A classic banquet dish of Jingzhou and old Shashi in Hubei, and a standard of the Jingbang (荆帮) school of Chu cuisine. Live yellow eel is killed, deboned, and cut into long finger-width strips, which are coated in wet starch and deep-fried in stages over rising oil temperatures until the outside is crisp and the strips wrinkle and curl. They are then tossed or coated in a clear sweet-and-sour glaze, so the surface shatters while the meat inside stays oily-tender. The finished strips are golden and translucent, wrinkled like snakeskin or jointed like bamboo — the wrinkled, leather-strap form gives the dish its name. It is also recorded as 竹节鳝鱼 (bamboo-joint eel) and counted among Jingzhou's best-known eel dishes.
Pi Tiao Shan Yu is a traditional dish of Shashi (now part of Jingzhou) in Hubei, the home water-country of yellow eel, and is reckoned among the "four great dishes of Jingzhou" and the so-called "eight treasures of Jingzhou" alongside dishes like 龙凤配, 鱼糕丸子 and 冬瓜鳖裙羹. Its exact originator and date are unrecorded, but local accounts place it in the city by the Daoguang reign of the Qing and give it a history of roughly two hundred years. A frequently repeated anecdote, traced to a 1982 article in 《食品科技》, holds that in 1828 (the 8th year of Daoguang) Zhu Caizhe (朱才哲), a native of Jianli in Hubei, was posted as magistrate of Yilan county in Taiwan, where farmers cursed the eels that burrowed through and collapsed their paddy dikes as "boundary-wrecking worms" (拱界虫) and quarreled endlessly over the damage; to defuse the disputes Zhu promoted eating eel and had the Jingzhou-school cooks he had brought along lay eel banquets, whose star was a sweet-sour fried-eel dish — the 竹节鳝鱼 / 皮条鳝鱼 — that proved so popular the cooking spread and travelled back to Jingzhou. The name comes from the form of the fried strips, whose wrinkled skin resembles a snake or a leather strap (皮条); the dish has been entered into 《中国菜谱》.
A strip lifts whole and gives a dry, audible crackle as you bite through the wrinkled shell; the crust is glassy and shatters cleanly, never soggy. A beat later the eel inside is hot, oily-tender and faintly springy, with the clean river-sweetness of the fish and none of the muddy slime note. Over it all runs the sweet-sour glaze — a bright acid lift, then a rounded sweetness, then the warmth of ginger and scallion — clinging to the surface as a thin lacquer rather than soaking in. Done well, the shell still snaps after it has been sauced and sat a while; done badly, the eel is fried hard and stringy throughout, or the glaze is added too hot and too long and the crust goes limp and chewy, or careless deboning leaves fine bones and a slimy bitterness.
The dish turns on a staged double-fry. Yellow eel is lean and water-rich, its strips held together by proteins that coagulate fast in heat; a first fry at a moderate 五到六成热 (about 150-170°C) cooks the strips through, sets the protein and fixes the starch coating into a shell while driving off surface moisture, so the strip firms and wrinkles. The pieces rest briefly so internal steam escapes, then a second, hotter fry at 七到八成热 (about 180-200°C) blisters and dehydrates the shell into a glassy, rigid crust — water boiled out of the coating is what makes it crisp, and the dehydrated starch resists going soft. Because the protein has set quickly the interior keeps its moisture and stays tender. The clear sweet-and-sour glaze is cooked separately from sugar and vinegar to a syrupy bind and then tossed with the eel off or barely on the heat, for only a few seconds: kept brief, it coats as a thin film, but tossed too long the sugar and acid draw moisture back out of the crust and collapse the crispness — the classic failure. Live eels are first purged in clean water to void mud, then scalded and wiped to strip the protective slime, and thoroughly deboned, since the body carries fine intramuscular bones.
Variations
The same dish is recorded under the name 竹节鳝鱼 (bamboo-joint eel), the strips cut and scored so they curl into bamboo-like joints rather than long straps. Within Jingbang cookery it sits beside the city's other famous eel preparations and the "four great dishes of Jingzhou" — 龙凤配 (a paired chicken-and-eel/snake dish), 鱼糕丸子, and 冬瓜鳖裙羹 (winter-melon and soft-shell-turtle-skirt soup). The sweet-sour glaze is the usual sugar-and-vinegar yellow sauce, but cooks vary its balance and some redden it with tomato; the eel may be cut thicker as straps or thinner and scored, and the staged frying runs to two or three oil baths depending on the kitchen. The broader family of fried sweet-sour eel — including the plainer 酥炸鳝鱼 from which the Jingzhou dish is said to have been refined — is eaten across the eel-loving waters of the middle Yangtze.
On the Palate
Where Pi Tiao Shan Yu sits in the Chinese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 4
How it's made
7 steps · 35 min active + 10 min waiting
- 110 min
Purge live yellow eels in clean water for a day or two to void mud, then scald them in hot water to kill them and loosen the slime; rub the bodies clean.
- 212 min
Debone each eel along the spine, remove the guts and backbone, and cut the meat into long strips about a finger wide and 8-10 cm long; rinse and pat dry.
- 36 min
Season the strips lightly with salt, Shaoxing wine, ginger and scallion, then dredge and coat them evenly in wet starch (potato or sweet-potato starch slurry).
- 45 min
Heat frying oil to about 150-170°C (五到六成热) and fry the coated strips until set and pale golden, cooked through; lift out and let them rest a few minutes so steam escapes.
Watch outFirst fry at 150-170C until set and pale gold to cook through and fix the coating, then rest so steam escapes.
- 54 min
Raise the oil to about 180-200°C (七到八成热) and fry the strips a second time until the shell is wrinkled, deep golden, translucent and shatter-crisp; drain well.
Watch outSecond fry hotter, 180-200C, until the shell wrinkles, deep-golden and shatter-crisp — that dehydrating blast is what makes it crunch.
- 63 min
In a clean wok make the glaze: dissolve sugar with rice vinegar (and a little soy and stock), and cook to a light syrupy bind, balancing sweet against sour.
- 72 min
Take the glaze off or nearly off the heat, add the fried eel strips, and toss for only a few seconds so a thin clear glaze coats the surface without soaking in; plate at once while crisp.
Watch outToss in the glaze off the heat for only seconds so a thin coat clings without soaking in — dawdle and the crust goes soft.
