Although I am a northeasterner, I travel to the northeast once a year, yes, not home, is a trip.
This point around me a lot of friends, including my parents are not very understanding, the entire eastern provinces are very different, accent eating are similar, there is nothing to swim?
I give them a dismissive look every time and say, "You don't know anything about the Northeast. The northeast includes Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning and the five eastern leagues of Inner Mongolia, north by Russia, east by North Korea, west by Inner Mongolia, and south by the immigrant culture of breaking into the East, with a northeast generalization is too one-sided.
Of course, in addition to seeing the border forest grassland lake big snow, there is an important project is to eat barbecue.
Northeast barbecue is really good, but it also leads to the same thing when people think of Northeast barbecue only one label: delicious. Although this is already highly praised, but too one-sided, leading people to lazy in-depth understanding, for example, there are Russian-style skewers, there are Inner Mongolia-style grilled leg of lamb, there are Korean-style sweet and spicy mouth skewers, and then subdivided, there are Hegang, Jiamusi, Jinzhou, Dandong, Hunchun and so on and so many small local schools.
So much barbecue, but also step by step began to blossom in southern cities, for example, I saw a while ago in the Meituan's "2022 China barbecue industry consumption development report" said that in 2021, the number of northeast-style barbecue stores in the Sanya area grew 66.67% year-on-year in 2020, and the number of orders traded online in 2021 grew 48.18% year-on-year.
How to say it, the northeast barbecue is like a how can not finish the book, jerk a string has a string of surprises.
You can never eat the whole Northeast barbecue, unless you travel to every canton in the Northeast.
Although not so much as a village in Jiangsu and Zhejiang have different characteristics, but in the 1.52 million square kilometers of the northeast, said a city a barbecue characteristics is not too much. So you will find that the barbecue store, the first words of the northeastern brother after seating is usually: what are the characteristics of your home?
The subtext of this sentence is: without the characteristics of what to open a store ah.
Liaoning Shenyang area coal scorched sub fire grilled chicken rack is the eternal king of the streets and alleys, several raw chicken rack laid flat in the iron net, under the sizzling fire, chicken meat cooked chicken bones charred crispy, that heavy charred smell, is the fatal attraction of the chicken rack, but also the remnants of heavy industry in Shenyang.
Jilin Yanbian region, the main Korean flavor, kebabs marinated in advance, a table and a stove, the following is a charcoal fire rack, the upper and lower two layers of the grill, a layer of grilled meat a layer of insulation, do it yourself, now eat now grilled. Marinated yellow beef is tender and juicy, dipped in dipping sauce and wrapped in soursop leaves, the fragrance of freshness wrapped in meat is the food matching wisdom of Korean people.
The specialty of Qiqihar, Heilongjiang is freshly cut beef and lamb, simply dry mixed and then roasted directly on the stove, known for its straightforwardness and rawness. Here near the grasslands, good beef and lamb, every day there is a constant flow of fresh cattle and sheep over, good meat plus fresh, grilled meat charred with a share of milk, on the stove zhi la zhi la hook soul.
The same province of Jiamusi is characterized by grilled cakes with meat skewers, the baked dough cakes are cut open and the meat skewers are placed inside and clamped together, then the iron skewers are pulled out one by one, the grease slowly seeps into the crust, and the aroma of the meat and grains sizzling is superimposed, a temptation to eat dozens of skewers and have another one.
And only 70 kilometers from Jiamusi, Hegang, barbecue features a different style, where people do the best with beef, a small beef skewer is divided into medium rare, rare and fully cooked, and different cow parts such as the chest, heart tube, small intestine, tendon skin. Looking at the menu, you can't help but sigh: in the matter of eating cattle, South Chaoshan, North Hegang.
Further to the small, even in Hegang, the resident population of only 900,000 people in the city, each barbecue taste are also innovative, and even my friends in Hegang said that the geographical overview is too biased, Northeast barbecue, you have to take the store to summarize.
As the saying goes, if there is a demand, there is a market, there is a market, there is competition, there is competition, there is an internal volume.
So every time I go to a new place I am amazed with the ingenuity of the people of the Northeast in grilling. Even once felt that the northeastern people pioneered the northern wilderness, drilling out of Daqing oil, the spirit of drilling and research to open up the mountains did not disappear, it continues in another way, that is, barbecue.
For example, conceptually, the northeasterners are very finely divided. Northeast barbecue including barbecue, skewers and other, in the street if you see Zhao Si barbecue, the probability is a skewer store, see Liu Neng barbecue, that is a barbecue store, see grilled chicken frame, grilled leg of lamb, that is the part of the special store.
On what to roast, the northeast insists on the principle of roasting as long as it can be eaten, such as Itong roast pigeon, choose eliminated pigeons as raw materials, wash and inject the material juice into the pigeon meat, first wrapped in tinfoil and buried in the charcoal fire until 80% mature, then roasted and cooked in the open. The pigeon is muscular and fatty with little fat and tastes firm and elastic.
