Laoshan Mushroom and Chicken Stew 崂山菇炖鸡

A chicken and a mountain

The cooking itself is simple and old: chicken and mushroom go into a pot and are left to exchange flavour. What makes the dish local is where the mushroom comes from, and that is documented in more detail than the recipe.

A survey of the Laoshan hills – the mountain on Qingdao's eastern edge – recorded 92 wild species of edible and medicinal fungi, 78 of them edible. The two most associated with the pot are slippery jack and thick-ringed bolete, both common bolete-family mushrooms rather than the dried shiitake used elsewhere.

Earthy and deep

Wild boletes give a stew an earthy, slightly nutty depth that cultivated mushrooms do not, and they also release more liquid, so the broth is often darker and stronger than a standard chicken soup.

The chicken is there to carry that flavour. It is a homely dish rather than a banquet one, and it tastes best when the mushrooms have had time to soften into the broth.

A city with a mountain in it

Laoshan is part of Qingdao rather than a separate destination, and the city's survey work on the mountain is unusually thorough. Alongside 246 recorded species of larger fungi, the mountain holds 3,081 recorded species in total, and the fungi list is still growing as new records are added.

That is why the dish belongs to Qingdao in a way that a generic chicken stew does not. The mushroom is a local product of a local hillside, and in Qingdao the phrase 小鸡炖蘑菇 most often means a pot made with these species.

Chicken and wild fungus

The two core ingredients are chicken and mushroom, with aromatics and seasoning to taste. Because the mushrooms are foraged, the flavour varies between baskets and between years.

If you are picking mushrooms yourself, this is not a dish to improvise: boletes have toxic lookalikes and the survey work is aimed at species records rather than at casual identification. Buy from a market or order it cooked in a restaurant instead.

Asking about the mushroom

Order 崂山菇炖鸡 and then ask which mushroom is in the pot – 什么菇. A kitchen using local boletes will say so; one using the cheaper common option will answer differently.

If the menu lists the mushroom by name, that is the version to try. It is also worth asking whether the mushrooms are fresh or dried, because the two give quite different broths.

A bowl with rice or bread

The stew is served in a bowl with the broth, and rice or plain bread goes alongside to soak it up. In the villages around the mountain it is typically one dish in a larger farm meal rather than the whole point of the meal.

Because the mushrooms thicken the broth, a single bowl is filling. Order two dishes for two people unless you are deliberately eating it as the main course.

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