Text|Leopard becomes Song Zihao.Early in the morning on Chinese New Year's Eve, Chen Jianguo, after 95, has begun to prepare for the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner in the evening: a large plump eggplant is changed into a fan-shaped, and the adjusted meat filling is stuffed in the gap and fried until it is finalized, and when the dish is only fried again in the evening, and then poured with sauce, it is a steaming lantern eggplant.Edit|Liu Yang.
Similarly, the glutinous rice has been soaked, and the asparagus should be changed in advance. This year is the third time Chen Jianguo has organized the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, and she has been able to be busy and orderly in the kitchen.
It's like fighting a battle, and you start preparing for it a week in advance. Chen Jianguo described the preparation process of the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner.
Almost at the same time, Xiao Zhou, a post-00s who lives in Xinjiang, was preparing a Chinese New Year's Eve dinner with his family. In the past, when cooking Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, Xiao Zhou worked in the kitchen, and this year he was promoted from assistant chef to head chef, which is inevitably a little busy. In Guangdong, Sister Tu was much more relaxed, with the help of pre-made dishes, she only paid 31 yuan for the three hard dishes of her Chinese New Year's Eve dinner.
In recent years, young people have gradually become the owners of Chinese New Year's Eve dinners. According to the "2024 Spring Festival Youth Social Media Trend Insight Report" jointly released by Kantar and Xiaohongshu, 36% of young people plan to prepare for the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner this year, of which 27% will directly take charge of the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, 19% will complete most of the decoration work, and 9% will provide creative dishes and new recipes.
Although young people do not have much time to practice cooking skills under the pressure of work and study, the post-95s and post-00s, who have their own personalities and pursuits, and strive to show their taste in food, rely on the blessing of the mobile Internet to not only use online recipes to make the "ninth cuisine" that their parents have never seen, but also use prefabricated dishes and semi-finished ingredients to greatly improve the efficiency of the kitchen.
For a time, at the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner hosted by young people, technology and ruthlessness flew together, innovation and tricks. After reorganizing the workplace, young people began to start with the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner.
01 Hard dishes rely on science and technology, cold dishes rely on platingIn the busy rhythm of life, young people are accustomed to pursuing an efficient and labor-saving lifestyle. This trend extends not only to work and study, but also to all aspects of daily life. For example, in the preparation of the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, many young people began to explore a new trend of saving worry and effort, and saving money, forming an online display that was ridiculed as "Chinese New Year's Eve Dinner Fool Learning".
Fool learning, as the name suggests, is to make an amazing Chinese New Year's Eve dinner with the least amount of time and money spent through clever fooling skills. The purpose of fooling is to refuse to get up early and be greedy for late to handle ingredients, refuse to soak in the kitchen all day, and focus on washing dishes less.
This is not only a unique philosophy of survival, but also a comprehensive discipline that combines creativity and economic wisdom. When some post-00s are still worried about how to complete a table of dishes, some people have already achieved the amazing achievement of "300 yuan to get a Chinese New Year's Eve dinner" by fooling learning.
The tutorial will teach you to use semi-finished ingredients as much as possible: a sour soup of lamb, the base of the soup is made with the sour soup fat beef private kitchen sauce you bought, you only need to prepare the meat rolls and side dishes, cook them, and finally sprinkle them with dried chili packets, pour hot oil, and make a hard dish in a few minutes.
Similar ideas, osmanthus braised pork ribs are poured directly on the marinated pork ribs with osmanthus braised sauce, the operation is simple, and you can smell the fresh and sweet taste before it comes out of the pot. Then sprinkle the dried osmanthus bag, and the shape will bring back a city.
Sister Tu, who is familiar with the essence of fooling, spent 231 yuan to buy three hard dishes: squirrel mandarin fish, abalone sauce barbecued pork bun, and salted hoof bamboo shoots and duck pot, and after using the 200 yuan gift card issued by the last year, she actually only paid 31$1.
Sister Tu said: "I usually choose prefabricated dishes under physical restaurants or large supermarkets, and the dishes and materials are more guaranteed. ”
Sister Tu's mother can also agree to this "fooling" after trying the pre-made dishes once, and she named them to eat again on Chinese New Year's Eve.
