Zhenjiang Pot Cover Noodles

Zhenjiang Pot Cover Noodles

　　Many people know that Zhenjiang has “Three Oddities”: vinegar that never goes bad, pork trotters served as a side dish, and noodles cooked with a pot lid in the pot. Pot cover noodles are one of these three oddities.

　　As for pot cover noodles, locals love them, and they’ve gradually gained some fame outside Zhenjiang too. But what exactly are pot cover noodles? As someone from Zhenjiang, I never really paid much attention to it before. This time, a discussion with Jing You Xin Zao on this topic prompted me to look into it in a bit more detail.

　　As the name suggests, pot cover noodles are noodles cooked with a pot lid—in other words, they’re made by cooking noodles in a big pot with a small pot lid placed on top, floating on the water’s surface. This method produces noodles that are very chewy—not too soft, not too hard—and quite delicious. To put it plainly, pot cover noodles refer to a method of cooking noodles, not a specific type of noodle.

　　There are several versions of the legend behind pot cover noodles.

　　One version says that in ancient times, there was a family in Zhenjiang where the wife was cooking noodles for her husband. Carelessly, she let the lid of the soup pot on the stove slide into the noodle pot (in the past, people used wood-fired stoves with two burners, and between the two pots was a soup pot used for boiling water—there’s an old saying, “The water in the soup pot is always warm,” meaning the water would get heated while cooking). To her surprise, the noodles cooked this way turned out better than usual—not too hard, not too mushy, just perfectly soft and tender. So, they teamed up with others to open a noodle shop. Since they cooked noodles with a pot lid in the pot and it was a joint venture, Zhenjiang noodle shops came to be called “partner noodle shops,” and the noodles they served became popularly known as “pot cover noodles.”

　　Another version says that there was once a family where only a father and his three sons lived. With no women in the house, life was pretty rough, and they never washed the pot lid when cleaning the wok. They had little to eat. One day, when guests came over, there were only some noodles left, and no seasonings like oil, salt, soy sauce, or vinegar. They simply put the noodles in a big pot to boil. After putting the noodles in, out of habit, the father placed the small pot lid he usually used for cooking into the pot without thinking much about it, then went out to borrow seasonings from a neighbor. When he returned, the noodles were already cooked—and the whole house was filled with a delicious aroma. It turned out that because the pot lid was never washed, it had all kinds of seasonings on it. And so, pot cover noodles were born.

　　Yet another legend says that when Emperor Qianlong traveled to the south and visited Zhenjiang, he stopped by a noodle shop. The shop owner, in a panic, placed a small pot lid on top of the big pot. Unexpectedly, the noodles cooked this way turned out incredibly fragrant, and thus the dish became known as pot cover noodles.

　　Actually, these are all just folk tales. Personally, I find the first version a bit more credible. It might have been an accidental discovery that, after many trials, became an invention. So why cook noodles “with a pot lid in the pot”?