Famous rice dumplings in the north and south
Guangdong Zongzi: Guangdong rice dumplings are large in size and unique in appearance. In addition to fresh meat rice dumplings and bean paste rice dumplings, there are also assorted rice dumplings made of diced chicken, duck meat, char squash pork, egg yolk, mushrooms, mung bean paste, etc. as fillings.
Minnan Zongzi: The roasted pork dumplings and alkaline water dumplings in Xiamen and Quanzhou are both famous at home and abroad. The rice dumplings for roasted pork dumplings must be selected. Pork pork belly is first braised to make it fragrant and rotten. Add mushrooms, shrimps, lotus seeds, braised broth, sugar, etc. When eating, dip them into various seasonings such as garlic paste, mustard, red spicy sauce, and carrot sour. It is sweet and tender, oily but not greasy. The rice dumplings in southern Fujian are divided into alkaline rice dumplings, meat rice dumplings and bean rice dumplings. Alkali rice dumplings are made by steaming with alkali liquid to glutinous rice. They are both sticky, soft and smooth. They are particularly delicious after being ice-cleared and added with honey or syrup. The ingredients of meat dumplings include braised pork, mushrooms, egg yolks, shrimps, dried bamboo shoots, etc., and Xiamen's meat dumplings are the most famous. Bean rice dumplings are popular in Quanzhou area. They are mixed with a little salt of September beans and wrapped with glutinous rice. After steaming, the beans are fragrant and some people dip them in white sugar to eat them.
Ningbo Zongzi: Zhejiang Ningbo Zongzi is a four-corner shape, with alkaline water Zongzi, red bean Zongzi, red date Zongzi and other varieties. Its representative variety of alkaline water rice dumplings is to add an appropriate amount of alkaline water to glutinous rice and wrap it with old yellow bamboo leaves. After cooking, the glutinous rice turns light yellow and can be eaten with white sugar, which is fragrant and delicious.
Jiaxing Zongzi: Jiaxing Zongzi is rectangular, with fresh meat, bean paste, eight treasures and other varieties. For example, fresh meat dumplings often include a piece of fat meat in the lean meat. After the rice dumplings are cooked, the oil of the fat meat penetrates into the rice, making the mouth fat but not greasy.
Beijing Zongzi: Beijing Zongzi is a representative variety of northern Zongzi. It is smaller in size and has an oblique four-angle shape. In the rural areas of northern suburbs, we are used to eating rhubarb rice dumplings, which are sticky and fragrant, and are mostly filled with red dates and bean paste.
Other more famous rice dumplings include Sichuan and Lianghu spicy rice dumplings, Guizhou pickled rice dumplings, and salted egg rice dumplings in northern Jiangsu.
There are many types of rice dumplings in Shanghai
Cantonese zongzi represented by Xinghualou and Xinya are soft and have a strong taste. The shape is flat on the bottom and is square and pentagonal, with one corner facing upwards and the rest extending toward all directions. There are many varieties of Cantonese zongzi, including chestnuts, fresh meat, egg yolks, and mushrooms; pillow wrapping rice dumplings include roast duck, mushrooms, chestnuts, fresh meat, egg yolks, and rice kernels. Others include alkaline water zongzi, bean paste zongzi, fresh meat zongzi, fresh meat zongzi, fresh meat yolk zongzi, red bean zongzi, etc.
Huaiyang's specialty rice dumplings represented by Laobanzhai and Yangzhou Hotel are "eight flavors and eight styles", authentic "little feet" white rice dumplings, four-corner red dates and red bean rice dumplings, weight-shaped egg yolk chestnut rice dumplings, ingot-shaped ham meat dumplings, triangle bean-board bacon rice dumplings, pillow-style fresh meat dumplings, long-pin style chicken dumplings, and diamond-shaped bean paste rice dumplings, with distinctive characteristics.
The mushroom rice dumplings, bean board rice dumplings, bean paste rice dumplings, red bean and red date rice dumplings, pine nut white rice dumplings and Luohan rice dumplings supplied by Gongdelin are all characterized by vegetarian food.
The rice dumplings of the Halal Hong Changxing are very Muslim in style. The rice dumplings are slightly green in the shell, with clear edges and angular appearance, and the taste is pure. Especially the "beef rice dumplings", which are not available to other people.
