Nanchang Earthen-Jar Simmered Soup

Nanchang earthen-jar simmered soup is made by blanching ingredients, loading them into small clay jars with water, sealing the mouths with foil, then stacking the jars inside a charcoal-fired clay vat more than a metre tall to simmer for many hours under the rule of "seven parts meat, three parts water," yielding a clear, deeply savoury broth.

The method is said to date to the Jiayou era of the Northern Song, almost a thousand years ago; a folk tale tells of a Nanchang scholar who buried a vessel in hearth ash and found a delicious simmered soup, which people copied until the clay-vat jar method became Nanchang's distinctive soup tradition—half of the classic local breakfast of "one jar of soup, one bowl of noodles."

A steaming jar of soup ladled out at dawn beside a bowl of Nanchang mixed noodles is the city's classic breakfast; the soups come in many kinds—minced-pork patty, century-egg-and-pork, shiitake-and-pork, free-range chicken—all prized for being cooked without open flame and keeping the ingredients' pure taste.

The distinctive vat-and-charcoal simmering—"high heat to bring it up, low heat to draw it out, gentle heat to finish"—the single-serving small jar, and the clear yet intense, true-taste broth are the hallmarks of Nanchang earthen-jar soup.