Every year, winter begins. In Shandong Province, especially in , Shandong, , people have a very unique essential "dish-style dish" when eating and drinking, that is, "pig head meat". This "pork head meat" is a "hard dish". In some places, it is called " dish meat ", "pork frozen", "pot meat", or "pork cold seeds", etc.
text/ Mingzhi
pictures/ New picture vision
editing/ Heguang Tongchen Studio
In fact, no matter what it is called, they are all the same dish, which is a special food made with fresh pig heads. Today, let’s take a look at how this rural couple in Shandong embarked on the road to becoming rich by making “pig head meat”.
Xu Dejun and his wife Liu Hongxiang
100 years ago, Xiaoling Village, Changling Town, Ju County, Rizhao City, Shandong Province, because it is located on a major transportation road, there are often some businessmen traveling around the country in the village to rest here. Over time, a small market has formed here, including breakfast, tea, big cakes, vegetables, meat and other merchants. At that time, the most famous village was the family selling cooked pork head meat. According to the elderly in the village, in that era when material resources were not abundant, more than a dozen families made a living by making cooked pork head meat in the village with hundreds of people.
Xu Dejun sorting freshly out-of-cooked pork head
With the development of the times, in the 1990s, Xiaoling Village gradually developed into a professional village of "pig head meat". Nearly 500 households in the village, one-fifth of them specialize in making "pig head meat" at home. The village has formed a one-stop cooked food industrial chain . Every winter, people in the village are busy processing and making pork head meat, and even the unique fragrance of pork head meat is wafting in the air. There are endless vendors coming to wholesale and sell pork head meat, which has become a unique landscape of this village.
Natural and cool pork head meat is a delicious "dish dish"
52-year-old Xu Dejun and his wife Liu Hongxiang have been making pork head meat at home for more than 30 years. Xu Dejun clearly remembered that when he was very young, his grandfather secretly made two pots of pork head meat at home and used a wheelbarrow to go to the Changling rural market to sell. The car was sitting with him while the pig head meat was placed. Later, his father took over his grandfather's skills and went to the market to sell pork head meat. Xu Dejun, who had grown up, gradually became his father's business assistant. Now, Xu Dejun has inherited the skills of his grandfather and father and is professional in making pork head meat. Now he has become the largest, most sold and best-tasting pork head meat processor in the village.
Liu Hongxiang took pork head meat from a special large iron pot
"I used to make it less. I thought when my grandfather sold pork head meat, but it was almost the Chinese New Year in winter to make pork head meat. At that time, the living standard was not good, and people had no money. When my father made pork head meat, his living standard gradually improved. In winter, he sold it, and he could sell it hundreds of pots in a winter." Xu Dejun said that in the past, the living standard was not good, and the people had no money, and not many families could eat pork head meat. Nowadays, people's living standards have generally improved, they have money in their hands, and people have more demand for pork heads.
Steaming pork head
What kind of dish is this pork head? In fact, the method is very simple. Use fresh pig heads to clean off the remaining pig hairs on the pig heads, then put them in a large pot, add water, add salt, soy sauce, MSG, ginger, star anise, fennel, cinnamon, tangerine peel, licorice , pepper and other ingredients, cook over high heat, then turn to low heat for two or three hours, until the pig head meat is cooked until it is completely turned off. After the cooked pork head meat is naturally warm, take out the pork head meat and put it in a clean basin, pour in the soup when cooking the meat, and leave it overnight. You can eat it until it is cooled down. The characteristics are that the pork head meat is delicious, fragrant, and the soup is frozen and melts in the mouth. Especially suitable for eating when drinking white wine, the liquor is hot and spicy, and the pork head is cool. The two are neutralized and the aftertaste is endless.
