Three Kingdoms Saozi (minced meat)

Three Kingdoms Saozi (minced meat)

There is a famous dish, the Three Kingdoms minced meat, in Xinye County, which has been a favorite with the locals for its special cooking methods and unique taste for more than 1800 years.

According to the historical documents, from A.D. 201 to A.D. 208, Liu Bei (the king of the Shu Kingdom), with Zhuge Liang--the wit master, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei (two great generals) occupied Xinye. But during the period of war, troops always had to move. So there was not one fixed camp. In order to solve the problem of having meals, Zhuge Liang devoted himself to experimenting and cooking minced meat as an emergency food that shortly became favored by the soldiers. Later the food was introduced to the locals. People in Xinye passed down the dish generation by generation and the cooking methods so greatly improved that the Three Kingdoms Minced Meat became well known. It once won an award as the champion in the contest of Henan local flavor snacks and is praised by customers both at home and abroad.

The main raw ingredients of the minced meat are beef and mutton. The cooking methods are as follows: firstly, high-quality tender beef and mutton, not too fat and not too thin are carefully chosen. The meat is chopped into pieces as big as grapes. Then dry red peppers are fried in oil until they become golden. When the flavor of the peppers is absorbed into the oil, they are taken out of the oil and cooled. Once cooled, they are then minced for later use. Next, the meat pieces, minced pepper, salt, ginger, Chinese cinnamon and etc. are put into the pepper oil and fried until they are well cooked and turn scarlet in color. The finished minced meat is fragrant but not greasy, spicy but not hot. Suitable amounts of minced meat can be fried with vegetables so that the vegetables will take on the flavor of the meat. Noodles will be even more delicious when prepared with the minced meat.

Another feature of Three Kingdoms Minced Meat is that it can be preserved for a long time, without freezing, for more than one year. It will not go bad in summer. The package is divided into bowl-packages, small-packages, and gift-packages with various flavors. It is a good gift for relatives and friends.