Pingyao Beef

“Pingyao’s beef Taigu cakes are famous, and Xinghua Village’s Fenjiu is famous.” This is a line from a popular Shanxi folk song. The mellow and delicious Pingyao beef and the fragrant Fen wine are both famous inside and outside the province.

Pingyao beef is a traditional specialty of Pingyao County in central Shanxi. It is said that Pingyao beef was famous as early as the Ming Dynasty. By the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, Pingyao beef had become a must-have for dignitaries and dignitaries. By the 1930s, Pingyao beef had been exported to Beijing, Tianjin, Xi'an and other places. At that time, during autumn and winter, traders from all over the country came in droves to traffic beef, making Pingyao beef famous in the North. In 1956, at the National Famous Food Exhibition held in Beijing, Pingyao beef was rated as a national famous product. It is exported to North Korea, Mongolia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia and other countries, and is fragrant overseas.

Pingyao has a long history of cattle raising. According to Pingyao County Chronicles, as far back as the Han Dynasty, the folk custom here was "selling swords to buy cattle, selling knives to buy calves." At that time, cattle were raised for plowing, and only old cattle that were unable to work could be eaten as food. Over time, a unique set of experience in making old beef has been formed. During the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, there were workshops for curing beef in Pingyao. First, Lei Quaning's family opened the "Xingsheng Lei" slaughterhouse on Wenmiao Street, which has been selling spiced beef for more than a hundred years. The shop has a complete set of special techniques from slaughtering old cattle to making old beef. It only takes 15 minutes from slaughtering the cow, deboning it to cutting the meat into cubes. When slaughtering a cow, the two aorta blood vessels in the cow's neck are cut off to allow the cow's blood to flow out as quickly as possible. The cow killed in this way will have no blood stasis in the meat and the color will look good. In addition, it will reduce the time of fright and tension before the cow dies and prevent the muscle fibers from contracting. Resulting toughness. Deboning and slicing are quick, which maintains the inherent tenderness of the meat.

There are two beef shops in Pingyao with a relatively long history. One is the "Zi Licheng" beef shop opened by Ren Yangwen, the son of Ren Dacai, on West Street; the other is the "Longsheng" beef shop opened by Han Laibao in Xiguo Village outside the south gate. "Wang" beef restaurant has a history of about 200 years.