The rice dumplings supplied by traditional specialty stores such as Shen Dacheng, Shanghai Jiaxing Zongzi Store, Wufangzhai are "various", including bean paste, fresh meat, white rice, red dates, red beans, fresh meat and egg yolks. Shen Dacheng's first curry chicken rice dumplings is colorful. Various types of rice dumplings vary from variety to appearance, taste to color. The large Cantonese wrapping rice dumplings are 450 grams each, while the mini rice dumplings are only 25 grams each.
Zongzi shape
Due to different regions, there are great differences in materials and even the shape of the rice dumpling leaves. For example, in the early days, people tend to sacrifice ox horns to the sky, so the rice dumplings in the Han and Jin Dynasties were mostly made into horns as one of the items for worshiping ancestors. In addition, there are generally various shapes such as regular triangles, regular quadrangles, pointed triangles, squares, and long.
Due to different eating habits in different places, zongzi has a north-south flavor. Among them, the more famous zongzi are:
Beijing Zongzi is a representative variety of northern Zongzi. Beijing Zongzi is larger in size and is obliquely quadrangular or triangle. At present, most of the glutinous rice dumplings are available on the market. In the countryside, I am still accustomed to eating raw yellow rice dumplings. It is sticky and fragrant, with a unique flavor. Beijing rice dumplings are mostly filled with red dates and bean paste, and a few are also used as the filling.
The representative variety of Guangdong Zongzi is the opposite of Beijing Zongzi. It is smaller in size and unique in appearance. It has a square front and a sharp corner bulge at the back, which looks like an awl. There are many varieties. In addition to fresh meat dumplings and bean paste dumplings, there are also egg yolk dumplings made of salted egg yolks, as well as mixed rice dumplings made of chicken, duck diced meat, roasted pork, mushrooms, mung beans, etc., which have a better flavor.
How to make rice dumplings
(I) Ancient
In the Han Dynasty, rice dumplings were "reeds wrapped in rice with rice leaves"; in the Western Jin Dynasty, they became "rose leaves wrapped in sticky rice, mixed with millet." Jia Sijie of the Later Wei Dynasty recorded in "Qimin Yaoshu" in more detail:
The "Food Classic" says: "The method of millet and millet: first take the rice and soak it to release it. A total of two liters of rice is made into a dou of millet, put it in a bamboo, wrap it in a row of rice, and wrap it with a rope. The rope is separated by an inch. You must cook it in a cauldron, and cook it between ten stones of rice, so that the millet is ripe."
"Food Seven" says: "●: Use sour rice, silk, water and honey to sautum, like strong soup cake noodles. Put it on your hand and make it longer than a foot and more than two inches wide. Break it four times, use dates and chestnut meat to cover it with oil, wrap it with bamboo bamboo, and steam it. Dried it for 2 times, and the bamboo leaves do not open, break it off both ends and remove the bun."
In the Ming Dynasty, Li Shizhen recorded in "Compendium of Materia Medica":
"Grilled rice is commonly used as rice dumplings. The ancients used millet to wrap the reed leaves and cooked them with sharp horns, like the shape of the heart of the bean leaves, so it is called grilled rice, called kewed rice. In recent times, glutinous rice has been used. Now, on May 5th, it is considered as a gift for each other. Some people say that it is to worship Qu Yuan, and it is used to jump into the river to feed the dragon."
It can be seen that during the Ming Dynasty, glutinous rice had become the main raw material for rice dumplings.
(II) Modern
The traditional method now is to soak the rice dumpling leaves (reeds or bamboo leaves, etc.) first, soak the glutinous rice in water, and use meat, bean paste, jujube kernels as fillings, and steam and cook them into triangular, square, pillow-shaped, etc. The specific practices are detailed below:
1. Meat dumplings
A. 5 jin of fragrant glutinous rice, use (not too cool or overheated, the water temperature is a bit hot but acceptable) soak the glutinous rice in warm water for 2 or 3 hours (tick 1 to 2 times during the period so that the rice can be soaked better), and use a small dustpan or filter basket to filter dry the water.
B. 2 kilograms of peeled mung beans, soak them in the same warm water and the same time, and filter them dry.
C. 2 and a half pounds of fat and lean pork (the rice dumplings cooked with lean meat are not smooth and not fragrant enough), cut the meat into strips of 2cm wide, 1cm thick, and 10-15cm long. Then add a little salt, MSG (chicken essence), cooking wine, ginger slices, 1 teaspoon of light soy sauce, 1 teaspoon of (seut oil) sesame oil and other seasonings and mix well with chopsticks.
D. Put the rice dumpling leaves in water and boil them for 10 minutes. Take out the cold water and wash them and cut them into excess, then filter them dry.