Cooked pork head meat in the cold storage
"I use this special large iron pot, which can cook seven or eight hundred kilograms of pig heads in one pot, and at most it can cook more than 1,000 kilograms. A pig head can be calculated based on 10 kilograms, and it can put down nearly a hundred pig heads." Xu Dejun introduced that now, a large pot of cooking a day is cooked, and there are seven or eight hundred kilograms, and it will be sold out in two or three days. Every year, the Mid-Autumn Festival is the time to make pork head meat. The sales are the most popular in the more than ten days before the Spring Festival. Making two big pots every day is not enough to sell. After about four months of work a year, you can use more than 5,000 pig heads, totaling about 20 tons of pig heads.
Special large iron pot steamed
"I can use more than 4,000 kilograms of big ginger a year, and I have to use more than 20,000 yuan for peppers. In the past, I used to make pork head meat, and I used fewer large ingredients, so I just added some big ginger, green onion, pepper, star anise, etc. Now, according to my ancestral secret recipe, I combined the health concept and added Chinese herbal medicines such as licorice, tangerine peel, cinnamon, grass fruit, gardenia and other Chinese herbal medicines, and secretly made a new formula. The pork head meat made by this new formula is more fragrant." Xu Dejun said that the pig head meat secretly made in this new formula is fat but not greasy, fragrant but not fishy, and is easy to digest after eating, and does not accumulate food, which is very popular.
Various herbs for cooking pork head
"I went out to sell it two years ago and sent it to supermarkets in surrounding villages to sell it. I didn't have to go out in the past two years, so customers came to me by themselves. The customers who have been doing good for many years are hotels, restaurants, and units. There are several restaurants in Beijing who use me to make pork head meat all year round. In addition, the scattered customers who like to eat pork head meat all year round, most of them are old customers and there are more repeat customers." Xu Dejun introduced that the main reason is that they don't have to go out to sell in the past two years is that they sell more online. He posted a video of himself making pork head online, attracting the attention of netizens from all over the country.
Liu Hongxiang checks the fire water of pork head
"The customers really have it all over the country, from Jilin, Liaoning, Heilongjiang in the north, Hainan, Sanya in the south, and the east, we need to say nothing about Rizhao Beach, Qingdao , Weihai , Yantai and other places, and from Sichuan and Tibet in the west. Big cities Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Jinan, Zhengzhou, etc., let alone small cities, and other customers bought it and brought it to Singapore." Xu Dejun said that thanks to the current logistics industry and developed Internet, Shandong people working hard in other places, when they saw the video of pork head released by him on the Internet, they remembered the taste of their hometown, so they called to order.
Clean the bones in the pig's head
"Now, there are many food broadcasts on major short video platforms. They watch the videos I posted, so they contacted to shoot. There are all kinds of people everywhere, and there are also locals, from other places, from Jiangsu, Henan, and Linyi . They said they were shooting videos, do you think we can still not let them shoot?" Xu Dejun introduced that these videos were also very hard to shoot. We came here on a motorcycle, which was cold in the middle of winter, and the face was red with coldness, which was really not easy to watch. Some people from other places drove here, while others took a bus. A person from Henan drove to our county town and came the next day.
Xu Dejun and his wife Liu Hongxiang packed pork head meat with
"In addition to those who come to shoot videos, there are also people who want to learn production techniques. Our locals are easy to say. If they really want to learn, I will teach them. So far, they have taught more than 20 apprentices. In this business, as long as you can endure hardships and work hard, you can do it well. If you don't endure hardships and are not reliable, it will be useless." Xu Dejun said that in addition to what you want to learn from locals, there are also many people who want to learn from outside. Many people who work outside cannot make money and want to do a small business by themselves, and they all want to learn from them.
ginger slices for boiling pig heads
"Last year, there was a young man in Henan who had been working outside for several years and had no wife yet. He seemed to want to do it himself, so he came in the car. After coming, he told me that he wanted to learn pig head meat making technology. I said that you can learn it, but you have to check the market. Do you want to open a store in , Henan’s hometown , do people there like to eat this kind of pork head meat? Do you like this taste? If you don’t like it, you can’t learn it."Xu Dejun introduced that if the tuition is not tuition, we can't let others spend time learning skills, and they don't make money. It's not easy to live a life now, who can make money easily?
