What is the hottest food in Shanghai in the summer? Not cold drinks, but bad cooked food and pickle sauces. Jiefang Daily and Shangguan News reporters recently observed that regardless of the scorching sun or heavy rain, many long-established doors in Shanghai continue to queue, and the sales of traditional specialties have increased significantly year-on-year. In this process, traditional gastronomic culture and related intangible cultural heritage items have been passed on.
The same is "bad", the taste is not the same
"Our deli window is lined up all year round, but the hot products in the summer are different from the hot products in the winter, and the bad brine products enter the peak sales as soon as the summer arrives." At the door of the dajiu house in Guangming Estate, Middle Huaihai Road, there is a long queue of consumers waiting to buy cooked vegetables. According to the relevant person in charge of the store, the rotten fish, the bad vegetarian chicken, etc. are selling very well, and the grounded "next meals" such as pickle edamame, sauce radish strips, and homemade spicy shoots are also very popular. According to his observation, the weather is hot, consumers do not like to cook themselves, and cold and appetizing dishes are particularly popular. For example, this year's new products launched by the store are sweet and sour radish, which looks very ordinary at first glance, but the mystery is the ingredients prepared by the store itself, so it is hot as soon as it is listed.
The cooked brine at The Cheong Kong Estate Restaurant sells very well in the summer
The person in charge also revealed that there are many stores in Shanghai that sell bad brine products, but different brands of bad brine and cold dishes have their own characteristics, because their respective "housekeeping skills" are not the same, "the bad brine of Guangming Estate is their own preparation, after buying the lees, mixing with other ingredients and then filtering out to use, the specific ingredients belong to 'trade secrets', relying on the master fu carefully prepared, familiar customers will know as soon as they eat." ”
Not far from Guangming Estate, there are also long queues in front of the old people and restaurants at the intersection of Huaihai Middle Road near the south intersection of Chengdu, and consumers are also waiting to buy bad brine cooked food. The relevant person in charge of the store said that "hanging bad" is the signature craft of the elderly and the elderly: in the cold dining room below 16 ° C, the incense mud is mixed with rice wine, spices, etc., stirred and soaked, and then wrapped in gauze and hung up, one drop by one to filter out the bad juice, skimming the top layer as a bad brine, the whole process is more than 24 hours. It is reported that the bad chickens sold the best in these two days, selling an average of more than 100 chickens per day.
The old taste is exquisite about how to eat
In addition to these bad brine cooked foods, cured meat products such as Nanfeng meat and bacon are also popular. Among many long-established brands, Nanfeng meat is a seasonal product that is placed in a prominent position.
"Nanfeng meat can be said to be the most regional seasonal pickled meat product." Ding Hongfang, the relevant person in charge of Sanyang South Goods Store, who is well versed in "a toothpick to test the quality of ham", said that Nanfeng meat specifically refers to the air-dried meat produced by the use of pig front legs in Jinhua and Lanxi areas of Zhejiang Province, which is usually made after the Spring Festival, hung up and dried naturally, and is listed in the Yellow Plum Season that year. When the air is dry, it blows the wind of Gangnam, hence the name "South Wind Meat".
If you measure the nanfeng meat with a toothpick, you can also smell a faint aroma of ham, but its taste is very different from that of ham. Because the ham is made of pork hind legs and the cycle is more than one and a half years, the taste is relatively hard; and the Nanfeng meat with a relatively short production time is much lighter in color than the ham, and the taste is much softer, especially suitable for summer soup or sliced steaming.
South-style meat with both regional and seasonal characteristics
Also popular is bacon. Compared with Nanfeng meat, the production cycle of bacon is shorter, usually after marinating and pressing water, and is characterized by fully reflecting the salty and umami taste of meat, but without the special aroma of ham. The most exquisite bacon in summer is called "knife plate incense", which uses fat and lean pork belly.
"When the product is good, it should also be publicized so that everyone knows how to eat it." Ding Hongfang noted that many long-established brands have increased their online marketing efforts this year, introducing time-honored brands to young people through short videos and other means. The reporter looked at social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and found that there were countless notes with Nanfeng meat as the protagonist. Reflected in sales, it is the old brand found that many young people are buying through e-commerce to taste the early.
