Tag Archives: vinegar

Balancing the Five Flavours – for a healthy body and a harmonious society

Posted on by
7

The ability to perfectly balance flavours is what separates a chef from a cook

If the goal of eating and drinking is to maintain and improve health, then the typical single most important element in food would be nutrition. The Chinese, however, focus on colour, fragrance, taste and form in food, looking for refinement in food vessels and elegance of the dining environment, demonstrating an artistic spirit. Hence, from the beginnings of documented history, the Chinese advocated the philosophy of ‘harmony between the five flavours (wuweitiaohe)’. It could be related to one of the core concepts of Confucianism: ‘harmonious society (hexie shehui)’. The Chinese invented ways to adjust blended ingredients and spices for a wide variety of tastes. Revolving around the ‘five flavours, which are sourness, sweetness, bitterness, pungency and saltiness, dishes can evolve into more than hundreds of different flavours.

Saltiness xian 咸

Of the ‘five flavours’, saltiness is the principal flavour. It is the simplest and simultaneously the most crucial. Salt is needed to heighten any flavour in foods. Without it, any delicacy cannot emerge in its full glory. But from a health perspective, salt should not be taken in excessive quantities. The most important salty ingredient is obviously salt. However, soy sauce is of almost equal importance as a salty seasoning in Chinese cuisine. Soy sauce is a good example of how a few other flavours can be deftly used to cut the raw edges from pure salt.

Some salty ingredients: salt, soy sauce – regular.

Sourness suan 酸

Sourness is also an indispensable taste in foods, especially in the northern part of China, where water supply is heavy in minerals and strong in base. So, in order to induce better digestion of food, vinegar is often used in cooking. It can also arouse appetite. Sour taste can also neutralize fishy odour and greasiness. At banquets with strong grease and heavy meat dishes, sour dishes are usually added to neutralise the greasy mouthfeel (ni in Chinese). They come in many varieties. Not only are the sour tastes of plums, fruits and vinegar different from one another, just the different types of vinegar are distinguished by its production areas, different ingredients and different production techniques, thus causing quite drastic differences in taste. Usually, the northerners regard mature vinegar made in Shanxi as orthodox, whilst the people in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang area appraise the Zhenjiang-made rice vinegar as authentic. The most typical of all places eating vinegar is the province of Shanxi. Many families there are skilled at making vinegar from crops and fruits. Their everyday meals are even more dependent on vinegar. A very interesting thing is that in the Chinese language, the word “vinegar” is used to represent the feelings of jealousy between men and women. Slang, such as ‘eat vinegar(chi cu)’ for being jealous and ‘vinegar jar (cugangzi)’ for a jealous person, are universally understood in both the north and the south.

Some sour ingredients: bitter melon-fresh, vinegar, lemon, lime, dry wine, cranberry, wild cherries.

Pungency xin 辛

Pungency is the most stimulating and complex of the ‘five flavours’. Sometimes Chinese use ‘pungent-hot (xinla)’ as one word. In actuality, pungency and hot (la) have major differences. Hot is sense of taste, stimulating the tongue, throat and nasal cavity. Instead, pungency is not just a sense of taste as it involves sense of smell as well. Pungency is mostly obtained from ginger, while hot and spicy usually denotes the use chili pepper or black pepper. Since hot peppers were a foreign product, there was no mentioning of ‘hot’ in ancient Chinese cooking, instead it was generalised as pungency. Moreover, Chinese also has the word ma ‘numbing’, used for the sensation in the mouth caused by Sichuan peppers (huajiao). It differs from the hot sensation of peppers, but is also part of the range of pungent flavours. Ginger not only neutralizes rank taste and odour but can also bring out the great taste of fish and meats. So, ginger is a must-have when preparing fish and meat. There are also principles to using hot peppers. We should not merely seek for the degree of hotness but should rather use saltiness and natural essence of food as fundamentals, so that the hot and spicy taste comes out multi-staged, full of great aroma and not too dry. In addition, garlic, scallion, ginger and other spices can also kill bacteria, so are great for cold dishes with dressing.

Some pungent ingredients: ginger, black pepper, chili peppers, Sichuan pepper, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, radish, cardamom.

