Folk Food 158--Glass Meat Qi Fengchi I remember that there was a common cold dish called glass meat more than 30 years ago. At that time, this dish was served on the tables of weddings and funerals during the New Year and festivals.

Now when I think back to the cold, sweet and crispy, fragrant glass meat, I still feel it is delicious.

It’s a pity that the glass meat in my memory has changed with the times and the improvement of people’s dietary standards. The glass meat, which is high in fat, greasy and polysaccharide, has long been removed from the menu and has been far away from the dining table and people’s memories.

Nowadays, people’s dietary concepts have begun to change towards healthy nutrition and health care.

Therefore, many of the good dishes I ate as a child have been eliminated.

Now if you want to eat, you have to remember.

I began to reminisce, feel and appreciate the taste of those dishes and the lost years in my memories.

In the past, relatively high-end glass meat was a main cold dish on people’s holiday or wedding tables.

Today, it has long been forgotten by people.

Needless to say, people ate it, even today’s chefs couldn’t cook it.

I know how to make glass meat, I have made it in the past.

It is made from pork fat and sugar.

First, remove the skin from the rib meat, then remove the lean meat, leaving the white layer of fat. Then cut it into pieces as thick as chopsticks and about an inch long, then stir it into a paste with egg white, starch and flour, and grind the fat into a paste.

Put the strips into the batter, dip them evenly, and fry them in the oil pan.

When the meat strips become hard, change color and float, take them out.

Then use a spoon to boil the white sugar. When the sugar is boiled until it drips with the spoon and becomes strands, the sugar has reached the heat.

At this time, take out the meat strips that have been oiled on another stove, immediately pour them into the boiled sugar, and turn the spoon repeatedly to make the sugar completely wrap the meat strips. Finally, sprinkle the fried sesame seeds on top and take it out.

, then pour it into a large flat plate and grease the bottom of the plate to prevent the glass meat from sticking together.

After it cools down, you can eat it.

The characteristics of this dish are sweet, fragrant, crispy and greasy.

Because the fat strips have been fried twice, the meat has basically turned into oil, and the oil has seeped into the batter.

Coated with white sugar on the outside, it is of course sweet, crispy and fragrant when you bite it.

At that time, people's living standards were low, and it was difficult for people to eat meat several times a month, so people were very tempted when they saw sweet food.

I remember that it was October in the early 1970s, when my neighbor’s eldest brother got married, and the chef made this glass meat cold dish.

After the dishes were done, they were placed outside in a cool place.

When all the guests arrived at noon and the dishes were ready to be served, when the chef put the glass meat on the plate, he found that there were several tables of glass meat missing.

Now the chef was worried. He asked the owner why the glass meat was missing. In fact, the owner didn't know. Later, someone told the chef that the children pinched one at random, and he took one and ate it.

The table is about to open, what should I do?

The chef had to make a temporary decision to make another dish to make up for the plates of glass meat eaten by the children.

Nowadays, glass meat has long been withdrawn from recipes and people’s dietary concepts.

Glass meat belongs entirely to the hungry years and the years when people lacked nutrition.

Today, when talking about glass meat, I still feel so familiar with the years when meat was lacking in sugar and the days of poverty. Looking back on the glass meat that disappeared from the recipes, I still feel that it is so sweet and greasy.