🍽️ Pingliang Mutton Soak

East-Gansu mutton with bread.

Pingliang Mutton Soak is a flavor of Pingliang, Gansu, an eastern-Gansu version of mutton-soaked bread. Mutton is stewed in its own original broth—generous broth, fall-apart meat—and the bread is broken into chunks and soaked in the soup, served with candied garlic, chili sauce and cilantro. Compared with Xi'an's paomo, the Pingliang version has wider broth and larger bread chunks; the mutton is braised tender, the broth savory and rich with a peppery warmth. It is a winter morning and guest-welcoming hot food for Pingliang people; a bowl of soup and bread drives off the cold and warms the stomach. Eastern Gansu cooking of mutton emphasizes the stock and heat, broken and soaked to order and eaten hot, best conveying the substantial, steaming mutton-soak taste of the eastern Gansu plateau.