Savor the Taste of Time

These ancient flavors are also preserved on the ­islands of Taiwan through the use of preserving methods like sun-drying, salting, and smoking. Meat, so difficult to keep fresh, develops its own unique terroir by undergoing several rounds of complex procedures, varying by how different communities respond to their environments, and being heated by the fires of time.

Meat being smoked over a charcoal fire. Over the course of five days, it turns a beautiful maroon color.

The science of food preservation

These classic techniques are all easily understood from today’s scientific perspective. Food spoilage is mainly due to the activity and reproduction of microorganisms, and removing the water they need to live is one way to inhibit that activity. Therefore, the most tradi­tional and ancient way to preserve food is by exposing it to the sun or air-drying it, to remove moisture.

Salting is also a method found in the traditional recipes of peoples across the planet. Using the principle of osmotic pressure to draw water out of food is another approach to dehydration.

Or one can hang up food in a confined space over a slow, smoky charcoal fire. Like salt, smoke has a sterilizing effect, which can prolong the shelf life of food and add flavor to it.

For hundreds of years, Taiwan has accommodated many migrant groups who have settled here. Each has brought their own ways of adapting to nature, and each has made the tastes of Taiwan that little bit more diverse.

Li Jialing is dedicated to keeping the flavors of his family alive and thriving.

Smoked meat on the table

The diverse flavors on the island come partly from military immigrants who came to Taiwan with the Nationalist government from 1949 onward. This is how the flavors produced by Xingshazhai Hunan Cured Meats of Shuishang Township in Chiayi County came about.

The old boss, Li Jialing, is a second-generation wai­sheng­ren, the child of a father who served in the ROC Air Force in China and decamped to Taiwan in the mid-20th century with the Nationalist government. Cured meats were a side business for the family. Later, Li Jia­ling, after working in Taipei for years, returned home at the age of 40 to commercialize his father’s hometown cuisine.

At 8:30 in the morning, the staff haul sausages and partly cured meat out from the refrigerated shipping containers to dry them in the sun. “A sausage needs at least six or seven sunnings,” says Li. It takes half an hour to rack up about 360 kilograms of sausages each day to sun-dry them. When production enters the busy season in the runup to the Lunar New Year,, hordes of photographers will rush to Xingshazhai to capture images of the blue sky, yellow sun, and red wall of ­sausages.

“Meat cured in dry, cold conditions turns out better, but Taiwan’s more a damp cold, so it’s not that well suited to it,” says Li. So instead, they use air-­conditioning, putting the meats in refrigerated containers to have 4°C cold air blown over them at night, then hauling them back out to “sunbathe” during the day. “This business is really dependent on the weather.”

“Some people think the good taste of my family’s meats is because of the unique recipe, but what’s more important is the process. Knowing how to control it so that we complete curing in six days takes experience.”

Next, Li Jialing leads us into the work area. Two teams of people work on processing the pork that is delivered fresh from the market early each morning, the first handling the hind legs. They first check them over and remove the silverskin (the outer layer of connective tissue), and then cut the meat into thin strips, ready for the grinder. This is the raw material of sausage, which is then seasoned with just salt, sugar, MSG, chili powder, Sichuan pepper, and kaoliang liquor.

On the other side, Li Jialing’s wife, Chen Shouzhen, cuts the pork belly into long pieces five centimeters wide. After stringing them with a loop of cotton thread, each piece is coated with salt. After this “spa treatment,” they’re left to cure at a low temperature for five days, and then they spend four or five days in the sun before being smoked over rice husks.

Behind the factory, Li Jialing has built two rectangular curing stoves, each about two meters deep. Iron rods, each hung with eight pieces of salted raw pork belly, are neatly arranged crosswise in the top of the stove. Charcoal is burned at the bottom, covered with a layer of rice husks. Throughout the process, they have to carefully observe the fire temperature, making sure the temperature inside the stove stays at 40°C.

The smoking takes five days, until the meat turns a beautiful reddish brown. After being taken out, the pieces are then washed down with boiling water to remove the dust and residual oils.

So is the curing done? Not yet! The smoky smell of the meat at this stage is still too strong, so it needs to be aired for a week or two before being packaged. The total processing time for a piece of cured meat is thus nearly a month, so you can see that nailing that perfect flavor really is no simple task.

Good cured meats can entice a diner to plough through several bowls of rice.

Sweet and salty, smoked with sugar cane

In the past, Yilan was a big duck-raising county, and one of its local specialties is a kind of smoked duck called yashang. “When I was a child, the entire Dongshan River was full of ducks,” says Lai Zhenghong, the third-generation owner of the food business A-Wann’s in Yilan’s Wujie Township. In addition to virtually every farming household growing rice, raising ducks was also widespread.

