Roast whole lamb is one of the most popular lamb dishes in the country. Photos by Ye Jun /
With public health scares hitting sales of pork and poultry, diners are developing a renewed enthusiasm for lamb, which has a long and rich history in Chinese cuisine. Ye Jun reports.
With the impact of avian flu leading to a decline in the consumption of poultry, Chinese and Western chefs are finding a greater demand from diners for lamb dishes.
Lamb has been on the Chinese dining table for hundreds of years, and has always been safe.
"Chicken, pork or beef - they all had problems, but never lamb," says Yang Yuping, executive chef with Ninety-nine Yurts.
Yang's restaurant in Beijing offers lamb dishes in an Inner Mongolia yurt setting. He says lamb is always safe because it is raised in healthy conditions.
Back in Yang's hometown of Inner Mongolia, where his restaurant sources meat, sheep and goats are raised on grasslands, feeding on wild grass and herbs.
Ninety-nine Yurts offers popular lamb dishes, such as roast whole lamb, lamb's back, kebabs and boiled goat.
Yang says the most traditional way of cooking lamb, Inner Mongolia's signature meat, is boiling. Roast lamb, the best known dish from the region, is mostly for festivals and important occasions.
"With quality lamb you need to reduce the amount of seasoning, so as to bring out its original flavor," Yang says. "I often only cook lamb with salt and ginger."
In Beijing, a hodge-podge of styles of Chinese cuisine exists and there are many ways to cook lamb.
Xinjiang restaurants are famous for their kebabs, grilled lamb leg and fried lamb with cumin. They are more international in style, and the restaurant itself is usually jovial, with Uygur style dancing and singing performances.
A traditional way to cook lamb in Beijing is by searing thin slices of meat in a hot pot. Lamb hot pot was invented by Mongolian aristocrats but brought to Beijing by Manchu people during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), according to Hong Dacai, owner of Hongyunxuan, a Muslim restaurant specializing in Mongolian hot pot.
Hong still observes strict rules of the traditional lamb hot pot. He serves eight sauces, and the hot soup is clear and has no foam after the slices of lamb are boiled in it.
Celebrating the season
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Photo by Ye Jun /
Located along Shichahai Lake, Kaorouji is a restaurant where one can experience how Beijingers grilled lamb in the 19th century. The restaurant, founded in 1848, still has a traditional round table with a huge round iron grill for customers to cook the lamb with a long pair of chopsticks.
Dong Keping, a Beijing-based gourmet, says lamb was China's main meat by the time of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). Yinshan Zhengyao, a book on food and recipes written in 1330, recorded mostly lamb dishes, and just a few beef dishes, but no pork dishes. Its author, Hu Sihui, was a Yuan Dynasty nutritionist working for the imperial family.
Pork became widespread in most parts of China only after the start of Qing Dynasty, according to Dong. "That's because Manchu people used pork for sacrifice, and the imperial family would give sacrificed pork to court officials, as an honor. That has helped it become China's national meat," says Dong, a culinary advisor for the CCTV's food documentary A Bite of China.
Although pork became dominant, lamb dishes still remain in most parts of China.
Lamb is cooked in almost every way - boiling, stewing, roasting, frying and braising.
Traditional Chinese medicine doctors believe lamb is warm and nourishing and especially good in the cold winter. In fact, they even use it as medicine to improve deficiency of energy, and pain in the stomach in cold weather. Lamb soup with angelica and ginger is a recipe that has been recorded in medical books since Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-220).
Australian David Pooley, executive chef with Western cuisine restaurant Aria in Beijing, says lamb is one of Australia's national meats, ranking second in restaurant consumption, only behind beef.
He says that in Australia it is traditional to cook a leg of lamb on Sunday night, along with roast potato, at a family gathering.
Different parts of the lamb are cooked differently. Lamb loin should be prepared very quickly, according to the chef. He prefers to braise top of the shank, roast lamb rump slowly, and grill or roast lamb rack quickly.
Unlike Chinese chefs, Pooley says he almost never cooks a lamb well-done, because it can become too dry. "But moms always cook it well-done, and there is something nice about it," he says.
Celebrating the season
Time for truffles
2 3 e<!--enpproperty 2013-05-01 15:39:51.0Ye Jun
Boiled mutton is Ninety-nine Yurts' signature dish.
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