She is more afraid of trouble, and the pre-made dishes seem to be relatively easy to make. And in our city, there are too many people who go out to eat during the Chinese New Year, and they still need to make reservations in advance, and she is too lazy to toss. Sister Tu said.
In addition to hard dishes, young people have also put a lot of effort into the styling of fast and cold dishes. They choose quick dishes that are simple and easy to learn, and they greatly enhance the level of sophistication of the dishes through clever plating, accompanied by good names with good meanings.
For example, in the Chinese New Year's Eve recipe shared by Xiaohongshu bloggers, blueberry yam is given the meaning of "purple gas coming from the east", jade cabbage rolls symbolize "gathering wealth", and orange-flavored grilled chicken wings have the reputation of "orange heart wishes".
Little Red Book blogger biu cub Ma Ma's Chinese New Year's Eve recipe.
Other netizens also showed their own powers, a piece of carved cucumber, coupled with ingenious shapes, can be transformed into the Year of the Dragon limited "Green Dragon to the Sea", and even an orange can be posed as an "auspicious dragon head orange" in the shape of a dragon head, becoming a dish to make up a few dishes.
In short, hard dishes rely on technology, cold dishes rely on plating, young people's cooking skills may not be comparable to their parents, but in terms of social circles, their Chinese New Year's Eve dinner appearance level has repeatedly reached new highs.
02 Can pre-made dishes be served? "High-end" ingredients often only need the simplest cooking method: the young Chef Du spreads bean sprouts and cucumbers in the pot, opens the soft-shelled turtle soup package and pours it into the pot, and only needs to simmer for a few minutes, and a soft-shelled turtle soup with full color and flavor is complete. This dish full of technology and ruthlessness was selected into the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner menu of the post-00s Dudu.
The topic of pre-made dishes served on the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner table has caused heated discussions a few years ago, and netizens have said that after a hard year, do you still need to eat pre-made dishes for Chinese New Year's Eve dinner? The disgust and resistance in the comments are palpable.
However, this may represent the attitude of the majority of consumers towards pre-made dishes. According to iMedia Research, in 2023, in a survey of Chinese consumers' trust in the food safety of pre-made dishes, only 2218% of consumers choose to believe very much, 5592% of consumers choose to believe more, 1790% of consumers choose to generally believe.
As early as the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger in 2023, a large number of restaurants and supermarkets launched pre-made dishes, hoping to occupy the table of Chinese New Year's Eve, but did not set off much storm.
Young people are the main group of people who consume pre-made dishes. According to the "2022 Prefabricated Vegetable Consumption Trends***" released by Jingdong Supermarket, consumers in the 26-35 age group have the strongest purchasing power for prefabricated dishes, accounting for 36%.
After young people become chefs of Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, will pre-made dishes be served smoothly?
Jessie is a new generation of culinary experts after 00, she usually likes to study various cuisines by herself, in the past three years of Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, Jessie is just helping to start, this year is officially promoted to Chinese New Year's Eve chef.
Although Jessie has a lot of research on food, she still chooses to add some pre-made dishes appropriately, "There are usually three pre-made dishes in seven or eight dishes. At last year's Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, rice cakes, fish and rice cakes, as well as a stir-fried dish, were pre-made dishes. ”
Jessie is open to pre-made dishes, and she scrutinizes the ingredient list in favor of relatively healthy pre-made dishes. "Mainly because the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner can't be delayed for too long, and there are many dishes, so I pursue a faster cooking method. ”
Du Du was curious about the taste of pre-made dishes and tried a lot of pre-made dishes. She once bought a small bowl of Manchu and Han full-seat dishes for 65 yuan and ten dishes, of which 5 can be recommended, 3 are thunderous, and 2 are decent. After eating, Du Du's biggest feeling is that there is a crisis of trust in the stalls on the first negative floor, because many dishes are no longer different in taste.
In the popular menu of the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, Du Du tried three dishes: squirrel mandarin fish, braised elbow, and turtle hot pot.
As for whether she will try pre-made dishes at the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, Du Du believes that it mainly depends on the purpose of the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, and when eating with her family, she enjoys the process of cooking, so she will not choose pre-made dishes. But Du Du's grandfather's family will set up four or five tables at home for the Chinese New Year, and invite relatives and friends to eat, and on occasions like this, she feels that it is okay to eat pre-made dishes.
