The first course of the state banquet

The first course of the state banquet is crystal yaorou.

"Not greasy, slightly fragrant, red and tender." Crystal Yaorou is a famous traditional dish in Zhenjiang, which enjoys a long reputation. If you want to choose a dish to represent Zhenjiang cuisine, it must be Yaorou. This dish is made of pig's trotters as raw materials, pickled with nitrate and salt, with seasonings such as onion, ginger and yellow wine, simmered in a wide soup until crisp and rotten, and then frozen and solidified. It has the characteristics of beautiful shape, mellow and fresh fragrance, oily, fat but not greasy, and is a traditional flavor dish in southern Jiangsu.

Yao meat is actually a general term for hoof meat, with white skin, scarlet lean meat, transparent brine and smooth crystal. Because it has been selected as the main dish of cold dishes for many times, it has the reputation of "the first dish of state banquets".

Legend of Crystal Yaorou

According to legend, hundreds of years ago, the owner of a small hotel in Jiuhai Street, Zhenjiang, bought four trotters a day and prepared to eat them in a few days. Because it was hot, he was afraid of deterioration, so he salted them. But at that time, he mistakenly salted the pig's trotters with a pack of nitrate for firecrackers bought at home, and it was not until three days later that his family looked for nitrate. When they quickly opened the curing jar, they found that not only the meat quality had not changed, but also the cured pig's trotters were hard and fragrant, with ruddy color and ruddy hoof skin.

In order to remove the smell of nitrate, soak it in clear water for many times in a row, then boil it in a boiling water pot and take it out. Then, he put the pig's trotters in the pot, and added onion, ginger, pepper, fennel and cinnamon to stew at high temperature. I was going to remove the toxicity and odor, but unexpectedly, after the onion was cooked for half an hour, there was a strange smell. When you taste it at the entrance, it's delicious and has no peculiar smell. Since then, shopkeepers have made "Nitrate Meat" in this way, and more and more customers have come to taste it, which soon became famous in this city.