As the Lunar New Year approached, every household would set about making its own yashang. The origin of the name “yashang” is both fascinating and argued over. Giving one explanation, Lai Zhenghong explains that in the past, meat was a precious resource, and the smoked duck meat was given as presents to relatives and friends, earning it the name yashang, or, in this case, “duck gift.” There is, however, another explanation, one related to the production method. In the past, making yashang involved hanging the ducks outside in the sun for days, and each day the progress of drying had to be checked, resulting in the name yashang, or “watched duck.”

Turning into the alley where A-Wann’s is located, one’s eyes are met by what looks like a family factory. Lai Zhenhong’s grandfather Lai Guihe once happened to try using some dried-out sugarcane stalks as firewood to smoke some duck, and found that the duck meat became infused with the unique aroma of sugarcane. He and his family continued making yashang in this way, and later his son, Lai Sheng’an, turned it into a business. He developed a wooden cabinet smoking method, and founded A-Wann’s, whose yashang has even been served at state banquets.

Lai Zhenghong leads us into the area where the charcoal grilling is carried out in wooden cabinets. Deboned duck carcases, cured with salt for 12 hours, have been stretched over stainless-steel frames and hung in the wooden cabinets. They are then heated over a charcoal fire for three hours. “The temperature in the cabinet is about 68 to 70°C,” says Lai. “The function of this stage is to drive the moisture out of the duck meat and make the surface dry, so that when it’s smoked over the sugarcane in the next stage, it will be better in both color and flavor.”

Three hours later, the surface of the duck is dry and the color is getting darker. Lai takes short lengths of split sugarcane, covers the charcoal with them, and adds a spoonful of sugar. White smoke begins to curl out, and in a moment, the room is like a sauna. The fragrant smoke and aroma from the sugarcane are used to cure the duck meat, incorporating the sweetness of the sugarcane into the meat. “After another three hours of smoking, the surface of the duck will have turned a beautiful maroon.”

Because of how time-consuming and labor-intensive the process is, only two or three firms are keeping alive the traditional method in Wujie Township. “After they are chilled and salted, you put the ducks on the frames, then charcoal dry them for three hours, sugar­cane smoke them for three hours, and steam them. From scratch, the whole process takes three days.” This is a flavor that truly takes time to develop.

Yashang is a distinctive Yilan delicacy, and Lai Zhenghong of A-Wann’s is the latest in the family enterprise to make this delicious food.

Yashang is smoked over sugarcane for three hours, imparting some of the sweetness of the sugarcane into the duck meat.

Slices of yashang, paired with sugar, wine, and sesame oil, make for a great accompaniment to drinks.

Indigenous flavors

Before the advent of refrigeration, Taiwan’s indigenous peoples also had their own ways to preserve meat. When we visit the Amis indigenous community of Tafalong in Hualien County’s Guangfu Township, Imay Ina and Nakaw Ina (ina meaning “mother” in Amis) have already laid out banana leaves on a table and prepared the materials for making siraw for us.

Siraw is a traditional Amis pickled food, most commonly made with pork. In the past, when materials were scarce, siraw was not an everyday food, but rather a precious dish that only made the table during festivals or when entertaining distinguished guests.

Siraw’s ingredients are simple: salt and meat. Imay Ina picks up a handful of salt, smears it over the meat, and massages it in. “The amount you use depends on what feels right.” Then you sprinkle some salt in a jar, put the meat in the jar, let it stand until the third day, take out the meat, squeeze the blood and juices out, add a little more salt, and let it sit for another three days, at which point it is ready to eat. But you need to be careful—siraw made by people with sweaty hands is apt to go rancid, so they can’t make siraw.

After being pickled for just seven days, siraw must be cooked before eating. The Amis often throw siraw into a pot and cook it into soup. Or when hunters head into the mountains for days at a time, they will bring a hunk of siraw with them. There is another procedure, a more complicated and time-consuming one. It’s basically the same, but you need to squeeze out the blood and juices three times along the way, and the pickling process takes three to six months.

Daya, the supervisor of the Good Shepherd Social Welfare Foundation’s service center in Guangfu, who invited us to Tafalong, shares the customs of her own Amis community on the Hualien coast. On the first day of a festival, the community will slaughter a pig, sharing the meat among the residents, with the elders setting aside a chunk to make into siraw. When the review meeting is held on the last day of the festival, the finished siraw is taken out for everyone to share. “This represents the successful conclusion of the event, and it carries a symbolic implication of the past being gone and the future lying ahead of us, with everyone now looking forward to what’s coming,” Daya explains.

The day before our interview, Daya sends word that the Inas are preparing some siraw dishes, paired with local vegetables common in indigenous communities. Led by the Inas, a group of people busy themselves with washing the vegetables, cutting the meat, and plating the meals, the group seemingly growing out of nowhere until ten people are gathered around the table. After saying grace, the assembled group begins eating and chatting, telling distinctively indigenous jokes. As everyone laughs loudly and digs into the food, we experience the abundance and happiness of sharing food the indigenous way.

A taste of indigenous Taiwan: siraw paired with local vegetables and prepared with heart by indigenous friends.

While the ingredients for and preparation of siraw may be simple, through fermentation over time it can develop a complex flavor.