I don't remember which year it was in the Spring Festival Evening. A hostess came out and said, "Every household in the New Year's Eve should include jiaozi", which aroused the dissatisfaction of many netizens in the south. Indeed, eating jiaozi in the New Year is just a habit of northerners. China people in southern rice producing areas don't have a kind of symbolic food corresponding to jiaozi. This is certainly not to belittle the diet in the south. In fact, I would rather say that the living standard in the south is high and there are many food choices. Just like dinner on Christmas Eve, English people must eat turkey. I asked the French what they were eating at this time. The French replied that there are many kinds. The implication is that the British only have turkeys. The word jiaozi jiaozi appeared relatively late. All the information on the Internet quoted this article: According to the relevant historical records of the Qing Dynasty, "On New Year's Day, when people are happy, they go their own way, such as eating flat food, making a name for themselves and making old friends. Nobody cares where the specific information comes from. This is the advantages and disadvantages of the Internet. In fact, there was a name of "flat food" in the Ming Dynasty. Pu Songling, a native of Shandong Province in the early Qing Dynasty, wrote in "Common Words for Daily Use" that flat food, like a crescent moon, will not boil if it is soaked in a cold water pot. In the early years of the Republic of China, Jinan Kuailan, published by Jinan, introduced a restaurant specializing in flat food, which has a history of nearly a hundred years. The book also introduces Shandong folk customs: in the event of New Year's Eve or New Year's Day, noodles are used as the corner, and the stuffing is either meat or vegetarian, and people can eat whatever they want. . . Total name: water steamed stuffed bun. The flat food, trough and steamed stuffed bun here are all modern jiaozi. In Nanyang, Henan Province, there is a story that Zhang Zhongjing, a doctor of the Eastern Han Dynasty, invented the mutton jiaozi, which Henan people think is the origin of eating jiaozi from winter solstice. This story can't be found in ancient books, but it is quite elegant. According to the story, the noodles invented by Mr. Zhang Zhongjing, a native of Henan, are shaped like ears, similar to modern wonton. The history of wonton recorded in ancient books began in the Three Kingdoms period. Jiaozi should have evolved from wonton step by step.

My grandmother is from Hebei. She often says that it is not as delicious as jiaozi, and it is better to lie on your back when you are comfortable. This sentence has different versions in different places, which should be the knowledge of farmers in the north. The climate and products in the north are not as good as those in the south, and people live in poverty, especially the supply of meat is insufficient. Farmers, in particular, can kill pigs and eat meat during the Chinese New Year. A farmer who has worked hard for a year, jiaozi, who is eating a lump of meat, and then lying on the kang to rest, is the best enjoyment. Modern urbanites don't have these feelings, but tradition still works. The reason why jiaozi is delicious is that, like all foods with stuffing, the flavor of dumpling stuffing is sealed in the dumpling skin and will not be lost. Therefore, when eating jiaozi, the fragrance of dumpling stuffing suddenly broke out, and this effect was very shocking. Dumpling skin and stuffing play an indispensable role here. As the old saying goes, jiaozi needs a thin skin and a big stuffing, which is what it means. There are two kinds of mature practices in jiaozi: jiaozi and steamed dumplings, among which jiaozi is the mainstream family practice, named after being cooked in water. Jiaozi usually refers to jiaozi. Due to historical reasons, the north has been short of fuel, so steamed dumplings are not common. Steamed dumplings don't touch water, but they are better than jiaozi in taste. But jiaozi's skin is soft and smooth, which steamed dumplings can't provide. Dumpling skin is made of cold water dough. Gluten content is the main quality index of flour and plays an important role here. The dumpling skin made of high-gluten flour tastes smooth and tough, and it is not easy to cook in a pot. There was no high-gluten flour before, and everyone used white powder or refined powder to wrap jiaozi. Jiaozi tastes like black flour or whole wheat flour will be sticky. Steamed dumplings are made of instant noodles. Making steamed dumplings with low-gluten flour may be more conducive to cost control.

