In the noodle museum of Zhongzhijie Factory, there is a sentence engraved on the wall: Be good at character and food. This seems to be an important reason why this northern noodle-making enterprise can occupy a place in the traditional rice dumplings producing area in the south of the Yangtze River.
Slogan of Zhongzhijie Noodle Museum (Photo courtesy of Zhongjie from Yangguang. com)
The birth of a zongzi is not complicated or mysterious, but how to make it popular in the north and south of the country and how to package it, people still can’t help thinking about it.
Changchun Zhongjiejie Jingyue Factory is one of Zhongjiejie’s two factories in Changchun, where Zhongjiejie meat dumplings, which are well-known in China, are produced. One afternoon in early summer, the reporter and his party were invited to walk into the production line of Jingyue Branch of Zhongzhijie Food Co., Ltd. to see how the legendary zongzi was produced.
You need to wear good shoe covers, masks and white coats specially made by the company at the entrance. Before entering the workshop, you should wash your hands by the sink with a tap like a surgeon, and then disinfect your hands and the whole body. There is no shortage of health supervision links.
After entering the workshop, there were four "columns" making zongzi, and nearly 100 workers making zongzi were working nervously. The scene was a little spectacular.
Production workshop (Photo courtesy of the outstanding person in Yangguang. com)
When we went there, we caught up with the vegetarian rice dumplings. In front of each worker, raw materials such as rice leaves and glutinous rice were placed in an orderly manner. There was also a scale in front of everyone. I saw that they skillfully picked up a rice leaf, rolled it up, then grabbed a reconciled glutinous rice and put it on the scale. It is said that there can be no difference of 2 grams between the top and bottom.
Weighing link (Photo courtesy of the outstanding person in Yangguang. com)
The reporter stood behind several workers and basically didn’t see any difference in weight. After weighing, he wrapped the thread several times and fastened it, and then cut it with the knife next to him, and a zongzi was wrapped.
Workers who make zongzi (Photo courtesy of the outstanding person in Yangguang. com)
According to the production process, this zongzi needs nine cotton threads to be bound and hand-wrapped, and each zongzi should be in an authentic zongzi shape with a 60-degree angle.
According to the manager, a skilled worker can pack five or six bags per minute at the earliest.
Everyone operated silently and quickly, and a rectangular steel plate about one meter long was filled up in a short time.
After each steel plate is filled, it is sent to the next workshop, put into a one-meter square big steamer, and then stuffed into a very high steam furnace. The temperature and time are accurately controlled by the machine and cooked with one button.
One-click cooking (Photo courtesy of the outstanding person in Yangguang. com)
To enter the steaming process, it is already the fourth process.
Because the scene of making zongzi is so spectacular, we will be attracted by them almost at the first sight when we enter the workshop, which leads us to skip the previous procedure directly: killing the stuffing and zongzi leaves.
These two links are also not simple.
After 3 hours of cold water foaming and repeated cleaning, the rice is soaked. And stuffing equipment is a bit like a mixing drum for mixing concrete on the construction site. Which one is put first and which one is put later is carried out in strict accordance with the procedure instructions. Finally, the essence of the ingredients boiled for 6 hours is locked into the filling.
Mixing and stuffing (Photo courtesy of the outstanding person in Yangguang. com)
Near the steaming room is the zongye conveyor belt. The workers on the conveyor belt took out bundles of zongzi leaves from the bag, which were soaked in cold water for more than 4 hours. The workers cut off the petiole first, then put it on the conveyor belt for cleaning, and it was washed three times by the machine, and then it was sent to the workers who wrapped zongzi by special personnel.
Every link must not be sloppy (Photo courtesy of the outstanding person in Yangguang. com)
After the steamed zongzi is cooked, a drawer is sent to the cooling room next door on the conveyor belt, cooled, deoxidized and sealed, vacuum packed, and the delicious taste of zongzi when it is just out of the pot is preserved, and then packaged, and finally it enters the market.
After cooling, enter the next link (Photo courtesy of the outstanding person in Yangguang. com)
Complete plastic packaging (Photo courtesy of the outstanding person in Yangguang. com)
Packaging (Photo courtesy of the outstanding person in Yangguang. com)
From this, it will enter the market (Photo courtesy of the outstanding person in Yangguang. com)
According to the process summary of Zhongjie, it is a good zongzi after 46 processes.
Delicious meat dumplings produced after strict and meticulous management process (Photo courtesy of the outstanding person in Yangguang. com)
In fact, there is not much mystery in the whole process, which is probably the case in most companies that make pasta.
What employees need is a strict and clear process, and every step can’t be wrong. It is the conscience of the enterprise that the manager corresponds to the "good character and good food" in the pasta museum on the first floor.
It is said that every employee of Zhongjie knows the story of "white steamed bread throwing a pigsty". It was more than ten years ago, when Zhongjie had just started, Zhongjie promised customers that "overnight food would not be sold". Once, after the boss went to work, he found that there were more than a dozen boxes of steamed bread made on the first day. Without saying anything, he directly asked the workers to take the steamed bread off the shelf, strictly forbidding it to flow into the market, and gave it directly to the pig farm.
Another time, before the Dragon Boat Festival more than ten years ago, during the busiest production of zongzi, the boss found a batch of about 4,000 kilograms of zongzi, and the rope was not solid. He picked up one and tasted it and found that the taste did not meet the requirements, and immediately destroyed the whole 4,000 kilograms of zongzi!
The boss’s name is Wang Fusheng, the founder of Zhongjie. His ancestors came to visit Guandong. In his hometown of Jining, he was also an old chef who made pastry. Therefore, Wang Fusheng can be regarded as an ancestral craft. "The boss is in the office building next to him. He comes every day and always comes to the workshop to inspect!" The staff said.
Xiaozongzi is simple to wrap, and the process is not so complicated and mysterious, but it can guarantee the quality at any cost, control the process without going out of shape, and hold the pass for twenty years, which truly reflects the relationship between good food and good character.
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