Guanyintang Beef 观音堂牛肉

Guanyintang Beef (观音堂牛肉), also called Guanyintang five-spice beef (观音堂五香牛肉), is a brined and long-boiled beef from Guanyintang (观音堂镇), a town in Shanzhou District (陕州区) of Sanmenxia (三门峡) in western Henan. The Shanzhou District government lists it among the district's local products and calls it a traditional snack of the area.

How it is made

Freshly slaughtered beef is put into vats of clean water with salt and saltpetre. How long it stays there depends on the season: about a month in winter, three or four days in summer and seven or eight days in spring and autumn, until the meat is red right through. The cured beef is then boiled in a large pot for six or seven hours with fennel, cloves, Dahurian angelica root (白芷), ginger, garlic and chilli. The cook turns and checks it often and watches the heat, stopping when the meat is tender but still holds together.

Flavour and texture

The finished beef has a bright colour and a strong aroma of cooked sauce. It is moderately salty and the meat is tender.

Where it comes from

According to local tradition, people around Guanyintang were already making a living from cooked beef in the Tongzhi reign (同治) of the Qing dynasty. In the autumn of 1901 Empress Dowager Cixi passed through Guanyintang, and the story goes that she praised the beef and made it a tribute to the court. A beef master, Zhang Yong'an (张永安), reworked the recipe and made the beef famous. In the 1950s it was sent to Beijing as a National Day gift, and in the 1980s it was included in a national compendium of famous Chinese foods (中国名特食品大全). It is still made mainly in single-family workshops, and several long-running shops sell it around Sanmenxia.