Cooking Methods
Flavor-Potting
This method refers to stewing foods
in a highly-flavored sauce (see the
section on "Stocks and Flavoring
Sauces" below) that permeates the
dish.
Basic flavor-potting (lu) means stewing the food in a mixture of soy sauce, rice wine, sugar, salt, red fermented rice mash, and five-spice powder, scallions, ginger, chicken stock and water. The food cooks over low heat for several hours and comes out tender and full of flavor.
Marinating and flavor-potting (jiang) adds the step of marinating the food in salt, soy sauce, and soybean paste (also known as ground bean sauce) before it is stewed in the flavor-potting sauce.