brief introduction

Zongzi is the festival food of Dragon Boat Festival, which was called "Zongzi" in ancient times. According to legend, 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 the history of China.

history

The record of Zongzi in history was first seen in Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi in Han Dynasty. The word "Zongzi" is written as "Yi", and there is "Shuo Wen Jie Zi Xin Fu"? "Mibu" means "Sui, reed leaves are wrapped in rice. From the meter, it is embarrassing. " "Said the article? Yan: "Hey, that's enough. "When a bird flies, it will fold its legs and claws." Rhyme: "Hey, the horn is also." Or jiaozi. "

Zongzi, also known as "crossing toes", was first recorded in the local custom of the Western Jin Dynasty: "On the fifth day of midsummer, Fang Bo is extremely harmonious. Enjoy the corn tortoise scale in Shunde. Note: the end is also the beginning, which means the fifth day of May. Sizhong is Fang Bo. The custom of May 5th is very heavy, just like the solstice in summer. ● (Same as "duck"), Chunfu chicken can be eaten during the summer solstice. First, the first two festivals are one day, then glutinous rice is wrapped with leaves, mixed with millet and cooked with pure ash juice. The second festival is still good. ..... wrapped in glutinous rice, a' glutinous rice' and a' corn millet' cover up the image that Yin and Yang are still wrapped around the package. "

It is clearly recorded in Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica in the Ming Dynasty that millet is wrapped in leaves and cooked into food in the shape of sharp horns or palm leaves, so it is called "horn millet" or "zongzi".

After the Ming and Qing Dynasties, zongzi were mostly wrapped in glutinous rice, so they were called zongzi instead of millet.

folklore

Since the Northern and Southern Dynasties, there has been a folk saying that Zongzi originated from the folk memorial to Qu Yuan.

Wu Jun of the Southern Dynasty (467-520) wrote in Continued Harmony: "Qu Yuan died in Miluo on May 5th, and the Chu people mourned. Every day, rice is stored in bamboo tubes and sacrificed in water. During the military construction of Han Dynasty, Changsha returned to Europe. During the day, I suddenly saw a man who called himself Dr. San Lv. He said, "You should see this sacrifice. Very kind. But it is often stolen by the bitter dragon. If there is any benefit today, you can put neem leaves on it and tie it with colored silk. These two things are also afraid of dragons. "Back to him. The world uses five-color silk and neem leaves to make zongzi, all of which are gurgling. "

There is also a saying that people are afraid that Qu Yuan's body will be eaten by fish in the river, so they wrap up Zongzi and throw it into the river to feed the fish.

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

Yuan Zhen wrote in "Ten Summer Poems": "The colorful clouds are continuous, and the fragrant white jade beads."

In Song Dynasty, Yang Wuxia wrote in Qi Tianle Dragon Boat Festival: "Spare a few Huang Meiyu. It is noon again. Corn is covered with gold, calamus is full of jade, and the scenery is still beautiful. Shirt Ai Hu. Zhu Fu has more curly hair and red thunder on his arm. Float powder and fragrant cotton, call the fan noon window. "

The interesting story of zongzi

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

The largest zongzi, Darou Zongzi, is produced in Nanning, Guangxi, each weighing about two kilograms. There are fat pork and mung beans inside, which are soft, sticky and not greasy.

The smallest zongzi is found in Shanghai City God Temple, Green Wave Gallery and Lake Pavilion. About an inch long, shaped like a pillow, filled with ham, small and fresh; Huting thinks tea and food are great.

Zongzi genre

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

Zongzi in Jiangnan is the most famous and complicated, especially the stuffing, which is ever-changing. A big difference with 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.

China's Zongzi is the most famous one in Jiaxing, south of the Yangtze River. Jiaxing Zongzi enjoyed a high reputation as early as the Qing Dynasty. Food books record the types and practices of Jiaxing zongzi;

Bamboo Dumplings: "Take bamboo leaves and wrap them in white glutinous rice dumplings and cook them. The tip is like a cut raw water chestnut. "

"Ai Xiang Zongzi": "The glutinous rice is washed clean, wrapped with dates, chestnuts and mung beans, and boiled in a pot."

Mint-flavored Zongzi: "Mint soaked in rice and steamed until soft, mixed with foreign sugar and wrapped in glutinous rice."

"Red bean paste jiaozi": "Red bean paste, sugar, fat oil, cooked in a small jiaozi."

"Lotus Stuffed jiaozi": "Peel the heart, mix the foreign sugar and wrap the steamed buns."