Bitterness ku 苦

Bitterness is rarely used alone in cooking but is a valuable asset. When making simmered or braised meats, adding tangerine or orange peel, clove, almond and other seasonings with a light bitter touch can rid the meat of unpleasant taste and smell, and awaken the original flavour of the food. Black foods usually also have bitter flavour notes. Traditional Chinese medicinal theories believe that bitterness is helpful for the stomach and produces saliva. Some people really enjoy bitter taste in foods, such as in the Sichuan-style ‘Strange Taste (guaiwei)’ type of foods, which have the bitter elements.

Some bitter ingredients: bitter melon-ripe, Seville orange, soy sauce-thin, garlic-raw, star anise, dry mustard, radicchio, mustard greens, endive, arugula.

Sweetness gan 甘

Sweetness has the effect to cushion the effect of other basic flavours, whereas saltiness, sourness, pungency and bitterness are all too strong, they could be remedied by sweetness. When making dishes of other tastes, sugar can improve and embellish. However, using large amounts of sugar is not recommended, as too much sugar can be nauseous. Since many spices can produce a sweet flavour and they all taste quite different, much of the culinary world hails cane sugar as the orthodox sweetness.

Some sweet ingredients: sugar, honey, coconut, bell peppers, apples, grapes, raisons, hoisin sauce, cooking wine, garlic-cooked dates, onions-cooked, rice-cooked, bing cherries.

Freshness xian 鲜

What is not listed in the ‘five flavours’ but still holds an important status in the culinary world is the ‘freshness’, now better known as umami, factor. ‘Freshness’ is the most tempting flavour in food. Most foods all contain an ‘essence’ but it is often dormant, so making soup is often the way to awaken the taste. Chicken, pork, beef, fish and ribs can all be used as soup stock. When the unpleasant tastes and smell are eliminated during the soup-making process, the essential flavour is fully exposed by adding just a touch of salt. Stock not only can be enjoyed directly but can also be used to make other plain foods taste great. Such foods include shark’s fin, sea cucumber, bird’s nest, bean curd and gluten, which all must be cooked with essence soup to achieve its mouth-watering taste. Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) is an artificial essence. Its synthetic nature makes it impossible to compare to naturally made stock. So skilled chefs usually do not care for it.

Healing flavours

Five tastes in harmony, with flavour as the top priority, bringing direct pleasure to the tongue. At the same time, it is a good health-protecting and body-regulating method. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) theories state that pungency can regulate bodily fluids, blood and qi, and can be used to treat bone and muscle pain from coldness, kidney problems and so on. Sweetness can nourish, soothe, and improve emotional mood. Honey and red jujubes are also great tonic foods for those who have a weak and frail physique. Sour taste can cure diarrhoea and produce saliva to stop thirst. Sour vinegar can prevent colds, while eggs boiled in vinegar can stop coughing. All these are folk cures with adequate modern medical recognition. Bitterness can release heat in the body, improves vision and detoxify the body. Five tastes in harmony is an important factor to great health and long life. The picture shows that sour is linked to the liver, bitter to the heart, sweetness to the spleen, pungency to the lungs and saltiness to the kidneys.

Modern developments

Societies change and so do their cultures. Although modern Chinese cooks are still eager to balance the flavours, present day Chinese consumers have adopted a slightly different set of terms to discuss the taste of food. A major development is already hinted at in the paragraph on pungency above: the arrival of the chili pepper. Chili has become such an important ingredient all over China, that la ‘hot’ has become an independent category. This has separated ma ‘numbing’ too. Umami is an important aspect of any dish, but is not recognised as a ‘flavour category’ in every day parlance. A survey held early 2020, asking a consumer panel about their most favourite flavour, generated the following results.

Hot comes out as the most favoured flavour; by far. However, when ordering a dinner in a restaurant, or cooking one at home, Chinese still prefer to complement a hot dish with one or two with another dominant flavour. Harmony remains important.

Compound flavours

Chinese cuisine is apt in mixing and blending flavours. Spices and other seasoning ingredients can be combined in endless ways, but a small number of the them have become such favourites of Chinese chefs, that they have got used with various types of foods. An example introduced in an earlier post is yuxiang, ‘fish flavour’. In that post, I introduced the basic recipe and a number of variations developed by food technologists. This post adds another dimension to the understanding of such generic compounds: the mix of basic flavours: yuxiang is relatively hot, but the right combinations of saltiness, pungency, sourness and sweetness can bring out the delicacy of the peppers while containing excessive sharpness.

