Guangzhou’s ‘Most Intense’ Food: Smells Like ‘Flatulence,’ Many Tourists Can’t Stand It
This is a favorite spot for Shanshan's three sisters to live, photograph, travel, and enjoy food.
Sour and pungent vinegar in Guangzhou, the Guangzhou culinary culture is thriving, and the variety of delicacies is quite rich. Guangzhou people attach great importance to the original taste of food, and the flavor is mainly 'light', pursuing freshness, and the use of seasonings is relatively small. So, if anyone asks about Guangzhou's 'heavy-flavored' delicacies, not everyone can immediately answer, because Guangzhou's flavor is very heavy, and when it smells, it's like 'flatulence', which many foreign tourists are not used to, so this delicious flavor is limited to certain places. This delicacy is: Sour and pungent vinegar.
Sour and pungent vinegar is a type of vinegar, it's a 'one-of-a-kind' in the vinegar world. Because it has a 'flatulence' smell, it got the name 'flatulence'. In fact, long-term drinking of sour and pungent vinegar can prolong life, so sour and pungent vinegar also has another name 'long-life vinegar', but people have forgotten this name, and only like to call it 'sour and pungent vinegar'.
Shanshan's three sisters like to go to the Liuhe River to play, after playing they eat sour and pungent vinegar at the nearby store. The stores in this area that sell sour and pungent vinegar are basically for catering to regulars, they are hidden in the countryside old houses, and their business is very hot, and many locals come to patronize, so it's necessary to book in advance, and if you come to eat temporarily, it's very likely that you won't be able to eat it.
This sour and pungent vinegar is indeed 'heavy-flavored'. When the car arrives, it's quite far away from the store, and when you smell the 'flatulence' smell, it's no wonder sour and pungent vinegar shops can only be opened in empty countryside, and it's unknown whether it can be opened in the city and complained about 'polluting' the environment, haha.
Sour and pungent vinegar can be used in hotpot, or as a drink. Shanshan's three sisters like 'sour and pungent vinegar hotpot' more: put soybeans, ginger, eggs, etc. into milky sour and pungent vinegar and boil them, used as the bottom of the pot, when eating, put chicken legs, pig trotters, etc. into sour and pungent vinegar, and cook it, the meat becomes soft and juicy without any seasoning, retaining the original flavor of the meat, which is very delicious and particularly fragrant. When the meat is eaten almost finished, you find that the milky white sour and pungent vinegar has turned golden. Don't miss this meat-cooked sour and pungent vinegar, this is the essence of sour and pungent vinegar. When you add rice to it, it's sour, salty, and fragrant, and the taste is concentrated here.
Besides hotpot, sour and pungent vinegar's most traditional eating method is as a drink. Formerly, the countryside made sour and pungent vinegar, unwilling to spend money on it, so it was only made as a drink. In Guangzhou's surrounding areas, in the summer, drinking a bowl is to invigorate the spleen and dispel summer heat.
During the consumption of sour and pungent vinegar, Shanshan's three sisters and the restaurant boss asked to visit the production of sour and pungent vinegar. The boss refused, saying that sour and pungent vinegar had its 'personality', and couldn't be looked at casually. However, the boss also taught me some production methods: using a certain proportion of rice and glutinous rice, stir-fried and then put into pottery, after adding water, it was sealed and fermented. Good sour and pungent vinegar needed about 180 days to make, and the sour and pungent vinegar would emit a 'flatulence' smell.
Each shop's sour and pungent vinegar tastes different, for example, if more rice is used, it will be more sour; if more glutinous rice is used, it will be sweeter; if there is less sunlight, it will be sweeter; if there is more sunlight, it will be more sour… Each family adjusts according to their own taste. Although sour and pungent vinegar is heavy in flavor, it smells of 'flatulence', but when you drink it, sour, salty, and fragrant, it's unforgettable, and it's also beneficial to the human body, with invigorating, dispersing blood stasis, detoxicating, ventilating, and purging fire effects.
'Flatulence' is a smell that people dislike. It's a reaction of the sense of smell. However, the sense of smell doesn't mean the same as taste; a thing that smells bad doesn't mean it's not good to eat. If you have the courage to try 'bad-smelling' foods, overcome the sensory and psychological impact of smelly food, and try smelly foods, you may find that smelly foods are not as bad as you imagined, or even delicious. Sour and pungent vinegar is such a case.
So, have you traveled to Guangzhou? Have you eaten 'heavy-flavored' sour and pungent vinegar in Guangzhou? Do you have the courage to try sour and pungent vinegar for the first time? Have you eaten other heavy-flavored delicacies in Guangzhou? Welcome everyone to leave comments!
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