"Songren Zongzi": "Little Zongzi without a purse"

Jiaozi of Ham: "Put jiaozi in the ham. If the ham is Jinhua, the fine fertilizer should be uniform. Also, diced meat can be wrapped in jiaozi. "

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

The famous zongzi

1 Wufangzhai Zongzi (China famous trademark, China famous trademark, China time-honored brand)

2 Daoxiang Village Zongzi (founded in 1895 (Guangxu 2 1), a Chinese time-honored enterprise)

Holiland Zongzi (famous brand, large pastry chain enterprise)

Sanquan Zongzi (China famous brand, national inspection-free product)

5 Missing Zongzi (China famous brand, national inspection-free product)

6 Likoufu Zongzi (famous brand, owned by Guangzhou Catering Enterprise Group)

7 Laobian Zongzi (founded in 1829, a Chinese time-honored catering enterprise)

8 Miqi Zongzi (1994 Xi 'an, a famous brand)

9 kg of Paradise Zongzi (1996 a famous brand in Tianjin)

10 Kutokuhayashi Zongzi (founded in 1922, a time-honored enterprise in China)

Zongzi shape

Because of different regions, the material and even the shape of the "wrap" are very different. For example, people used horns to worship the sky in the early days, so in the Han and Jin Dynasties, zongzi was mostly made into horns as one of the products of ancestor worship. In addition, there are regular triangles, regular quadrangles, pointed triangles, squares, long strips and so on.

Zongzi practice

(1) Ancient times

The zongzi in Han dynasty is "rice wrapped in zongzi leaves"; In the Western Jin Dynasty, it became "glutinous rice wrapped in leaves and mixed with millet". At the end of Wei Dynasty, Jia Sixie recorded this in more detail in Qi Yao Min Shu:

"Food Classic" says: "Millet millet method: take rice first, dye it and then put it. Count two liters of rice, a bucket of millet, a row of rice, a row of millet, wrap it with a rope and tie it up. The ropes are different. It must be cooked in a kettle, and it can be cooked in ten stone meters. "

"Food Times" said: "●: Mix rice flour, silk, water and honey, such as thick soup and cake noodles. Hold it in your hand and make it more than a foot long and two inches wide. Four pieces, jujube and chestnut meat all over the ground, wrapped in oil bamboo, rotten steamed. I couldn't open the second cup, but I broke both ends and untied the bag. "

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

"China, common for zongzi. The ancients cooked it with reed leaves wrapped in millet, and the tip of the horn was like the shape of a palm leaf, so it was called glutinous rice. Glutinous rice is widely used in modern times, but it is considered as a festival on May 5th. Or as a sacrifice to Qu Yuan, throw it into the river to feed the dragon. "

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

(2) Modernity

At present, the traditional method is to soak the leaves of Zongzi (reed leaves or bamboo leaves, etc.). ) First soak the glutinous rice in water and take meat, bean paste, jujube kernels, etc. As stuffing, it can be wrapped into triangle, square and pillow shape and steamed. Specific practices, detailed as follows:

1, brown meat

A, 5 kg fragrant glutinous rice, soak the glutinous rice in warm water (neither too cold nor too hot, the water temperature is a little hot to the touch but acceptable) for 2 or 3 hours (scratch 1 2 times during the period to make the rice soak better), and drain the water with a small dustpan or filter basket.

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

C, 2 Jin of semi-fat lean meat (the zongzi cooked with lean meat is not smooth enough), cut the meat into strips with a width of 2cm, a thickness of 1cm and a length of 10- 15cm, and add a little salt, monosodium glutamate (chicken essence), cooking wine, ginger slices and 1 spoon.

D, put the zongzi leaves in water and cook for 10 minute, then take out cold water and wash and drain the excess at both ends of the scissors.

E, cut a number of cotton threads, each about 20cm long. Put a towel on your leg (knee) in case you get wet.

F, take two leaves of Zongzi (with opposite sides), with one end and one tail overlapping in the opposite direction (incomplete), put them into a small bowl of rice (125g), draw a word gently in the middle of the rice with your index finger, put in 1, put in 2 spoonfuls of mung beans, then put in meat strips, put the same mung beans on the meat strips, and cover with/kloc-.

G, the right hand first folds the outer end of the zongzi leaf inward and backward, wraps one end, and finishes the other end. Before tying zongzi from one end to the other, tie it in the middle once to prevent deformation. The rope should not be too tight (boiled) or too loose (flooded), just pull it lightly.

H, put them into the pot one by one, then pour cold water on the zongzi for about 1cm, ignite ... After the water is boiled for 15 minutes, change the positions of the upper and lower zongzi in the pot, and then cook them with slow fire for 1 hour.