Peter Peverelli is active in and with China since 1975 and regularly travels to the remotest corners of that vast nation. He is a co-author of a major book introducing the cultural drivers behind China’s economic success.

Advertisement

Sour is the new sweet in China – young Chinese food scientists play with vinegar

Posted on by
9

Vinegar, i.e. the Chinese cereals-based vinegar, has been an important ingredient in Chinese cuisine for ages. A famous application is vinegar-based dipping for dumplings.

Vinegar is a growth product in China, although only 30% of the output is branded vinegar with the remaining 70% workshop-style factories. Insiders estimate that the 2020 turnover of the Chinese vinegar industry can reach RMB 13.42 billion; up from RMB 4.017 billion in 2013.

A traditionally important vinegar region is Shanxi province. Qingxu county in Shanxi is often referred to as the ‘vinegar capital‘ of China.

However, it was not regarded as something for direct consumption by most Chinese, who preferred their snacks and soft drinks sweet, sweeter, sweetest. Until recently, that is. The past 2 – 3 years have seen a surge in so called ‘vinegar beverages’ (cuyinliao). These are mildly acid drinks made of naturally acidified fruit juice (apple vinegar is the top product in this category) or drinks produced by mixing vinegar with other ingredients. These products are advertised as healthier choices than the traditional sugary drinks.

This product group has grown so rapidly, that China’s top vinegar producer, Hengshun, with 83.8% market share in 2018, has organised a competition for students of food science in various Chinese universities to design new types of drinks, but also foods, based on vinegar. The various products the next generation of Chinese food scientists came up with is so interesting, that I will list the top products in this post.

First prize

Apple Vinegar drink

appvinegar

As introduced above, this is not a new type of drink, but the jury still awarded it the first prize due its innovative production process. Apples are first baked to the pectin of the apples in small active molecules and increase flavour through the maillard reaction. The juice is then fermented twice.

Second prizes

Cuxian-xian (literally: Vinegar Fibre – Fibre)

cuxianxian

Arrowroot starch is fermented with Acetobacter xylinus to obtain a high fibre refreshing drink.

Hua Young fruit fibre and probiotics effervescent tablets

huayoung

These are ascribed a medicinal function: increasing appetite and relieving bowel and stomach trouble.

Water melon double vinegar

watermeltwo

This drink consists of two varieties made from the flesh and skin of water melon, hence the two colours.

Third prizes

Vinegar strawberries

vinstrawberries

These are preserved strawberries made with Hengshun vinegar and honey.

Cranberry flavoured healthy plum vinegar

cranplum

Green plums (qingmei) are fermented and flavoured with cranberries, resulting in a refreshing sweet and sour beverage.

Konjac vinegar jelly

vinjelly

Fruit jelly has been a favourite snack all over Asia for the past few years, and this product adds an innovative new member to the already extended family of fruit jellies.

Vinegar love

vinlove

Fruit juice is mixed with white vinegar and flavoured with flower petals, resulting in romantic colours.

Hengshun crispy bones

vinbones

Crispy bones are soaked in Hengshun vinegar giving the bones a sweet and sour taste. It is chewy and rich in calcium.

Most innovative prizes

Filled thousand layer vinegar

vinlayers

Crackers are filled with a combination of jam and Hengshun vinegar. It is positioned as a healthy snack.

Lactobacillus in vinegar

vinlacto

Lactobacillus is added to traditional vinegar. The strain is acid and heat resistant. It enhances the antioxidant activity of the vinegar.

Best packaging prize

Vinegar lotus eggs

vinlotus

Soft sweet lotus pod is flavour with a mixture of sardines and Hengshun vinegar and a touch of chili sauce, producing sweet & sour crispy fish balls.

Best marketing prize

Xiaoxixi (laugh hi hi) vinegar milk

vinmilk

Formulated milk drinks are already popular in China. Milk is mixed with pineapple vinegar, creating a kind of yoghurt with a unique flavour.

