Kebabs with beer are a popular form of entertainment in the summer. As a foodie country, barbecue has always been one of the popular choices when we gather with friends, and most people have the impression that kebabs should be popular in modern times. In fact, not only modern people love to eat barbecue, this cooking method has been very popular in ancient China!

Gansu Jiayuguan Wei Jin Tomb "eat barbecue" brick painting

Sipping beer and skewers, this is the right way to open a summer night!!

Tell us more about the history of barbecue

Seeing the food below, did the saliva of the foodies flow all over the place? People who lived in ancient times played tricks every day to make their food more delicious and put it on their tables. Eating methods such as shabu-shabu and barbecue have become delicious dishes on the "tip of the tongue" of the ancients!

Without further ado, guess what the following artifact is?

Huidong County, the southern end of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan Province, in ancient times, the barbecue in the area of Huidong County was famous in the country, and many tourists passed through Huidong to set up a barbecue grill and put on a few skewers of meat. So everyone thinks that this thing is the barbecue grill used by the ancients. When it comes to the origin of barbecue, we have to start with the origin of human beings.

In ancient times, there were barbecues

Speaking of the origin of barbecue in China, legend has it that the humanistic ancestor of the Chinese nation, Fuxi, took the "heavenly fire" to invent barbecue. He taught people to catch fish and birds, and roasted them and ate them. People eat fragrant barbecue, no longer have stomach troubles, and their bodies are more healthy. Therefore, they called Fu Xizun "Ku Xi - the first person to cook the meat of an animal with fire." ”

Portrait of Fuxi

Speaking of barbecue regions, many people think that they originated from the nomadic people in the north, but in fact, most of the real grassland herders eat boiled meat more than barbecued meat.

Before our ancestors invented the cooking utensils with the function of ding,  (guǐ) and (zèng), meat was cooked directly over the fire without exception. But in ancient times, the so-called "roasted" meat was primitive and rough, and people just hung the meat whole or piecemeal and "burned" it directly with flames.

During the Longshan culture period of about 4,600 to 4,000 years ago, about one-third of the total number of burnt bones were excavated. From 3,500 to 3,800 years ago, a lot of animal bones were also found in the Erlitou ruins.

Nowadays, there is a big difference between "roasting" and "roasting" from a culinary perspective: "roasting" refers to heating food with hot air generated by a heating source, while "roasting" refers to placing ingredients directly into a flame - the heating temperature of the two is different, because the temperature of the flame is higher than that of hot air, which has the greatest impact on the fat in the meat, and rapid charring will occur, making the appearance of the meat charred and black. Think about it, is the meat grilled in our own household microwave oven not as delicious as the barbecue master grilled over the fire?

I love barbecue

It developed during the Shang and Zhou dynasties

During the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the roasting method of meat began to be upgraded, and people developed the method of "broiling", which basically broke away from the flame and burned directly. It can be seen from the glyphs - the upper part is the pictogram of meat, and the lower part is fire. The ancients accurately defined that "skewering meat and putting it on the fire" is "broiling".

At this time, barbecue was already a delicacy in the life of the aristocracy, and the copper tripod used to cook meat became one of the most important ritual vessels, and barbecue gradually became a food culture. But with the exception of the "Liao Sacrifice", in which the sacrificial animals were put on the firewood pile for barbecue, barbecue food was already a staple food in the Shang and Zhou dynasties in China. The nobles also used raw meat, dried meat, and meat boiled in dings for sacrificial and eating.

Jiangsu Xuyi Jiangdu King Liu Fei tomb unearthed "grid ding"

Upgrading and development during the Han Dynasty

In the Han Dynasty, there were gradually barbecue tools, such as the iron stove in the collection of the Zhangqiu District Museum, which was a kind of living utensils, and was unearthed in various ruins and tombs. The four walls of the oven are equipped with rings and chains, so you can move them around at will without burning your hands. All four corners of the grill are slightly upturned to prevent the skewers from slipping off the edges. The designer of this oven must be a veteran foodie, and he is quite thoughtful!

Han Dynasty Iron Furnace Zhangqiu District Museum Collection

The iron stove is 53.4 cm long, 44 cm wide and 19.6 cm high, and is used to grill food. There are still iron chisels and charcoal in the oven today, which were used for kebabs in those days. (All of them are more than 2,000 years old.)

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In fact, the ovens of the Han Dynasty are not much different from modern ovens. For example, in 1969, in Yanxingmen Village, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, a "Shanglin Square Furnace" was unearthed, which was verified to be the royal thing of the Western Han Dynasty, and more ovens were unearthed since then, but the basic shape design and working principle have not changed, and they are still in use today.

Late Han Dynasty portrait stone tomb

Why was barbecue so popular in the Han Dynasty? One of the most important factors in this is spices.

Zhang Qian sent an envoy to the Western Regions to open the "Silk Road", connecting the Western Han Dynasty with many countries in Central Asia, and becoming the first cultural integration between the Han and the Yi. During this period, the food culture of the Western Regions was introduced, and at that time, the people of the Han Dynasty mainly used sauce and salt, and later introduced spices and sweet seasonings of caramel. The use of spices in the process of food production swept the Western Han Dynasty and the public, making it popular among the princes and nobles to the common people, and barbecue was the most popular one at that time.

Portrait rubbings of stone tombs in the Han Dynasty