Chaozhou cuisine has a long history of formation and development. As early as before the Qin Dynasty, Chaozhou was Fujian and Vietnam, belonging to Nanhai County since Qin Shihuang, and has been affiliated to Guangdong ever since. It is appropriate to win the custom in form, so people who immigrate to Fujian are right. Therefore, the origin of Chaozhou cuisine can be traced back to the ancient Fujian-Vietnam period, and its characteristics are similar to those of Fujian cuisine. After Qin dynasty, it was changed to Guangdong, and it was also improved by the influence of the central plains food culture like Guangzhou cuisine. In the prosperous Tang Dynasty, Han Yu, who was demoted as a thorn history of Chaozhou, wrote a poem ("Early Food in the South: Eighteen Laws of Yiyuan Garden") in the 14th year of Yuanhe (AD 8 19), which is a masterpiece introducing the special flavor of ancient Chaoshan diet. The poem says: "horseshoe crabs are as good as Huiwen, with bones and eyes facing each other, and oysters stick like mountains, and they hit every shot." Typha fish's tail is like a snake, and its mouth and eyes don't match. Clams are frogs with the same name as real waves. Zhang Ju vest column, fighting with strange self-introduction, the rest of the dozens, which is amazing. I'm here to taste the charm of glass. I should cook it in the south. Salt and acid, pepper and orange. The smell of urine began in Vietnam, and the mouth swallowed and sweated. " Several sentences in the poem record that Chaoshan people eat dozens of kinds of meat, such as horseshoe crab, oyster, octopus, clam, octopus, vest column and snake, and know how to season with salt and acid, pepper and orange. It can be seen that Chaoshan people at that time already had a considerable level of cooking skills. They can not only use local Haite products to cook dishes with local characteristics, but also know how to use salt, sauce, vinegar, pepper and oranges as seasonings. While spreading the Central Plains culture, Han Yu also brought the fusion of mainland food culture and Chaoshan local cuisine. Over time, he formed a unique southern cooking school-Chaoshan cuisine. After the Tang Dynasty, the cooking techniques and tableware of Chaozhou cuisine were recorded in the Song, Yuan and Ming Dynasties. By the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, Shantou had risen as a new trading port, with merchants gathered at home and abroad, a prosperous market, restaurants and restaurants, and famous teachers and dishes, and Chaozhou cuisine entered an era of rapid development. In the early 1930s, there were many high-class restaurants in Shantou, such as Qingtian Restaurant, Fangtao Restaurant and Central Restaurant. After the founding of New China, Chaozhou cuisine has made new development. Especially in recent decades, the spring breeze of reform and opening up has brought about the economic take-off in Chaoshan area, and the living standards of people in coastal towns have been greatly improved. As a special economic zone and hometown of overseas Chinese, Shantou has frequent business exchanges and overseas Chinese visiting relatives and sightseeing, which makes the catering market unprecedentedly prosperous, and large and medium-sized multi-level hotels, guesthouses, restaurants and flavor restaurants have sprung up like mushrooms after rain. Chaoshan is located in the lower reaches of the Han River, which runs through the Tropic of Cancer. It is located at the junction of Fujian and Guangdong, with mild climate, abundant rainfall, fertile land and extremely rich natural and marine resources. This is the material basis for the development of Chaozhou cuisine. Fourth, the flavor characteristics of Chaozhou cuisine Chaozhou cuisine has a wide variety and unique flavor, and is especially good at cooking seafood, such as open-hearth boiled snails, raw lobsters, mandarin duck crab paste, braised shark's fin, braised abalone and braised sea cucumber. All of them are based on fresh aquatic products, and the taste is refreshing, depressed but not greasy; Another example is stewed eel (white eel), soup crab balls, Chaoshan fish balls and so on. This soup is delicious and keeps its original taste. Beets in Chaozhou cuisine are more distinctive, such as sweet crepe meat, whose skin is wrinkled, the meat is tender and sweet, and the sweetness is clear and rich. Chaozhou cuisine pays attention to knife work, neat and beautiful, and its artistic processing is also very fine. It can be made of various raw materials into flower-and-bird patterns and decorated with dishes. The main cooking methods of Chaozhou cuisine are: stewing, stewing, frying, boiling (steaming), frying, roasting, soaking, buckling, washing, pouring, burning, burning and bending. Among them, stew and stew have unique flavor. The main feature of stewing is to heat the material with strong fire first, so that the air flow breaks through the body of the material and disintegrates its fibers, and then collect the soup with slow fire, so that the material gradually absorbs the essence of the auxiliary materials and blends into one, making it fragrant and