E. Cut a few strips of cotton thread, each about 20cm long. Put a towel on your legs (at your knees) to get your clothes wet.
F. Take two (both opposite) rice leaves overlap in the opposite direction (incompletely), put a small bowl (125 grams) of rice, use your index finger to gently mark the middle of the rice, add 1 or 2 spoons of mung beans, then put the meat strips, put the same mung beans on the meat strips, and fill in 123 grams of rice to cover the mung beans.
G. First fold the outer zongzi leaves inward with your right hand and fold them backwards. Wrap one end and then use the same method to complete the other end. You must tie the zongzi once in the middle before tie them one by one from one end to one end to prevent deformation. The tightness of the rope should not be too tight (boiled) or too loose (water inlet), just pull it lightly and not move.
H. After binding, put it into the pot one by one, then put cold water into the rice dumplings for about 1cm, light the fire... After the water boils for 15 minutes, the rice dumplings in the pot are exchanged, and then cook on slow heat for 1 hour.
2. Red dates and rice dumplings
It is not difficult to figure out how to make meat dumplings. The biggest difference: soak the dates in warm water and remove the seeds and cut them into large bean particles, and then mix them with the filtered glutinous rice. As for the seasoning, if you like sweetness, add some sugar.
3. Mung beans, duck egg dumplings
750 grams each of glutinous rice and mung beans, 25 grams of peanuts, and 5 cooked salted duck egg yolks. Cut the egg yolks into pieces, mix with glutinous rice, mung beans and peanuts to make a filling. Take the soaked rice dumpling shell leaves and fold them into a bucket shape, fill them with an appropriate amount of filling, wrap them in a pot and add cold water to soak the rice dumplings. After boiling for 1 hour, then simmer and cook for 1 hour.
4. Tangerine peel beef rice dumplings
1,000 grams each of soaked glutinous rice and mung beans, 100 grams each of beef and tangerine peel, 50 grams of minced pork, and appropriate amount of chopped green onion, minced ginger and salt. Fry the chopped green onion with lard, add beef, tangerine peel and pork in sequence and stir-fry for half a minute, then drizzle with sesame oil and make a filling. When wrapping, first fill in the mixed glutinous rice and mung beans, clip the filling in the middle, and then cook it in the above method.
5. Hundred Fruit Zongzi
750 grams of glutinous rice, 25 grams of green plum, pineapple meat, and winter melon strips, 15 grams of watermelon seeds, walnut kernels, raisins, and red shreds, and 300 grams of white sugar. First boil the green plum, pineapple meat, and winter melon strips with white sugar, drain the water, and then marinate with white sugar for 24 hours to make the filling. Wrap it into a five-corner square rice dumpling, cook for 50 minutes, and simmer it off the heat for 4 minutes.
6. Salty chicken dumplings
Ingredients: 600 grams of glutinous rice, 800 grams of chicken, 400 grams of potatoes, 80 grams of shrimp, 1 tablespoon of garlic, half a tablespoon of light soy sauce, scallion, salt, chicken essence, a few raw powder, appropriate amount of rice dumpling leaves, and appropriate amount of rice dumpling rope.
practice:
(1) Chop the chicken, potatoes and green onions, add salt, garlic, chicken essence, raw powder and other seasonings and mix well.
(2) Wash the glutinous rice and soak it in water for half an hour. Heat the pan, stir-fry with shallot, ginger and garlic, add glutinous rice and light soy sauce, and stir-fry.
(3) Use 2 pieces of rice dumpling leaves, fold them into a leaky shape, add 1 tablespoon of fried glutinous rice, add the filling evenly in Method 1, and then add 1 tablespoon of glutinous rice on top.
(4) Tie the zongzi rope and put it in a high-pressure pot and cook for 30 minutes, and then eat while it is hot. If it is a normal pot, it must be cooked for about 2 hours.
7. Authentic gold medal steamed rice dumplings
Materials:
(1) 500 grams of glutinous rice, 1 dried mushroom, 4 lotus seeds, 10 grams of shrimp, 50 grams of mung bean kernel, 2 chestnuts, 1 dried lotus leaf, 6 dried bamboo leaves, and 2 dried alkali grass.
(2) 1 salted egg yolk, a little pepper, 30 grams of taro, about 100 grams of pork ribs, and fat; a little five-spice powder, scallion oil, and MSG salt.
practice:
(1) Soak the ingredients in material 1 until it starts, soak the glutinous rice for at least 2 and a half hours, and then marinate the flavor with pepper, scallion oil, MSG and salt. Cut the taro into pieces and fry it and set aside.
