Why do Li people like to eat rice? What are the special staple foods of Li nationality?

Rice is the staple food of Li people's life, and they attach great importance to the protection of food. In mountainous areas, there are small granaries near the village; In the coastal plain area, every household has a big bamboo basket for storing grain. People usually use a single wooden bucket or clay pot to preserve rice. Rice is ground with wooden mortar or bamboo. There are three kinds of rice: white rice, Redmi and glutinous rice. White rice and Redmi are the raw materials for making rice balls, making jiaozi and making wine.

The process of cooking rice is: make a fire in a triangle stone furnace and put it in a pot. After the water in the pot is boiled, press the rice under the water and stir it evenly with a spoon. The heat is moderate. When the rice is half cooked, cover the pot, take out the firewood from the stove, and stew the rice into delicious rice with the waste heat of charcoal.

Due to the midwest of Hainan Island, the sunshine time is long and the weather is hot. It is common to cook porridge all day in the morning. When cooking, rice is generally not washed, thinking that washing rice will lose nutrition. After the rice is cooked, wash it in cold water and make porridge. Drinking rice soup instead of boiled water in daily life makes porridge cool and delicious, quenching thirst and filling the stomach. Li called "porridge" Tarnum. "Chi" has different names in different dialects of Li language. There are names such as "Lata", "Lota", "Mata" and "Detou", which are generally based on "Lata" in Baoyu Town dialect of Ledong.

Second, Shan Lan rice.

Shan Lan rice is a kind of upland rice, and Wuzhishan area is rich in Shan Lan rice. Li people develop mountain vegetable gardens in mountainous areas by slash and burn, and plant mountain rice, corn, potatoes and melons. Sow mountain rice in April every year and harvest it in autumn. Shan Lan rice is excellent in quality and rich in nutrition. When cooked, it smells fragrant and is the top grade for the Li family to welcome guests.

Third, bamboo rice.

Soak rice in water, filter dry, mix with lean meat, spiced meat and appropriate amount of salt, put it in a bamboo tube (made of young bamboos of raw mangosteen or Yunzhu), then put in appropriate amount of water, and block the seal with banana leaves. Then put the bamboo tube into the fire and bake it slowly to make bamboo tube dry rice. Li Yu called bamboo rice "plum pill". Bamboo rice is fragrant and delicious, and people often take it for dinner when they go out for a long trip. Bamboo rice should also be cooked during the festival. Bamboo rice is not perishable and can be kept for a week. Contemporary bamboo rice has become people's favorite to taste Li's flavor at hotel banquets.