Any vegetarian material can be used as dumpling stuffing. Of course, the effect of eating is still different, just like the cost of raw materials is different. Fresh and tender raw materials are more expensive, and the taste and taste will be better. Meat raw materials include pork, beef and mutton. There is fish stuffing along the coast of Shandong, which is a local characteristic. There are countless raw materials for vegetables, and the unique vegetable fillings are tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant and garlic moss. Vegetable raw materials should be pretreated for stuffing, such as squeezing out water from melons and vegetables and frying eggplant. Jiaozi in the north rarely has pure meat stuffing, which is quite different from the stuffing foods like jiaozi in the south. The reason lies in the consumption tendency formed by the shortage of meat supply in the north in history. Although the dumpling stuffing in the north is mixed with vegetarian food, one of the delicious jiaozi standards is meatball stuffing.

make dumplings

Although jiaozi is a home-cooked dish, it is not easy to make it well. First of all, you should pay attention to noodles. There is an old saying in Hebei: Soft noodles and jiaozi hard noodle soup, which means that the noodles eaten in jiaozi should be soft and the noodles eaten in noodles should be hard. When the dough is hard, the dumpling skin becomes hard when rolled. It's not easy to pinch together when wrapping jiaozi. You won't feel strong when you eat it. Make flour as a preparation, and the size should be uniform. Some people like to pull medicine by hand, and my family cuts it with a knife. The size of the potion is whatever you want, but jiaozi is too big to cook. Skillful skills are needed to roll skin. If you roll and turn over the medicine, you will get it if your hand is slow. I remember when I was in college, my classmates wrapped jiaozi in the dormitory, and I was in charge of rolling dough. As a result, only a few were introduced, and several students in Xi' an laughed at them and had to make way. Xi 'an's dumpling skin is really much smaller than mine. This incident is quite impressive. Xi 'an has a dumpling feast. It seems that the mass base is very solid. Bao jiaozi's techniques vary from place to place, including pinching and squeezing. Pinch method is to hold dumpling skin and stuffing in one hand and hold the edge of jiaozi in the other. Jiaozi, wrapped in a pinch, lay flat, much like their ancestors' flat food. The extrusion method is to hold the two ends of the dumpling skin with the thumb and forefinger of both hands, and fold it in half to the middle. In this way, jiaozi was squeezed into a pot-bellied shape and could stand up. Finally, cook jiaozi. The water boils before you pack jiaozi. High water temperature can make the dumpling skin mature quickly and keep its shape. When the water in the pot boils again, in order to reduce the water temperature and keep the water slightly boiling, a small amount of cold water can be added, because too much water will crack the dumpling skin and the dumpling stuffing may not be cooked yet. If you use real high-gluten flour, and you want jiaozi to be fresh and tender, and you don't want to cook it for too long, this is not an example. Squeeze jiaozi

