Nanchang Earthen-Jar Simmered Soup Technique

The Nanchang earthen-jar simmered soup technique is said to date from the Jiayou era of the Northern Song, almost a thousand years ago; a folk tale tells of a Nanchang scholar who buried a vessel of ingredients in hearth ash and drew out a delicious broth, inspiring people to copy the method until it grew into the distinctive tradition of simmering small jars in a great clay vat. It entered the Nanchang municipal ICH list in 2014 and was later listed as a Jiangxi provincial ICH item.

The craft blanches the ingredients, loads them into small clay jars with good water, seals the mouths with foil, stacks them in a charcoal-fired clay vat more than a metre tall, and simmers them for many hours under "high heat to bring it up, low heat to draw it out, gentle heat to finish," holding to the rule of "seven parts meat, three parts water," with no open flame and the pure taste of the ingredients kept intact.

Earthen-jar simmered soup is the heart of Nanchang's everyday food culture, and the breakfast pairing of "one jar of soup with one bowl of mixed noodles" has become a mark of local life, carrying the Jiangxi tradition of honouring natural taste and the slow simmer.