Pork Stewed with Cattail Shoots 蒲菜炖肉
Pork Stewed with Cattail Shoots is featured among the local specialties of Jiangsu.
Pork Stewed with Cattail Shoots (蒲菜炖肉) brings tender cattail shoots together with pork and broth in Huai’an (淮安). A family-banquet version recorded by Yangtse Evening Post in 2014 uses rou-tuo (肉饦), hand-chopped pork shaped into balls, with shoots from Tianfeigong (天妃宫).
Pork balls over tender shoots
At the Tan (谭) family’s banquet, the pork combined three parts fat with seven parts lean. It was chopped by hand into fine pieces and formed into balls. Fresh cattail shoots were cut into sections and partly cooked in chicken stock before being placed with the pork in a clay pot.
More chicken stock, goji berries and a little salt were added, and the pot simmered gently. The shoots at the bottom absorbed the combined chicken and pork juices, becoming soft, tender and savoury while retaining their own fresh character.
Carefully selected shoots and stock
The family’s senior cook insisted on Tianfeigong cattail shoots for their particular texture. She also simmered the chicken stock over a stove for more than three hours, making it a foundation for the family’s Huai’an dishes.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-27. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.