Dehong Food and Restaurants

Burned porket
Burned porket is one of the best dishes for entertaining guests among Dai people. Dai people would choose small-eared pigs produced in Dehong. Those porkets of half a year are thin-skined and tender, and are the best choice. Remove the bowels of the porkets, cram the seasonings, and stitch it together with thin bamboo strips. After that, bake the porkets with slow fire until it becomes brown and the oil leaks out. Puncture the skin of the porkets with a dagger while baking them. Dust them with wet ashes of straws and bake them again. Finally the porkets smell good and you can slice them up, and serve them with seasonings of Dai.

 

Green Feast of Jingpo people

Green Feast is a kind of feasts of primitive simplicity which is well known among Jingpo people. It features potherbs and the game which are abundant in local areas. Traditional ways of cooking include baking, steaming, frying and salting. The  rice and dishes are wraped up in fleshy leaves or leaves of banana. The spoons and bowls are also made from leaves. The dishes are green, and spoons and bowls are also green; so it is called Green Feast.

 

Haoshuai
Haoshuai is a featured food of Dai people. It is made from local dry pea powder and best Ersi. Mix the pea powder with water first. Cook Ersi and put in powders of ginger and shallot, refined salt, Caoguo, pepper jam, anise oil and white orchid oil.

 

Jingpo Food
The most famous food of Jingpo people is pestled dish which is made by pestling potherbs and wild fruits. Pestled dish can stimulate your appetite and cure diseases.

 

Ox Tripe Fruits
Ruili is located on the 24°north latitude and has a difference of only 5 latitudes from Hainan Island. Because of the special geographical conditions and climate here, many tropical plants which can grow in Hainan Island can also grow here. Jackfruit trees are tall and strong. Its way of producing fruits is different from that of other trees. Jackfruit trees can fruit from branches, trunks and even roots. One jackfruit tree can have as many as several hundred fruits. One big jackfruit can weigh tens of jins (a jin=1/2 kilogram). Because the jackfruit looks like an ox tripe, local people call it ox tripe fruit.

 

Palm Rice Noodle of Achang people

Palm Rice Noodle is the favorite food of Achang people. Palm Rice Noodle is made of best rice. Make the rice into white threads. Bake the meat and chop it. Finally mix the meat with intestines, salt, pepper, peanut, gingeli, bean powder and vinegary water, and then the seasonings are done.

 

Before eating, you have to take a gout of rice noodle in the palm, put some seasonings on the rice noodle. That’s why it is called Palm Rice Noodle. It tastes even better if you have seasonings made from the game. Many businessmen and foreign visitors eat Palm Rice Noodle and are full of praise for it.

 

Pestled dish of Jingpo people
In the menu of Jingpo people in the the Autonomous Region of Dehong for Dai and Jingpo People, the most featured dish is pestled dish. All the people who have tasted it are full of praise.

 

Pestled dish is always a leading character on the dining table of Jingpo people. There is a saying which goes like this, “if the pestling canister does not work, you will not have a good meal.” Almost every Jingpo family owns a pestling canister, and almost every Jingpo family has pestled dish every meal. In addition, all the dishes can be cooked this way. Thereinto, cooked pestling method is suitable for the meat dish from parched meat and mashed bones of cattles, birds and fish. The most tasty dishes made this way include baked pestled ringdoves, baked eels and baked loaches. Such dishes made from Lila bamboo shoots, big bitter fruits, small bitter fruits, horsebeans and cowpea can also be cooked in the cooked pestling method. The raw pestling method fits for ginger, Mapipao, Naijiang mushrooms, cowpeas and horsebeans. The usually used seasonings for pestled dishes include lobster sauce, pepper, ginger, garlic, and so on.

 

Pestling canister is easy to make: just take a burl of bamboo as the canister, and take a stick as pestle.

