Anshan Date-Shaped Sausages 鞍山肉枣
Anshan Date-Shaped Sausages is featured among the local specialties of Liaoning.
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Anshan Date-Shaped Sausages (鞍山肉枣) are small cooked pork sausages from Anshan (鞍山), Liaoning, whose pieces look like red jujubes. The name rouzao means "meat jujube". The Anshan City Archives records them as a product of the cooked-meat plant of the Anshan Food Company (鞍山市食品公司), sold under the Maple Leaf (枫叶) brand.
How it is made
The filling is pure lean pork, fresh or frozen, with the fat, sinew sheaths and ligaments removed. It is minced to a suitable fineness and mixed with a range of seasonings, then packed into small-bore pig casings. The sausages are air-dried and finally boiled.
Flavour and texture
The finished pieces are bright red and neatly shaped, and they taste sweet with a salty edge and a mellow aroma. A 2020 episode of CCTV-10's food programme Flavour (味道), in a series on hometown dishes of Anshan, presented them as sausages with a distinctive liquor aroma and sweetness.
Where it comes from
In 1982 the Maple Leaf sausages and the plant's Maple Leaf dried pork were named quality products of Liaoning province, and in the same year they won a quality-product award from China's Ministry of Commerce.
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.