In fact, with Shanghai as the center, the diet in the Yangtze River Delta is generally sweet. If there is a list of sweet cities, Shanghai, Suzhou, Changzhou and Hangzhou can undoubtedly be on the list except Wuxi. For example, Shanghainese, many classic dishes are thick oil red sauce, and sugar must be put in when coloring, and sugar should also be put in cooking. Adding sugar to everything has always been a routine operation in Shanghai people's cooking. For friends from other regions, it may be too sweet to eat in Shanghai, but Shanghainese can hardly eat the sweetness in the dishes; But when we don't put sugar, we can taste it right away.
And even when I was a child? Sugar jar? When I grew up, Shanghainese in Suzhou said it was acceptable, and the taste was not too bad; But when I arrived in Wuxi, I began to feel sweet there? Accept incompetence? Get up. What is the specialty of Wuxi? Tin food? What's the difference between this special dish and the dishes in different cities? Sweet? . In a word, as long as you cook food without sugar, just like people in Jiangxi, Hunan, don't put pepper in cooking, the chef won't know how to start. I guess Wuxi friends choose all sugar when drinking milk tea.
What impressed me the most was the sauce ribs in Wuxi. When I was a child, my parents brought back a bag of vacuum-packed sauce ribs specialty. At that time, I only thought it was too sweet to taste other flavors, thinking that it was opened in the wrong way. Later, I personally went to a restaurant in Wuxi and tasted it once. I found that it was still pure and sweet without sour taste, which was completely different from the sweet and sour chops we often eat. In addition, fried vegetables are double sweet, and even porridge and steamed buns stuffing are of the order of+10086. It's so sweet that you are embarrassed to spit it out when you eat it, but you can't swallow it. It's in your mouth and you want to cry!
Then netizens will ask why Wuxi people love sweet food so much. This is actually due to historical reasons. In the early years, Wuxi was rich in sugar cane, and some people found that sugar flavor could be extracted from sugar cane. In the past, those who lived in poverty and could afford sugar cane were rich people in large families. How much sugar was put in cooking became the label of wealth and poverty. Later, with the growing scale of sugarcane planting, sugar became something that ordinary people could afford. However, the custom of putting sugar in ingredients has continued, and it has gradually become a special taste that Wuxi people can't do without from snacks to big meals to old age.
To what extent is Wuxi sweet? It is said that there are no sugar cans in the noodle restaurant next to them, and they are all authentic. This degree can be seen. However, I think sour, sweet, bitter and spicy are all kinds of taste. If you simply enlarge one and ignore the others, the taste of the dishes will be monotonous without layering. The sweetness of authentic Wuxi cuisine is actually sweet and salty. Hanging fresh with sugar, such as vegetables in winter, is slightly bitter. If you add a handful of sugar, the taste will be much better. There are many foreign restaurants now. In order to cater to Wuxi's taste, they think that Wuxi's taste is heavy sugar, which has deepened people's misunderstanding of Wuxi cuisine.
In a word, Wuxi is a city with profound food culture, and Wuxi cuisine is not always sweet when cooking. Only among many condiments, the proportion of sugar is indeed more than that of other cities in the south of the Yangtze River. For people who don't eat too much sweet, they will be more unaccustomed. For the friends who are in the same area, except for some dishes and snacks, people are so sweet that they want to cry; The authentic dishes produced by Wuxi restaurant are still remarkable in taste.