Shaobai Steamed Pork Belly 烧白

Flavour and texture

Freshly steamed shaobai is strongly aromatic. The pork is fatty without being greasy and so soft that it melts in the mouth, and it sits on a bed of salted greens (盐菜) that is salty, savoury and crisp. The Chongqing planning bureau's food map sums up the Chongqing style as meat that is soft and yielding, greens that are salty and fresh, and a glossy red colour.

Where it comes from

In Pengshui (彭水), Fuweng shaobai (涪翁烧白), also called Yushan shaobai (郁山烧白), is an essential dish of the farmhouse banquet known as "三蒸九扣" (three steamed dishes and nine bowls). Almost every household in Pengshui makes shaobai, but the Yushan version is the famous one, and it is on Chongqing's sixth list of representative intangible heritage items. Tradition says the Song-dynasty poet and calligrapher Huang Tingjian (黄庭坚) praised it while in exile in Pengshui, and the dish took his literary name, Fuweng.

How it is made

Bishan (璧山) big-knife shaobai is named because each slice of meat is as long as a kitchen cleaver. It is made from skin-on pork belly with yacai (芽菜) preserved greens and other ingredients, and turns out brownish-red, soft and sticky, and fatty without greasiness. It won the title "China Famous Dish" at the fifth national chefs' cooking competition in 2004.

Wulong (武隆) cooks set pork belly on the district's old salted vegetables (老咸菜) and cook it by frying and then steaming. Qianjiang (黔江) red kourou uses Tujia three-layer pork: the marinated slices are given red food colouring, arranged in a circle in a Tujia earthenware bowl and slow-steamed in a large pot, where control of the heat decides whether the meat is cooked through without overcooking.