Lianzhou Cured Meats 连州腊味
Lianzhou Cured Meats is featured among the local specialties of Guangdong.
Lianzhou Cured Meats (连州腊味) are the air-dried sausages, pork, duck and other cured foods of Lianzhou (连州), in Qingyuan (清远), Guangdong. A Nanfang+ report republished by the Lianzhou city government calls the cured meats of Dongpi (东陂镇), a town in Lianzhou, a flagship of the city's farm produce; they have been made there for more than 300 years. On 24 January 2006 China's former quality inspection administration (国家质检总局) granted Dongpi cured meats (东陂腊味) protection as a geographical-indication product.
How it is made
The same report describes a method built on natural air-drying, with no preservatives added at any stage from choosing the meat through salting and drying to the finished product, and several steps done by hand. A producer interviewed by Southern Metropolis Daily (南方都市报) in December 2024 said fresh ingredients are salted with a traditional recipe and then air-dried naturally, which takes about 15 days.
Dongpi calls its sausages 'wind sausages' (风肠) rather than the usual 'cured sausages' (腊肠), because mountain wind dries them. The Qingyuan intellectual-property service platform explains that the Xixi stream (西溪) flows to the edge of the town from a gorge to the northwest and brings the mountain wind with it. Before dawn, households carry poles hung with sausages out of their shade sheds to catch the cold wind, and carry them back under cover when the midday sun gets strong.
Ingredients
Southern Metropolis Daily found the rooftops, eaves and balconies of Dongpi hung with sausages, cured pork, cured duck and cured pig's trotters in the curing season. Dongpi also makes a cured egg roll (腊蛋), in which pork caul fat forms the wrapper and egg the filling. In the 1930s, the cured egg rolls and wind sausages of Dongpi's Suichang (遂昌号) firm were already being sold to Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Macau.
Flavour and texture
The Nanfang+ report on the Lianzhou government portal sums up the flavour of Dongpi cured meats as crisp skin and springy meat, a deep cured aroma, richness without greasiness, and a balance of salt and sweetness.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-23. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.