Hair-Thin Shredded Beef Tripe

The dish is tied to Li Hesheng, a Muslim (halal) restaurant opened in Changsha in 1885 (the 11th year of the Qing Guangxu reign) by Li Guoan, a Hui Muslim from Taojiang in Yiyang. Its head chef Huang Weian, later called the foremost master of Hunan halal cooking, built the house reputation on beef and is credited with its three signature beef dishes — the so-called "Three Beef Masterpieces": hair-thin shredded omasum, red-braised beef tendon, and stewed beef brain. The restaurant's fame is recorded in writing: the poet Guo Moruo dined there in February 1938 and noted it in his memoir Hong Bo Qu.

On the plate the threads are uniform and fine as hair, lightly glossed with a thin clear sauce and flecked with chili and pickled pepper. They eat crisp and springy — a clean snap rather than a chew — and the flavor is bright sour-hot up front, salty-savory beneath, the vinegar and chili cutting any richness so the tripe tastes fresh, not offaly.

Omasum is mostly muscle and connective tissue, so it turns rubbery the instant it is overcooked — its collagen and muscle proteins tighten and squeeze out water when held too hot too long. The recipe defeats this twice. First the raw tripe is blanched and scrubbed clean of its black membrane, then simmered only to about seventy percent done so it stays firm. Then it is sliced hair-fine across the leaves, which shortens the muscle fibers so no long tough strand survives, and stir-fried over a fierce flame for mere seconds: the brief, intense heat sets the surface and warms it through before the proteins can seize, locking in the crisp-tender snap. The sour-hot edge comes from vinegar and chili or pickled pepper, added late so the acid does not stew the tripe soft.