Jiaozi is usually served with spices. This has almost become a necessary procedure for eating jiaozi. The common seasoning is mashed garlic with soy sauce, sesame oil and vinegar. People with light taste can use a plate of vinegar. People with heavy tastes should also add Chili sauce. I met the scariest fellow villagers in Shandong. After adding all kinds of seasonings to the seasoning dishes, I poured a spoonful of Laoganma hot sauce. My heart is full of grievances about my package jiaozi. After he left, I told my wife that I would never invite him to eat Sam Sun jiaozi again! But think about Sichuan people's red oil jiaozi, isn't it the same? So it's just talk. I once invited a European devil to eat jiaozi. I didn't expect Gai Yi to ask me with sauce: What do you need to eat jiaozi? Because he ate China jiaozi with others. Dipping in sauce is another common practice in Europe. He remembers. I had to bring him a bottle of Zhenjiang balsamic vinegar. The most common dumpling stuffing in Shandong and Hebei should be pork and cabbage stuffing. Chop pork and cabbage, mix with sesame oil, onion and ginger, and the stuffing made of ordinary raw materials will bring incredible taste. No wonder jiaozi is popular. Old Beijing likes zucchini mutton jiaozi in summer, which is probably extinct. Hebei people have a kind of jiaozi stuffed with fennel and pork, which is rich in flavor and unique. The corresponding vegetarian stuffing is fennel eggs. I used to eat this jiaozi every time I went to Hebei for business. It's delicious and clean. Fennel is a plant form of fennel, and people who are not used to it may not like it. Sanxian stuffing, which originated in the coastal area of Shandong and spread to Liaoning, is made of small shrimps produced in Bohai Sea and peeled with pork and leeks. The delicacy of sea shrimp, the fatness of pork and the coarseness of leek have reached a perfect balance. Correspondingly, a dumpling stuffing is Su Sanxian, including eggs, dried shrimps and leeks. It tastes a little bad, but it's definitely cheap. The most distinctive jiaozi along the Shandong coast should be jiaozi stuffed with Spanish mackerel. This is made by selecting Spanish mackerel produced in the Yellow Sea, scraping off the fish, mashing it into meat paste, slowly adding water and seasoning and stirring it until it becomes sticky, and then adding leeks. This squid dumpling stuffing is soft and delicious, and the thick leek neutralizes the taste of fish. Spanish mackerel jiaozi requires fresh Spanish mackerel, otherwise the fish will absorb less water and the taste will not be so tender. This is the same as making fish balls in southern provinces. Therefore, to eat real Spanish mackerel jiaozi, it is best to go to Jiaodong and Dalian. There is a so-called sauerkraut jiaozi in the northeast of jiaozi. This is the method of using local materials. Traditionally, the northeast is freezing, and there are no fresh vegetables, so you can only eat sauerkraut, and your diet style should be found in sauerkraut. In fact, sauerkraut tastes tough, so it must be cut into pieces and served with meat oil. Personally, I think the most distinctive city in Northeast China is Jiaozi, the old side of Shenyang. The old frontier is from Renqiu, Hebei. He went to the Northeast to make a living, stopped in Shenyang, and created jiaozi, a special food in the old frontier. The style of Laobian jiaozi comes from fried stuffing and steamed dumplings with instant noodles. His dumpling stuffing is fried. Coupled with steaming, it keeps the taste better, so old jiaozi is oily and delicious, which is completely different from ordinary jiaozi. Now it seems that this function is not difficult to achieve, but it is difficult to be the first. Although jiaozi is a characteristic of northerners, it is almost universal now. This is the result of social changes, population mobility and economic development. I couldn't believe it when I heard from my friends in Liuzhou, Guangxi, that they also ate jiaozi during the Spring Festival. It is said that there is a legendary lady in Hong Kong who won a place in the Hong Kong business community by selling northern dumplings herself. The brand of quick-frozen dumplings made by herself at Wan Chai Wharf is sold nationwide. This can be seen as an example of the display of modern commercial power. Of course, I believe that the significance of jiaozi to the people in rice producing areas is incomparable to that in wheat producing areas.

Jiaozi's characteristics determine its simple nature. Few people used to go to restaurants to buy jiaozi. Everyone knows that jiaozi cooked at home is the best. You can eat whatever stuffing you want, and the size is optional. More importantly, Bao jiaozi is an occasion for family reunion, especially on New Year's Eve. Making friends on New Year's Eve is the original intention of making friends recorded by Qing people. Some people stick to tradition and wait until 12 midnight to cook jiaozi. I remember one time I spent the New Year at home, and I bought jiaozi for the New Year's Eve. I am in charge of rolling leather, and my wife and my parents are in charge of wrapping jiaozi. My daughter is still young, carrying dumpling wrappers between two tables. Children have a sense of honor and are willing to do their duty. Every time I roll a dumpling wrapper, she jumps up and sends it to her grandparents' table. Grandparents all smiled and said, have a rest. Save more before sending. She wouldn't listen either. As usual, we wrapped jiaozi with pork, leek and shrimp. It was really delicious.