Hengdong Country Cooking 衡东土菜
Hengdong Country Cooking is featured among the local specialties of Hunan.
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Hengdong Country Cooking (衡东土菜) is the home-style cooking of Hengdong County (衡东县) in Hengyang (衡阳), Hunan. Hengdong is described by Rednet Moment and the Hengdong County Media Centre as the only county in Hunan to hold the official title of famous county for country cooking ("土菜名县").
Ingredients
Xin Hunan describes Hengdong country cooking as food that is not happy without chilli, and its heat as ever more fiery. The ingredient at its centre is the yellow tribute chilli (黄贡椒) grown in Sanzhang (三樟), which both reports call the soul of Hengdong country cooking. The Sanzhang chilli is thin-skinned and thick-fleshed, bright in colour, and sweet, hot, fragrant and crisp.
Juweitang Foods (聚味堂食品有限公司) buys the chilli in Sanzhang; on hot sunny days its staff spread part of the fresh picking on scorching concrete to dry and make the rest into chilli paste. The company cooks Sanzhang chilli with garlic, ginger and other seasonings into a paste meant to be eaten with rice, kept fresh under a layer of vegetable oil once opened.
The best-known dish
Rednet Moment and the Hengdong County Media Centre, writing of country dishes cooked over firewood ("柴火烧土菜"), name Shiwan crisp stomach (石湾脆肚), fried with yellow tribute chilli, as the county's household classic. Nicknamed "a thunderclap over Hunan" ("三湘惊雷"), it is home cooking in Shiwan (石湾), Sanzhang, Daqiao (大桥) and Bailian (白莲), and in 2008 it won a gold award in the Hunan round of a national cooking competition.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.