Zhenba Cured Pork 镇巴腊肉

Zhenba Cured Pork (镇巴腊肉) is salted, wood-smoked pork from Zhenba County (镇巴县) in Hanzhong (汉中), Shaanxi, in the heart of the Daba Mountains (大巴山). Xinhua calls it a representative local product of the Qinling and Daba mountain region (秦巴山区), and in 2010 it became China's first cured pork approved as a protected geographical-indication product.

How it is made

In the home method a Shaanxi Daily report recalls from one Zhenba family, the pork is salted, smoked over a wood fire and hung under the eaves to dry. The same 2021 report describes the process scaled up at an industrial park in Xiaoyang town (小洋镇): dark-red raw pork hangs on large steel racks over a charcoal fire of firewood, which draws the water out of the meat. After more than 30 days of smoking it is washed with alcohol, dried in the shade and vacuum-packed.

Where it comes from

In the steep, remote mountains of Zhenba, goods were hard to carry in and fresh meat did not keep, so people salted and smoked it to remove moisture and make it last; in the family Shaanxi Daily describes, one batch of cured pork had to last the whole year. Shaanxi Daily puts its making history at more than a thousand years. Liu Chuang (刘闯), a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, describes Zhenba as China's northernmost cured-pork area, at high latitude and altitude with low temperatures, and notes that the pigs eat green fodder containing medicinal herbs.

How it is eaten

In that family's kitchen the pork was rinsed in warm water and then put in the pot to boil. One Zhenba family's standby, which a child could carry to boarding school for the week, was cured pork stir-fried with fermented black beans (腊肉炒豆豉), reheated by steaming.