A Guide of Tujia Cuisine

Zhangjiajie's Tujia cuisine is renowned far and wide, rich in ethnic characteristics. Drawing ingredients from high mountains and deep ranges, it blends the mountain people's love for sour, spicy, and aromatic flavors to create a series of uniquely flavored traditional delicacies, inviting you to indulge your appetite.

Tujia dietary preferences: ethnic groups in the region generally favor alcoholic beverages and sour, spicy, and aromatic foods. This preference for sour, spicy, and aromatic flavors is closely linked to the consumption of coarse grains like corn. Coarse grains are rough and hard to swallow, so pairing them with sour, spicy, and aromatic elements aids digestion. Mountain dwellers live among ridges and deep valleys with cold spring water; the damp, miasmatic air requires spicy heat or fermented alcohol to warm the stomach and strengthen the spleen. Alcoholic beverages are mostly homemade, with mountain areas using various grains as raw materials for brewing, especially the Bai ethnic group's famous "corn liquor." Hence, a folk saying goes: "Three days without sour and spicy, the heart feels like a cat's claw scratching, the steps grow weak and the mind wanders." The sour and spicy foods consumed are all homemade, such as sour soup, pickled vegetables, salted vegetables, pickled fish, and cured meat. Mountain residents cannot do without chili mixed into their dishes in their three daily meals, with varieties including fresh chili, dried chili, sour chili, pickled chili, chili powder, and ginger soup.

Famous Tujia Dishes:

Three-item Pot: Legend has it that during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, the imperial court conscripted Tusi soldiers from western Hunan and Hubei to the front lines to fight Japanese pirates. As it coincided with the Chinese Lunar New Year, the Tusi King ordered an early New Year celebration to avoid delaying military plans. Thus, cured meat, tofu, and radish were cooked together in one pot, called "mixed dish," which later evolved into the "Three-item Pot." Today, Zhangjiajie's Three-item Pot no longer simply cooks cured meat, tofu, and radish together but often features a selection of three ingredients such as pork intestines, pork belly, beef tripe, lamb tripe, pig's trotters, or pig's head meat, specially processed by local Tujia chefs and cooked in one pot, resulting in an excellent flavor. However, this dish is not available in typical hotels; it can only be found in some small restaurants frequented by locals.

"Loach Burrowing into Tofu" is a dish beloved by the Tujia people. The cooking method is as follows. First, place small loaches in a water vat or jar with clear water and a small amount of salt, letting them fast overnight until they expel all sand and impurities from their stomachs. Then, rinse them with clean water and pour the live loaches into tender white tofu. As the water heats, the loaches burrow into the tofu, creating numerous small holes. Finally, it is stewed in a pot with oil and seasoned with Sichuan pepper, chopped scallions, monosodium glutamate, fresh ginger, soy sauce, and other ingredients. This dish is exceptionally nutritious, fresh, and tender, with a wonderfully delicious taste, making it a fine delicacy for Tujia people to entertain honored guests.

"Steamed Sliced Pork Belly" is a famous dish of the Tujia ethnic group in Western Hunan, typically served as a main course only at grand banquets or wedding feasts. The preparation uses pork belly, processed through multiple steps including boiling, frying, and steaming. Although made from fatty meat, it is not greasy at all and tastes extremely fresh and tender. Currently, most restaurants and hotels in Zhangjiajie offer this dish for tourists to enjoy.

These restaurants offer wild boar meat, bamboo rat, muntjac meat, cured meat, and more. Recommended local specialties include Huangzi Meat, also known as pressed meat or Miao ethnic sour meat. Heizhugou wild mountain mushrooms, with a dazzling variety of fresh mushrooms, are a highlight. Their dim sum is also excellent, with crispy corn cake that is crispy outside and tender inside, and pearl meatballs that remain a delicious treat no matter how many times you enjoy them.

Chinese source: hunan.gov.cn