Every now and again there is a food so damned that I will do some serious travel to eat it. Thus today I traveled on a fast train for 2 hours a distance of 300 km to eat goats feet (麻辣羊蹄 (má là yáng tí)).
Yep I shit you not I primarily did this journey because I had not had this delicacy in about ten years and was just hammering for it. To be fair that Yan’an is also a kinda communist Disneyland was an added bonus.
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What the Yan’an?
Yan’an is a prefecture-level city in northern Shaanxi province with a population of around 2.5 million people. It sits roughly 300 km north of Xi’an, which is about a 2 to 3 hour journey on the high-speed rail line today.
Historically, Yan’an is absolutely massive in Chinese revolutionary history, as it was the final destination of the Long March and later became the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party from 1936 to 1948. Today it is part pilgrimage site, part tourist attraction, and part normal northern Chinese city, with a strong local culture and heavy “red tourism” industry built around its revolutionary past.
Shanbei Cuisine and goats feet
Shanbei cuisine (Northern Shaanxi cuisine) is proper rugged northern food. This is not delicate Cantonese dim sum stuff, this is cold winters, tough terrain, and strong flavours. It is heavy on lamb, wheat-based noodles, and anything that can be boiled, braised or stewed for hours until it becomes soft enough to eat.
Goats feet are one of the signature street foods here. You’ll see them boiled, braised, or sometimes grilled, and then chopped up and served in big messy piles. Variations include 麻辣羊蹄 (spicy and numbing), 卤羊蹄 (braised in soy and spice stock), and sometimes even dry rubbed versions with cumin and chilli. The texture is always the same though: sticky, fatty, collagen-heavy goodness that northern China absolutely loves.
Click to read about Shaanxi Cuisine.
How to eat goats feet?
What I freakin love about goats feet is that in Yan’an and Zicheng this is the drunk food, this is the kebab. Basically you go into a late night restaurant and you just get served goats feet galore until you are full. This has led me occasion to eat a unholy amount. There are different ways to serve it, but usually it comes boiled and with 蒜泥醋汁 (suànní cùzhī) a garlic vinegar sauce. This thing is the bomb and has a northern Shaanxi tang to it.
You are then given a glove because all the best foods in the world are eaten with your hand. Your job is then to put it in your mouth after covering it with sauce and then suck the meat from the bone. At classy places there will even be bins for you to spit the bone into.
So, how does it taste. The goats feet itself is similar, but better than a pigs trotter and has a surprising amount of meat to it. Yes it is fatty, but there is meat too. It is though the 蒜泥醋汁 (suànní cùzhī) that makes this dish, with the tang being a great conduit for more beer, or more likely bai jiu. Make no mistake these northern boys can drink. And Muggles it is these things combined that make this such a great street food, drunk food, Shanbei food.
Oh and a shout out to Zicheng, another revolutionary base about and hour from Yan’an that has even better goats feet.
How to make 蒜泥醋汁 (suànní cùzhī)
OK, I am not chef, nor will I ever make this myself, but hey if my recipe helps one cat out there!
- 10 cloves garlic, crushed
- 4 tablespoons aged Shanxi vinegar (山西陈醋)
- Pinch of salt
Mix and serve.
The strong vinegar and raw garlic are there to cut through the rich, sticky, collagen-heavy texture of the goat’s feet.
Restaurant trick
A lot of places will add:
- 1 tablespoon of the cooking broth from the braised goat’s feet
- A little MSG or chicken powder
This gives the sauce a deeper savoury flavour and makes it taste more like what you get in a restaurant in Yan’an.