Not all of these products will make it to the shelves of Chinese supermarkets, but this list provides a rare glimpse into the perception of young Chinese food scientists.

Apart from this contest, vinegar-flavoured icecream has appeared in China as well in the course of 2018. This photo has been taken in Taiyuan (Shanxi).

Peter Peverelli is active in and with China since 1975 and regularly travels to the remotest corners of that vast nation.

Eggs – Chinese like them salty

Posted on by
8

Eggs are one of the oldest ingredients of food in China, witness the 2800-year old eggs on exhibition in Nanjing.

ancientegg

China has produced 33,089,800 mt of eggs in 2019; up 5.78%.

Chinese cuisine includes many dishes with eggs as the main ingredient; fried tomatoes with eggs probably being the simplest as well as the best known. Don’t forget to add a little sugar en chopped garlic, just before turning of the heat.

Eggs can also be used as a minor ingredient to add bulk and texture to a variety of dishes, sometimes as a replacement for meat.

Fresh eggs have special meaning to the Chinese. Eggs are auspicious food, a symbol of fertility, of longevity, of new life. The birth of a child is celebrated with the delivery of hard-boiled eggs to friends and relatives, often dyed a brilliant red in honour of the occasion. Eggs are also a part of the bride’s dowry, sent by her family on the wedding day to her husband’s home as a sign of her potential fertility. They reciprocate with a gift of live chickens.

Birthdays are also marked with noodles and eggs all over China, and even as an ethnic Chinese growing up abroad, I remember my grandmother making a bowl of vermicelli for me with a large egg on top, dyed bright red, of course.

However, eggs are a perishable product, which is why many rural families still keep chickens so they have a steady supply. Chinese have developed a few ways to preserve their shelf life. I am introducing three of these in this post

Pidan – 1000-year eggs

Pidan

First, let’s set straight the myth hidden in that Western term. They have not lain forgotten for 1000 years, despite the name. Instead, pidan, as they are known in Chinese, are carefully cured for several weeks to several months so that the albumen solidifies into a dark, transparent, gel-like semisolid while the yolk hardens slightly on the outside but remains molten in the centre. There are strict culinary standards on what makes a pidan a gourmet experience.

Pidan are always eaten with condiments. They may be served with sweet slices of pink pickled ginger, doused in sesame oil and vinegar, or smothered in minced garlic or chopped cilantro leaves.

The most common raw ingredient for pidan is duck eggs, valued for the size of the yolks and the generosity of the egg white. However, chicken or quail eggs are also used, but more for novelty rather than need. A good century egg often has a snowflake pattern on the outside of the white, an indication of a well-cured egg. Its fearsome colour is the result of a chemical reaction with the curing mix usually wood ash, salt and rice husks mixed with clay or lime.

Pidan as export product

Pidan can even become a lucrative export product. The Shiqian region of Guizhou has been producing pidan for over 600 years. The local government has realised its potential value and supported modern industrial production of its traditional pidan in 1993. The state owned enterprise was dissolved in 1995, but its manager continued the production as a private entrepreneur. The company currently produces more than 10 mln eggs p.a.  Shiqian pidan were already exported to other Asian countries, in particular Malaysia, but more recently exports to the US and Canada, with their growing Chinese population, have also increased.

Xiandan – salty eggs

Xiandan

Another popular staple is the salted egg, a pure white delight that is as visually attractive as its cousin is not.

Eggs from either chicken or duck are carefully wiped clean with Chinese liquor and placed in bottles of saturated brine. After a month to several weeks, the whites would have thoroughly absorbed the salt, and the yolks hardened into little golden globes.

Salted eggs are most often boiled and then split and eaten straight from the shell. They are also used for cooking. The salted egg yolks are vital ingredients in many seasonal foods, including the rice dumplings eaten during the Dragon Boat Festival and the sweet moon cakes during Mid-Autumn festival.

Here is a salted version of quail eggs produced by Deshi.

Wuqiong has launched individually packed salted eggs in 2021, under the Changchangpian brand. The ad states that the seasoning has entered into the yolk due to a process of high temperature and high pressure.

