Huizhou Hengli Rice Noodle Soup 惠州横沥汤粉

How it is made

The broth is the heart of the dish. Dongjiang Times (东江时报), a Huizhou paper, lists what goes into the pot: pork bones, roasted flounder powder (左口鱼粉), small dried shrimp with some shrimp meat, and pork skin scraped clean of fat, simmered for several hours. The pork skin gives the broth a slightly sticky body without making it greasy.

The trotters, brisket, pork small intestine and eggs go into a marinade made with cooking wine steeped with more than twenty medicinal herbs; the trotters braise for over an hour to render out their fat, and the eggs for five hours. The rice noodles are made by traditional local methods, and side items such as stuffed pork skin (酿猪皮) and small meatballs are foods particular to the Dong River (东江) region.

How it is eaten

In Huicheng a standard bowl comes with pork trotter, braised egg and brisket, plus hand-made meatballs of stuffed pork skin, and the broth carries the taste of dried fish and small shrimp. Nanfang+ (南方+) suggests adding a little white pepper, and names it as the bowl a Huicheng day starts with.

Where it comes from

More than a century ago Hengli was a busy wharf town on the Dong River, drawing people from nearby market towns on every lunar-calendar day ending in 2, 5 or 8. Dongjiang Times relates that noodle-soup sellers from nearby Rengtu (仍图) brought their trade to Hengli, and the soup developed from there. It was named one of Huizhou's ten famous snacks at the city's first eco-leisure tourism festival in 2004.