Beijing food is a collection of varieties from Hebei, Shandong, lower Yangtze River, Inner Mogolia and Xinjiang. Cooking methods include barbecuing, deep-boiling, roasting, smoking and braising.

Beijing Roast Duck
The Beijing Roast Duck is dubbed as “the Number one delicious food in the world”. Most visitors coming to Beijing will never forget to have a try. Eating Peking duck is considered to be one of the two things visitors are absolutely supposed to do while in Beijing; the other is climbing the Great Wall.

 

How to make the Beijing Roast Duck? First, he duck must be the “Forced-Feeding Duck” of superior quality, which is about three kilograms when they are killed. Then, when roasting the duck, compressed air is injected into the duck between its skin and flesh to make the skin glossy and shiny.

 

The manner of serving the Beijing Duck is unique. The chef presents you the whole ducking before taking it away for slicing. One duck may produce about 120 very thin slices, each containing both meat and skin. The duck slices are brought back to the table with some thin pancakes, green onion or shallot, sweet soybean paste, fresh cucumber, garlic paste and sugar sometimes.

 

The proper way to enjoy the duck is as follows. Take a piece of pancake in one hand, then put three to four slices of the duck onto the pancake with each of the above mentioned vegetable and seasoning. Don't forget the soybean paste. At last, wrap up the pancake into a roll and eat it.

 

The two famous restaurants that serve Beijing Roast Duck are Bianyifang Roast Duck Restaurant and Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant, both of which have a history of over one hundred years. They represent two different schools of roasting duck. Quanjude is the largest and best- known roast duck restaurant in Beijing.

Official Dishes of Family Tan
“The Dishes of Family Tan” are the common dishes in Beijing, which are neither too salty nor too sweet and agreeable to diners. Cooks use high quality ware and pay much attention to the degree of heat. The cooking style stresses maintaining the freshness and inherent taste of the material, avoiding using heavy seasoning in case that the taste be changed.

Mutton Hot Pot
The traditional food Mutton Hot Pot, inherited from the hearty Mongolian, is important to the Chinese table. Mutton Hot Pot is famous for its large variety of materials and seasonings, such as paper-thin mutton slices, sesame jam, leek sprout, bitter shrimp oil, frozen bean curd, dried rice noodles and fresh vegetables like cabbage and radish slices.

 

Though good throughout the year, the hot pot banquet is the best for the harsh and cold winter of northern China and contributes to a wonderful occasion where people get together and socialize.

 

Bingtanghulu (candied haws on a stick), and Beijing Soybean milk are typical snacks easily be found while you are walking on the Street in Beijing.