![]() Quanjude’s roast duck, with its burnished skin and juicy flesh, quickly won the favour of the city’s upper classes and literati. After years running a street stall selling ducks and chickens, in 1864 he opened his own restaurant, Quanjude, recruiting a team of former palace chefs to staff it. In the late 19th century, a former poultry trader called Yang Quanren introduced it to the Beijing public. The hanging oven technique was developed by chefs in the kitchens of the Forbidden City, where the Qing imperial family had a predilection for roasted meats (records show that, in 1761, the Qianlong Emperor once ate roast duck eight times within a fortnight). ![]() Chefs tend them carefully, turning and adjusting the birds until each is perfectly cooked - a process that’s much more precise and convenient than the batch-roasting of the menlu. Inside, ducks are hung in the fierce heat on metal racks. Today, in the popular Siji Minfu restaurant, near the eastern side of the Forbidden City’s moat, fruitwood fires blaze at the open mouths of a row of brick ovens. This new method soon eclipsed the menlu and, even now, is synonymous with the finest Peking duck. Among the various restaurants jostling for position was one that opened in 1885 under the revived Bianyifang name - a brand that lives on today, with many branches, although the birds are now roasted in gas ovens.ĭuring the Qing dynasty, chefs began to roast their ducks in a new kind of ‘hanging oven’, called a gualu, which enabled them to cook the birds one by one, to order. But it wasn’t until later, during the Qing dynasty (which lasted from 1644 to 1912) that Peking duck enjoyed its heyday. Some time during the Ming dynasty, a roast duck shop named Old Bianyifang, in Beijing’s Rice Market Hutong, became known for the quality of its birds, which were cooked in a menlu. “The chefs would build a fire in the middle, and when it had burnt down to smouldering embers, they’d hang four ducks inside each opening, shut the oven doors and then open them about an hour later, once all the ducks were roasted.” “The menlu was a square, brickbuilt oven with a door on every side,” says Ai. But in the southern capital, Nanjing, they began to roast them in a menlu (an enclosed oven), so that more could be cooked at once. Over time, chefs in Beijing bred a local variety that became known for its snowy-white feathers, thin skin and tender flesh and was regarded as far superior to the ducks of Nanjing.Īccording to veteran Beijing chef Ai Guangfu, in the earliest days of Chinese roast duck, the birds would be roasted on a large metal fork over an open fire. Originally, it was known as ‘Jinling roast duck’ (Jinling being an archaic name for Nanjing). Allegedly, it was only after 1420, when the Yongle emperor moved his capital to Beijing, that roast duck found its way to the city. Roast duck was one of the cooked foods sold door-to-door by street vendors, and it became a speciality of nearby Nanjing, the first capital of the Ming dynasty. The dish is said to have originated during the 13th century in Hangzhou, not far from Shanghai. But for Peking duck, locals make an exception. In Beijing, aside from the ubiquitous pork and chicken, lamb is the most distinctive local meat duck is somewhat overlooked. Most of China’s classic duck dishes hail from the watery Jiangnan region around Shanghai, where ducks swim in paddy fields and ponds and appear in delicacies such as Nanjing saltwater duck and Hangzhou duck soup. Surprisingly, though, it’s a gastronomic anomaly in this arid, northern city. Peking duck is one of the world’s great dishes and as much an emblem of Beijing as the Forbidden City or the old hutong lanes. The combination is irresistible: the fragrance of the meat and skin, the savoury hit of the sauce, the refreshing contrast of the vegetables. The crisp skin, dipped in white sugar, melts instantly in the mouth. Pancakes are taken from a stack in a bamboo steamer, anointed with dark tianmian sauce, laid with slices of duck and shards of leek and cucumber and rolled up, ready to be eaten. With a long knife, the chef shears off slices of lacquered skin and then succulent meat, laying them neatly on a serving platter. On it is a duck plump and glossy, its skin is an enticing caramel and entirely smooth. A young chef in a white toque parks a trolley by the side of the table.
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