Huaibei Lamb Soup 淮北羊肉汤

Huaibei Lamb Soup (淮北羊肉汤) is the milky-white lamb soup of Huaibei (淮北), Anhui, where, in the words of People's Daily Online, people have a particular fondness for lamb. It is tied to the custom of eating lamb soup in the hottest weeks of summer, known as fuyang (伏羊, 'dog-days lamb').

Flavour and texture

People's Daily Online describes the northern Anhui lamb soup served in Huaibei as free of any gamey or muttony taste, with a milky-white broth and a small pinch of coriander scattered on top; those who like heat add red chilli oil. At a 2023 festival in Huaibei the pots gave off the smell of coriander, chopped spring onion and lamb fat, and one cook said that day's soup had been simmering for five hours. Visitors from Xuzhou (徐州) in Jiangsu, Jiefang Daily reports, find Huaibei's lamb soup the same as their own.

How it is eaten

The soup is served by the bowl, and at the festival it was handed out with shaobing (烧饼), a baked flatbread. Anhui News reports that the custom of drinking lamb soup in the dog days has a long history in northern Anhui, dating back to the Han dynasty, and a local saying in the Huaibei area runs 'a bowl of lamb soup in the dog days, and you need no prescription from a miracle doctor'. Xiangshan District (相山区) held its first fuyang lamb feast on 11 July 2023, and the fuyang festival has become a new folk custom in Huaibei.

A local version

In Linhuan (临涣), a town of Suixi County (濉溪县), Huaibei's only county, lamb soup is known as a traditional snack in its own right. The Suixi County government says the broth-making skill has been handed down through the generations and looks simple but takes care and patience, and that the soup keeps its natural, original flavour with no food additives. Many visitors come to Linhuan to taste it.