It is said that Wuhan is a holy land for breakfast. What are the delicious breakfasts in Wuhan that you must eat?

Most outsiders who have just arrived in Wuhan will be shocked by the arrangement of Wuhan people eating breakfast: a street is filled with breakfast stalls, and each stall is crowded with diners, with some people waiting for a bowl. Hot dry noodles, some people stare at their noodle nests, and some people hold a piece of tofu skin... These iconic breakfasts mean the beginning of a day in Wuhan.

Different from the slow-paced morning tea drinking in Guangzhou, people in Wuhan usually don’t have time to sit down and eat slowly. They hold it in their hands or carry it in their bags, and rush to work or school in a hurry. So the hot dry noodles, tofu skin, and noodle nests followed people through the streets and alleys of the three towns in Wuhan.

This is a daily citywide movement in Wuhan called "Premature".

Even if heavy rain turns the city upside down, Wuhan people cannot help but be premature.

Wuhan, the Breakfast City

“Women from small families learn from the rich and powerful, and sleep until morning to wake up from their dreams; wait and comb your hair before it’s too early, and swallow glutinous rice dumplings together.” Dao Guangsan of the Qing Dynasty In the tenth year (AD 1850), Ye Tiaoyuan's "Hankou Bamboo Branch Ci" engraved by Ye Tiaoyuan used the word "premature" to express breakfast for the first time. At this point, Wuhan people have been "premature" for 166 years.

Indeed, among the three meals a day, Wuhan people are most particular about eating them early. Moreover, people in Wuhan do not have the habit of making breakfast at home, so they always buy it at roadside stalls. The roadside stall business in the three towns of Wuhan is very prosperous. In the past, there were stalls on almost every street. Now the management is strict, but many shops still put their stoves and oil pans at the gate.

Hong Kong gourmet Chua Lam once called Wuhan the "breakfast capital". The importance of breakfast in Wuhan can rival that of dinner, and its variety is rare in the world. A netizen once posted on Weibo that things are not the same after 28 days. Wuhan writer Chi Li also took stock of Wuhan's breakfast in her work "Hot or Cold or Just Living": "Lao Tongcheng's tofu skin, the first-class fragrance and the first-class breakfast Bao, Cai Linji’s hot dry noodles, Tan Yanji’s dumplings, Tian Hengqi’s glutinous rice noodles, Hoshengli’s assorted tofu curd, Lao Qianji’s beef stir-fried shredded beans, Minsheng Canteen’s small glutinous rice balls, Wufangzhai’s sesame paste Tangyuan, Tongxingli’s Youxiang, Shunxiangju’s heavy-oil roasted plums, people’s sweets such as Tizhijiu, Fuqinghe’s beef rice noodles..." In fact, these are just time-honored brands with great reputation in Wuhan, and cannot be named in the streets. There are countless names.

Every morning, the streets of Wuhan are full of breakfast stalls, people buying breakfast, and people walking and eating. This is the most unique market custom in Wuhan.

The talent of Wuhan people is that not only can they eat dried noodles such as noodle nests and roasted plums while walking, but they can also eat hot dry noodles and beef noodles while walking, and they can do so very quickly. Three times five times two, one bowl of noodles will be enough to satisfy your stomach. Of course, this habit also leads to frequent accidents, such as on the bus or subway, a bowl of noodles is thrown at the other person after a disagreement.

How many choices are there for Zao Zao?

Unlike the clear categories of dim sum in Cantonese-style morning tea, Wuhan people’s choices for Zao Zao are very messy and none of them are strict. system division.

Breakfast in Wuhan is roughly divided into four series-

Noodle series: hot dry noodles, beef noodles, beef noodles, paste soup noodles, and bean shreds

< p>Fried food: bean curds, noodle nests, sweet potato noodle nests, soda poppies, pan-fried buns, glutinous rice chicken, Huanxi Tuo, Youxiang

Steamed food: roasted plums, glutinous rice buns, fried dough sticks, soup dumplings

p>

Beverage system: rice wine, eggnog

Let’s talk about the noodle system first:

Hot dry noodles

Hot dry noodles are from Wuhan Premature signs - the most famous and distinctive. Soak the alkaline noodles in boiling water, remove them, drain the water, drizzle with sesame oil and mix well, spread them out and let them cool for later use. When it's too early, grab a handful of cool noodles and put them into a long-handled, pointed-bottomed, round-mouthed spatula. Boil the noodles in boiling water, drain the water, put them into a bowl, and then pick up a noodle. With a long-handled spoon, add salt, soy sauce, spicy diced radish, minced green onions, chili peppers, pepper, MSG, sugar, etc. If you are particular, you will also add a spoonful of brine, and finally pour sesame sauce. This bowl of hot dry noodles is You're done. The time to make a bowl of hot dry noodles usually only takes two to three minutes.