2. Red dates and zongzi

It is not difficult to find out how to wrap jiaozi with candied dates. The biggest difference: jujube is soaked in warm water, seeded and cut into beans, and then mixed with dried glutinous rice. As for seasoning, you can add some sugar if you like sweet.

3, mung bean duck egg jiaozi

750 grams of glutinous rice, 750 grams of mung beans, 25 grams of peanuts, and 5 cooked salted duck eggs. Chop egg yolk, mix with glutinous rice, mung bean and peanut, and make stuffing. Fold the soaked zongzi shell leaves into barrels, fill them with appropriate stuffing, put them in a pot and soak them in cold water. After boiling 1 hour, simmer 1 hour.

4, dried tangerine peel beef jiaozi

Soaked glutinous rice and mung bean1000g each, beef and dried tangerine peel100g each, 50g minced pork, chopped green onion, Jiang Mo and salt. Stir-fry chopped green onion with lard, add beef, dried tangerine peel and minced meat in turn, stir-fry for half a minute, and then pour sesame oil as filling. When wrapping, put the mixed glutinous rice and mung beans in first, put the stuffing in the middle, and then cook according to the above method.

5. Baiguo Zongzi

750g of glutinous rice, 25g of green plum, 25g of pineapple meat and wax gourd strips, 50g of watermelon kernel, walnut kernel, raisin, HongLing15g and 300g of white sugar. First, the green plum, pineapple meat and wax gourd strips are boiled with white sugar, drained, and then marinated with white sugar for 24 hours, which is the filling. Jiaozi wrapped into a square bottom, boiled for 50 minutes, and simmered for 4 minutes.

6. Salted chicken jiaozi

Ingredients: 600g of glutinous rice, 800g of chicken, 400g of potato, 80g of dried shrimp, garlic 1 tablespoon, half a tablespoon of soy sauce, onion, salt, chicken essence, a little raw flour, appropriate amount of zongzi leaves and zongzi rope.

Exercise:

(1) Chop chicken, potatoes and onions, add salt, garlic, chicken essence and cornmeal and mix well.

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

(3) Fold two zongzi into a leaky shape, add 1 tablespoon of fried glutinous rice, add the stuffing evenly wrapped in the method of 1, and then add 1 tablespoon of glutinous rice.

(4) Tie the zongzi with a zongzi rope, cook it in a pressure cooker for 30 minutes, and eat it while it is hot. If it is an ordinary pot, it must be boiled for about 2 hours.

7. Authentic steamed dumplings with golden stuffing

Materials:

(1) 500g glutinous rice, dried Lentinus edodes 1, 4 lotus seeds, dried shrimps 10g, 50g mung bean kernels, 2 chestnuts, dried lotus leaves 1, 6 dried bamboo leaves and 2 dried alkali grass.

(2) Salted egg yolk 1, a little pepper, 30g taro, ribs 100g fat; Spiced powder, scallion oil, monosodium glutamate.

Exercise:

(1) Soak the materials in the material 1 in water for at least 2.5 hours, and then marinate with pepper, scallion oil, monosodium glutamate and salt. Cut the taro and fry it. Put it aside.

(2) Cut the fat into pieces and marinate with spiced powder for about 30 minutes. Chop the ribs and marinate them with black vinegar, soy sauce, salt, monosodium glutamate and flour.

(3) Tear the lotus leaves in pairs, with the rough side facing down, spread 3 bamboo leaves and put half glutinous rice. Then add mushrooms, lotus seeds, shrimp skin, 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 lotus leaf in half and grab it, then fold it back and forth and grab it and wrap it into a quadrilateral, and wrap it tightly with alkali grass. 5. Cook jiaozi in water for four hours before serving.

Matters needing attention

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

Yangzongzi

The fifth day of the fifth lunar month is the Dragon Boat Festival in China. Eating zongzi on 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 cakes" on the Dragon Boat Festival. People cook fresh and tender leaves of Artemisia argyi, mash them, add them to rice flour, and then make them into wheel shapes. Koreans call it "wheel cake".

▲ Japanese Zongzi Japanese people also eat Zongzi on the Dragon Boat Festival, but the Dragon Boat Festival in Japan is on May 5 of the Gregorian calendar. Japanese zongzi is not made of glutinous rice, but of rice flour. The shape of Zongzi is different from that of China Zongzi. It is seed-like and unique.

▲ Vietnam jiaozi Vietnam jiaozi is wrapped in banana leaves, 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 thriving. Eating zongzi on the Dragon Boat Festival can achieve good weather and good harvests.