Affordable products make big business
It is not difficult to find that in Shanghai's seasonal cuisine, there are many vegetarian dishes with low unit prices, such as pickles and dried edamame radish. But many long-established brands say that small things can also make big business.
The most typical is the Shanghai National Souvenir Shop on Huaihai Middle Road. The best sellers in the pickles were assorted vegetables, green melons and ginger slices, the first two of which sold about 3,500 kilograms a month, the latter reaching 1,800 kilograms; peanut butter in the sauce came out on top, selling 7,000 kilograms in a month.
Bulk pickle sauces from local souvenir shops across the country in Shanghai are popular
"Affordable products are not simple." The relevant person in charge of Shanghai all over the land said that the products are like several treasures. For example, the recent hot assortment is shredded by hand, which has a taste of "unspeakable", "although the length and thickness of the machine cut are similar to those cut by hand, but the old eaters insist on hand-shredding better." "There's also the best companion peanut butter for cold noodles and cold ravioli in summer, and one of the reasons for the hot sale is that it's made here with pure peanut grinding without any additions.
In Shanghai, almost every pickle or sauce has a similar story, so from the overall point of view, the small area of the pickle sauce counter has become the "sales king" of the store: the daily sales were about 34,000 yuan before, and since the summer, the daily sales have risen sharply to 44,000 yuan, up to 60,000 yuan. Comparing this sales with the area of the sauce pickle counter, its ping effect is not only in Huaihai Middle Road, but also in the same kind of products in Shanghai.
"A little" and "an appropriate amount" become the standard
There is also a long-established brand that sees the direction of development from the traditional taste of hot sales: while innovating, it also makes up for the shortcomings of traditional taste.
This point is quite experienced by Shao Wansheng, the "drunken king" of Shanghai. This year, Shao Wansheng's drunken family has added a lot of new packaging products for online shopping, including "bad" new products such as bad pig hands, bad pork belly, bad chicken, bad fish, and "drunk" new products such as low-salt yellow mud snails and cooked drunken crabs. Zhu Guowei, the seventh generation of the Huangpu District Intangible Cultural Heritage Project Drunken Processing Technology, told reporters that the birth of the "Bad Drunk" method was to store fresh food, pay attention to no addition of preservatives, pigments and food additives; evolved to the present, into a special flavor. However, the skills handed down by the ancestors are also changing, "In the past, the drunken products were generally salty to extend the shelf life, but now people pay attention to a light diet, so the drunken process must be improved." We explore how to use the least amount of salt to achieve long-term preservation of products. ”
Drunken foods such as yellow mud snails are one of the representative foods of Shanghai
Exploring the content and proportion of various raw materials in the bad drunk is an important work of Zhu Guowei, "Shao Wansheng's 160 years of bad drunk secret recipes were all word of mouth before, more is 'a little' and 'moderate' and other vague words, even if the master teaches kung fu, there are many vague places." For example, the yellow mud snail, the size of the foam in the brine, the speed of the rise, etc., are the key points to judge the quality of the yellow mud snail, but they are more subjective. Therefore, he wants to turn these vague and subjective parts into an unmistakable manual of operation specifications, and give accurate numbers according to different ingredients and pass them on to future generations, "This year's new low-salt yellow mud snail is a kind of exploration." ”
In Shao Wansheng, in addition to the finished food, the bad brine for consumers to make their own bad brine food is also selling well, and more than 170,000 bottles have been sold since May. A bottle of bad brine can spoil at least three or four dishes, and it can taste in 15 minutes, which is very in line with the requirements of the current "fast dish". Originally, Shao Wansheng launched the industry's first publicly marked "special" grade of bad halogen, the mystery is that the protein content is very high. A bottle of bad brine is less than 16 yuan, but the production environment and technical requirements are very high, and many brands are reluctant to do this kind of small business. But Shao Wansheng insisted, "This is the housekeeping skill of the old brand, and someone must always summarize, improve and inherit." And from the perspective of market response, consumers are very willing to pay for these products, which is our motivation. Zhu Guowei said.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Wu Weiqun Text Editor: Ren Chong
Source: Author: Ren Chong