Strings of sausages and strips of cured pork hang on a bamboo rack, an open bamboo steamer over a clay pot holds sliced cured pork, and a blue-and-white plate is fanned with sliced cured pork and sausage around chopped scallion.
Winter-cured pork
Introduction
Pork cured in the twelfth month and air-dried or smoked, and sausages.
Cured pork and sausage are the pork products cured in winter and air-dried or smoked, called la rou because they are cured in the twelfth lunar month, along with sausages. The cure starts with salt, and Cantonese cures often add soy sauce, wine and sugar. Cantonese cured pork is mostly air-dried, while that of Sichuan, Hunan, Chongqing, Guizhou and Jiangxi is mostly smoked. Styles differ between places, some saltier, some sweeter and some with a smoky note. Ham has a class of its own, smoked meat and fish with no product class of their own belong to Smoked Foods, and braised cooked meat belongs to Braised and Sauced Cooked Meats.