Beef Entrails is a Hong Kong dish largely influenced by Cantonese cuisine.
Good quality beef is chosen to stew with its entrails for a couple of hours. There are several ways to serve this food, for instance, as beef entrails hot pot, beef entrails on a skewer and beef entrails served with pieces etc. The seasonings called "13 herbs" are the main composition of the master stock sauce. None of the herbs can be omitted, or else it causes a huge change of flavour. The herbs are fennel, Sichuan peppercorn, star anise, dried citrus peel, cinnamon, sand ginger, and nutmeg. The tripe (four tripes of the cow are edible but the honeycombtripe has the highest rating), pancreas, intestine, spleen and lungs are the major characters of the beef entrails. The dish is usually served with chili oil and black pepper.
Origin
According to a Chinese legend, an emperor traveling in disguise found out that his citizens were suffering from hunger. Thus, he commanded butchers to kill the cows and cooked them for the starved citizens. The king hoped every citizen could eat it. So besides of cooking the beef, entrails of cows were also put into the pot to cook more. Citizens thought the dish tasted good and the dish has passed on from generation to generation.
Development
Beef entrails had been a popular kind of snacks in Guangdong province of China. Due to the Chinese Civil War of the mid-20th century, a wave of migrants from mainland China flooded into Hong Kong as refugees. With the influence of the migrants from Guangzhou, beef entrails became popular in Hong Kong. With the economic boost of Hong Kong in the 1970s, the fusion of Chinese and Western cultures led to the popularity of beef entrails among foreign visitors. It is common to buy beef entrails from street vendors, which is another unique feature that can be found in Hong Kong. Under the law, if the street vendors fail to get licenses given out by the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, they cannot continue their business as they may cause hygienic problems, and hawkers may worsen the city image of Hong Kong. In 1958, the government set up Hawkers Control Teams to combat street vendors.[1] However, starting from the 1970s, the government has slowly stopped giving out licenses to street vendors. It resulted in the disappearance of many street vendors, thus the places selling beef entrails.
On the bright side, the standardisations of operations and the maturity of market help further the development of beef entrails in Hong Kong. Beef entrails have become one of the must-eats in cart noodle shops and cha chaan tengs. Some people have stopped vending on the streets and opened beef entrails restaurants.
