Hulu Tou
“Xi'an bowl of long-simmered pork intestine and stomach over diner-torn flatbread, in a heavily spiced pork-bone broth.”
The bite
Hot, deep, dark. The spiced broth hits first — cardamom and fennel pushed forward, white pepper that opens the back of the nose. Intestine pieces have a soft chew with no funkiness if cleaned right; stomach is firmer, almost crisp. The torn flatbread underneath has bloomed into chickpea-sized sponges holding broth in their centers. You eat with a spoon and chopsticks together. If the intestine smells off at all, the cleaning was rushed.
Where it comes from
A Xi'an dish from the city's Huimin (Hui Muslim) Quarter and the surrounding Han neighborhoods — sometimes traced back to a Tang-era physician's prescription for a digestive bowl, more reliably documented from late Qing when the famous Chunfasheng shop opened in the Bell Tower area. The name 葫芦头 refers to the gourd-like shape of the cleaned intestine end. It's eaten as a heavy breakfast or late-morning meal, in the same paomo tradition as yangrou paomo but with offal instead of lamb.
What makes it work
The dish lives or dies on the intestine clean. Pork large intestine carries a layer of mucus and bile-bitter inner film that, if not stripped with the salt-vinegar-flour scrubbing in three rounds, will perfume the entire pot of broth and ruin every other ingredient. The 'guan tang' triple pour at the end isn't a flourish: ceramic bowls cool fast in winter Xi'an, and torn bread heated through only by a single pour will go cold and chewy in the bottom layer before you reach it.
On the Palate
Ingredients
Serves 4
How it's made
6 steps · Show ↓35 min active · 240 min waiting
How it's made
6 steps · Show ↓- 125 min
Clean 1kg pork large intestine: turn it inside out, scrub with coarse salt, white vinegar, and flour three times to strip the inner mucus. Rinse until water runs clear and there is no fecal smell. Repeat for 500g pork stomach.
- 28 min
Blanch intestine and stomach in cold water with ginger, scallion, and Shaoxing wine. Bring to boil, skim, drain, rinse. The blanching liquid is now garbage — scrub the pot before continuing.
- 3240 min
Build the spice broth: pork bones (1kg, blanched), white cardamom (3), grass cardamom (1), star anise (2), cinnamon stick, fennel seed, white pepper, sand ginger, and a thumb of fresh ginger. Simmer 4 hours skimming foam every 30 minutes.
- 490 min
Add the cleaned intestine and stomach to the broth in the last 90 minutes — they should be tender enough to bite through but still hold a slight chew. Lift out and slice intestine into 5cm rings, stomach into 3cm strips.
- 55 min
Each diner tears a tuotuo-mo flatbread by hand into chickpea-sized pieces directly into a deep ceramic bowl — the size and irregularity matter for soup absorption.
- 62 min
Arrange intestine, stomach slices, and a few black wood ear pieces on the torn bread. Pour boiling spiced broth over to fully submerge — soup poured 3 times to ensure the bread is heated through, a Xi'an habit called 'guantang'. Garnish with chopped chives, black pepper, and a chili oil drizzle.