PackedEggs

Chayedan – tea eggs

Chayedan

Tea eggs are usually prepared at home. Brew a pot of tea. You can use any Chinese tea, but a dark tea like Pu’er will taste stronger than green tea. Place the tea and tea leaves in a pot, add a piece of star anise, a stick of cinnamon and either some cloves or cardamom. Add soy sauce and enough water for the liquid to come halfway up the pot.

Wash about 10 eggs and place them in the pot to boil. After 15 minutes, remove the eggs and gently tap them to crack the shells. Turn off the heat and return them to the infusion. You want a marbled effect. The flavours and colours improve if you also break the membranes so the tea infusion can penetrate. Then wait, to allow the eggs to soak in the tea sauce for a few hours, preferably overnight. You’ll be rewarded for your patience with the most flavourful hard-cooked eggs you have ever eaten.

You can reuse the tea sauce to cook more eggs when the first batch is finished, but remember to either add more tea or soy sauce to adjust the seasoning.

Free range eggs redefined

Innovation in food is one of the core themes of this blog. A Chinese organic farmer in Taiyuan (Shanxi) has redefined the concept of ‘natural’ eggs, better known in the Western world as ‘free range eggs’. His term is ‘original eggs (tujidan)’, which he defines as ‘eggs resulting from natural insemination of the hen by a cock’. This is even more humane that simply allowing chickens to walk around freely.

Tujidan

The yolk of the resulting eggs is brighter yellow than those of mass-produced eggs and are said to be lower in cholesterol. Strictly speaking, this is not really innovation, but simply going back to basics. Still, it is a development worth pointing out.

Dried eggs – a novel product

The general trend in the Chinese food industry towards more convenient products has also affect this sector. Recently, Master Shen Food (Anhui) launched a ready to eat egg product: dried eggs. This is a truly innovative product. It imitates traditional Chinese dried bean curd, but is made from eggs, making it a more nutritious product. The ingredients:

Egg, fermented soy sauce (includes caramel colour), sugar, salt, flavours, lemon, food additives (MSG, disodium 5’-ribonucleotide, sodium pyrophosphate, sodium tri-polyphosphate, red koji red, sodium d-isoascorbate)

The brand name is also partly imitation: Master Shen is obviously alluding to the Master Kong brand instant noodles.

Export

China exports some of its egg products as well. Hubei province was China’s top exporter of for the 10th consecutive year in 2019, generating an income of USD 90 mln.

Peter Peverelli is active in and with China since 1975 and regularly travels to the remotest corners of that vast nation.

Artificial jelly fish – Chinese can make it look, feel and taste real

Posted on by
Reply

In Chinese culture, artificial has a more positive connotation than in Western culture. We tend to regard anything artificial as less that ‘the real thing’. Chinese on the other hand perceive creating a good to perfect copy of the real thing as a skill and the product of that skill as something that has added value over the copied object.

This cultural difference is very visible in the different ways Chinese and Westerners deal with landscape. Many Westerners have their favourite spot of unadulterated nature that they frequently visit to recuperate. When Chinese find such a spot, they like to embellish it, to make it even more beautiful. You can accentuate a hill by adding a few metres of soil, dig a little lake, build a wooden bridge over a brook.

The Chinese word for ‘artificial’ is renzao (man-made). Man’s interference with nature makes it more renqi. This literally means ‘people spirited’ and refers to the cozy ambiance that you create, when people get together. In other words, a human hand will make nature more human.

In Chinese cuisine, and later carried on in the Chinese food industry, this positive perception of artificial has led to a large number of artificial versions of natural foods and ingredients.

For this post I have selected artificial jelly fish an example. Even the natural jelly fish is not something you will find on many menus of Western restaurants, let alone an artificial version.

My source for this post states that artificial jelly fish is novel food that can compare in look and quality with natural jelly fish. It adds that regular consumption can lower the glycemic level, and can prevent heart diseases and obesity. Wonderful!

While most industrially produced jelly fish starts from sodium alginate, this recipe uses seaweed as raw material. The seaweed is steeped in sufficient water and treated with sulphuric acid to take away the calcium and soaked in a sodium carbonate solution. The acidity of the filtrate of the resulting liquid is then lowered to 7.5 – 8 using diluted sulphuric acid.

