Suizhou Shiitake Chicken Stew 随州香菇炖鸡

Suizhou Shiitake Chicken Stew (随州香菇炖鸡) is shiitake mushroom from Suizhou (随州), Hubei, simmered with free-range chicken into a thick, mushroom-scented broth. Suizhou is known as China's home of shiitake and of flower mushrooms (花菇), the thick-capped shiitake whose tops crack into a pale pattern, and the stew is built around that local crop.

Ingredients

Hubei Daily traces modern shiitake growing in Suizhou to 1978, when Yang Xinmei (杨新美), a professor at Huazhong Agricultural University, began artificial cultivation there. Livestreams from the Suizhou pavilions at the 2024 Hubei Agricultural Expo described the pattern on the caps as formed by the gap between day and night temperatures, and 'Suizhou shiitake' is registered as a national geographical-indication agricultural product and trademark.

How it is made

At the same expo in Wuhan (武汉), Suizhou shiitake was cooked with free-range chicken on the spot into a thick broth whose rich mushroom aroma left visitors eager for a bowl, the Suizhou Daily reported. A similar pairing, old-hen and shiitake soup (老母鸡香菇汤), is one of the dishes on the shiitake banquet that Suizhou chefs presented at the 2023 Suizhou International Shiitake Industry Expo.

Where it comes from

Local tradition, as told in a China.com.cn report from Sui County (随县), holds that the Yan Emperor Shennong (炎帝神农) began using shiitake as both food and medicine in the Suizhou area. Simple shiitake stews and stir-fried shiitake slices came first; generations of cooks later built them into a full shiitake banquet, which China Central Television (CCTV) presented to a national audience as Suizhou food in August 2017.