Longxi Cured Pork 陇西腊肉

Longxi Cured Pork (陇西腊肉) is salt-cured pork, streaked with fat and lean and dried in the open air, from Longxi County (陇西县) in Dingxi (定西), Gansu. The China Association of Agricultural Science Societies (中国农学会) has named Longxi the 'home of Chinese cured pork' (中国腊肉之乡), and the pork is a Chinese geographical-indication product.

How it is made

Makers choose pork with fat and lean in layers. Guo Longlong (郭陇陇), a provincial-level inheritor of the craft, describes six steps: selecting the meat, rubbing it with sugar, salting, pressing it in barrels, drying and storing. The meat is coated with rock salt, Sichuan pepper, fennel and more than ten spices in all and cured for 45 days, then turned and dried in the open air for another 45 days. In winter, rows of curing pork hang in drying yards across Longxi's towns and villages; the finished pork is cooked by boiling in the traditional way.

Flavour and texture

China Gansu Net compares the lean to red clouds and the fat to agate: the lean is not dry or stringy, and the fat is slightly translucent and not greasy. The strips are a glossy red with glistening fat.

Where it comes from

Curing in Longxi is recorded as starting around the Qianlong reign (乾隆, 1736 to 1795) of the Qing dynasty. Dingxi added the making of Longxi Cured Pork to its third batch of municipal intangible cultural heritage on 12 April 2010, with the Longxi County Cultural Centre as the protecting body, and the craft is also a Gansu provincial heritage item. Guo Longlong learned it from his grandfather; he is the third generation of his family to make it, and his son has started to learn it.