Draft:Suan Cai Yu

• Comment: Has a lot of grammar errors and unsourced sentences, not fit for the article-space. 🍗TheNuggeteer🍗 01:53, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

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SuanCai Yu or Sauerkraut fish or Sichuan Fish with Pickled Mustard Greens is a dish from Chongqing, Sichuan Province. Popularized in the 1990s, Suancai Yu is one of Sichuan’s most well-known cuisines. It is characterized by its unique flavor of sour and spicy tastes.

Claims of history

There are multiple versions regarding the origin of Suan Cai Yu.

Claim 1:

Suan Cai Yu began on a fishing boat in Jiangjin, Chongqing. According to legend, the fisherman will catch big fish to sell money, often selling the leftover small fish to riverside farmers for sauerkraut to eat. The fisherman will then cook sauerkraut and fresh fish in a pot. Then they found that this way made the fish fresh and delicious. Since then, sauerkraut fish became popular in the early 1990s in many restaurants. Sauerkraut fish became one of the pioneers of the beginning of Chongqing cuisine.

Claim 2:

It was founded in Chongqing City, Jiangjin County, Jinfu Township, in a restaurant called Zhou Yu Food Store.

Claim 3:

Some claimed that it originated from a restaurant located in Bishan County, Chongqing; this store is surrounded by bodies of water with fresh fish, so they introduced a lot of fish cuisines; one of the fish was Suan Cai Yu.

Claim 4:

Still in Chongqing, a fishing old man will put fish that he got into the pot with pickled vegetables to cook together.

Claim 5:

According to folklore in Sichuan, at the beginning of winter, the local people would pickle vegetables and store them in large jars. This way, they can use them whenever they want. However, these pickled vegetables are not eaten directly; instead, they are used to make soups with chicken, duck, fish, or meat. This was claimed to be the origin of Suan Cai Yu.

Honor:

On September 10, 2018, Suancai Fish, one of Chongqing's top ten classic dishes, was listed at the 2018 First Event to Introduce "Chinese Cuisine" to the World, a large-scale exchange conference for classic provincial and regional dishes and famous banquets held in Zhengzhou, Henan.

Recipe:

Grass carp, sauerkraut, fungus, shiitake mushrooms, green onions, ginger, garlic, dried chilies, coriander, millet spicy, salt, monosodium glutamate, thirteen spices, oyster sauce, light soy sauce, and aged vinegar.