Xu Dejun is packing pork head
" In addition to traveling thousands of miles to shoot videos and wanting to learn skills, there are many people who come specifically to eat pork head . An old couple in Jinan watched the video and asked their children to drive them to eat pork head meat. They said they had worked in Juxian before, and came to eat pork head meat to recall the time they were back then. "Xu Dejun said that the old couple used to work in our Ju County and were used to the way to cook pork heads here. They said they couldn't find the flavor they wanted to eat in Jinan over the years. After coming to eat the pork heads I made this time, they said they were back in their youth. Before leaving, they ordered 20 basins and said they would go back to share them with their friends.
Xu Dejun was cutting pork heads and packing them with
"Last year, four or five people came from Jiangsu, and drove for five or six hours, which was specifically for our pork heads. A retired elder sister said that these people just think about eating all day long. After eating all the local delicacies, they searched for them in the surrounding cities. This time they saw the pork head meat we made, and after they came, I asked me to cut them a plate of pork head meat for them to eat. "Xu Dejun introduced that these retired people have money and don't feel sorry for eating meat. Five people ate two plates and bought 10 basins of 10 kilograms of pork head meat before leaving. After leaving, they left, and went to the city to drink Juxian mutton soup.
Fresh pig heads must be soaked in clean water for seven or eight hours
" This year's sales volume is not as good as last year. One is that pork prices have risen this year, and the other is that express delivery is restricted. This year, a pig head costs 12 yuan per catty, and last year it was only 6.7 yuan, which grew almost half of the price. Last year, a box of cooked pork head meat sold for 120 yuan, and this year it sold for 180 yuan. The whole pig's body contains pig head meat, large intestine , tongue, pig ears, etc. It was sold for 220 yuan per box last year and 260 yuan per box this year. "Xu Dejun said that the price of raw materials has risen significantly. If we don't raise the price, we have to lose money. There is no way, so we can only increase the price. Fortunately, people who buy pork head meat now have no debts. They are all cash settlement .
Xu Dejun put pork head meat for customers
" It was expected to be sold for 700,000 to 800,000 yuan since last year, but I didn't expect it to be sold at the end of the year, and it was sold for more than 1 million yuan. At the most, more than 100 pots were sold a day. When we were at the busiest time, our couple was too busy and even found two helpers. "Xu Dejun introduced that in fact, it is only about four months a year. It starts from the Mid-Autumn Festival and is busy until the end of the twelfth lunar month. After the Chinese New Year, I am free. During that period after the Mid-Autumn Festival, I am not doing it every day, sometimes every three or four days. The busiest time is the month of the twelfth lunar month. When it is almost the Chinese New Year, I am so busy that I have no time to sleep and eat.
Xu Dejun packs pork head meat in the house
"Do this business, it seems that it is okay to make money, but it is quite tiring. I have to get up at three or four o'clock every morning to work, and the pig's heads are soaked the first day, soaking them for seven or eight hours to remove the remaining blood from the pig's heads. Then get up early to clean the small hair on the pig's head, then boil the pig's head with fire, and cook it for three or four hours before it can be cooked. Cook it just right, not too bad, nor too hard. This time depends entirely on experience and there is no fixed time. "Xu Dejun said that many people who come to study looked so tired, and many people were scared away. They did not feel comfortable working in this job.
Xu Dejun is placing the packaged pork head
"I am making this pork head now, using local fresh pig heads. meat factory ships it to me every day. I don't need frozen pig heads imported. Those pig heads are very small, and the pork head meat made has a fishy smell and has a bad taste. "Xu Dejun introduced that imported frozen pig heads are cheap, and many people use them to make pork head meat, and the prices are also cheaper. However, in order to ensure quality and develop his own brand, he has been using local fresh pig heads over the years, so he has always maintained the traditional taste to sell so well.
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