 

Pestled dishes are cold, and thus good to eat in summer. This kind of dishes are of great value as medicine. For example, Horse-hoof dish is alexipharmic and detumescent; Yuxing dish is alexipharmic, and can prevent and cure diseases. Many materials for pestled dishes are herbal medicine, and thus are detoxicating, stomachic, inflammation diminishing and diuretic. Also raw materials of pestled dishes are Yuxiangcao, Bitter Lianzi fruits and Jinjie with which people are familiar. If you fall and hurt, Wujiafeng is a good choice for pestled dishes.

 

Pestled dishes are clean because all raw materials and seasonings will have to be washed before they are used. If fish, shrimp and eel will be used, they have to be baked and cooked first and then pestled.

 

Dai-Flavor “Sapie”
“Sapie”, a cold dish of the Dai ethnic group, have many variant kinds according to sauce and ingredient. The major ones are “Sapie with bitter sauce”, “Sapie with lemon juice sauce” and “Sapie with eggplant sauce”, and some improved dishes are Sapies with fish, pot-stewed pork as main ingredients. The ingredients of “Sapie with bitter sauce” include rice noodle, cooked beef slice, cooked beef slice, cooked tripe slice. The sauce is very distinctive. First, pick a section of ox intestine near the stomach just after the beast is slaughtered, simmer it with water. Then, put minced raw beef, leek, cilantro, willow bud and buya (Dai word), rice-sized chilli, and “shuanshuan chilli” into the soup and keep stirring until the soup becomes very thick.

 

Now, diners can dip the rice noodle, cooked beef slice and cooked tripe slice in the sauce, and then eat them. The food is tasty and refreshing. Since it is very hot, diners should eat a little at first. The dish is believed can help get rid of summer heat, so it is very pleasant to have it in summer. The Dai people like “Sapie” so much that they cook fish in the cooking way of “Sapie”. First, chop the fish into pieces, splash lemon juice in it. Put the minced leek, cilantro, willow bud and buya, rice-sized chilli, and “shuanshuan chilli” to make the sauce. Then, prepare a plate of fried fish bones, minced lettuce or cabbage. Diner can dip the food in the sauce. It tastes sour and sweet, but very delicious.

 

Dai-Flavor Pickled Vegetables
Stewed Chicken with Lemon Grass
The Dai people usually feast guests with this dish. Lemon grass grows in subtropical region. It emits lemon fragrance and is effective in strengthening stomach, refreshing mind and stimulating the oestrus. Dai people like to stew locally bred chicken with lemon grass as the flavoring. The strong smell of chicken mingles with light fragrance of lemon grass, making the dish tasty.

 

Dai-Flavor Pickled Vegetables
Dai people believe that eating sour food is effective in refreshing mind, improving eyesight, helping digest and relieving summer heat and fever. Thus, there are lots of sour dishes in Dai cuisine, like sour steamed meat, sour fried fish with bamboo shoot, sour stewed beef with pawpaw, stewed bean curd with pickled vegetable. Without sour dishes, Dai people will lose their appetite. If you come to Dehong Prefecture, you’d better go to a secluded Dai-style bamboo stilt restaurant for a taste of sour food.

 

Jingpo Ghost-Worshipping Chicken

Jingpo “Green Leave Feast”

After having a taste of Jingpo’s “green leave feast”, you might have a fresh new understanding on the currently popular “pure green food”. When sitting aside the dinning table, you can’t find any bowl, spoon, iron drinking utensil. Jingpo people use bamboo tube to steam rice and prepare dishes, use green plantain leave to hold dishes. They fold leave to ladle out soup, use bamboo joint as drinking utensil and cook wide herbs and locally bred chicken. The feast is quite different from modern cuisine and seems an ethnic “grand banquet of wisdom”.

 

Jingpo Ghost-Worshipping Chicken

Though having terrifying name, the dish tastes delicious. The Jingpo people have the tradition of slaughtering chickens and offering them as sacrifice to ghost queen. The Jingpos first boiled chicken, then tear it into pieces after chicken gets cool. They mix the tossed chicken with minced ginger, garlic, cilantro, lemon leave, salt, monosodium glutamate and soy. Jingpos use the delicacy to feast guests so that they can have a taste of it frequently.

