Earth snails

Earth snails

　　Earth snails, also known as di luo er, are small, white, screw-shaped underground tubers about an inch long, crispy, tender, and slightly sweet. They can be fried, soaked, or pickled. Frying consumes a lot of oil and is considered more extravagant, so soaking or pickling are more common methods. Similar to making kimchi soup, ingredients such as salt and chili are boiled in water to make a broth, with an appropriate amount of vinegar added, and the cleaned earth snails are then soaked in the broth. They can be eaten after a few days, cooked as desired. Pickled earth snails are even simpler—just mix the earth snails with an appropriate amount of salt, place them in a container, press them down with a vegetable weight stone, and wait until a slight sourness develops before eating. They can also be pickled together with soft-pickled vegetables.