Chinese Techniques: Smoking

Smoked foods are a regular, and in some provinces an everyday, feature of the Chinese diet. Tea-smoked chickens are standard fare in Peking, camphor-smoked ducks a proud specialty of Szechwan, and no Hunanese with an ounce of regional pride will fail to recount (at length!) the treasury of densely smoked foods for which Hunan is famed—the hams, spareribs, liver, eggs, duck tongues, duck webs, soybeans, and endless variety of major and minor nibbles that have been transformed in the crucible of many a family’s smoking room. Smoked foods in China are traditionally listed in the category of “foods to make the wine go down,” so well do they serve to spark the appetite and tease the tongue.