Jingpo Mashed Food

 

If visiting a Jingpo family, you will hear the saying that “appetite will be lost without mashed food”. Mashed food is the most distinctive one among Jingpo cuisine. The Jingpo people put some herbal plants like cordate houttuynia and China berry fruit, a plenty of edible spice and flavorings, baked fish, shrimp and meat into bamboo tube, and pound these raw materials with wooden pestle. The delicacy can relieve rheumatic pains, cold and internal heat, help digestion and invigorate the functions of stomach.

 

Cross-the-hand Rice Noodle

The cross-the-hand rice noodle is a delicacy of Achang ethnic group living in Husa, Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture. It has a different flavor from cross-the-hand rice noodle of Mengzi and bean-curd-jelly rice noodle of Kunming. The cross-the-hand rice noodle is thin, soft and slippy. It is made of red rice, a local specialty. When people put the rice noodle on the palms, it seems as if they carry a red rose with shy look. Mix minced meat with rice noodle and then put them into mouth. Immediately, the sweet smell permeates the air and immerses diners.

 

"Shuanshuan Chilli"
For those boasting that they can eat all the chillis in the world fearlessly, they’d better come to Dehong Prefecture to try local “shuanshuan chilli”. Dehong teems with the super chilli. It is said that the piquancy of “shuanshuan chilli” is 20-30 times more than other kinds of chillis. If Dehong “shuanshuan chilli” is used as an ingredient of sauce, diners should dip a little in case that they feel unwell.

 

Unique Insect Dish
These who see the dish for the first time will be astonished. However, Dai, Jingpo and De’ang people living in Dehong Prefecture still keep the tradition of cooking dish with such insects like ant eggs, bamboo worm, bee pupa and spider. It, with sweet smell lingering between diner’s lips and teeth, is absolutely a good dish to go well with wine. Visitors can have a try if you are bold enough. It is indeed nourishing.

 

Stewed Chicken with Lemon Grass

The Dai people usually feast guests with this dish. Lemon grass grows in subtropical region. It emits lemon fragrance and is effective in strengthening stomach, refreshing mind and stimulating the oestrus. Dai people like to stew locally bred chicken with lemon grass as the flavoring. The strong smell of chicken mingles with light fragrance of lemon grass, making the dish tasty.

 

Jingpo “Green Leave Feast”

After having a taste of Jingpo’s “green leave feast”, you might have a fresh new understanding on the currently popular “pure green food”. When sitting aside the dinning table, you can’t find any bowl, spoon, iron drinking utensil. Jingpo people use bamboo tube to steam rice and prepare dishes, use green plantain leave to hold dishes. They fold leave to ladle out soup, use bamboo joint as drinking utensil and cook wide herbs and locally bred chicken. The feast is quite different from modern cuisine and seems an ethnic “grand banquet of wisdom”.

 

Jingpo Mashed Food

If visiting a Jingpo family, you will hear the saying that “appetite will be lost without mashed food”. Mashed food is the most distinctive one among Jingpo cuisine. The Jingpo people put some herbal plants like cordate houttuynia and China berry fruit, a plenty of edible spice and flavorings, baked fish, shrimp and meat into bamboo tube, and pound these raw materials with wooden pestle. The delicacy can relieve rheumatic pains, cold and internal heat, help digestion and invigorate the functions of stomach.

 

“Shuanshuan Chilli”

For those boasting that they can eat all the chillis in the world fearlessly, they’d better come to Dehong Prefecture to try local “shuanshuan chilli”. Dehong teems with the super chilli. It is said that the piquancy of “shuanshuan chilli” is 20-30 times more than other kinds of chillis. If Dehong “shuanshuan chilli” is used as an ingredient of sauce, diners should dip a little in case that they feel unwell.

 

Rice Grown in Zhefang Town

Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture is a well-known land of fish and rice. Because of favorable weather and fertile land, the prefecture is abundant with grain. There is a widespread saying: "Rice produced in both Mangshi and Zhefang are excellent." It is said that rice produced in Zhefang was once given to emperors as a tribute. The grain of rice looks crystal clear, and its sweet smell can be caught even at a distance of five kilometers. No wonder that emperor want to have a taste of it.