Yingtan Cuisine

Yingtan cuisine can be divided into Jiangxi home style dishes and flavored Taoism dishes.

Famous home style dishes include Luxi Fish, Winter Bamboo Shoots Fry the Salted Meat, Mushroom of Longhu Mountain Fry with Pork, Stewed Chukar, and Chestnut Cooked with Native Chicken.

Luxi Fish (泸溪活鱼)- the fish from the clear Luxi stream, originates from high mountains. No matter which way used for cooking, the meat is rather fresh and tender without any fishy smell.

Winter Bamboo Shoots Fry the Salted Meat (冬笋咸肉丝)- winter bamboo shoots are the traditional native products in Longhu Mountain. They are large in size and plump in meat. Fried with fresh pork, salted meat or eggs, the flavors of fresh, light, sweet and soft make it a popular dish in the area.

Mushroom of Longhu Mountain Fry with Pork (香菇活肉)- Mushrooms grow in Longhu Mountain are full of nutriments in great varieties, of which a variety named Money Mushroom (金钱菇) is the most precious and famous. They are pretty tasty and refreshing with strong sweet smell when cooked with fresh pork in the local style.

Stewed Chukar (清炖石鸡)- chukars grow in pools and caves of remote mountains, which is hard to be captured; But the flesh is tender and delicate, and the soup is also delicious. Even in hot summer, the chukar soup can be frozen.

Native Chicken Cooked with Chestnut (天师板栗烧土鸡)- chestnut is also the native product in Longhu Mountain, which is large in size, sweet and full with starch. It is the favorite fruit and tonic for Taoist masters in the mountain and is regarded as the Immortal’s Fruit in the world. Chestnuts are cooked with native chicken by slow fire for hours, and the dish is full of nutritive value that often served for the most honorable guests.

Taoism dishes are famed by the Eight Diagrams Feast (八卦宴) and Shangqing Tofu (bean curd) (上清豆腐). Both are vegetable dishes but delicious with superior flavor in color, smell and taste. Eight Diagrams Feast contains a great deal of vegetable dishes cooked in elaborate processes with rich Taoism culture. It often served during large ceremonies and activities. Yingtan Tofu is made of superior soybeans and mineral water from Luxi River. The tofu is not only in good flavors but also full of nutriments.

Yingtan’s featured snacks are dried eggplant (茄干) of Yujiang County, Guixi Taoism vegetables (贵溪捺菜) which are made of leaf mustard in a combined flavor of fresh, fragrant, tender, crisp, sour, sweet, salty, and hot and the most typical is Guixi Dengxin Cake (贵溪灯芯糕) which enjoys a reputation for over 800 years and once was the tributes to emperors in Qing Dynasty (1638-1911).