Hunan Cuisine (Part One)
Hunan Cuisine (Part One)
Dear friends:
Hello, everyone! Now that you're in Hunan, how could you not try Hunan cuisine? Hunan cuisine, also known as Xiang cuisine, gets its name from "Xiang," the abbreviation for Hunan Province. To help you gain some understanding of Hunan cuisine, I will share with you everything I know.
The reason Hunan cuisine can stand alongside Shandong, Sichuan, Fujian, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Anhui cuisines as one of China's famous Eight Great Cuisine Schools is that it is renowned worldwide for its unique cultural heritage and distinctive style. Hunan's culinary tradition is an important component of Chinese cuisine, sharing the common features of Chinese cooking—"flavor as the core, nourishment as the purpose." At the same time, it is a highly distinctive flavor school with a very pronounced character. Hunan cuisine also enjoys considerable international renown; it is a Chinese flavor eagerly promoted by Western media, with dishes like "Dong'an Chicken" proving quite popular in North America. Even the stinky tofu from Changsha's Fire Palace was noted down in a notebook by former U.S. President Bush. Therefore, Hunan cuisine cannot be explained in just a few words, and I will present it to you in several parts. First, I'd like to address the question you care about most: What are the characteristics of Hunan cuisine? How does it differ from other cuisine schools?
Hunan cuisine embodies a profound Huxiang cultural heritage. The rich natural products of Hunan, the multi-ethnic social, historical, and cultural composition of the province, its uniquely charming humanistic traditions, its agricultural production that led other regions of China, and its relatively developed urban handicrafts and commerce—all of these laid a solid material, spiritual, and cultural foundation for the emergence, development, and perfection of Hunan cuisine. It is precisely on this unique socio-cultural soil that Hunan cuisine, crystallizing the collective wisdom of generations of Hunan people, has become a spectacular flower in the garden of China's culinary culture. It presents itself to the world with its unique style and alluring charm, and will bloom even more brilliantly in the near future.
The greatest characteristic of Hunan cuisine is "harmony in diversity." People often say: "Anhui is sweet, Hubei is salty; Fujian and Zhejiang are salty yet sweet; Ningxia, Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Qinghai are spicy and sweet with salt added. Shanxi has vinegar, Shandong has salt; the three northeastern provinces are salty with a touch of sour; Guizhou and Jiangxi, Hunan and Hubei love chili and garlic; the most numbing and spicy is Sichuan. Guangdong is fresh, Jiangsu is mild; ethnic minorities are unique in style." So how does Hunan cuisine differ from other cuisine schools? Let us first look at the characteristics of the four major cuisine schools: Guangdong, Shandong, Sichuan, and Huaiyang.
The characteristics of Guangdong cuisine are: a vast and exotic range of ingredients, adapted to the changing seasons; emphasis on color, aroma, and freshness, with distinctions of five flavors and six tastes; refined cooking techniques; precise knife work; and an extraordinary variety of dishes.
The characteristics of Shandong cuisine are: meticulous preparation, expertise in cooking seafood, attention to heat control, emphasis on flavor with freshness as the priority; carefully selected ingredients, fine knife work, skilled use of stocks; long renowned for being clear and fresh, crisp with salt, tender, and pure in taste.
The characteristics of Sichuan cuisine are: careful selection of ingredients, fine knife work; color-coordinated dish arrangement with clear primary and secondary elements; emphasis on soups with natural tones; comprehensive use of flavors with rich reduced sauces; highlighting the primary flavor with special attention to freshness; bold numbing-and-spicy flavors with a unique style; diverse preparation methods with strict attention to heat control.
The characteristics of Huaiyang cuisine are: a tendency toward sweet flavors, refreshing and palatable; prominent main ingredients, fine knife work, harmonious color pairing, rich and savory; seasonal dishes appearing in timely succession; particular expertise in preparing river crab and lake crab; and melon and fruit carvings that are remarkably lifelike.
