Najia Guan White Pork and Blood Sausage

Around 1874 Na Jiyou, a descendant of the Manchu Plain White Banner, left officialdom to open the eatery Jixingyuan near the Kuixing Tower in Shenyang, adding white pork and blood sausage in keeping with the northeastern custom of slaughtering a pig at festivals. In the early Republic his son renamed and expanded it as Najia Guan.

Najia Guan became the defining house for northeastern white pork and blood sausage; after relocation and closures it reopened in Shenyang and, from 1979, revived its traditional methods, standing as a banner of local Manchu flavor.

The pork comes as steamed slices or crisped tiger-skin style, tender and aromatic; the blood sausage is made by filling cleaned casings with fresh pig's blood and slow-simmering it to a glossy tenderness, eaten with chive-flower paste, fermented bean curd and mashed garlic.