A Hearty Winter Dish From China’s Famously Cold Northeast

During my first visit to Northeast China (known as Dongbei in Mandarin), I couldn’t believe what I was eating: hearty stews, slow-cooked hunks of meat and thick, glossy sauces, all served with fluffy steamed buns. This was a different style of Chinese cooking to anything I’d experienced before. The familiar stir-fries, steamed dim sum and bowls of warm rice were nowhere to be found. Instead, dishes like Dongbei pork and chestnut stew (Dōngběi lìzǐ dùn ròu, 东北栗子炖肉) were on every dinner table. At this point, I’d spent years living in Beijing and calling it home. On a map, the capital city appears close to Dongbei, but in reality, the cuisines are quite different. My local Beijing restaurants serve up noodles, Beijing hot pot or porridges but rarely slow simmered dishes like this one. I’ve been tempted back to Dongbei many times just so I can taste this style of food again and again.  

This stew is rich with umami but also has a sweetness from the chestnuts. Aromatic hints of chili, star anise and garlic infuse the dish, creating layers of flavor that embody the heartiness of Dongbei cuisine. Everything goes into a heavy clay pot known as a shaguo (砂锅) on a gentle simmer, and then a few hours later, you’re rewarded with tender meat that yields to the press of a chopstick, chunky chestnuts packed with flavor, and sauce you just have to dunk steamed buns into.

The Overlooked Cuisine of the Northeast

The provinces of China’s Northeast are largely ignored when people discuss the great cuisines of China. Sichuan, Guangdong and Shandong get all the limelight, whilst the frozen territories of the north are forgotten or assumed to be too simplistic and rustic to merit attention. The cuisine has a reputation as nothing more than farmers’ food, and the humble ingredients it’s made with are quite unfashionable in China today: grains like millet and sorghum, simple steamed buns, thick cuts of heavily-salted pork. And yet, on my visits up to the Northeast, I’ve found the food to be exactly what I needed—dishes that fill my belly and warm my bones. 

This food tastes almost Russian, which is not surprising—at various times over the course of history, parts of the Northeast were controlled by Russia. Borders in this region have been redrawn again and again over the years, and, as a result, food was exchanged, dishes tweaked and techniques borrowed from different countries. 

The residents of these regions did not historically have the luxury of abundance like the people in, say, Sichuan or Guangdong. Instead, their food traditions developed in the darkest depths of harsh winters. The three provinces that make up this region—Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang—are brutally cold most of the year. Frozen fields and trees that fruit for only a few months of the year forced the people of Dongbei to innovate with their cuisine. Pickling, stewing and curing became essential methods of preparation in Dongbei.

Dongbei’s Ancient Art of Stewing

This region’s stewing technique dates back to the non-Han cooks of the nomadic and warrior cultures—including the Khitan, Jurchen and Mongols—who resided in the Northeast at various times over the centuries. Cooks would often serve hearty, nutritious stews in huge communal pots. While chefs later refined the region’s cooking techniques, stewing remained at the heart of the region’s food. Over the years, the meat-heavy cuisine of nomadic tribes merged with the more sophisticated palates of Song, Ming and Qing dynasties as people relocated in, and out, of the Dongbei provinces. Local cooks also adopted ingredients from other parts of China, fusing them into their own cuisine: a drizzle of soy sauce, a splash of cooking wine, a few Sichuan peppercorns here and there. 

Today, the slow-cooked, balanced dishes created by the melding of these traditions and ingredients are the stars of the Northeast’s cuisine. No other province or region in China can claim as many braised dishes: there are simple pickled-cabbage stews, fish stews with glass noodles, lamb stews with root vegetables, tofu stews with belly pork and countless meat stews. There’s even a kind of everything stew, commonly known as da dun cai (大炖菜) or “big stew,” that offers a perfect way to use up any leftovers in the kitchen, from a bit of sausage to half a potato to a handful of pickles.

Tips on the Ingredients in Dongbei Pork and Chestnut Stew

Chestnuts really make this dish; their subtle sweetness and crumbly texture add an unusual element to an otherwise simple stew. Chestnuts grow in abundance all over the northeast of China, from the outskirts of Beijing right up to the mountains bordering Russia. They are widely used in pastries, desserts and savory dishes. I love Dongbei’s liberal use of them, from the classic braised chicken with chestnuts (lìzi dùn jī, 栗子炖鸡) to simple stir-fried chestnuts (chǎo lìzi, 炒栗子) or even the slightly sweet pork and chestnut dumplings (lìzi zhūròu jiǎozi, 栗子猪肉饺子).

Chestnuts: You can roast and peel your own chestnuts if you want, or you can use a pre-packaged type. I usually buy them freshly roasted, from a local vendor, but not all of us are lucky enough to have chestnut roasters on our doorstep. Pre-packaged chestnuts are usually steamed, so they end up being firmer than the roasted kind. This means that during a braise they will retain their shape, which is great, but they don’t absorb as much of the flavor from the broth. 

Spices: The chili and Sichuan pepper in this dish are included to add a nice warmth rather than a hit of spice, so go easy on them. You may want to reduce the number of dried chillies if yours pack a punch. One er jing tiao from The Mala Market store is probably enough. 

Sugar: You can use white sugar here if you like, but many Chinese chefs opt for rock sugar as it’s slightly less sweet and easier to control. White sugar will caramellize quicker and is more likely to burn and give a bitter taste to the final dish.

Cooking Tips and Techniques

This is not a complicated dish to put together, but there are four aspects to pay attention to: the pork, the spice level, the sugar and the sauce.

• Cooking the pork: Pork belly shrinks a lot after braising, as all those layers of fat melt away. An easy mistake is to cut the pork too small and then, after cooking, find that you’re left with unsatisfying flakes of meat. A common frame of reference among cooks in China is to cut the pork into cubes the size of a mahjong tile (about 1½  inches) for a dish like this. Once you have your pieces ready, the first step in cooking the pork is blanching it for a few minutes with ginger, scallion and sometimes cooking wine. This is a common technique in Chinese cooking as it removes the meat’s impurities, resulting in a cleaner broth and reducing the unpleasant taste that sometimes is present in pork (known as pork taint).
• Spicing the dish: A mistake I’ve made a few times is over-spicing this stew. We want mild chillies and just a sprinkle of Sichuan pepper. Add the spices carefully, and remember that newer dried ingredients are going to be more fragrant and spicy than ones that have been in your spice cupboard for six months. 
• Coating the meat with sugar: Early on in this dish you’ll need to melt the sugar and let it cook to a rich brown color. Don’t be impatient here—you need to let it caramelize slowly on low heat. It’s often tempting to stir the sugar, but resist that urge; if you stir, the sugar will crystallize and won’t coat the meat correctly. If you want to speed things along, you can tilt the pot back and forth a bit to move the melting sugar around. Then once the sugar is a rich, dark brown, add the meat, turn up the heat and coat quickly. 
• Reducing the sauce: This stew does not have a thick, sticky sauce. The locals of Dongbei prefer a thinner broth that they can dip steamed buns into. After about 1½ hours, your stew should be rich enough without being overly thick.

For more warming stews to make during the winter months, check out Xueci’s Sichuan Spicy Braised Chicken With Taro or Kathy’s Sichuan Braised Chicken with Chestnut + Shiitake.