲ North Korea's Zongzi Koreans have the custom of eating "wheel cake" on the Dragon Boat Festival. People boil fresh and tender leaves of Artemisia argyi, mash them, add them into rice flour, and then make them into wheel shapes. Koreans call them "wheel cakes".

▲ Japanese Zongzi Japanese also eat Zongzi during the Dragon Boat Festival. However, the Dragon Boat Festival in Japan is on May 5th of the Gregorian calendar. Japanese Zongzi is made of ground rice flour instead of glutinous rice. The shape of Zongzi is different from that of China, and its shape is seed-shaped and unique.

▲ Vietnamese zongzi are wrapped in banana leaves, which are round and square. They believe that the round zongzi represents the sky, the square zongzi represents the earth, and the heaven and the earth are integrated and prosperous. Eating zongzi on the Dragon Boat Festival can achieve good weather and good harvests.

▲ Zongzi in Myanmar Burmese people love to eat Zongzi, but it has no festive cultural color and commemorative activities, but it is only used as a food. Burmese zongzi is made of glutinous rice as the main ingredient, with bananas and coconut as the stuffing. It is fragrant, soft and crisp, sweet and intoxicating.

▲ Zongzi wrapped in Thailand is as small as an egg. Because it is wrapped in green leaves, it is light green after steaming and tastes very fragrant.

▲ Mexican zongzi is also called "Dagmar". Its raw material is coarse-grained corn flour, and the filling is sliced meat called pepper.