Sheep offal

Sheep offal

　　Sheep offal

　　Sheep offal, or 羊杂割, is a local snack from Shanxi Province. Legend has it that the people of Shanxi began eating 羊杂割 during the Yuan Dynasty, and the name “杂割” was bestowed by Kublai Khan’s mother. When Kublai Khan, the founding emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, marched from Shanxi into the Central Plains, he passed through Quwo County. At that time, his mother, Empress Dowager Zhuangsheng, fell ill. Xu Guozhen, a renowned local physician in Quwo, cured her illness and became a trusted imperial doctor favored by the Empress Dowager. Xu’s mother, Lady Han, was skilled in cooking and accompanied her son to serve the Empress Dowager. Seeing that the Mongols ate mutton but discarded the offal, she found it a pity. She collected the offal, cleaned it, boiled it, and served it with green onions and chili peppers. The taste turned out to be delicious. The Empress Dowager praised it highly and named it “羊杂酪” (sheep offal stew). Since then, it gradually spread and became a popular folk snack.

　　Sheep offal stew goes by different names and is prepared differently across various regions of Shanxi. There are three main regional styles: southern (represented by Quwo), central (represented by Taiyuan), and northern (represented by Datong). Southern-style (Quwo) emphasizes boiling in water to preserve the original flavor and broth, resulting in a milky white soup with a rich and mellow taste. The preparation generally involves four meticulous steps: cleaning, boiling, chopping, and combining with broth. The central style (Taiyuan) uses a more complete assortment of ingredients. During boiling and when serving the broth, scallions, ginger, and cilantro are added, and sometimes vermicelli and tofu are included, offering a unique flavor. The northern style (Datong, Huairen) is more rustic in both preparation and serving—ingredients and broth are cooked together in a large pot over a fire, served as-is, with no strict rules on form.