🍽️ Zhangjiajie Sour Pork

Tujia fermented sour pork stir-fried with chili.

Zhangjiajie Sour Pork is a traditional fermented meat of the Tujia people in the Zhangjiajie area of Hunan, a taste of western Hunan. Pork belly chunks are mixed with toasted rice flour and salt, then sealed in an earthen jar and fermented for months until the meat turns mellow with a lactic aroma. Sliced and stir-fried with dried chili and garlic sprouts, it is rich but not greasy, tangy and appetite-whetting, ideal with rice. Proper sealing and fermentation time are the craft, an age-old mountain method of preserving meat. Tujia families serve it to honored guests, and visitors to Zhangjiajie can find it in local Tujia restaurants, savoring the highland villages' unique fermented-meat flavor.