It is not hard to see that the four major cuisine schools are largely similar with minor differences. If you taste carefully, you can easily sense: Guangdong cuisine emphasizes lightness, Shandong cuisine favors richness, Sichuan cuisine loves numbing spice, and Huaiyang cuisine prefers sweetness. The outstanding features of Hunan cuisine lie in: a wide variety of dishes, carefully selected ingredients, rich flavors, and excellent aroma. As many great gourmets have said: its color is true and flavor is rich, like aged fine wine; its fragrance is rich and lingering, like the finest tea. Some have summarized it as: fine knife work, beauty in both form and taste; diverse cooking methods with special emphasis on simmering; skilled at seasoning with a focus on spiciness. It is evident that Hunan cuisine differs from the sweetness of the east, the lightness of the south, the numbing spice of the west, and the salty freshness of the north—it is "harmonious yet distinct," stressing "piping hot, amply spicy, uniquely fragrant, and the harmony of five flavors."
Piping hot: In Hunan culinary jargon, there is a saying that "one boil equals three fresh flavors." Amply spicy: A Hunan folk saying goes, "No dish is complete without spiciness." Uniquely fragrant: After eating Hunan cuisine, people often describe it as "fragrance lingering on the lips and teeth," showing that the aroma of Hunan cuisine is extraordinary. Sometimes the importance of fragrance can surpass that of taste. For example, winter bamboo shoots with cured meat: the delicate fragrance of winter bamboo shoots merges with the "smoky aroma" of cured meat, plus the pungency of garlic and chili—truly a dish that makes you open your mouth upon smelling it. The so-called harmony of five flavors means: each flavor is distinct, each flavor is clear, each flavor stands out; whether it's the original taste, a unique freshness, a distinctive braised flavor, or a complex blend of multiple tastes. The key to achieving this level lies in five aspects that lay the solid foundation for Hunan cuisine's "harmony in diversity":
First, Hunan as a "land of fish and rice" provides unique ingredients. For example, soft-shelled turtle, mountain tortoise, and mandarin fish come from Dongting Lake; cured meat from western Hunan, winter bamboo shoots from Dawei Mountain, and tofu from Mount Heng all come from the mountains, with textures unlike any others.
Second, the support of unique folk seasonings. Liuyang's fermented black beans, Xiangtan's Longpai soy sauce, Shuangfeng's chili paste, Ningxiang's chili peppers, Changsha's Yuhe vinegar, Liuyang River xiaoqu rice wine, Loudi's mountain pepper oil, Youxian's garlic, and Liling's ginger are renowned far and wide and unique throughout the country.
Third, the support of unique cooking techniques. Take chicken for example: Guangdong cuisine's white-cut chicken has crisp skin, tender meat, and slightly pinkish bone; Shandong cuisine's Dezhou braised chicken is fall-off-the-bone tender without being greasy, with a delicious taste; while Hunan cuisine's Dong'an Chicken is numbing, spicy, fresh, sour, crisp, and tender—tangy and refreshing to eat, sweet and mellow, rich yet not greasy, with the delicate fragrance of braised chicken, the crisp tenderness of roast chicken, and the savory richness of stewed chicken—never tiresome to eat. The key is that Hunan cooks select the right ingredients for Dong'an Chicken, control the oil temperature precisely, and use yellow vinegar, ginger, and chili in proper proportions.
Fourth, the Tongguan Kiln and Liling porcelain provide advantages for Hunan cuisine's cooking and plating. Hunan cuisine combines the elegant and the rustic, with unique natural advantages. For example, soup dishes simmered in earthenware pots from Tongguan Kiln have a unique delicate fragrance, like a lotus emerging from clear water, naturally free of artificial embellishment—fresh and refreshing, rich yet not diluted.
Fifth, the influence of Huxiang culture makes Hunan cuisine inclusive and adaptable. The Hunan people's pragmatic approach to practical affairs has led them to respect tradition while daring to transcend it, integrating techniques from north and south, connecting Chinese and Western methods, and innovating between old and new. In Hunan dishes, you can detect the flavors of Sichuan cuisine, see the grandeur of Shandong cuisine, discover traces of Huaiyang cuisine, and find the delicate freshness of Guangdong cuisine. Likewise, you can see the integration of Western cooking techniques such as roasting and baking. Through compatibility in varieties, ingredients, methods, and seasonings, the people of Hunan have created a Hunan cuisine that keeps pace with the times.
