🍽️ Beef Bile Hotpot

Herb-bile beef hotpot, Dong/Miao bold dish.

Beef Bile Hotpot is a unique hotpot of the Dong and Miao areas in southeastern Guizhou. The niu bie refers to the liquid filtered from the partially digested herb matter in a cow's stomach and small intestine, used as the soup base. Beef, tripe and intestine are cooked together in it; the broth is yellowish-green, the first taste slightly bitter, then a returning herbal sweetness. Outsiders often call it dark cuisine, but in Dong and Miao villages beef bie is a premium dish for guests, believed to clear heat and refresh the palate. It is eaten around a charcoal fire with a dipping sauce and seasonal vegetables, simmered as you eat. It is one of southeastern Guizhou's most controversial and most representative local flavors, and visitors brave enough to try it often come to understand the distinct logic of ethnic-minority cooking.