🍽️ Sour Pork

Pork fermented with glutinous rice, south Guizhou sour.

Sour Pork is a traditional fermented meat of the Miao, Shui and other peoples in southern Guizhou. Fresh pork is rubbed with salt, mixed with glutinous rice powder, then sealed in an earthen jar and naturally fermented for months, until the meat darkens and develops a mellow sourness. It is eaten steamed or stir-fried, sour and appetite-opening, with the fat turning lighter after fermentation. Southern Guizhou's humid climate made cold storage hard in the old days, and sour pork is the mountain peoples' way of preserving meat. Together with sour-soup fish and pickled vegetables it forms one corner of southern Guizhou's sour school of cooking, and village households serve it at festivals and for guests. First-time visitors may find it unfamiliar, but the sour aroma brewed by time and microbes is exactly the wild-mountain side of southern Guizhou food.