Du Du said that he will also arrange pre-made dishes when friends gather, "because some of them are really delicious, my roommates and I like the soft-shelled turtle hot pot and grilled fish very much, and people will always have a time when they want to eat takeout, and using pre-made dishes that are more knowledgeable and cheaper than takeout will become a choice for my appetite." ”
But in the process of trying pre-made dishes, Du Du has also stepped on thunder, such as the squirrel mandarin fish produced by a certain brand, the sauce smells particularly sour, and the fish also smells fishy when eaten.
Speaking of his views on pre-made dishes, Du Du believes that young people are more receptive to pre-made dishes, which is related to consumption habits, after all, pre-made dishes may have already occupied the stomachs of young people through takeaway.
As long as the ingredient list is open and transparent enough, you can choose pre-made dishes or not, and the main thing is to know yourself and your opponent. Dudu said.
03 Creating the "Ninth Cuisine" is different from the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner organized by parents, young people in the mobile Internet era have begun to search for recipes on the Internet since learning to cook, and the best dishes come from the wisdom of the majority of netizens.
For example, Chen Jianguo's family used to make stewed pork ribs with lotus root and fried lotus root. But she followed a blogger's Chinese New Year's Eve dinner menu, and for the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner in 2021 and 2022, she took out the southern typhoon shelter fried crab and Russian oxtail borscht.
Chen Jianguo's persimmon cheese roll walnut.
Although there is no cooking skills accumulated by the elders, young people learn various cooking skills and cooking methods through various online channels, such as food masters, ** tutorials, etc. At the same time, through various e-commerce and grocery shopping platforms, they can easily buy fresh ingredients from all over the world. Bringing together ingredients from the north and south of the country, coupled with unique practices, it has formed a special ninth cuisine in the hands of young people - network fusion cuisine.
Chen Jianguo told "Leopard Change": "Back then, prefabricated dishes were not so popular, so these two meals did not have so much technology and ruthlessness. But in order to finish these two meals, she also had to buy ingredients a week in advance, and prep some of the ingredients, in her own words, to make a family version of the pre-made dishes.
For example, crabs and fish have to be processed in advance, and the fish needs to be fried a day in advance. Stewed dishes should be made as early as possible, the beef should be stewed a day in advance, and it will be more flavorful when left overnight, and it can be served directly when heated the next day. It's the same with turnips. ”
She said that she originally thought that eating the Chinese New Year's Eve meal she made was the most fragrant, but after the actual operation, she was so tired that she had no appetite to eat when she served the table, "the most difficult thing is to make ten dishes at the same time."
This year, Chen Jianguo tried a lot of Cantonese dishes, mustard shrimp balls, milk soup asparagus, lobster noodles three dishes are made according to the online recipe, and with northern chicken stewed mushrooms, family heirloom pork ribs lotus soup, a table of Chinese New Year's Eve rice is complete.
Xiao Zhou, a post-00s from Xinjiang, also said that after he was upgraded to the head chef, the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner menu at home was also updated, and even the north and south were integrated.
In the past, I would help with the shopping and make a start when I cooked the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner. This year, I'm going to do it, because there are three people in my family now, and I cook ten dishes, and three people get up in the morning and start cooking, and it's almost finished in the afternoon. ”
Xiao Zhou said: "If it is made by the elders, it is braised pork, plum cabbage button meat, cumin mutton, all kinds of stir-fried, there are quite a lot of patterns, and sometimes a hot pot is added." Then there must be fish, and there must be more than one year after another. ”
After she became the head chef, the family's Chinese New Year's Eve recipes also began to innovate, "I added some new dishes, some for curiosity and taste, such as horse meat, which belongs to my family's characteristics." Some are popular among young people, such as shrimp, which my family almost didn't eat before, but my brother and I liked it very much, so we added it to the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner menu. My parents are still not used to eating shrimp, and they will also consider everyone's hobbies to add vegetables. ”
Like Chen Jianguo and Xiao Zhou, many young people are using their own ideas to change the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, making this tradition more creative and changing. With the help of young people, the technology and ruthlessness of the new era such as pre-made dishes and semi-finished ingredients are slowly being put on the table on Chinese New Year's Eve. Under the "rectification" of young people for the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, the new year began.
At the request of the interviewee, the names of the people in the article have been changed).