When some people mention Hunan cuisine, the first thing that comes to mind is those bright red chili peppers, and they typically assume it's just about spiciness. The most widely circulated folk saying is: "Sichuan people aren't afraid of spiciness, Guizhou people fear no spiciness, Hunan people fear it's not spicy enough." Hunan people's love of spice is known nationwide, even surpassing that of Sichuan people who also love spicy food. But saying Hunan cuisine is only about spiciness is not entirely accurate, because spiciness is common throughout southwestern China, and their spiciness differs: Sichuan is numbing-spicy, Guizhou is fragrant-spicy, Yunnan is fresh-spicy, Shaanxi is salty-spicy, and Hunan is sour-spicy. This sourness mainly comes from pickled vegetables, different from vinegar—sour without being harsh, mellow and gentle, combining with spiciness to form a unique flavor. Especially in the home cooking of rural and mountain households, they simply cannot go a day without sour-spicy food. This sourness and spiciness together form an organic flavor whole: often sour with spiciness, spicy with a hint of sour; sourness masking spiciness, spiciness melding with sourness; both sour and spicy, complementing each other; creating a most pleasant and refreshing taste when eaten.
Hunan cooking features sour-spicy flavors as its mainstay, which is an optimal choice for health preservation and a manifestation of dietary health culture. Due to Hunan's unique topography and its location at the meeting point of warm, moist air currents from the Bay of Bengal and the Pacific Ocean, with annual precipitation of 1,300–1,800 millimeters and a dense network of rivers and streams, the region from mountains to plains has since ancient times been called a "low-lying, damp land." People living here are constantly affected by internal cold and heat, easily developing dampness-related illnesses. Pungent foods that induce sweating, dispel dampness, and relieve stagnation became the inevitable choice. On the other hand, the balance of hot-spicy and cold-sour—the opening spiciness and the astringent sourness mutually restraining and coordinating with each other—has provided the people of Hunan with health-preserving protection, allowing them to thrive on this unique land. This is precisely the scientific explanation of Hunan cuisine's sour-spicy flavor—the dialectical unity of taste art and food science—and the essence of Hunan's culinary culture.
Hunan's chefs excel at managing sour-spicy flavors. They can adjust according to different settings—from casual eateries to banquets—different clientele, different regions, climates and seasons, as well as different ingredients and dish styles, making sour-spicy flavors range from light to rich, from mild to intense, achieving just the right balance. Hunan chefs are adept at mastering the characteristic of chili that "masks flavors without overpowering them," harmonizing a hundred flavors under the cover of spiciness, allowing people to taste a hundred flavors through the spice—including lake freshness, seafood, fresh bamboo shoots, fresh mushrooms, and even Hunan specialties like fermented black beans, cured meats, tea oil, and mushroom oil—all can emerge through the spiciness. This skill is displayed to its fullest only in Hunan.
Hunan's cooking inherits historical traditions, gathers the finest from across the province, broadly absorbs information from home and abroad, and through the blending, refinement, and sublimation by master chefs, creates representative Hunan dishes and dim sum that fully display the power of knife work and heat control. In color, form, aroma, taste, and texture, they are both noble and elegant, splendid and magnificent; also fresh and delicately understated, beautiful and free; and rustic and antique, bold and magnificent—this is the epitome of Hunan cooking, the representative of a major Chinese flavor school. Faced with its flavor characteristics, diners have never been deterred by the sour-spicy taste; on the contrary, they are captivated and enchanted by it. Otherwise, how could Zeng Guangjun, a Hanlin Academy scholar, have written the famous lines that spread far and wide: "Spicy chicken and soup-soaked tripe, make one always remember Yuloudong"?
