(1) Dongyan: Bird's nest picked in wild caves and coastal cliffs.

(2) House Swallow: A man-made house built artificially and suitable for nesting in Jin Siyan, but it will not change the living habits of Jin Siyan. Domestic swallows are relatively clean and white in color.

2. According to the classification of countries:

(1) Mao Yan: It is the initial state of bird's nest, which contains impurities and feathers.

(2) Zhan Yan: It is a kind of bird's nest that can be stewed normally after being washed, depilated, shaped and dried with few impurities.

3. Classification by shape:

(1) Zhan Yan: Because the nest built in Jin Siyan looks like a swallow, it is named Zhan Yan, which is the best bird's nest. According to the quality, different businesses are divided into dragon tooth lamp, faucet lamp, official swallow, first-class lamp, second-class lamp and so on.

(2) Swallow strips: In the process of picking, packaging or transportation, many complete swallows are crushed and cannot be shaped. Those thick bird's nest strips are swallow strips. The taste of Yan tiao is slightly worse than that of Zhan Yan, but its nutritional value is the same. Because it doesn't have a cup shape, the sales volume is not good, so the price is lower than that of Zhan Yan.

(3) Broken Swallow: During the process of picking, cleaning or transporting bird's nest, the broken part can't become a swallow strip, which is called broken swallow. Swallows are finely divided and come from different parts of the nest. Most swallows are chemically depilated by grass swallows, so special attention should be paid when choosing.

(4) Yan cake: the cake made of broken Yan is not as nutritious as broken Yan.

(5) Bird's Nest: The part that supports the weight of the whole bird's nest is the head and tail of the bird's nest stuck on both sides of the bird's nest board. It was Jin Siyan who first spat out the bird's nest and stuck it on the wooden beam, which was equivalent to the "foundation" of bird's nest. It is relatively hard and thick, and is often cut off by workers to match the complete swallow cup shape. Jin Siyan hangs on the swallow board and spits the swallow horn, which belongs to the load-bearing part. Therefore, when Jin Siyan spits, the saliva concentration is higher and the time required is longer, about 10 hour.

4. By season:

(1) Phase I Swallow: The bird's nest is harvested from February to April every year. Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries have sufficient rain, which is suitable for insect reproduction. Jin Siyan has plenty of food and a lot of saliva, so the swallow cup is complete, shiny and hairless.

(2) Phase II and Phase III Swallows: The bird's nest harvested in May -65438+ 10 is the molting period in Jin Siyan, so the nest built is loose, cup-shaped and has more fluff impurities.

5. According to the processing method classification:

(1) Wet picking: When picking fluff impurities, the advantages of running water and soaking water are clean, but the acid content of bird's nest is 8%- 10%, and the foaming rate is 7 times.

(2) Dry picking: When picking wool, just brush the surface of Mao Yan and start picking wool. Because the plucking process was not soaked in water at all, the bird's nest acid remained intact, the content was 12%, the foaming rate was 8- 10 times, and the taste was good.

So what do 3A, 4A, 5A and 6A in the market mean?

The quality of bird's nest is measured by the width of swallow's back. 3A Bird's Nest means that the width of the swallow's back is equal to the sum of three fingers. Similarly, 5A bird's nest means that the width of the swallow's back is equal to the sum of five fingers. In the past, the higher the A level of bird's nest, the wider the swallow's back and the bigger the bird's nest. In fact, the name is to cater to the needs of the China market. The larger the number of lamps, the more atmospheric they look, but in fact, the nutritional value is the same.

Take a break and attach pictures of bird's nest in various shapes.

There will be some inferior bird's nest in the market, that is, bird's nest with poor quality and chemical treatment, which is mainly divided into the following situations:

(1) Bleaching: As the selection of feathers in the processing of bird's nest is a very tedious and time-consuming process, the raw materials of bird's nest are mixed with feathers from Jin Siyan, and some feathers are as fine as human hair and difficult to remove. In order to speed up the processing, some unscrupulous merchants will first filter the raw materials of bird's nest with chemical bleach to bleach these tiny impurities into white, so that you don't have to pick them out, just pick the bigger impurities. The bird's nest produced in this way has many impurities and is easy to breed bacteria. Some unscrupulous merchants use chemical bleach to make inferior bird's nest beautiful and sell it at a high price, making the color of bird's nest cups whiter, more uniform and better looking. At the same time, some nutrients in bird's nest have lost at least %40-50, and the chemical residues on bird's nest cannot be cleaned up, which is very harmful to human body.

(2) Rubber painting: Rubber painting is also the most common means of counterfeiting at present. In the process of processing bird's nest, unscrupulous vendors brush chemical glue such as fish glue, pectin and agar on the bird's nest, which can fill the gap generated in the process of impurity removal, make the bird's nest cup more perfect and full, look better, and more importantly, increase the weight, and the seller can make huge profits from it. Therefore, the bird's nest cup is dense and seamless, which may be an inferior product coated with glue.

So much basic knowledge of bird's nest has been laid, so the real problem is coming? How to avoid the pit when buying bird's nest? Now more and more bird's nests are sold, and all kinds of attractive gimmicks are available. How to judge the quality of bird's nest? Here are some simple ways:

1, look at the gap between Yan silk, there will be a natural gap between ordinary Yan lanterns.

There is less fine hair in the cup. If there is no glue at all, be careful if you brush too much glue.

3, the color is ivory white or ivory yellow, especially white, pay attention to whether to brush glue.

4. The soaking time is about 2-4 hours. If it can't be soaked for a long time, it may contain glue, which should be translucent after soaking.

5. The stewed bird's nest protein is rich in flavor and delicate and smooth in taste. If the stewed water is sticky, it may be coated with glue or added with thickener.

There is a lot of information today. Take your time to collect. I will continue to share how to stew bird's nest and various recipes later. If you have any questions about bird's nest, you can leave a message or a private message. I stayed in Malaysia for three years and ate bird's nest for nearly a year. The knowledge about bird's nest is still ok. Thank you for your patience in meeting people here.