Yulin Three-Meat Stew 榆林拼三鲜

Yulin Three-Meat Stew (榆林拼三鲜) is a banquet dish from Yulin (榆林) in northern Shaanxi. Pork, mutton and chicken are each cooked first and then stewed together with a range of other ingredients. Yulin Daily calls it a well-known Yulin dish. At family gatherings in Yulin it comes to the table as the closing main dish.

Ingredients

The three meats are pork, mutton and chicken. Soaked wood-ear fungus and soaked dried daylily buds go in with them, along with shredded kelp, yellow chives and spinach. Yulin Daily picks out the colours in the bowl: soy-red braised pork, green spinach, clear strips of starch sheet, golden daylilies and black wood ear.

How it is made

Yulin Daily puts the whole process at more than thirty steps. The ingredients are boiled, braised, deep-fried, steamed or blanched before they are stewed together. The seasoning is handled with care, and Yulin Daily notes that the flavour can differ even between experienced chefs.

Where it comes from

In Yulin the dish is part of life events from birth to death, including birthdays, a baby's first month and house moves; Yulin Daily writes that no important feast goes without it. It is also one of the "Old Twelve Dishes" (老十二件), a traditional Yulin banquet whose dishes are served in a fixed order, and it often closes a banquet as the grand final dish. Yulin Daily describes it as combining Han, Manchu and Mongol flavours. The paper also repeats a legend that the Qianlong Emperor tasted it on an incognito visit to Yulin and that it was later taken into the palace as the closing dish for foreign envoys.