Eating Hunan cuisine has now become a fashion! According to preliminary estimates, in major cities like Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, Hunan restaurants number as many as 2,000 or more, with at least several hundred even in smaller numbers. Even in international metropolises like Paris, Rome, and New York, Hunan cuisine has a presence. When asking on an American street where to find a Chinese restaurant, an ordinary American might even respond: "You mean Hunan cuisine?" This shows just how popular Hunan cuisine has become. Today, the famous Hunan restaurant in Beijing is still the Quyuan Restaurant, a China Time-Honored Brand on Fuwai Avenue, which has been in the capital for over half a century since 1949. It is said that after the ten marshals of New China were granted their ranks, a state banquet was held at Quyuan Restaurant featuring Hunan cuisine to honor the heroes. The restaurant was also honored to receive a huge "Hunan embroidery" from the Great Hall of the People that had hung in the Hunan Hall. Celebrities from all walks of life—Huang Miaozi, Dong Shouping, Lou Shibai, Guo Moruo, and others—gladly left their calligraphy at Quyuan, praising the excellence of Hunan cuisine. Ma Kai Restaurant is also a famous Hunan restaurant serving Hunan-style dishes. When it opened in 1953, Mr. Mei Lanfang cut the ribbon in celebration. The "Earth Sheep Banquet" developed here once won a Beijing Science and Technology Progress Award. Ma Kai Restaurant was managed by Master Wang Jingren, a Hunan cuisine master who had formerly served as a family chef for senior national leaders, who directed the kitchen and passed on his craft to apprentices. Famous scholars and literary figures—Zhou Gucheng, Dong Shouping, Tian Han, Qi Baishi, Qi Gong, Ouyang Yuqian, Lu Jiaxi (Chairman of the Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party), renowned traditional Chinese medicine doctor Guan Youbo, and artists Yuan Shihai, Liu Xuetao, Xu Jijia, and others—were all guests at Ma Kai and left behind treasured calligraphy. Mr. Pu Jie wrote a poem: "Outside Di'anmen, before the Drum Tower, a master chef tends the stove, creating splendid feasts; Red Brightness adds the color of Hunan delicacies; crowds flow like a dragon, diners gather eagerly." Today it is still bustling with customers and extraordinarily lively business.
Even in Guangzhou, long famous for its fine food, Hunan cuisine is increasingly attracting numerous diners with its unique flavors. This is why a well-known Guangzhou chef, Tang Hongwei, performed the most traditional apprenticeship ceremony to take "Hunan Cuisine Master" Xu Juyun as his teacher, determined to carry forward traditional Hunan cuisine in Guangzhou's world of gastronomy.
The reason Hunan cuisine has become popular in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Sichuan, and indeed across the country lies in its development and innovation—excellent in color, aroma, taste, and form—with a uniquely individual flavor profile: sour without being harsh, spicy without being burning, rich without being greasy, salty without being alkaline, tender without being raw, light without being bland, thick without being cloying, sweet without being excessive, crisp without being tough. Even Xu Peidong, the composer of "Spicy Girl," said that Hunan cuisine is incredibly popular in Beijing now, and its greatest characteristic is its rich flavor—just like a song, which also needs to be written with rich flavor and ample momentum to be good.
Master Xu Juyun of Hunan cuisine has said: "The key to the development of Hunan cuisine is innovation." Today, Hunan cuisine has grown to over 4,000 dishes, with more than 300 famous dishes. On the basis of traditional Hunan cuisine, it integrates the finest elements of Sichuan, Guangdong, Shandong, and even Huaiyang cuisines, innovating in ingredients, cooking techniques, and all other aspects, blending the strengths of many schools, adding fresh taste sensations, and thereby creating new dishes whose flavors can fully meet the needs of various consumer groups. In Chengdu, Hunan cuisine has absorbed both Sichuan and Hunan styles—adding Changsha dried radish to the traditional Sichuan twice-cooked pork, astonishing Sichuan diners. This perfect combination of color, aroma, and taste can be said to bring out the best in each other. Since early 2000, a type of earthenware-pot slow-cooked soup has become popular in the Chengdu market, and most restaurants serving Hunan cuisine have adopted this variety. Initially it was just single-pot cooking, but later it evolved into large pots nesting small pots, with as many as 20-plus soup varieties. Its distinguishing feature is the incomparably delicious soup—truly remarkable. No wonder some have commented: eating meat is not as good as drinking the soup; the aroma of meat lasts three days, but the freshness of soup lasts seven. Another example is "home-style tofu," a very common dish. In the past it was purely braised; now many chefs use a technique of pan-frying first and then simmering, resulting in a smoother, more tender texture and richer flavor.
