In the past two days, I have been craving Yangzhou's salt-watered old goose, so I ordered a sealed packaged goose online.

However, eating it hot at home is not the local taste in Yangzhou after all. It can only be better than nothing and satisfy the craving.

Salt water old goose is a secret delicacy of Yangzhou people, and many outsiders don’t know about it.

If you don't go to Yangzhou to eat old goose, it's hard to know its taste.

Compared with Nanjing salted duck, Yangzhou people only recognize salted goose.

In Yangzhou, stalls selling salted goose are all over the streets and alleys. As long as you see a small cart and a queue, this one is authentic.

When eating goose, it doesn’t matter the part.

Goose blades, goose hind legs, goose gizzard liver, goose neck, goose claws, goose wings, goose intestines, goose head, goose blood... A goose is full of treasures all over its body.

I walked to the stall and ordered half of the goose. I saw the boss put the braised goose on the chopping board, cut the goose head and body with a knife from the neck, and then cut the goose into two parts from the chest area and chopped it into small pieces.

Piece, the whole action is done in one go, which makes the customer's index finger move wildly, and he can't wait to squeeze a piece with his hand and eat it.

The goose meat is packed in a box, plus a small bag of goose fat and stewed soup.

After returning home, pour the goose fat and marinade over the goose meat to make it delicious.

In my opinion, the most delicious thing among the old goose is the goose head.

"Goose head paired with wine is not ugly at all", this is a Yangzhou saying.

The goose head brings a variety of food textures, including soft and hard, fat and thin, dry and wet. Yangzhou people who created the "Huaiyang Three Heads" cannot let goose heads go.

Whenever I eat goose, I will think of a passage in "Water Margin": The charm of goose meat is even hard for a tiger-fighting hero to resist!

Eating goose has been a tradition of Yangzhou people for thousands of years.

Yao He, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, said in "Three Spring Poems of Yangzhou" that there is no household in Yangzhou that does not raise geese.

It shows that in the Tang Dynasty, Yangzhou people were already famous for raising and eating geese.

Ni Zan, a Jiangsu painter from the late Yuan and early Ming Dynasty, also known as Yunlinzi, wrote a book "Yunlin Collection", which introduced a goose dish - Yunlin goose.

"Suiyuan Food List" records this dish: Yunlin goose is actually a steamed dish, but some steps are similar to salted goose.

The specific method is as follows: select a whole goose, wash it, rub the goose's belly with salt, then stuff a handful of green onions into the goose's belly, mix honey into the wine, and coat the goose all over.

Pour a large bowl of wine and a large bowl of water into the pot, and use bamboo chopsticks to place the goose on the pot so that the goose does not touch the water.

Put two bunches of moso bamboo into the stove as fuel and let it burn out slowly. After the pot lid cools, uncover the pot lid, turn the goose over, seal the pot lid again, and continue steaming.

After that, put a bunch of firewood in the stove and wait for the firewood to burn up on its own without stirring the firewood.

The lid of the pot should be sealed with tissue paper. If the tissue paper is dry and cracked, moisten it with water.

After being cooked and served in the pot, not only the goose meat is as cooked as mud, but the broth is also very delicious.

Duck meat cooked this way tastes just as delicious.

Salt water goose is called "old goose" by Yangzhou people.

The word "老" is the goose's status symbol.

How old is Lao Goose?

The first oldest is the age of the goose.

When eating meat, we all like to eat tender meat.

For example, for chicken, you need to eat chicks, and for mutton, you need lamb.

Meat becomes tough as it ages, making it more suitable for stewing soup than eating meat.

However, goose meat is the only exception.

Although the old goose is old, the meat is very firm and not woody.

The saltwater goose uses Yangzhou geese raised free-range by Gaoyou Lake, which has less fat and a more refreshing taste.

The second oldest is Lao Lu.

The marinade is made by boiling saturated salt water with ginger, green onion and star anise. The marinade that has been made and cooked many times becomes the old marinade.

The old brine contains water-soluble protein, amino acids, carnosine, creatine, prionine and other flavor ingredients, which make the pickled goose taste more delicious.

More importantly, boil the brine in a wooden pot, and it is best to boil it with a fir lid.

The salted old goose marinated in this way is plump in shape, rotten but not scattered, bright yellow-orange in color, fresh and salty and delicious.

The third oldest one is that the process is complicated.

Salted goose needs to go through a series of processes of "dry pickling, brining, re-brining, blanching, drying and stewing".

First, add 1 to 2 kilograms of star anise powder to every 100 kilograms of salt, mix well and apply it to the whole body of the goose, then fold the goose into a tank and marinate it for 2 to 4 hours.

Because of the action of salt, the water and blood in the goose meat will penetrate into the abdominal cavity.

At this time, you need to lift the goose's wings and use your fingers to open the goose's buttocks to release the water in the abdominal cavity. This step is called "picking the brine."

Then, stack the goose in the tank and marinate it for 2 to 3 hours, and then marinate it for the second time.

After the marinade is done, it’s time for the marinade to do its job.