The Sinosphere · Volume 27, The Iron Pot, the Frozen Pear and the Railway’s Own Sausage
Suan Cai Dun Bai Rou Xuechang
Liaoning and Jilin
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 2 hours
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Its origin is tied to Manchu shamanic sacrificial practice: after the household's pig was slaughtered, traditionally around Spring Festival, the cooked pork offered to the spirits was called "blessed meat," the blood was stuffed into cleaned intestine casing to make blood sausage, and both were shared among family and neighbours once the ritual had passed. Fatty cuts went into salt jars for the rest of the year; the remainder went straight to the table.
As tradition built it
Serves 4 to 6. About 2 hours, plus at least a month for the suan cai (see rung 1).
Ingredients
- 1 kg homemade suan cai (see rung 1), shredded
- 800 g skin-on pork belly
- 1 spring onion, 3 slices ginger scallion and ginger, for the pork
- 600 g fresh pig's blood, or a good UK-sourced blood sausage, see Sourcing
- 150 ml water, if making the sausage from scratch
- 4 g salt, 1 g MSG or bouillon, 6 g mixed amomum, cassia bark and clove salt, a little MSG or bouillon, ground amomum, cassia bark and clove
- to cover good pork or bone stock, to cover
Method
- If making the blood sausage: let the blood settle, then take the clearer upper layer and mix with the water, salt and spices. Pour into cleaned casing, tie off, and simmer very gently, just below a boil, until it floats. Cool and slice.
- Cover the pork belly with water, add scallion and ginger, bring to the boil, then simmer 20 minutes. Cool and slice thinly.
- Bring a good stock to a simmer in a wide pot. Add the shredded suan cai and let it cook through, 20 to 30 minutes.
- Return the sliced pork belly to the pot and warm through, roughly 80 per cent doneness, then add the sliced blood sausage.
- Serve straight from the pot, eaten in order, the source tradition says, white meat first, then blood sausage, then the suan cai last as a palate-refreshing finish.
What a modern chef changes
A precision water bath for the pork, and a cleaner-set sausage.
Not a numbered rung; the chapter's own application of the reader's kit to a dish whose logic is otherwise unchanged.
Method
- Cook the pork belly sous vide, 72°C for 12 hours, rather than a short simmer, for a more evenly tender result edge to edge, then chill and slice thinly cold before the final warming step, a genuine improvement a controlled water bath gives this specific cut.
- Set the blood sausage mixture in a low, steady sous vide bath, around 75°C, rather than a watched pot, for a silkier, more evenly set texture than a simmer that can easily overshoot.
- Strain the finished broth through a chinois before serving, for a cleaner presentation without losing the suan cai's own body, added back in after straining.