Secondly, to meet modern people's health needs, Hunan cuisine's techniques have also changed. Take braised pork, for example—a traditional Hunan dish that Chairman Mao loved most—but it is high in fat. Hunan people now prepare braised pork with a defatting process. Therefore, Hunan cuisine is not only a feast for the eyes in terms of presentation, but also a treat for the tongue in terms of flavor, and even more a healthful cuisine emphasizing nutrition. Hunan people love spice, and chili peppers are rich in vitamins—ranking first among all vegetables—and can dispel cold and dampness, benefiting health. Japanese scholars have scientifically deduced that chili peppers can promote fat metabolism, prevent fat accumulation in the body, and help with weight loss. Hunan cuisine features fish—delicious and nutritious. Fish fat is mostly unsaturated fatty acids, which help lower blood lipids.
In addition, there have been innovations in dish pairings, so that people say: each dish is a unique flavor experience. Take that glistening soy-sauce braised duck—the dark reddish-brown duck pieces have a satisfying chewy texture, and not only is the meat sweet and fragrant, even the bones are savory. With each bite of duck, the more you chew, the more fragrant it becomes, the more you chew, the harder it is to stop. Then pair it with a steamed fish head with chopped chili—the most distinctive dish in Hunan cuisine. That thick layer of red chili presses heavily on the fish head, showcasing the Hunan people's love of spiciness. At the same time, the mild spiciness and crisp fragrance of the chopped chili meld into the tender, fresh flesh of the fish head. After one bite, every pore in your body exudes fragrant, spicy sweat—a truly delightful sensation. Then follow with taro meatballs and boiled greens. After eating until your tongue is tingling and fragrant, a bowl of this refreshing green vegetable soup with the starchy fragrance of taro lets the spiciness slide away to some corner of your stomach—what a refreshing feeling!
At the same time, this is inseparable from Hunan cuisine's "borrow-and-use" approach. Hunan people are not exclusionary; on the contrary, they care greatly about outsiders. An outsider living in Changsha can easily gain acceptance and help, with neighbors offering doubled care, from major matters to small details. This inclusive mentality of Hunan people is naturally reflected in Hunan cuisine's menu.
For example, braised lion's head is a standard Jiangsu (Shanghai) dish, popular in the lower Yangtze River Delta, Qiantang River Delta, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and parts of Anhui and Jiangxi. The standard braised lion's head is essentially a large braised meatball; it is called "lion's head" because the meatball is truly enormous—each one is the size of a small fist, weighing even around half a jin. Those who have tried it often find it hard to forget—both the taste of the lion's head itself (fluffy meat, fresh flavor, well-balanced seasoning) and the appreciation of the pickled vegetables (sweet and mellow, chewy with lasting flavor). When this dish enters Hunan cuisine, it typically retains its original character.
Another example is the cold dish series. Hunan cuisine has always had its own cold dishes, such as cold cucumber, spicy purslane, sesame oil chives, spicy sword beans, roasted chili with century eggs, spicy dried bamboo shoots, cold rice noodles, and century egg with tofu... But modern Hunan cuisine does not reject foreign cold vegetable dishes like spicy broccoli, sweet-and-sour seaweed, oyster sauce cauliflower, cold celery, or blanched snow pea shoots—some are even casually adopted, following naturally. As for cold meat dishes, Hunan cuisine has always had: red oil pig ears, sweet-and-sour spare ribs, spicy river shrimp, and five-spice braised chicken—but it also does not reject foreign dishes like fried grasshoppers, ginger-vinegar beef tripe, crystal duck webs, rose-flavored meat, drunken shrimp in fermented tofu sauce, and mustard white tripe.
And then there are snacks. Scraped rice jelly, white rice balls, rock sugar lotus seeds, traditional sweet fermented rice, fire-baked fish, and lotus root starch are all famous Hunan dim sum. But mung bean paste, pea cakes, job's tears with pork tripe, and five-ingredient pigeon are imported varieties. Especially fried dough sticks and baked sesame cakes, which are famous northern snacks brought by the liberation war.
Hunan cuisine is rich because of its inclusiveness; Hunan cuisine develops because of its ability to absorb. Inclusiveness is the fundamental reason for Hunan cuisine's continuous growth and expansion. Therefore, the character of Hunan cuisine is determined by its specific spatial and temporal conditions, and with the addition of specific humanistic factors, it has formed a unique Hunan culinary culture. This is the material and spiritual wealth created by the people of Hunan in their culinary practice.