For example, hairy eggs, i.e. chick fetuses, are roasted by cracking out a hole and skewering them on an iron skewer to cook, when the chicks with their undergrown hair and still soft bones are soft and smooth to eat.
And then baked beef marrow, tofu, pupae, eggs, pineapple, durian, dates, instant noodles, flying in the sky and running on the ground as long as you want, there is nothing can not be baked.
After the ingredients that can be eaten are grilled all over, the northeasterners in the barbecue innovation from horizontal development to vertical development, in addition to the above-mentioned Hegang, the cow directly to the extreme, the northeasterners can also be completely like the Japanese yakitori, the chicken is broken down into small pieces: the head can be grilled, the crown can also be grilled, and then there is the next chicken neck, chicken breast and legs, the wings are divided into the front, middle and back three parts plus chicken whole wings, the chicken frame is divided into crispy bones, collarbone and the whole, fragmented split into chicken heart, gizzard, chicken butt, and finally at the same time can not let go of chicken feet - oh, this is called chicken claws in the Northeast.
Different parts of the meat should be roasted in different ways, just flip back and forth on the oven that is the practice of novices, the real masters, good at using ordinary seasoning to make each kind of meat to the most perfect look. For example, the skin of the chicken must be sprinkled with sugar, the chicken frame in Fushun area is sprinkled with sugar and sprayed with vinegar, the small skewers in Changchun need to walk in garlic water, and the sheep in Inner Mongolia cannot have any seasoning, everything must be just right.
The same exaggerated and dipping ingredients, to say the small, northeast barbecue dipping ingredients are divided into dry and wet ingredients, that to say the big family the same. For example, Qiqihar and Yanbian dry ingredients are divided into three kinds, I will call the red red spicy, with peach crisp fragrant peanuts not spicy and the combination of the two slightly spicy.
There are also three kinds of sauces, the common one is the secret soy sauce, put some green onion to garnish that is, Yanbian area has a special spicy sauce, some garlic taste some sweet, some parts of Liaoning dipped in sesame sauce, put some sugar, chili, and add a spoon of cold noodle soup, Liaoning people will never die for sweet.
On the side dishes also vary from place to place - yes, you will see rare leafy greens in the Northeast BBQ. Yanbian likes to wrap grilled meat and skewers in soursop leaves, while elsewhere it's usually just lettuce.
Garlic and chili rings are standard when wrapping vegetables, but in Jiamusi, Hegang, Jixi and other places, the table is usually also put a few heads of hairy onion, hairy onion is a mini version of onion, the flavor is strong but not overly spicy, juicy sweetness is also high.
Innovation is also not only on the string, when the string has tended to be perfect, the next thing to enhance, is the service.
You may have long seen the opulence of the Northeast bath, likewise, the Northeast barbecue has long been not that in the roadside plastic benches on the stalls.
Five years ago, I have been to a bar with a resident, magic kebab bar, according to the owner of the store, this is the first Shenyang area so engaged in the barbecue store, from here on out every night full, and the surrounding businesses compete to imitate. As for why so engaged, the boss said only one sentence: eat barbecue on a lively, why not make him more lively.
3 years ago, my sister's wedding bachelor party is also organized in the barbecue store, the same can order songs to watch the show, but the most exaggerated is that you can WeChat sweep the code to send a pop-up, so that night in my tireless efforts, the entire kebab store people know that my sister is getting married tomorrow in the largest local hotel.
Last year, I went back home to meet with my friends and wanted to find a quiet place to talk, but she took me to a skewer store, and I thought to myself, this voice chatter? I didn't realize that this kebab store was decorated like a cafe in Sanlitun, and the sunlight hit my face, so I thought I was eating brunch on the banks of the Seine in France.
Previously also saw a news: 95 years after the Hegang guy operating a small skewer annual income of one million, skewer master monthly salary of 6000-8000 yuan, there are even people flirting with the boss salary "30 years can buy down the Hegang".
I thought I had seen more of the city after leaving the Northeast, but every time I go to a kebab store, I am acutely aware of my ignorance and shallowness.
Even I would like to say: how many surprises do you have that I do not know?
And the latest surprise is that it has become easier and easier for me to eat kebabs from various parts of the Northeast in various parts of China.
The above-mentioned Hegang small skewers alone, in the "2022 China BBQ Industry Consumption Development Report" by Meituan, said that Hegang small skewers online stores rose continuously, 31.37% in 2021 compared to last year, and the year-on-year growth rate of "Hegang small skewers" in 2021 was 51.76%.
Northeast although the population is shrinking, but go out of the Northeast, either with a barbecue technology, so that the Northeast barbecue stores everywhere, or with the love of barbecue and picky, with their own power to improve the bottom line of the taste of barbecue throughout China, expanding the boundaries of people's perception of barbecue.
I really do not blow, China's barbecue can develop to this extent, the northeast accounted for at least half of the credit.
Author - Jiang Jiang
Design - Full Director
Editor - Jiang Jiang
