Traditional hotpot

Golden September and Silver 10 is the golden season to eat instant-boiled mutton. Instant-boiled mutton originated in the northeast. According to legend, Kublai Khan of Yuan Shizu led an army to the north and wanted to eat stewed mutton. At this time, the enemy attacked, and the stewed mutton could not be eaten. The cook came up with a way to cut the mutton into thin slices, stir it in boiling water, scoop it up in a bowl and add salt. Kublai Khan ate a big meal and felt the meat was particularly tender and warm.

The choice of traditional instant-boiled mutton and mutton slices is very strict. A goat with a lot of meat and a strong smell is not desirable. Therefore, the old-fashioned restaurants that mainly focus on instant-boiled mutton generally choose Beikou, that is, Zhangjiakou and Xikou, which are small-tailed sheep produced in Inner Mongolia and castrated rams, because this kind of sheep has no smell.

There are strict requirements for the weight of sheep: to eat instant-boiled mutton in autumn, you should choose grass sheep that weigh about 20 kilograms and grow up eating grass; To eat instant-boiled mutton in winter, you should choose a grass sheep that weighs about 30 kg and is fed with distiller's grains, bean skin, sesame sauce residue and sweet potato seedlings. Why? Because the sheep are not fat enough, the sheep are big, the meat is too old, and the sheep are fat and tired of eating. When they returned to the fat sheep, the taste was wrong. Standard sheep are not so easy to find, so many time-honored restaurants, such as Donglaishun in Beijing and Yongyuande in Tianjin, raise their own sheep and slaughter them for their own use.

Not all the meat of sheep selected according to this standard can be eaten by rinsing. Because the activity is small and the meat is tender, it is cooked at once. Muscles such as front legs and tendons are old and hard because of their large activity, which is not suitable for rinsing. This is the experience summed up from practice.

Specifically, there are only five parts that really meet the standard of "cooked in one rinse": the upper brain, also known as Tongji, is thin and fat at the upper part of the sheep's neck; Trident, the part behind the sixth rib; Big trident, one thin and one fat, commonly known as one heavy; On the film, the position of the sheep's ass is all thin; Cucumber strips, the real hind legs, have a fat edge attached to lean meat. Let's just say that if a sheep weighs 20 kilograms, the meat that can be rinsed is only about 5 kilograms, accounting for a quarter.

Even if you choose clean meat strictly, you can't rinse it at once. Cutting is a superb technology. Instant-boiled mutton has strict requirements on the cutting method of mutton slices: select clean meat, freeze it in freezer, compact it, put it on the meat pier, cover it with white cloth, leave only a little meat edge, cut it along the shredded pork with a knife tip, hold the knife steadily and evenly, and cut large slices five or six times in a row. Because the cutting action is not done in one go, the meat slices are not flat, but are similar to shavings and become meat rolls. Generally speaking, it is the most standard to cut a catty of mutton into fifty or seventy pieces. In the past, restaurants used to eat instant-boiled mutton, but now mutton slices are all cut and sold, paying attention to selling "finger meat", that is, chefs cut meat where customers want.

The seasoning of instant-boiled mutton is very particular Sesame sauce should be prepared raw and cooked, bean curd with soy sauce should be ground into pulp, chili oil should be sauteed with a small mill, chives should be refined, and soy sauce, shrimp oil, cooking wine, coriander, shrimp oil, vinegar, coriander and sugar garlic can also be added. The soup at the bottom of the pot includes Chinese cabbage, fine vermicelli, and some dried seaweed, seaweed, winter vegetables and mushrooms. Real old-fashioned instant-boiled mutton also uses copper hot pot and charcoal fire. This hot pot has high heat transfer coefficient and good heat preservation, and the mutton slices rinsed out are tender and pure.

There are two methods of instant-boiled mutton: warm eating and strong eating. "Wenchi" is to pick up mutton slices with chopsticks, drag them around in boiling water, then loosen the chopsticks and pick them up again, in order to rinse the place where the chopsticks are caught; "Wu Chi" is to pick up a few pieces of mutton, put it in a shabu-shabu, bake it and scoop it up with a small fence.

Donglaishun is the most famous mutton hotpot restaurant in Beijing. Needless to say, the most famous instant-boiled mutton restaurant in Tianjin is Yongyuande. There is an old saying in Tianjin: "Drink Zhengxingde for tea and Yongyuande for instant-boiled mutton." Explain the position of Yongyuande in the hearts of Tianjin people.

Yongyuande Restaurant is located in Rongji Street, Heather. Until the 1980 s, the tradition of self-slaughter and self-use was maintained. After selecting clean meat, the remaining meat is made into patties, steamed dumplings and take-away stuffing. In addition to instant-boiled mutton, this restaurant is also famous for its Beijing-style mutton cakes, stewed beef, iron bowls of eggs and sauteed tenderloin.

In the early 1980s, there was a Le Jia restaurant in Jinjiayao Street, Hebei District, which was run by a self-employed Zhang Jinlin and his wife, with an area of only 13 square meters. There are three dining tables in the shop, selling crispy rice in summer and instant-boiled mutton and water-fried tripe in other seasons. This is the earliest individual restaurant in Tianjin in the 1980s. At that time, mutton slices sold for one yuan and twenty cents a catty, and it was less than one yuan for one person to rinse half a catty of mutton slices and four sesame cakes. (Text: He Yuxin)