Mix the hot dry noodles quickly while the steam is hot. The strong aroma of sesame sauce and the aroma of the noodles themselves mix together, which immediately arouses people's appetite. The core of hot-dry noodles is sesame sauce. Good sesame seeds are enough to leave a fragrant aroma in your teeth and cheeks. However, in order to save costs, many businesses now use peanut butter instead of sesame paste, or mix the two, which greatly reduces the taste of hot-dry noodles.

When it comes to the stall that makes the best hot dry noodles, Cai Linji is famous. Many tourists in Wuhan also ask for Cai Linji. However, in recent years, with the expansion of the chain, the taste of Cai Linji has declined. , but prices keep rising. "A Bite of China" once chose to shoot the Tianji Noodle House located on Jianghan 2nd Road in Hankou. "Tiantian Hot Dry Noodles" and "Big Beard Hot Dry Noodles" are also outstanding representatives of Hankou and Wuchang hot dry noodles respectively.

Beef Noodles·Beef Noodles

Unlike Lanzhou beef noodles, which emphasize "one clear, two hundred, three red, four yellow, and five green", the beef in Wuhan is braised. The braised beef soup is spicy with a hint of sweetness and has a unique taste.

Wuhan’s beef noodles are also halal-flavored. The earliest beef noodle restaurants in Hankou were originally run by Muslims. There were Muslim settlements in the area of ??Liudu Bridge and Sanmin Road in Hankou. Chi Li also mentioned Hankou Fu in particular. Qinghe’s beef rice noodles, but now, Fu Qinghe no longer exists.

The test of whether a beef noodle restaurant is good or not is not only the taste of the noodle soup, but also whether the rice noodles will break quickly when picked up.

Soup Noodles

Soup Noodles are a specialty snack in Wuhan, full of characteristics of the land of plenty.

There are many rivers and lakes in the three towns of Wuhan, and a lot of fish and shrimps are caught every day, especially small fish and shrimps. In the early years, there were no storage conditions. If they were not sold, they would smell bad the next day. So someone thought of using it to make breakfast.

Add water to small fish and shrimp and simmer them into soup, then skim off the residue, leaving a thick soup as thick as rice soup. Blanch the rice noodles, take them out and put them into a bowl, pour a large spoonful of thick soup on top, and then sprinkle with salt, pepper, minced ginger, and chopped green onion. It will have its original color and flavor, and a rich and thick taste.

In the early days, the fried dough sticks were eaten with the fried dough sticks. There were also those that were eaten by dipping the fried dough sticks in the fried dough sticks, or tearing the fried dough sticks into small pieces and soaking them in the soup. But what? All full of flavor.

Bean Silk

Bean Silk is a specialty of Huangpi District, Wuhan City. It is made by grinding mung beans and rice into a pulp, then spreading the skin, cutting into shreds and drying it. When eating, add beef soup or Cook with other ingredients. If the amount of mung beans in this mixed rice and mung bean food is less, the taste of the shredded beans will be much worse.

Tang Lusun, the owner of the food, once wrote in an article: "Wuchang's beef and bean shreds are famous far and wide."

Now that we have talked about the noodles, let's talk about premature frying. series.

Beancurd

As the name suggests, beancurd is related to beans. Mung beans and rice are mixed in a certain proportion, soaked for several hours and then ground into pulp for later use. Heat a large iron pot and pour oil in it, then scoop the rice milk into the pot and spread it into a large thin round sheet. Crack the egg and spread it on the rice paste, spread it evenly and turn it over. It will turn into a shiny golden color.

Then, mix the steamed glutinous rice, cooked dried mushroom dices, fried pork or beef dices, dried fragrant dices, minced ginger, etc., spread them on the rice milk slices, sprinkle with pepper, salt and A large amount of chopped green onion, then turn it over, pour a spoonful of oil and a spoonful of water, cover the pot and simmer for two minutes, and a large pot of golden tofu skin is ready. Use a small shovel to cut the tofu skin into a grid shape. Each portion of the tofu skin is basically two or three small squares. Put it into a small bowl. With a pair of chopsticks, you can enjoy it.

The amount of oil used is the most critical to making the bean skin well. Too much oil will lose the tender and crispy texture. If there is less oil, the surface of the bean skin will become dry.

