Imperial Mock Bear Paw 御品赛熊掌

Imperial Mock Bear Paw (御品赛熊掌) is a Heilongjiang banquet dish that copies braised bear paw with pork skin, minced meat and beef tendon, since bear paw itself can no longer be cooked. In 2018 the China Cuisine Association (中国烹饪协会) named it one of Heilongjiang's ten classic dishes in its "Chinese Cuisine" (中国菜) list.

Where it comes from

Braised bear paw (烧熊掌) was a centrepiece of the Manchu-Han Imperial Feast (满汉全席), and Hong Kong Wen Wei Po notes that cooking it is now absolutely prohibited. The substitute was worked out by Zhang Jinchun (张金春), founder of the Jinchun Hotel (金春大酒店) in Harbin's Daowai District (道外区) and a provincial-level representative inheritor of the feast's northern-style dishes (北派菜), which Heilongjiang added to its intangible cultural heritage list in 2015. Zhang told Wen Wei Po he first had a bear-paw mould made, and named the result sai xiong zhang, "rival of bear paw". Harbin Daily counts it among the hotel's signature dishes.

How it is made

Zhang chose pork skin for the outer skin because it takes seasoning more easily than beef or mutton skin. A pork filling came out too soft, so he changed to minced beef and set beef tendon in the middle to stand in for the paw's sinews. Cooked pork skin is laid in the mould and filled with half of the seasoned beef, then the cooked tendon, then the rest of the beef; more pork skin closes and presses it, and it steams for 50 minutes before being turned out and sliced. The Heilongjiang Department of Culture and Tourism describes the mix as beef tendon, pork skin and minced pork, finished with a dusting of pine-nut powder to bring back the fragrance of bear paw.

Flavour and texture

According to Zhang, a slice carries no taste of beef and has a faint note of pine. The culture and tourism department describes the dish as brightly coloured and lifelike in shape, with a fragrant, smooth, soft and sticky bite, and says nearly every table at the hotel orders it.