▲ Zongzi in Myanmar Burmese people love to eat Zongzi, but there is no festive cultural color and commemorative activities, just as a food. Myanmar Zongzi is mainly made of glutinous rice, with bananas and coconuts as stuffing. It is fragrant, soft and crisp, sweet and intoxicating.

▲ jiaozi, Thailand The jiaozi wrapped by Thai people is as small as an egg. Because they are wrapped in green leaves, they are light green after steaming and taste delicious.

▲ The dumplings in Mexico are also called "Dagmar". Its raw material is coarse corn flour, and its filling is sliced meat called pepper, which is wrapped with corn leaves or banana leaves and has a unique flavor.

▲ Indonesian Zongzi Indonesians pay special attention to the stuffing of Zongzi. They often add mushrooms and onions to chopped fresh meat to wrap jiaozi. It is smooth and delicious when eaten, and it is not greasy to eat more.

▲ Zongzi in Costa Rica The zongzi in Costa Rica uses a specially processed sticky corn flour as the main ingredient, with chicken, beef, carrots, potatoes, olives and peppers. Some are also poured with beef juice, and then wrapped in fresh banana leaves into a flat square.

▲ jiaozi in the Philippines and jiaozi in the Philippines are a bit special. They are used to wrapping in long strips, and the taste is similar to that of jiaozi in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and China. Besides, they think jiaozi is an indispensable food for Christmas.

▲ Zongzi in Latin America A kind of food similar to Zongzi is also popular in Latin America, which probably originated from the traditional food of Indians. They use banana leaves to wrap zongzi, and the main ingredients are corn flour and kidney beans, which are delicious. There is another legend about it: more than 400 years ago, Spanish colonists ruled most of Latin America, and Indians were forced to go out to work. To this end, women wrapped cooked corn flour and green beans in banana leaves as dry food for their relatives to take on the road. Over time, this has become their tradition.

Zongzi is popular all over the Dragon Boat Festival, but the package forms of Zongzi also have different styles. In central Guangxi, big pillow zongzi, which looks like a pillow, is very popular. Jiaozi, a big pillow in Guangxi, uses half a catty to a catty of rice; In Guilin, a kilo of rice can make six or seven dumplings. In the north of Guilin, I like jiaozi wrapped in a dog's head. In the process of making zongzi, the ingredients have their own characteristics. For example, Guilin people like to add some alkaline powder to jiaozi to make the boiled jiaozi produce alkaline fragrance; However, Quanzhou people like to soak glutinous rice with straw ash. The zongzi made by this method has moderate alkalinity and delicious taste.

The biggest zongzi

During the Nanning International Folk Song Art Festival and Guangxi (Nanning) Tourism and Food Festival in 2000, the chef of Nanning Mingyuan Xindu Hotel cooked a giant zongzi, which was 3 meters long, 2. 1 m wide and 1.2 m high. After steaming, it reached more than 2,000 kilograms, breaking the record of Zhejiang Zongzi King and becoming the new Guinness World Zongzi King. Jiaozi Wang used more than 20 vats, 550kg glutinous rice, 150kg pork belly, 500kg mung bean, 150kg chestnut, 10kg shrimp skin, 10kg mushroom, 7. 5 kg of jiaozi sauce, wrapped and boiled. In addition, in order to cook this giant jiaozi, the Machinery Factory of Nanning Chemical Industry Group specially made a giant pot with a length of 3. 5m and a width of 2. 6m. * * * More than 3000 people tasted this zongzi.

Who shouldn't eat zongzi?

Zongzi is fragrant and elegant, soft, waxy and greasy, with diverse tastes, which is quite popular among people. However, glutinous rice, the raw material for making zongzi, is oily and sticky. Eating too much will easily lead to indigestion, which will lead to increased gastric acid secretion, abdominal distension, abdominal pain, diarrhea and other symptoms. Do not be greedy.

There are many kinds of zongzi. Meat zongzi and lard and bean paste zongzi contain more fat and belong to greasy food. Patients with hyperlipidemia, arteriosclerosis, hypertension and coronary heart disease will increase blood viscosity, affect blood circulation, increase heart burden and ischemia, and easily induce angina pectoris and myocardial infarction, so it is not suitable for eating.

After steamed or cooked, Zongzi can release a gelatinous substance, which will increase the load of digestive enzymes after eating, and at the same time increase the burden on the stomach and intestines, so patients with gastric and duodenal ulcers had better not eat or eat less. In addition, the elderly and children, as well as people with weak digestive function, should also be careful to avoid affecting digestion and normal diet.