The four most famous roast chicken producing areas in China are Anyang, Henan, Suzhou, Anhui, Qufu, Shandong and Shenyang, Liaoning. My hometown is in Hunan, and roast chicken is not famous.
Among roast chicken, Daokou roast chicken in Anyang City, Henan Province is the most famous, and it is known as the first chicken in China, just like Beijing roast duck. Daokou roast chicken has a bright color, light red and slightly yellow. Chicken is like an ingot, with white shredded pork and toughness. The fragrance is rich, crisp and fragrant, soft and rotten, salty and palatable, ripe and rotten, fat but not greasy. Its maturity is particularly amazing. No need to cut with a knife. When you shake your hand, the flesh and blood will separate themselves, and it will be fragrant whether it is hot or cold.
History of Daokou Roast Chicken
Daokou roast chicken was founded in the eighteenth year of Shunzhi in Qing Dynasty, and has a history of more than 300 years. According to the records of Xun County Records and Hua County Records, the business was not prosperous in the first hundred years because of poor technical conditions. Zhang Bing, the master of roast chicken in Qianlong for 52 years, the ancestor of Zhang Zhonghai, a representative inheritor of intangible cultural heritage, met Liu Yi, an old friend of the chef in Qing Palace. He opened a small roast chicken shop in Daji Street, Daokou Town, because of improper production, the business was depressed.
One day, an old friend who used to be a chef in the imperial dining hall of Qing Palace visited. He is stunted. The two met after a long separation and talked about drinking. Zhang Bing asked him for advice, and his friend told him a secret recipe, that is, roast chicken, with eight kinds of ingredients and soup stock. Eight condiments are tangerine peel, cinnamon, cardamom, galangal, clove, Amomum villosum, Amomum tsaoko and angelica dahurica. Soup stock is the soup stock for cooking chicken.
Every time you cook a pot of chicken, you should add the old soup from the first pot, and so on. The older the better. Zhang Bing did the same thing, and the chicken was really delicious. Since then, business has flourished. Zhang Bing named his roast chicken restaurant LAY, which means friendship and prosperity.