🍽️ Guyuan Hui Stew

Meatballs, vermicelli and lamb stew, Guyuan.

The Guyuan Hui Stew is a hearty home-style stew of the Xiji-Haiyuan-Guyuan region in southern Ningxia, reflecting local Hui Muslim cooking. Here the word xiaochi refers to an assortment of fried morsels: hand-rolled meatballs, fried tofu, vermicelli, daylily and wood ear mushroom are simmered together with chunks of lamb in bone broth until the flavors merge. The result is a thick, filling pot—meatballs soft and springy after soaking up the gravy, slippery noodles, tender lamb—savory with a gentle tang and very warming. In the dry hills of southern Ningxia where ingredients were once modest, families made a satisfying one-pot meal of fried items, noodles and meat; it is now a common restaurant specialty. A bowl in winter, eaten with steamed bread, is the most comforting local meal.