Chapter 17 Wing Fung Hot Sauce

Yongfeng Hot Sauce was produced in the Chongzhen period of the Ming Dynasty and has a history of more than 300 years. It is an outstanding representative of the spicy culture in Hunan culture. It is rich in profound cultural heritage and the courageous spirit of the Hunan Army, and is loved by the world.After eating Yongfeng spicy sauce for a long time, I gradually fell in love with the habit of eating Yongfeng spicy sauce mixed with steamed buns. Yongfeng is the seat of Shuangfeng County, surrounded by rising hills, with flat hills in the middle, contiguous mountains, interlaced hills, and flat land.Shuangfeng mountain is surrounded by water, beautiful scenery, deep gullies, majestic and tall, winding mountains.There are four distinct seasons, abundant heat, abundant rainfall, and sufficient light energy. In spring, there are frequent cold waves and drastic changes in temperature. In summer, it is long and hot, and summer drought is obvious.

Shuangfeng has a long history, from Jiang Wan of the Three Kingdoms to Zeng Guofan and Cai Hesen, the important ministers of the Qing Dynasty, and many celebrities. The most famous product is Yongfeng spicy sauce. Yongfeng hot sauce is made of lantern peppers and ox horn peppers produced in Yongfeng Town. This kind of peppers is thick in meat, fresh in taste, spicy and sweet, mixed with wheat, soybeans, and glutinous rice, and scientifically dried with traditional recipes. , the hot sauce is bright in color, delicious, spicy and sweet, fragrant and delicious.Yongfeng hot sauce has the functions of appetizing and invigorating the spleen, increasing appetite, helping digestion, dispelling cold and dampness, etc.

According to "Xiangxiang County Chronicles", during the reign of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty in the 16th century, a family in Yongfeng Town made chili sauce in the sun on the upper floor of their house.Since then, the custom of sun-dried chili sauce has spread in Yongfeng, and every household has sun-dried chili sauce, and some of them make a living by it.At that time, Yongfeng hot sauce was not perfect. It used lantern peppers as raw materials, steamed wheat, fermented, ground, added salt and water, and exposed to the sun to form a sauce. In the middle of the 17th century, the Cai brothers opened three soy sauce gardens, Cai Guangxiang, Cai Guangyi, and Cai Shunyi. The sales were booming. Some people saw that it was profitable to make hot sauce by drying, so they successively opened more than ten hot sauce workshops, including Shengyixing and Longshengtai, to produce hot sauce on a large scale.Among them, Cai Guangxiang, the ancestor of Cai Hesen, is the most famous, with an annual output of more than 40 tons of hot sauce.

From the end of May to the end of August in the lunar calendar, it is a good time for Yongfeng people to make chili sauce. The peppers are ripe, bright red and bright, with high temperature and sufficient sunshine.Pick bell peppers and ox horn peppers with bright red meat, thick and insect-free, clean them, remove the stalks of peppers, dry them, and crush them into powder; choose high-quality soybeans, wheat, and glutinous rice, cook them for fermentation, dry them in the sun, grind them, and put them in a sun-dried sauce bowl. Stir in the cooked glutinous rice and turn it in the sun for 180 hours.Mix the crushed chili powder, continue to expose to the sun, turn it every three to five hours, and dry it for about 180 hours, until the fragrance is overflowing, the color is bright and shiny, and it is reddish-brown or brownish red, and the hot sauce is just cooked. Sterilize the packaging.

During the Xianfeng period of the Qing Dynasty, Zeng Guofan brought Yongfeng Hot Sauce to the capital, paid tribute to the emperor and entertained court ministers, was praised by the emperor and ministers, was listed as a tribute, and opened up sales channels in the north.Zeng Guofan returned to Hunan, trained the Hunan Army, and recruited a large number of young people from Xiangxiang to join the army. Yongfeng Hot Sauce followed the battle of the Hunan Army and opened up markets in several southern provinces, including Hubei, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu and other places.Become a popular hot sauce in the whole country.

In 1954, Shuangfeng County Shiza Daily Miscellaneous Company built the first chili sauce candied fruit factory, which changed the production of chili sauce from family workshops to mechanized production, greatly improving work efficiency. In 1965, the Hongqi Brigade of Yongfeng Town established a hot sauce factory with an annual output of 25 tons. In 1981, Shuangfeng County Vegetable Company established a hot sauce factory with an annual output of 40 tons. In 1986, Yongfeng Hot Sauce Headquarters was established in Shuangfeng County, and the hot sauce production enterprises jointly produced. On the basis of inheriting the tradition of Yongfeng Hot Sauce, they developed seedless hot sauce, sword bean hot sauce, ground silkworm hot sauce, black bean hot sauce, and successively developed five-spice hot sauce. Sauce, eight-treasure sauce, mixed sauce, beef sauce, fish prince sauce, etc., with a total volume of 20,000 tons, sold to 26 provinces and autonomous regions, and exported to the United States, Japan, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and other places.The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People's Republic of China implements geographical indication product protection for Yongfeng hot sauce, and the scope of protection covers 6 townships in Shuangfeng County, including Yongfeng Town, Yintang Township, Zoumajie Town, Zimenqiao Town, Shatang Township, and Shiniu Township.

Yongfeng hot sauce is not only a condiment, but also a snack, with a unique flavor and rich nutrients.Eating Yongfeng hot sauce requires a long process of feeling: from the outside to the inside, the sauce on the surface is not spicy enough, sweet and salty, and the sauce is attractive.Taste the hot sauce, the taste is slowly presented, there are three tastes, the first is sweet and greasy, and the sweetness spreads on the tongue buds; the second sweetness disappears, the salty taste is replenished, and the salty taste gradually dominates; the third The heavy salty taste disappears, the spicy taste gradually emerges, and gradually increases until the spicy taste hits the nose, the stamina is sweaty, the eyes are clouded, and the tongue is trembling. Only then can we know the taste and power of Yongfeng spicy sauce.