"Hand grasping" is a unique way to eat in Qinghai Plateau, and it has a good reputation all over the country. Grasping mutton by hand is closely related to the nomadic life of Tibetan compatriots who live on aquatic plants. It is named after eating meat in one hand and holding a knife in the other, cutting, digging, picking and slicing all the meat on sheep bones.

Legend has it that it has a history of nearly a thousand years, and it was originally named after eating with hands. There are three ways to eat, that is, hot (steamed in a cage after slicing, dipped in three heavy oils), cold (dipped in refined salt directly after slicing), and fried (fried in a pot and eaten while frying). It is characterized by delicious meat, not greasy or greasy, and full of color, flavor and taste.

Shuo Wen says: The sheep is auspicious. Zhou Li; Yang Ren, Xiaguan: Shepherds hold sheep sacrifices and decorate lambs. Sheep were endowed with auspicious symbols and important sacrificial food in ancient times. Compendium of Materia Medica also says that mutton is a tonic, which can be compared with ginseng and astragalus. Hand-grabbed mutton has a long history, and it is a traditional food loved by Mongolian, Tibetan, Hui and Uygur people living in the northwest of China.

In the long years, hand-grabbed mutton was originally eaten by herders only in tents on the plateau and grassland where ethnic minorities live in northwest China. It is rare in the city, and celebrities regard it as embarrassing and dismissive. From midsummer to early winter, it is the golden season for grass and sheep to be fat, and it is also a good time to eat the most tender and delicious hand-grabbed mutton. At this time, if guests come to drink milk tea, the hospitable shepherd will go to the flock to choose the fat and tender Dajie sheep; Slaughter on the spot, skin into the pot, just drink three bowls of milk tea, and a large plate of steaming mutton will be served in front of you. There are also some sharp Tibetan knives stuck in the mutton. This dish of mutton is red and white, fat but not fat, and its color is attractive. Although it is eaten with a knife, it is very slippery, but if you taste it carefully, it is cold but not greasy, oily and crisp, tender and slippery, and has an extraordinary taste. Pastoral herders are unique in cooking mutton. Cooking operation is simple and lively, only add a handful of salt (some don't add salt, dip it in salt when eating), the heat is just right, the blood disappears quickly, the meat is cooked but not hard, it tastes fresh and delicious. The color, fragrance, taste and shape of mutton grabbed by hand on the grassland all represent the rough, bold, enthusiastic, pious and hospitable character of grassland herders. People of all ethnic groups in Qinghai, regardless of Hui, Han, Mongolian and Salar, use their hands to grab mutton as a food to respect guests. In recent years, the tourism industry has developed greatly, and hotels all over Qinghai have listed hand-grabbed mutton as one of the famous dishes with Qinghai flavor.

I still remember the first time I went to my new home and saw a dozen frozen whole sheep in the storage room. In the mid-1980s, they could eat meat indefinitely. Such a shocking scene will never be forgotten by me. From then on until junior high school, the days of eating beef and mutton in unlimited quantities never stopped. Every year in March and April, when the ice and snow melt, the most difficult thing at home is how to preserve the meat that has not been eaten in winter. At that time, I didn't pay much attention to eating mutton, and I didn't even think it was delicious, because in pastoral areas, beef and mutton, like vegetables in agricultural areas, were the most direct gifts from nature, which was too natural. Eating mutton is extremely simple, and the most important thing is that it is slaughtered now and fresh. Sheep are slaughtered without washing. Boil it in a pot and take it out after the water boils. The fuel used to cook mutton is picked up dry cow dung, which is so primitive. Cooked mutton, because it is cook the meat, is not too rotten, but chewy, with a knife in one hand and meat in the other. A large piece of sheep bone, under the skillful knife method, soon became a very clean skeleton.

Maybe it's because I ate too much meat since I was a child. The golden ratio of height and weight has been firmly established since 18 years old. Fortunately, this ratio was unbreakable until I was in my thirties. So, although I'm not in good shape, I'm still confident. After all, I haven't become severely obese until I saw a bunch of upward arrows in my physical examination two years ago. In this case, I had to walk into the gym and hire a personal trainer. From the first time I took a private class, the coach told me that I must eat more protein to promote muscle growth, and there are a lot of principles that I can't understand. But no matter how he explained it, I always listened, and I was glad that I found a theoretical basis for eating.