Laotongcheng is the most famous tofu skin restaurant in Wuhan. Like countless time-honored brands, it was a public-private partnership that retained the store name after it became famous. The founder of Master Wang’s Tofu Skin Restaurant, which is now the most famous in Wuhan, was once a cashier in Laotongcheng. He absorbed many tofu skin masters from Laotongcheng and opened this tofu skin restaurant.

Mianwo

Mianwo is an authentic specialty of Wuhan. Although it is called noodle, it is not pasta. It is made by mixing rice and soybeans into a paste, and adding an appropriate amount of chopped green onion and salt. Seasoned and fried. It looks simple, but it is not easy at all to do.

The ratio of rice to soybeans is very important. If there are less soybeans, the noodle nest will not taste fragrant; if there are too many soybeans, the noodle nest will be very oily, so the more soybeans, the better.

The fried noodle spoon is also very unique. This kind of spoon is concave around and convex in the middle. When frying the noodle nest, scoop a spoonful of rice milk to one side, scrape it in the middle, then sprinkle with sesame seeds and put it in the pot. If there is more rice milk in the concave parts of the dough, the fried dough will be soft and waxy; if there is less rice milk in the convex areas, the fried dough will be crispy. One food, taking into account two tastes.

蕋面面

苕 means sweet potato in Wuhan dialect, and 蕋面面 is also a noodle nest made of sweet potatoes.

Wash the sweet potatoes, peel them, cut them into small cubes, and add them to the rice milk. When frying, scoop a spoon into the fried noodle nest and flatten it out of the pan. The characteristic of the sweet potato noodle nest is that it is crispy on the outside and soft and waxy on the inside, with a salty and sweet taste.

Whether it is a noodle nest or a sweet potato noodle nest, it can be eaten alone or as a companion food to hot dry noodles, rice noodles or soup noodles.

Soda Baba

Soda Baba, also known as rice dada, is not only found in Wuhan, but also in various parts of Hubei.

This is a kind of pure rice food. After the rice is ground into pulp, it is slightly fermented with fermented glutinous rice. The resulting cake has a soft and sweet taste in the mouth, but a slightly sour aftertaste, giving it a three-dimensional texture. .

The iron pot used to make soda popsicles is very large, with a diameter of one meter to one and a half meters. There is a pit in the center of the iron pot and the surrounding is flat. After the pot is hot, rice milk must be added to the pot. The two lumps of rice milk must be connected together to form a complete rice cake. After adding the rice milk, add water to the pit in the middle, cover the pot and increase the heat. In this way, the rice milk below will quickly fry out a hard shell, and the water in the pit will generate a lot of steam to steam the other side of the rice cake. This is what the "soda" in soda pop refers to.

The rice cake made in this way looks like a shortbread on one side, while the other side is very soft and glutinous like a cake. There are no shops specializing in making soda poppies in Wuhan, and street stalls can be seen everywhere. Some people sandwich a dough nest between two pieces of soda cake and call it a "Wuhan sandwich".

Jianbao

Jianbao is not a unique snack in Wuhan, and in terms of reputation, the fried buns in the Jiangsu and Shanghai areas are more famous. But the status of fried dumplings in Wuhan's breakfast world is not low. Today, in the Minsheng Dessert Restaurants in the three towns of Wuhan, the indispensable snacks are hot dry noodles, tofu skin, rice wine and fried dumplings.

Wuhan’s fried buns are smaller than Shanghai’s fried buns, and unlike those in Shanghai and Suzhou where they are eaten with vinegar, Wuhan’s fried buns are eaten with sauce, and each restaurant’s sauce has different flavors. Similarly, the fried buns at Sanzhen Minsheng Dessert Restaurant are very popular, largely because of the delicious dipping sauce.

Nuttinous Rice Chicken

There is a lotus leaf glutinous rice chicken in Cantonese tea, but Wuhan’s glutinous rice chicken is completely different from it, because there is no chicken in Wuhan glutinous rice chicken.

To be precise, this kind of snack should be called glutinous rice balls, which are glutinous rice wrapped with pork belly, shiitake mushrooms, diced bamboo shoots, and dried fragrant seeds. They are then wrapped in batter and deep-fried until golden, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Waxy and salty. As for the reason why it is called glutinous rice chicken, it is unclear. Some people think that the fried glutinous rice chicken has a golden appearance and an uneven surface, shaped like chicken skin, so it is called glutinous rice chicken.

Glutinous rice chicken is one of the most common snacks in Wuhan. Any stall with fried snacks will have glutinous rice chicken.