Yucheng Braised Chicken 禹城扒鸡

How it is made

The bird is trussed in a set shape: the two legs are crossed and tucked into the cavity, and the wings are pushed through the cut at the neck so that the wing tips stick out on either side of the beak. It is then cooked with five seasonings, cloves, cassia bark, Sichuan pepper, star anise and fennel, which is where the name "five-spice" comes from. The chicken is stewed for a long time, until the meat falls from the bone.

Where it comes from

The Yucheng county gazetteer, as retold by Dazhong Net, names Wang Mingkui (王明奎) of Yueyawan village (月牙湾村) north of the town as the first maker; his family had boiled chickens for a living for generations. One autumn evening in 1891, when he was 18, he left more than 20 chickens stewing over a well-stoked fire and slept until morning. The birds had collapsed in the pot and the meat slid off the bones, so he carried them to the county seat and sold them as "five-spice boneless braised chicken". The name drew a crowd, and from then on his family stewed every chicken until the bones came free. In 1892 he opened a small restaurant in Dezhou serving the dish, which is how it reached that city.

From 1909, when the Tianjin–Pukou railway (津浦铁路) was being built and opened, more people in Yucheng made a living from the chicken, and by the Republican period shops such as Fuheju (福和居) and Xiangshengju (祥胜居) stood at Yucheng railway station. A saying of the time urged travellers to get off the train at the smell and taste it. A 2024 notice from the Yucheng Culture and Tourism Bureau reports that the Dezhou city government has placed the Yucheng braised chicken making technique on its eighth list of municipal intangible cultural heritage.