Although the process of fitness is hard and sometimes painful, every time I think that I have established a positive cycle of "building muscles-eating meat-building muscles", I walk into the gym with greater determination. Fortunately, in the past six months, I have lost 10 kilograms, and the effect is not bad. Of course, I didn't eat less meat either, which was very reassuring.

As a meat lover, I am also interested in cooking, especially cooking meat dishes. In fact, whether abroad or at home, the core point of making meat, especially beef and mutton, is to fully lock the juice in the meat. The so-called "fresh and juicy" is the basic starting point that any chef pursues when making beef and mutton. So the delicious steak still lies in the gravy. If the diner goes to eat a good steak, when asked how good the steak is, if he replies that the steak is rare, the chef who takes the order will definitely think that the diner is wasting his time. So the next time you go to eat steak, especially high-grade imported steak, I suggest you try medium rare, which is medium rare. As long as you eat it in your mouth, its rich juice is absolutely unforgettable.

Back to the topic of grasping meat by hand, the most important thing is to "lock the juice", followed by removing the fishy smell, which are the two basic starting points for making mutton. How to make a handle?

Hand-grabbed meat is the most primitive way to eat mutton, so we must pay great attention to raw materials. From the raw materials, we must choose the sheep grazing freely on the plateau, not the goats generally loved in the Central Plains, and even less the mutton with skin in the south. The fishy smell of these two kinds of mutton is not suitable for grasping by hand at all, and they can only be eaten stiffly, such as the south milk-stuffed mutton brisket popular in Guangdong. Anyway, when I first came to the south to see mutton with skin, I was shocked. Is this mutton? In an instant, the whole person is broken. :) I have always liked to get used to this way of eating, which may be the carnivorous gene in my bones.

You must choose sheep when grabbing meat, and it is best to graze freely, such as sheep in Xinjiang, Qinghai, Southwest Gansu and Ningxia. If it is a castrated ram, that is, a sheep, it is a better raw material. This kind of sheep is fat, uniform, odorless and delicate, which is very suitable for grasping meat by hand. Not long ago, there was almost no independence in Scotland, and mutton was better. Scotland's rich grasslands and lakes, as well as the climate in high latitudes, are very suitable for the growth of sheep. Unfortunately, British people who are used to dark cooking don't understand my food culture under the great Chinese civilization. Oh, what a pity.

From the position, lamb chops and necks are the most suitable places to eat and catch meat. Lambs are fat and thin, and their necks are often active, with more meat and less bones. These two parts are very suitable for hand grasping. There is too much lean meat in the leg of lamb, and the juice is not rich enough after cooking, so the leg of lamb is not suitable for eating with hands.

This time, we will take the lamb chops in Jieyang, Qinghai as an example to talk about hand-grabbed meat.

After the mutton is bought back, if it is slaughtered fresh, there is little blood, so it can be cooked in the pot simply by cleaning. If it is frozen mutton, there may be more blood, but it doesn't need to be washed many times. If you wash too much, the flavor of mutton soup will be greatly reduced.

At this stage, don't blanch the mutton, but cook it in cold water without any seasoning.

After the fire boils, a lot of blood foam will float in the water, and these blood foam must be skimmed, which directly determines the clarity and fishy smell of mutton soup.

When the blood foam is removed, add ginger slices, three or four dried peppers and a handful of pepper particles to the pot. The purpose of these three things is to get rid of fishy smell and stink. When eating meat and drinking soup, the taste of these condiments is basically inedible, which can increase the flavor of meat. No other condiments are needed, and no salt is added. The purpose is to lock the moisture in the meat so that the cooked meat will not burn wood.

During your stay in cook the meat, you should always observe it, and don't cook it too badly, so as not to lose its flavor. If it is mutton, cooking 15 minutes is basically enough. If it is a sheep for one year, it takes about 20 minutes to half an hour, just insert a chopstick. At this time, the meat is the most chewy and rich in gravy.

After cooking, fish out the meat in a small pot, then put a bowl of broth in a bowl, add more salt to the broth and mix it into salty soup. Serve the soup with meat. After the meat is dipped in salty soup, it can be eaten.