Source: wechat official account: authorized daily Yijian
When you go to a western restaurant to order, the waiter usually asks you, how would you like your steak?
Many people don’t know how to answer. They casually say “medium rare” or “medium rare”. As a result, they make a lot of jokes.
The high-quality waiter will explain patiently for you, while the low-quality waiter will secretly laugh at your old-fashioned.
When foreigners see it, they will think that the Chinese are poor and rustic, and can’t afford such a high-grade thing as steak.
Is the steak very good?
No, in China, this is something our ancestors didn’t eat at all.
First, explain why you make jokes.
Because in Western food, the raw and cooked degree of steak is divided according to an odd number, which is mainly divided into one, three, five, seven and fully cooked steak.
Another kind is called blue, that is, near raw steak.
If you order an even steak, it will only add embarrassment.
Second, why don’t Chinese people eat steak? Is it really because you are poor and rustic?
Of course not.
First of all, it is completely absurd to say that Chinese people are so rustic that they can’t eat steak.
Speaking of eating talent, the Chinese are definitely the most powerful race in the world.
Chinese chefs, in particular, are well fed.
“Frying, exploding, frying, frying, cooking, frying, cooking, pasting, meat, burning, stewing, simmering, baking, grilling, stewing, baking, salt baking, smoking, mud baking, cooking, stewing, boiling, boiling, steaming, and wire drawing”, so many methods have been invented.
You say Chinese people are so rustic that they can’t even cook a half cooked steak? This is an insult to the IQ of Chinese chefs.
As long as the money is in place, Chinese chefs can tell you what is delicious every minute, and they can make you a hundred different ways in one night. Believe it or not.
As for saying that Chinese people are very poor and can’t afford steak, that is nonsense.
Even if ordinary people can’t afford it, why don’t those princes, nobles and rich merchants eat steak for thousands of years?
On Kangxi’s 66th birthday, a Manchu Han banquet was held, which gathered all kinds of rare and exotic foods.
There are 108 dishes in total, including snout, fish bone, roe, Hericium erinaceus mushroom, bear’s paw, toad, deer tail, leopard fetus, etc. there are everything that can fly in the sky, swim in the water, and run on the ground.
But there is no steak in it.
Why? Was Emperor Kangxi too poor to afford steak, or could the chef not cook it?
None of them.
Kangxigui is the king of a country. He can’t get what he wants.
The man Han banquet is a collection of famous chefs from all over the world. Can’t you get a steak?
Therefore, there is only one explanation – that is, the Chinese people have never eaten steak since ancient times.
To figure this out, first you have to know, what is steak?
Some people say that this is not easy. Isn’t steak the meat of a cow?
Yes, but it’s not accurate.
Beef steak is commonly used for the longissimus dorsi muscle and tenderloin (eye meat, Xiling, filet) on the back of cattle, because this position is not stressed and does not move, and the taste is delicate and soft.
Anyone who has bought beef tendon meat in the supermarket knows that the beef tendon supports the whole body weight of the cow, with developed muscles, long and thick muscle fibers, and very rough taste.
No one will buy beef tendon and make steak directly.
The tenderloin can be bought back to make steak, while the general practice of beef tendon meat is either cut into pieces and made into sauce beef, or stewed over a low heat to make the meat soft and tender, and then braised or made into soup.
In ancient China, the use of cattle determined its meat quality characteristics, and then affected the cooking methods.
In ancient China, beef has always been regarded as the highest sacrifice, ranking first among the “three animals” used in the sacrificial ceremony.
Later, after the origin of farming civilization, people learned that by planting rice and wheat, they could harvest rich food and feed their families in the coming year.
As a result, cattle have become an important agricultural animal power and have been specially protected.
In ancient China, who worked in the fields? It is a cow, which is the foundation of farming, a tool of production and a valuable labor force.
Up to now, many places still use cattle as labor force for spring ploughing and autumn planting.
Therefore, in ancient China, the Breeding Orientation of cattle was to be more hardworking and energetic, rather than more delicious.
Let’s take another look. The way cattle farm is as follows:
A rope was attached to the back of the cow, and it was pulled behind to plow.
After long-term stress, the back muscles of cattle become very developed.
The muscle fiber is long and thick and extremely strong. Naturally, the taste will become rough. Moreover, young and middle-aged cattle are of great farming value and cannot be easily slaughtered. They will be slaughtered and eaten only when they are old and unable to do farm work.
The older you get, the harder the meat will be. After a lifetime of hard work, the beef back at this time is almost as hard as the beef tendon we bought in the supermarket.
This kind of meat, no one will use it to make steak, but will be made into sauce beef, or boiled and stewed thoroughly.
Therefore, even if people want to eat it, they can’t eat fresh and tender beef tenderloin at all. There’s no such condition.
Since there are no conditions among the people, can’t the official court, those Royal relatives, princes and ministers also eat it?
They are not unable to eat, but dare not eat.
