Cured Pork and Sausage · FFET10174
Lap Cheong (Chinese sausage)
Chopped pork and fat seasoned with sugar, salt, wine and soy sauce, stuffed in casings and dried; Cantonese lap cheong goes into rice dishes.
A round white porcelain plate holds red-brown dried sausages of chopped pork seasoned with rose wine and enclosed in sheep casings, with white fat visible in the slices, with wooden chopsticks resting beside the plate.
Pork cured in the twelfth month and air-dried or smoked, and sausages.
Lap cheong is a sausage of chopped pork and fat mixed with sugar, salt, wine and soy sauce, stuffed in casings and dried; it can be steamed on rice or used in lap mei rice dishes. It is common in southern places such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Sichuan and Guangdong. The Qimin Yaoshu records a sausage-stuffing method, but that section describes grilled lamb sausage, not lap cheong, and carries no date. A January 26, 2026 report records a local Huangpu account: in the winter of the 12th year of Guangxu (1886), a vendor stuffed leftover meat into casings and hung it to dry, creating Huangpu sausage.
What
Lap cheong is a sausage of chopped or diced pork and fat, seasoned with sugar, salt, wine and soy sauce, stuffed in casings and dried. It is also used in lap mei rice dishes.1,2
When
No dated record of lap cheong was found. The Qimin Yaoshu describes fresh lamb minced with scallion and other seasonings, stuffed into cleaned lamb intestine and grilled; this is not dried pork sausage, and the section carries no date, so it cannot establish the origin of lap cheong. A January 26, 2026 report records a local Huangpu account: in the winter of the 12th year of Guangxu (1886), a vendor stuffed leftover meat into casings and hung it to dry; the report gives no documentary evidence.1,2,3,4
Where
Lap cheong is common in southern places such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Sichuan and Guangdong; Dongguan has Houjie and Gaobu sausages. Huangpu (Zhongshan) is one of the birthplaces of Cantonese cured meats, with related brands including Huang Shang Huang, Likoufu and Huangpu Layou.2,4
How
Pork and fat are mixed with sugar, salt, wine and soy sauce, stuffed into casings, pricked to release air bubbles, tied into lengths and hung to dry for 10 to 15 days. The Huangpu method uses diced meat and dries the stuffed sausages in a roasting oven. Recipe A dries them outdoors by day for 10 to 12 days, and recipe B dries them in the refrigerator for 10 to 15 days.1,2,4,6,7
Why
The available material does not directly explain why lap cheong is made. A local Huangpu account describes stuffing leftover meat into casings and drying it in winter; lap cheong is also used in lap mei rice dishes.2,4
Impact and influence
Guangzhou's 8th batch of municipal heritage expansion items, announced on October 18, 2022, includes the craft of making Cantonese cured meats, number VIII-12, submitted by Likoufu; the notice does not name lap cheong itself. A January 26, 2026 report lists traditional products including Huang Shang Huang Cantonese cured meats, Likoufu Cantonese cured meats and Huangpu Layou.4,5
No tale about this food has been found.
Grandma Li
This is a simplified home version, not the traditional restaurant method.
This is Cantonese lap cheong dried in the refrigerator, not smoked, a simplified home version, which differs from the Cantonese workshop way of drying outdoors or in an oven. Both recipes come from food blogs, their authors are named: recipe A is a 5 kg batch with a sweet and a numbing-spicy version, dried outdoors by day for 10 to 12 days; recipe B is a 1000 g batch dried in the refrigerator. The home version follows recipe B at half the amounts; recipe B has far more sugar and salt than recipe A, and I keep recipe B's proportions.
Ingredients
- Pork (about 400 g lean and 100 g fat) 500 g in all, finely diced or coarsely ground
- Sugar 35 g
- Salt 10 g
- Light soy sauce 10 ml
- Mei Kuei Lu (rose-wine spirit) 15 ml, plus a little extra for brushing
- Red yeast rice 2 g
- Sheep casing about 1 m, soaked soft in warm water
Steps
- Put the pork in a large bowl, add the sugar, salt, soy sauce, rose-wine spirit and red yeast rice, mix well, cover and chill while you prepare the casing.
- Soak the casing in warm water until soft, then run water through it to rinse out the salt.
- Slip the casing onto a funnel and fill it loosely with the meat, not too tight, and prick the air bubbles with a pin.
- Tie the sausage into lengths every 13 to 15 cm with cotton string, and brush the casing with a little rose-wine spirit.
- Dry the sausages on a rack in the refrigerator, uncovered, for 10 to 15 days, until they are firm and darker. Recipe B stops at about 35 percent weight loss.
- To eat, steam the sausage on top of rice, or slice and steam it, until cooked through and no longer pink at the cut.
Tips
- On day one I weigh one sausage, and a few days later I weigh it again; recipe B stops at about 35 percent lost, so I can tell how far along it is.
- I follow recipe B on the lean-to-fat balance, about one part fat in five; I cut the fat small so the cut surface looks more even.
Allergens: soy, wheat