Lap Cheong (腊肠) — Chinese Sausage: Curing and Drying Tradition

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Lap cheong (腊肠, Cantonese: lap cheung, Mandarin: la chang) are the sweet, intensely flavoured, dried Chinese pork sausages that are one of the most distinctive flavouring ingredients in Chinese cooking. They are made from minced pork and pork fat, seasoned with soy sauce, Shaoxing rice wine, sugar (which makes lap cheong sweeter than most Western sausages), and salt, stuffed into natural casings, and hung to dry and cure in the winter months. The drying and natural fermentation process (the sugars ferment slightly in the sausage) develops a concentrated, complex flavour — sweet, slightly wine-like, deeply savoury — that is distinct from any Western sausage. Lap cheong is used as a flavouring ingredient in lo mai gai (lotus leaf glutinous rice), clay pot rice (bao zai fan), fried rice, and numerous other Cantonese preparations.

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