(2) Cut the fat meat into pieces and marinate it with five-spice powder for about 30 minutes. Cut the ribs into pieces with black vinegar, soy sauce, salt, MSG and flour and marinate them for later use.
(3) Tear the lotus leaves against each other, with thick side facing down, lay 3 bamboo leaves, and put half of the glutinous rice. Then add mushrooms, lotus seeds, shrimps, chestnuts, salted egg yolks, fat meat, ribs, taro, and mung bean kernels. Add the other half of the glutinous rice and cover the other 3 bamboo leaves.
(4) Hold the lotus leaves on both sides tightly, then fold them forward and backward to form a four-corner shape, and use alkaline straw to tightly tie the knot. 5. Boil rice dumplings in water for four hours before serving.
Please pay attention to the following points when making rice dumplings
Choice of zongzi leaves: Guangzhou people use bamboo leaves to make zongzi, and choose one with smooth and tough surfaces. People in Shantou use bamboo leaves to make rice dumplings. Rice dumplings have the fragrance of bamboo leaves, but they should be cooked soft before using them. Shanghai and other places use bamboo leaves picked from Huangshan, Anhui every year on the Great Fu Festival, which contains a special fragrance, commonly known as "Huizhou Fuzhu".
Seasoning for rice dumpling filling: First, mix the fresh pork with a little MSG, sugar, wine, salt and light soy sauce evenly until the seasoning penetrates the pork and then wrap it.
Bundle of rice dumplings: Bean paste and rice dumplings should not be tied too tightly to prevent rice grains from being squeezed into the bean paste. If they cannot be cooked thoroughly, they will be stagnant. If you use fat pork, it should not be tightened or tightened. If you use lean pork, you must tie it tightly, because the lean meat will shrink when cooked, and the fat juice of the rice dumplings will leak into the water, so the glutinous rice dumplings cannot be kept fat and glutinous.
Cooking of zongzi: When cooking zongzi, you must boil water before the zongzi is dropped. The water must soak the zongzi noodles. After it is boiled again, cook on high heat for about 3 hours. Do not add raw water during the cooking of rice dumplings. Be careful not to cook the glutinous rice dumplings with other rice dumplings. Remove while it is hot after cooking. When eating, open the rice dumpling leaves. The rice dumplings are fragrant and fragrant, oily but not greasy, glutinous but not sticky, salty and sweet, and fragrant, tender and delicious. This is the best product.
Things to note
When eating rice dumplings, you can drink some tea or sugar water to help digestion. It is best to eat it with some vegetables and fruits, which is more nutritious.
Who should not eat rice dumplings?
The rice dumplings are fragrant and elegant, soft, glutinous and smooth, and have a variety of flavors, which are very popular among people. However, the raw material for making rice dumplings is oily and sticky. Excessive eating can easily cause indigestion, which can lead to symptoms such as increased gastric acid secretion, abdominal distension, abdominal pain, diarrhea, etc., so you should not eat gluttony.
There are many varieties of rice dumplings. Meat rice dumplings and lard soy paste rice dumplings contain more fat and are greasy foods. After consumption by patients with hyperlipidemia, arteriosclerosis, hypertension, and coronary heart disease, it will increase blood viscosity, affect blood circulation, increase heart burden and ischemia, and can easily induce angina pectoris and myocardial infarction, so it is not suitable to eat it.
After steaming or cooking the rice dumplings, they can release a gelatinous substance. After eating, they will increase the load of digestive enzymes, and their nature is warm and stagnant. Eating too much will increase the burden on the gastrointestinal tract. Therefore, patients with stomach and duodenal ulcers are best not to eat or eat less. In addition, the elderly, children and those with weak digestive functions should also eat carefully to avoid affecting digestion and normal diet.
Choose zongzi
Be careful:
First, check the production date and shelf life on the zongzi label, and don’t buy spoiled zongzi;
Second, be careful of the taste changes of the zongzi. If you taste the filling of the zongzi is a little sour, bitter, and has a bad taste, don’t eat it anymore;
Third, be careful about the quality of the rice dumplings and be sure to buy regular rice dumplings from shopping malls, catering companies, and supermarkets;
Fourth, be careful about the outer packaging of the rice dumplings and buy safe and hygienic rice dumplings;
5. Be careful if eating zongzi is the right way. If you have stomach problems, don’t eat too sweet rice dumplings. If you have gallstones, cholecystitis and pancreatitis, don’t eat meat dumplings, egg yolk dumplings and too greasy rice dumplings.