The basic recipe of artificial jelly fish is:

580 gr of the processed seaweed; 20 gr gelatin; 90 gr calcium chlorate; 5 gr sodium hydroxide; 200 gr salt; 5 gr MSG; 100 gr water.

First solve the gelatin in 100 ml water and stir in the treated seaweed; leave for 6 hrs. Stir again and add the sodium hydroxide until pH 10.

Solve the calcium chlorate in water using a 1:5 ratio, and then add the solution to 450 ml of water. Poor 400 ml of the liquid on an enamel plate and wait until it sets into a sheet of 2 – 3 mm. Repeat that until all liquid is finished.

The sheets are seasoned with salt and MSG and left for 3 days. Then the product can be cut into shapes, most typically shreds, like the natural jelly fish. Sodium benzoate can be used as preservative.

Jelly fish is usually eaten as a cold appetiser. Some vinegar, chili and chopped spring onions can be added.

JellyFish

It is difficult to assess if the cost price for this product is lower than that of the real thing. This also applies to the balance of nature. We do not need to hunt jelly fish, but we are still harvesting seaweed. However, seaweed can be grown in coastal water, just as we grow wheat in soil, while jelly fish is hard to herd like some of the fish we like to eat.

This product is definitely high in dietary fibre, even though some less agreeable chemicals are needed to get it on our table.

I think that the real bonus for the creators of this recipe (and a long list of other recipes, including those for artificial chicken, honey, grapes, and shrimps) is that they derive pleasure from the very fact that they are able to create all this artificial food that is like the real thing . . . and a little bit more.

Peter Peverelli is active in and with China since 1975 and regularly travels to the remotest corners of that vast nation.

Favourite Chinese flavours – Yuxiang – Fishy without fish

Posted on by
4

Spice mixes are big business in China. The increasing pace of life and the rapidly expanding spending power of Chinese consumers renders spending a few hours in the kitchen per day to prepare the obligatory three hot family meals a day less and less attractive for Chinese.

However, these changes do not affect the Chinese demand for authentic flavours. Sure, an occasional Big Mac or a helping of Hot Wings from KFC is great, but in general food still has to look, feel, smell and taste as the real thing, regardless how fast it gets.

After my ‘What on earth is . . .’, I am therefore launching another series in this blog: Chinese flavours. I will introduce a number of generic classic Chinese flavours, and how they are implement in ready to eat, or ready to cook, products.

This kick off item introduces my own favourite: yuxiang (literally: ‘fish flavour’). There is actually no fish involved in this spice mix, but apparently it strikes the Chinese palate as fishy. It has reddish brown colour, combines al basic flavours: sweet, sour, salty and spicy and the three main pungent spices: ginger, onions, and garlic.

It can be combined with a number of macro-ingredients like pork, beef, fish and it can even be used to render foreign ingredients like potatoes Chinese.

The basic recipe

Here is a standard recipe for yuxiang sauce.

  • Ingredients: seeped chili pepper or hot douban (see our item on douban sauce), salt, soy  sauce, (rice) vinegar, sugar, MSG, ground ginger, ground rice, onions, stock, watered starch, cooking rice wine
  • Preparation: mix all ingredients with some cooking oil and stir fry until fragrance and colour appear, then add the starch mixed with water. The yuxiang sauce if almost immediately ready.
  • Attention: the taste and colour should not become caramel-like, so do not overcook.
  • Application: yuxiang sauce can be combined with various meats and vegetables. First cook the fresh ingredients and add the sauce once they are done, to avoid overcooking the sauce.

Ready to use products

Now have a look at a few industrial foods using yuxiang sauce:

YXeggplant

Guangzhi Food Yuxiang Eggplant Rice

The photo of the lid already shows what the product looks like inside: cooked rice and eggplants cooked with yuxiang sauce.

YXamano

Amano Yuxiang Eggplant

This is yuxiang eggplant in what Chinese like to call a ‘soft can’, and aluminum foil pack, without rice.

YXlee

Lee Kum Kee Yuxiang Sauce

Good old Lee Kum Kee would not want to lag behind and offers a ready to use yuxiang sauce in a pot.

Yuxiang for cats

Netease has started advertising for a yuxiang cat food under its own brand. I have not heard stories from Chinese cat owners.

