🍽️ Houjie Sausage

Short sweet-savory Cantonese sausage.

Houjie Sausage is a traditional cured meat from Houjie Town in Dongguan, Guangdong, a branch of Cantonese lap cheong. Fresh pork is cut into cubes at a chosen fat-to-lean ratio, stuffed into casings, seasoned with soy, sugar and rice wine, then air-dried or baked. Short, plump and dark red, each slice shows marbled fat and lean, tasting sweet-savory with a faint wine aroma. The fat-lean balance and drying process matter most; steaming a few slices over rice lets the fat perfume the grains. Dongguan families cure it in winter, toss it with garlic sprouts and gift it to relatives. Shorter and sweeter than most Cantonese sausages, Houjie sausage is one of the most distinctive cured tastes of the Dongguan region.