Haining Jar Pork

Haining Jar Pork

　　Haining Jar Pork is a specialty of Haining City, Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province. With a color resembling amber, it melts in the mouth, rich and smooth, neither greasy nor oily, and is truly extraordinary. It is not Dongpo Pork, but rather the "mother" of Dongpo Pork.

　　Cooking meat in a jar is a unique spectacle in Haining. During festivals and celebrations when locals entertain family and friends, jar pork (commonly known as “crispy pork”) can often be seen; it is also indispensable for ancestral worship, festive banquets, and entertaining honored guests and friends.

　　Any meat cooked in a jar is described as having “a color resembling amber, melting in the mouth, rich and smooth, neither greasy nor oily, and truly extraordinary.” The method of cooking with fire for jar pork can be found in the ancient Confucian classic “The Book of Rites • Internal Rules,” specifically in the chapter “Pure Stew.” By the Northern Wei Dynasty, Jia Sixie’s “Essential Techniques for the Welfare of the People” further developed the technique in its “Roasting Methods, Chapter Eighty.” Who invented cooking meat in a jar? Culinary history reveals that the invention of pottery during the Pottery Cooking Era was a groundbreaking milestone. Our ancestors, with their earthen jars and pots, not only had containers but could also use them as vessels for drinking. Artifacts from the Neolithic Age confirm that the Yangshao people, six thousand years ago, used fine yellow clay to make their pottery and, to enhance heat resistance, mixed in appropriate amounts of sand to create sandy pottery. Among the drinking vessels of the Hemudu people seven thousand years ago were earthen pots, an improved version of the jar. From then on, placing food ingredients into a container, adding water, and boiling them became the cooking method known today as jar pork. Haining has preserved this ancestral method of cooking meat for over seven thousand years. (For this very “Haining Jar Pork,” one might even argue for a place on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list for food.)

　　Another major advancement in “Haining Jar Pork” came in the sixth month of the eighth year of the Xining era during the Northern Song Dynasty (1075), when Su Dongpo visited Haining to write the “Record of the Great Mercy Pavilion at Anguo Temple.” As a gourmand, he was pleasantly surprised upon tasting Haining Jar Pork and personally adjusted its seasonings. In the second year of the Yuanfeng era (1079), Su Dongpo was demoted to Huangzhou due to the “Wutai Poetry Case.” He often drank with a group of talented but frustrated literati to ease his frustrations and composed poetry to dispel his sorrows. He adapted the method of cooking pork in a jar by using an earthenware pot to cook it for his friends, telling them that while a pot is not as good as a jar—a jar can cook an entire pig—the resulting meat is truly delicious. His famous poem “Ode to Pork” was written at that time: “Clean the pan, add just a little water, cover the firewood so the smoke flame doesn’t rise. Let it cook by itself without disturbing it; when the heat is right, it will be delicious on its own.” The poem details the cooking method for jar pork. Later, while serving as prefect of Hangzhou, he used this pork to comfort the laborers building the Su Causeway. Su Dongpo later lived in Meizhou, Yangzhou, and Changzhou, and “Haining Jar Pork” became widely popular. Due to his influence, people grew accustomed to calling it “Dongpo Pork.” But no matter what it's called, “Haining Jar Pork” has become an essence of gastronomic delight.