For thousands of years, China has been a natural economy, and agriculture is the foundation of the country. Emperors of all dynasties have adopted the policy of focusing on agriculture to protect agricultural production, so that farmers can have enough to eat, so that they will not rebel.
The cow is an important agricultural animal power and the root of farming. It is not too much to say that it is a national treasure.
Therefore, the rulers especially protected the cattle.
In the book of rites, it is said that “princes do not kill cattle for no reason, doctors do not kill sheep for no reason, scholars do not kill dogs and boars for no reason, and civilians do not eat treasures for no reason”.
In the Zhou Dynasty, only the emperor of Zhou could eat whatever he wanted. Even the majestic princes could not eat beef on weekdays. They could only taste it on the first day of each month.
Later, when the first emperor of Qin unified the six kingdoms, he ordered that the people should not slaughter cattle privately, and those who disobeyed the order should be beheaded.
After the Han Dynasty, with the widespread promotion of iron plowshares and cattle farming, the Imperial Court banned the private slaughter of cattle for the development of agriculture, even killing cattle, and restricted the consumption of beef among the people.
Even if the cattle died normally, the farmers had to go to the Yamen to report if they wanted to sell the beef. In addition, the processed cow hide and beef tendon had to be turned over to the Yamen as a military reserve. The procedures were very complicated.
In the Qing Dynasty, there was a county annals record that a local rogue, greedy for quick words, slaughtered a calf that had just been born for 100 days and took its rich meat to enjoy.
In the Qing Dynasty, that was evil. After the officials caught him, they directly showed him to the public, cut off his head and hung it on the city gate to see who dared to kill the cattle privately.
This is the case among the people. In order to maintain their rule, the rulers naturally set an example.
Of course, the emperor and nobles wanted to eat beef. Of course, they did not eat old and dead cattle, but beef cattle specially raised by people.
Beef cattle are different from farm cattle. They don’t need to work at ordinary times and their back muscles don’t need to be stressed. Therefore, the meat is fresh, tender and soft. From the cooking point of view, it is very suitable for steak.
However, steak has not developed in China.
Why?
Look at the delicious food that Westerners often eat.
This is goose liver.
This is their pork chop.
The surface is golden and fragrant.
After careful reading, you will find that their food is cut into rows and then fried on both sides, which is similar to our pancakes.
Why is this? That’s because European kitchens use pans.
In medieval Europe, it was such a culinary feast.
Later, it developed into this.
It’s also a pan.
It’s all over the wall.
Even their soup pots are flat bottomed.
This kind of tableware has created their diet, which can only be fried, and the rest is put into the oven.
The Chinese, however, first used “kettles” to cook food.
Caozhi has a famous seven step poem, in which beans cry in the cauldron. That’s what he said.
This is the kettle, a kind of cooking utensil in ancient China.
Only princes can cook and eat with the tripod. Therefore, for a period of time, the tripod is also a symbol of supreme power.
Jiuding means the son of heaven.
Later, with the development of iron, China began to use the iron pot.
But unlike Europeans, we use this type of iron pot.
It’s all at the bottom of the arc.
What, you asked me why?
China is not stupid. How much can an iron pot with an arc bottom hold at a time? You can try it with a pan.
During the Spring Festival, when relatives and friends come to the family, do you stew beef in a pan? How many times do you have to cook?
It is estimated that people have gone home after watching the Spring Festival Gala, and you haven’t finished all your dishes yet.
Economy and practicality are the biggest features of the arc bottom iron pot. It is precisely because of this feature that it has directly become the mainstream cooking utensils of the Chinese people.
The mainstream has almost squeezed the pan to the point where it can no longer survive…
It is precisely because of the large-scale promotion and use of the arc bottom iron pot that the upper class of China has never had the habit of eating steak.
In fact, as early as in the book of rites in the spring and Autumn period, there were records about roast beef, which is somewhat similar to today’s steak.
But it is not the same, because the Chinese people eat steak, which is Chinese style, and is baked on the fire.
It’s all like this.
It is the favorite of nomads on the grassland. They eat meat in large bowls and drink wine in large gulps.
However, in the eyes of those scholar bureaucrats in ancient China, these things were all done by barbarians. The food eaten by those barbarians in the North was too barbaric and insulting. Naturally, they would not touch it.
Therefore, steak has not been developed in China.
Until 170 years ago, Europeans invented modern steak, which is a historical accident and inevitable.
Many Chinese people say that we don’t eat steak because foreigners eat meat and drink blood. Chinese people are more civilized.
This is not true. Confucius said long ago that “you never get tired of eating fine food, and you never get tired of eating fine food”. Here, you mean sashimi. Chinese people have a tradition of eating raw food.
Different people have different opinions on the merits of culture and diet.
Eating or not eating steak is just a matter of eating habits. No one discriminates against anyone, and no one will be very senior because of eating steak.
Only some people, by drinking a little foreign ink and touching some Western fur, take it to despise you, despise him, and despise those who have not eaten steak.
These people are really ridiculous.
Spiritually, it is really poor and rustic.