Peter Peverelli is active in and with China since 1975 and regularly travels to the remotest corners of that vast nation. He is a co-author of a major book introducing the cultural drivers behind China’s economic success.

What on earth are . . . dumplings?

Posted on by
17

What do Chinese eat, when they have something to celebrate: dumplings!

Dumplings are small round sheets of dough (flour + water) filled with minced meat + condiments + vegetables. After a piece of filling has been placed in the centre of the dough, the latter is folded into a shape that vaguely resembles a horn, in particular that of a cow. This shape is the origin of the Chinese name: jiaozi. Jiao is ‘horn’ in Chinese and jiaozi means something like ‘small horn.’ Later, the link between dumplings and horns eroded and as dumplings became an important part of Chinese cuisine (in particular in the Northern part of China), a special character was coined for this food.

Dumplings

Dumplings are an old food, as is shown by various archeological finds. According to an archaeologist from the Museum of Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the three dumplings unearthed in the region’s Turpan area were determined to have been made during the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties (220-589). Archaeologists also found two complete dumplings made during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) in Turpan. The dumplings were 5 cm long, 1.5 cm wide and resembled the new moon in shape. Further research revealed the dumpling wrappers were made from wheat flour and the stuffing was meat.

According to legend, during the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 22 – 220), there lived a famous physician of Traditional Chinese Medicine, named Zhang Zhongjing, who introduced dumplings. Once, the “medical saint” was returning to his ancestral village after a long period of absence. During that winter, a febrile disease was turning into an epidemic. Many poor people were submitted to the cold weather because of the lack of warm clothes and sufficient food and suffered frostbite, mainly around their ears. Seeing their condition, Zhang was determined to help them rid of the frostbite. He cooked lamb, black peppers and a few medicinal herbs, shredded them and wrapped it in the scrape of dough skin. He shaped them like ears and boiled them. Everyone sick person was given two ‘ears’ along with a bowl of warm soup. After a few days, the frostbite was gone and the epidemic was under control. Since then, most people begin imitating Zhang’s recipe with additional ingredients like vegetables and other kinds of meat to celebrate Chinese New Year.

Already in traditional Chinese cuisine, some variation was applied in the preparation of dumplings. While pork was the main type of meat for the filling, beef and mutton were also used, combined with different vegetables. In Southern China seafood, especially shrimps, were used as filling as well. Vegetarian types of dumplings with, e.g., eggs, cucumber slices and glass noodles, etc. were known as Three Delicacies Dumplings.

Dumplings have developed into a Chinese type of fast food and special small restaurants only serving a wide variety of dumplings can be found on street corners of Beijing and other Northern cities.

Dumplings are THE Chinese festival food par excellence. Look at this video to learn more about the role of dumplings in the Chinese New Year celebration.

Industrial production

The dramatic change in life style of the past two decades has had a great impact on dumplings. While making dumplings (preparing the filling and the dough, folding the dumplings and, of course, eating them) used to be the number one family occupation during the weekends in the North, the quickening of the pace of life has decreased the interest in this time consuming preparation. It has not, however, tempered the love for dumplings of the Chinese. Towards the end of the 20th Century, a number of food manufacturers started experimenting with the industrial production of quick frozen dumplings (one of these, Sanquan, already ranks among China’s top food brands), to cash in on the increasing pace of life of Chinese consumers. the current production is approximately 15 mln mt p.a., with 100 – 150 kt exported.

The latest news (October 2014) is that China’s top fruit juice producer, Huiyuan, is considering to invest in the production of quick frozen dumplings. This is a clear sign that dumplings are perceived as a lucrative business.

Apart from the quick frozen mass production, there are also machines that produce dumplings for use in restaurants and other types catering business.

DumplingMachine

This video shows part of the production of quick frozen dumplings at Sanquan.

Formulation

This development has created exciting new challenges for ingredients suppliers (see my blog on the Quick Frozen Tradition). First of all, do the manufacturers of frozen dumplings buy their own raw meat, vegetables, etc., or do they purchase minced meat and chopped vegetables. Especially for the meat, it seems more appropriate to have meat processing companies supply ready-to-use minced meat. Other ingredients used in the fillings include: flavours, taste enhancers, and dehydrated spices. The dough poses challenging opportunities for suppliers of enzymes. To mention one example:  fungal α-amylase can lower the viscosity of the of the gelatinized starch, generating dextrin and a small quantity of glucose and maltose, which will make the dumplings softer and not stick to the teeth.

