However, eating hot food at home is not the local taste of Yangzhou after all, and solving the problem can only be better than nothing.
Salted goose is a secret food of Yangzhou people, which many outsiders don't know.
You can't eat old geese without going to Yangzhou. It's hard to know its taste.
Compared with Nanjing salted duck, Yangzhou people only recognize salted geese.
In Yangzhou, stalls selling salted geese are all over the streets. As long as you see carts and queues, this is authentic.
It doesn't matter where the goose is eaten. Goose front legs, goose hind legs, goose liver, goose neck, goose claws, goose wings, goose intestines, goose head, goose blood ... A goose is full of treasures.
I ordered half a goose before I went to the stall. Seeing the boss put the salted goose on the chopping board, he used a knife to separate the goose head from the goose body, and then cut the goose into small pieces from the chest. The whole action is done in one go, which makes the customer's index finger move greatly, and he can't wait to pinch a piece with his hand to eat it at once.
Box the goose, add a small bag of goose oil and gravy. When you get home, pour goose oil and gravy on the goose, which is delicious enough.
In my opinion, goose head is the best among old geese.
"Goose head wine is really not ugly", which is a common saying in Yangzhou. Goose headgear has a rich sense of food, which is soft and hard, fat and thin, dry and wet. Yangzhou people, who created the "three heads of Huaiyang", can't let go of Goose Head.
Whenever I eat geese, I always think of a passage in the Water Margin:
The charm of goose meat is hard to resist even the hero who fights the tiger!
Eating geese has been the insistence of Yangzhou people for thousands of years.
Yao He, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, said in Three Springs in Yangzhou that there is not a family in Yangzhou that doesn't keep geese. It shows that in the Tang Dynasty, Yangzhou people were already famous for raising and eating geese.
Ni Zan, a Jiangsu painter in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, was named Yunlinzi. He wrote a book, Yunlin Ji, which introduced a goose dish Yunlin Goose.
"Suiyuan Food List" recorded this dish:
Yunlin goose is actually a steamed dish, but some steps are similar to brine goose.
The specific method is: select a whole goose, wash it, rub it with salt in its belly, then put a handful of onions in its belly, and mix honey with the wine to wrap it all over. Pour a bowl of wine and a bowl of water into the pot, and put the goose on the pot with bamboo chopsticks to keep it from touching the water. Put two bundles of bamboo as fuel in the stove and let it burn slowly. After the pot cover is cooled, uncover the pot cover, turn the goose over, seal the pot cover and continue steaming. Then put a pile of firewood in the stove and wait for the firewood to burn itself out. Don't stir up firewood. The lid should be sealed with tissue paper. If the thin paper dries the crack, wet it with water. After cooking, not only the goose is cooked like mud, but also the soup is delicious.
The duck cooked in this way tastes just as good.
Saltwater goose is called "old goose" by Yangzhou people.
An "old" word is a status symbol of a goose. How old is this goose?
First, geese are older.
Eating meat, we all like it tender. For example, chickens should eat chickens and mutton should eat mutton. Meat hardens when it gets old, which is more suitable for stewing soup than eating meat.
However, geese are the only exception. Although the old goose is old, its meat is tight, not firewood. The salted goose is Yangzhou goose, which is free-range by Gaoyou Lake, with less fat content and more refreshing taste.
The second child is Lao Lu.
The marinade is boiled with saturated salt water, ginger, onion and star anise. I cooked the marinade many times and turned it into an old marinade. Old brine contains water-soluble protein, amino acids, carnosine, creatine, cantharidin and other flavor components, which makes the pickled goose taste more delicious.
What's more, brine is best cooked in a wooden pot and covered with a Chinese fir pot cover. The old goose preserved in this way is full in shape, rotten but not scattered, Chengcheng Huang in color, shiny, fresh, salty and delicious.
The third oldest is the complicated process.
Salted geese go through a series of processes, such as dry salting, marinating, re-marinating, scalding, drying and marinating.
First, add 100 kg of star anise powder to 1 00 kg of salt, mix well and apply it to the whole body of the goose, then put the goose in a jar for 2-4 hours. Because of the action of salt, the water and blood in goose meat will penetrate into abdominal cavity. At this time, it is necessary to lift the wings of the goose, stretch the buttocks of the goose with your fingers, and release the water in the abdominal cavity. This step is called "extracting brine". Then, put the goose in the jar for 2 to 3 hours, and then marinate it for the second time.
After selecting the marinade, it is time for the marinade to play its role.
Soak the goose in the old brine soup for 4 to 5 hours to make the goose fully tasty. This step is called "re-salting". After the heavy brine comes out of the can, hook the goose neck with a hook and water the goose body surface with boiling water. This step is called "ironing". After scalding the skin, the muscles and epidermis of the goose look tight and full, and they are hung in a ventilated place to drain the water. Then, hang the goose in the oven and dry it with fire, so that the dried cooked goose skin is crisp but not tough.
Finally, stew the goose in the marinade until cooked. A salty old goose is finished!
Buy two goose heads, a few goose feet, a little goose intestines and goose gizzards, and a pot of warm wine, and taste it slowly, not envious of Yuanyang and immortals.
Recommend several stores selling old geese:
1. Authentic Unforgettable Old Goose (Meiling Branch)
Address: Meiling New Village 12- 10 1
This store, hidden under a residential building, is never afraid of deep alleys. Just look at the people who line up every day.
2. Xiaoliuzi Old Goose (Dongguan Street Branch)
Address: 233 Dongguan Street
The biggest advantage of his family is that it is convenient to buy when traveling in Dongguan Street, and it doesn't delay the trip. It tastes good.
3. Yangzhou Old Goose
Address: at the entrance of Daliufang Lane, Guangling Road
Judging from the name of his family, the shopkeeper is very confident. The frontispiece is not big. The boss has been a goose for decades. His goose is a little expensive, but the quality is good.