Longyao Mutton Soup 隆尧羊汤
Longyao Mutton Soup is featured among the local specialties of Hebei.
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Longyao Mutton Soup (隆尧羊汤) is a milky-white mutton and offal soup from Longyao County (隆尧县) in Xingtai (邢台), Hebei; the Xingtai city government writes that hardly anyone in Xingtai has not heard of it.
How it is made
Sellers set up a large pot on the street, with white sheep bone frames rising and falling in a milky broth. The sheep are slaughtered early, cut roughly into large pieces and stewed slowly in a big iron pot. The cooked mutton is lifted out and sliced, and the offal is then stewed in the same broth with the bones, lifted out, sliced and set aside, leaving only the bones heating in the pot.
The offal mix covers heart, eyes, face, liver, blood and lung: everything edible on the sheep apart from the meat. According to the Xingtai city government, the seasoning and the heat decide the quality. Too little seasoning leaves a muttony smell and too much gives a medicinal taste, while a fierce fire melts the fat into the broth so that it turns milky white.
How it is eaten
A customer chooses a bowl of offal alone or one with mutton added. The server puts the slices in a large bowl, ladles in broth to cover them, turns the ladle over the offal to drain the broth back into the pot, and repeats this three or four times until everything is heated through. Chopped spring onion and coriander go on last. The repeated soaking is meant to merge the flavour of the meat and offal with the broth.
Chilli can be added, red against the white broth. The shops serve it with jinsi xiaobing (金丝小饼), small flatbreads that are dipped in the soup or eaten dry, and a final bowl of plain broth with no seasoning can follow.
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Pingquan lamb soup 平泉羊汤 →
Both are Hebei mutton soups; the Longyao bowl is built on offal, heated by pouring broth over it and draining it back three or four times.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.