Hair-Thin Stir-Fried Beef Tripe 发丝牛百叶
Hair-Thin Stir-Fried Beef Tripe is featured among the local specialties of Hunan.
Image notes
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Hair-Thin Stir-Fried Beef Tripe (发丝牛百叶) is a Hunan (湖南) dish built around precise cutting and a rapid stir-fry over high heat. Da Xiangcai Bao describes the finished tripe as pale, fine as hair, and crisp-tender, with salty, savoury, sour and spicy flavours.
How it is made
Chef Zhou Bo’an (周伯安) describes cutting both beef tripe and preserved bamboo-shoot slices into very fine shreds before stir-frying them. In a September 2017 demonstration in Changsha (长沙), he cut the tripe with a cleaver and separated the snowy-white strands with his fingers.
Where it comes from
In an interview published by Xiaoxiang Morning Post and carried by Rednet, Zhou recalled cooking the dish for Ye Jianying (叶剑英) at the Hunan Provincial Party Committee’s reception office in March 1963. Ye asked about the dish and met the young cook, who explained the fine-cut tripe and bamboo-shoot preparation.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-27. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.