6 Chaoshan dishes to eat in Shenzhen
Starting with the beef hotpot — the dish at the heart of it, and the one Chaoshan people are proudest of
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This is the dish Shenzhen will queue an hour for. It is not a spicy hotpot — the broth is a clear beef-bone soup with white radish, corn and goji berries, no chilli and no heavy spice, because the star is the never-frozen beef: slaughtered that morning, hand-sliced thin and sorted by cut, each part with its own name and dunk time. How to eat it: pinch a slice with chopsticks, count a few seconds in the broth, and the moment it changes colour, lift it out and dip it in sand-tea sauce. Leave it too long and the meat turns tough and loses its sweetness.
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If beef hotpot is the lead, braised goose is the co-star. A whole goose is simmered in a dark master stock (卤水) that the shop has built up and topped over years, with more than ten spices, star anise and cinnamon, so the meat turns tender and soaks up the braise all the way through. It's sliced and served cold or warm with a garlic-vinegar dip to cut the richness. The prized breed is the lion-head goose (狮头鹅) from Chaoshan, the largest goose in the world; braised goose head and liver are premium cuts that some shops price high. Unlike crisp-skinned Cantonese roast goose, this is all about tender meat that's soaked up flavour.
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A Chaoshan home-table classic. The proper version (蚝烙) is crisper and thicker than the soft oyster omelettes you may have met elsewhere: a sweet-potato-starch-and-egg batter fried in a screaming-hot pan with plenty of oil until the edges go crackly and singed, while the inside stays soft and a little chewy, with plump fresh oysters running through it. It's served hot with a fish-sauce-and-chilli or sour-chilli dip and a squeeze of lime. A fried dish that plays nicely against the lightness of the hotpot — order it to share in the middle of the table.
The legendary late-night meal of the Chaoshan people — congee bubbling away in a clay pot, made to order in front of you. Unlike Cantonese congee, which is simmered until the grains dissolve into cream, Chaoshan clay-pot congee keeps the rice swollen but distinct. The rice is cooked in stock, then big sea prawns, crab, shellfish or fish go in fresh, and all that sweetness from the sea melts into the grains. It's finished with Chinese celery, spring onion and fried garlic — slurped hot, it's the most comforting thing going. Shenzhen orders it after midnight or as the last round of a drinking session; one pot easily feeds two or three.
Real Chaoshan beef balls are nothing like ordinary meatballs. They're made from pure fresh beef pounded with iron clubs thousands of times until the meat turns into a single springy mass, with no starch or barely any, so the texture is bouncy and bounces right back when you bite. There are smooth all-beef balls (牛肉丸) and a version with tendon running through (牛筋丸) that's even chewier and more fun. Eat them in the hotpot, blanched in a clear soup with Chinese celery on top, or in a bowl of beef-ball noodles — dipped in the same sand-tea sauce. They're the snack every Chaoshan household keeps on hand.
"Da-leng" (打冷) is the most fun way for a visitor to eat Chaoshan — the shop lines up already-cooked dishes served cool in trays at the front, and you walk along and point at what you want. There's chilled steamed fish (鱼饭), fish-sauce-cured crab (腌蟹), blanched prawns, pickled shellfish, braised goose, duck, tofu and egg, plus pickles and beans. It's great for sharing over beer, and the best part is you don't need to read a Chinese menu — you see the real thing and just point. It's the way to sample lots of Chaoshan dishes in a single sitting.