delicious, rotten but not scattered. Stir-fried is crisp and smooth, especially delicious when boiled (steamed), washed, soaked and drenched, and maintains its original flavor. Chaozhou cuisine has a wide range of materials and has more than three characteristics. First of all, there are many kinds of aquatic products. In the poems of Han Yu in the Tang Dynasty, aquatic products such as limulus, octopus, oyster, octopus and crab roe were recorded. There are dozens of other things he doesn't know, which makes him amazed. Chaoyang Zhi, published in Jiaqing period of Qing Dynasty, said: "Most of the food eaten by Yi people comes from the sea, such as fish, shrimp, mussels and clams, and there are thousands of kinds, especially oysters and shrimps." It can be seen that these seafood products have been the main raw materials of Chaozhou cuisine for thousands of years. Therefore, cooking seafood is a major feature of Chaozhou cuisine. Second, vegetarian dishes are diverse and change with time. In recent years, it refers to vegetarian dishes made of meat and stewed meat. When you eat, you can see the food but not the meat, so that you can achieve the situation of "making it tasty and tasteless". Green vegetables are soft and rotten, full of meat and delicious, which makes people enjoy the fresh and true taste of natural vegetables. They are vegetarian but not vegetarian. There are dozens of famous products such as "Thick Mushroom Mustard", "Glass Cabbage" and "Protecting Country Vegetables", as well as green food dishes such as carrot soup, celery soup and cold melon soup recently introduced, which are the representatives of vegetarian dishes in Cantonese cuisine. Vegetarian materials change with the seasons at any time. The green vegetables used include mustard, Chinese cabbage, sweet potato leaves, amaranth, celery, spinach, cabbage, cucumber, wax gourd, cold melon, tofu, Nostoc flagelliforme and bamboo shoots. , which not only reflects the pastoral flavor, but also has the characteristics of Chaoshan. Third, there are many varieties of sugar beet. Chaoshan area belongs to subtropical climate and is one of the sugar producing areas in history. The people in Chaoshan have mastered a set of sugar squeezing methods for a long time, which provided basic raw materials for making sugar beet. The main raw materials of beet include animals and plants. Animals, birds, livestock and dried seafood can be made into beets; As far as botany is concerned, melons, fruits, beans and potatoes can all be made There are many precious raw materials in beet selection, such as bird's nest, sea cucumber, shark's fin bone, fish brain, fish gill and so on. What is more common and has its own characteristics is that it is made from local fruits, vegetables and grains, such as pumpkin, cantaloupe, ginger potato, taro, sweet potato, wax gourd, water chestnut, citrus, beans and glutinous rice. In the application of cooking technology, according to the characteristics of raw materials, a series of different production techniques are adopted to make the varieties rich and colorful, and meat materials such as fat pork and pork belly can also be used as dishes to make first-class dishes and become elegant. Representative varieties are: cucumber taro paste, Taiji taro paste, mutton roasted ginger potato, stewed shark's fin bone, crepe lotus seed paste and so on. Fourth, there are many sauces and sauces. The pickles in Chaozhou cuisine cannot be matched with other cuisines. Pickled vegetables are the main condiments of Chaozhou cuisine, which can harmonize tastes, increase delicacy and relieve boredom. From banquet dishes to local snacks, basically every dish must be accompanied by various sauces. In the cooking process, the color and taste of dishes are affected by heat treatment. At this time, the auxiliary role of sauce can be played to make the cooking process achieve good color, fragrance, taste and shape. The collocation of sauces in Chaozhou cuisine is more particular, and what sauces are matched with what dishes is the so-called truth that "things have no definite taste, and those who are palatable are expensive". For example, open the stove to burn snails, with plum sauce and mustard sauce; Raw cream crabs must be accompanied by ginger, rice and Zhejiang vinegar; Raw lobster should be served with orange oil; Frozen skin and oyster sauce should be eaten with fish sauce; Braised goose should be served with garlic vinegar; Beef balls and pork balls with Chili sauce, and so on. There are many sauces. The taste is salty, sweet, sour, spicy, astringent and fresh, and the colors are red, yellow, green, white, purple and brown, which is really colorful. To sum up, the main characteristics of Chaozhou cuisine are: 1, excellent materials and delicious seafood; 2, cooking without losing its original flavor; 3, the dishes are light and the taste is harmonious and sweet; 4. The soup is tender and diverse; 5. Exquisite and elegant; 6, because the dishes are free to season; 7, pay attention to hygiene, civilized dining; 8, delicious, small dishes still inherit the legacy and have a strong homesickness; 9. Serve congou at meals.