Here is a recipe for quick frozen dumpling skin that I picked up from a food technology site.

Ingredient Volume (gr.)
High gluten flour 100
Modified potato starch 20
Wheat Gluten 6
Sodium hexametaphosphate 0.26
Sodium tripolyphosphate 0.14
sodium pyrophosphate 0.05
Sodium bicarbonate 0.2
CSL-SSL 0.3
Salt 1.5
Water 35
Guar gum 0.3
Shortening 4

Special seasoning

The booming industrial production of dumplings and the resulting increased consumption has also triggered developments in related industries. A typical example is the appearance of ‘dumpling vinegar’. Dumplings are traditionally dipped in rice vinegar before consumption. China’s top vinegar brand Hengshun is now also available in a convenient table top packing. The label clearly indicates the motivation for this variety.

Innovation

Haibawang in Shantou (Guangdong) has launched innovative dumplings in September 2014 are ‘fish skin dumplings’. The wrapping of these dumplings contains 40% fish meat (probably in the form of fish paste). This makes them highly transparent. Highbawang has clearly stated that it intends to challenge the top producers of frozen dumplings like Sanquan with this novel product.

dumplings-HaibawangFish

 

A month later, in October 2014, Sinian (Zhengzhou, Henan) has launched a new range of dumplings with well known Chinese dishes like Sichuan Pepper Beef or Lime Beef fillings. Until this launch, the fillings of dumplings, whether home made or produced commercially, consisted of minced meat and a type of vegetable as the main ingredients, with spices and seasoning as added to finish the flavor. Stuffing a complete dish in a dumpling is revolutionary.

The mackerel dumplings of Hongye Food (Shandong) received the status of ‘traditional Chinese delicacy’ in February, 2020.

CP (Zhengda) has launched a range of ready to eat dumplings early 2022, marketed as breakfast dumplings. The are packed in small one-person helpings, also gearing to the growing market for single households.

Dumplings for children

Children are a major market segment for the Chinese food and beverage industry. Although a second child is a possibility now, for parents who are themselves single children, most children in China are still the ‘little emperors’ of the household who are doted on by parents and grandparents. Producers of quick frozen dumplings have also developed dumplings for children. They are marketed as more nutritious than the regular product and the skins are often coloured (typically red or green) to appeal more to the young. Sanquan‘s ‘King Shrimp Dumplings’ ended first in a taste panel test organized before Children’s Day (June 1), 2017.

Vegetarian

Although minced meat is the typical main ingredient of the fillings of dumplings, vegetarian dumplings exist as well. For home cooking, they do not pose a particular problem. However, the transformation to industrial production of vegetarian dumplings has its particular problems, the most prominent being the dehydration of the filling. Jiajiamei Seasoning (Zhoukou, Henan) has developed a seasoning mix specially formulated for vegetarian dumplings to deal with that problem.

VegDumpling

(Towards) organic

Another way of distinguishing yourself in the growing mass of industrial dumpling makers is going for high quality, getting rid of unnecessary additives, perhaps going for organic in the near future. Such a company is Chuange (Qingdao, Shandong). Founded in 2009, it produces a range of hand-made seafood dumplings. It markets its products as an industrial reproduction of traditional seafood dumplings eaten by the local fishermen. Its product range even includes sepia dumplings, marked by its distinct colour, not unlike the sepia noodles from Italy, or sepia paella from Spain.

Spin-off products

Dumplings are such a popular food, that it has lead to the development of various products related to the making or eating dumplings. E.g., many producers of vinegar or soy sauce have developed special products for dipping dumplings. Some chefs have started making dumplings using other cereals, like the oat dumplings of the restaurant chain Xibei Youmian.

Eurasia Consult’s database of the Chinese food industry includes 10 producers of dumplings., industrial recipes, and more.

Peter Peverelli is active in and with China since 1975 and regularly travels to the remotest corners of that vast nation. He is a co-author of a major book introducing the cultural drivers behind China’s economic success.