Hengyang Spicy River Snails 衡阳嗦螺

Hengyang Spicy River Snails (衡阳嗦螺) are field snails eaten by sucking the meat from the shell. Rednet Moment (红网时刻) reports the dish from a restaurant in Jinjialing (金甲岭), Chashanao town (茶山坳镇), Zhuhui district (珠晖区) of Hengyang, where the snails are fried with chilli, ginger and garlic and then simmered in pork-bone stock.

How it is made

In the kitchen described by Rednet Moment, the cook clips the tail off each snail with pliers, rubs the snails clean with a little salt, stir-fries them hard in camellia oil, adds chilli, shredded ginger and garlic, and simmers them in stock made from pork leg bones. The cook says the bone stock lets the flavour soak right into the meat. Because snails come out of the water carrying mud and grit, each one is washed patiently, and each tail is broken open so that diners can suck the meat out.

Flavour and texture

Rednet Moment describes the heat of facing-heaven chillies, the bite of ginger and garlic and the aroma of perilla coating plump, tender snail meat, and calls the finished plate fresh, fragrant and numbing-hot. The restaurant it visited used to make its snails hotter; as more visitors came to Zhuhui it toned the heat down to a moderate level.

How it is eaten

The name comes from the way it is eaten. "嗦" (suo) means to suck or slurp: diners pinch the shell between thumb and forefinger, purse their lips, push with the tongue and suck hard, and the meat slides out coated in the seasoning. Empty shells clatter onto the table, and diners suck the sauce from their fingers.

Where it comes from

The woman who runs the restaurant Rednet Moment visited counts the snails among the "金甲七宝" ("seven treasures of Jinjia") of Chashanao town, and says people from Hengyang's urban districts often make the trip to Jinjialing to eat them.