How to pickle sour meat

For those who prefer sour taste, you can consider making your own sour meat. The most common way to cook meat is probably to stir-fry it directly. This method has become too common and has lost its novelty. You can try another way to cook meat, which is to pickle the meat. You can pickle it yourself at home, the method is relatively simple. What is the method of pickling sour meat?

1. Take the fresh meat you slaughtered or bought, preferably the pig head, remove the bones, and place it with the skin on charcoal fire. Burn the skin and scrape off the charred dirt with a knife. The purpose is to remove sweat and dirt. Do not scrape with water. After scraping, the skin of the meat will be golden yellow. Then cut it into thin slices and put it in a bowl. Then pour the prepared salt, peppercorns, saltpeter, and fried crispy glutinous rice (or corn) into the bowl containing the meat slices in proportion and mix evenly. The general ratio is 8 cents of salt, 5 cents of peppercorns, 2 cents of saltpeter, and 2 taels of glutinous rice for every pound of fresh pork.

2. Turn the cleaned jar upside down with the mouth of the jar facing downward, and use glutinous rice straw to smoke the jar for 2 to 3 minutes to make the jar full of smoke. Then put the jar upright. When the thick smoke is overflowing from the jar, stuff the seasoned pork into the jar in time, then press the pork in the jar with your hands, and then blow a red-hot charcoal fire (either big or small) red, and put it in the jar on the surface of the pressed pork. At the same time, cover the jar with a lid and put a water plate in the jar to seal it. Place it in a cool and dry place and make sure to keep the water in the jar sufficient. When the marinade is mature (usually 10 days in summer and two weeks in winter), you can open the jar and take it out for consumption.

3. Notes: (1) Do not fill the jar too full with meat. Leave a certain amount of space. Generally, the meat surface should be pressed 2 to 3 inches away from the mouth of the jar. (2) During the period when the pickled meat is not mature, the jar must not be opened or removed from the seal, otherwise air will enter the jar and cause the pickled meat to mold. (3) After removing the seal and eating, the jar should be covered in time to keep the water in the pot so that it is always in a sealed state. Generally, the longest storage time of pork in the jar after opening the lid is about 3 months.

Food characteristics

In this way, the pickled sour pork is bright in color, with yellow skin, milky white fat and dark red lean meat; each piece of meat has a few grains of rice or peppercorns, and the taste is fragrant. The skin is crispy, the meat is fresh, the sourness is moderate, the aroma is overflowing, and it is refreshing and tastes good without any greasy feeling; if you sprinkle some dry spicy powder on the sour meat when eating, the taste will be spicy and slightly sour, which will be even better.

Although it is impossible to verify when the method of making Libo pickled sour meat began, it is said to have been invented by the Buyi people.