It's the sauce that matters

Zhang Cunyou's roast chicken comes with a bit of history, more than 300 years in fact. Daokou roast chicken has a bright-yellow color, crispy meat, and a modestly delicious taste. Xiang Mingchao / China Daily

Zhang Cunyou does not seem like a run-of-the-mill Chinese roast chicken chefs. Zhang's roast chicken comes with a bit of history, more than 300 years in fact. That's how long the recipe for his special chicken sauce has been around.

And his family have been making roast chicken for at least eight generations, since the mid-1600s.

The 68-year-old Zhang lives in the town of Doukou, in Huaxian county, Henan province where, after hundreds of years of development, Daokou roast chicken is a famous dish associated with the place of origin, similar to Peking duck, or Jinhua ham, or Dezhou braised chicken.

Daokou roast chicken has a certain auspicious appearance, similar to shoe-shaped gold or silver ingots, a bright-yellow color, crispy meat, and a modestly delicious taste. The chickens are boiled for as long as three hours and the meat falls off the bone without the use of a knife.

This roast chicken with an aura dates back to Shunzhi emperor of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1661), when one of Zhang's ancestors opened a roast chicken shop at a market in the town. But, according to the county records, its flavor wasn't all that great and his business wasn't all that good.

However, his offspring persevered and stuck with the business. Then, in 1787, under the Qianlong emperor, Zhang Bing, a descendant of the original owner, came across a chef for the royal family who passed on a special recipe, with eight essential ingredients that are responsible for today's delicious dish.

The ingredients are fairly common items, such as dried tangerine peel, cinnamon, cardamom, galangal (a member of the ginger family), and cloves. When Zhang Bing tried following the roast chicken, using the right ingredients in just the right amounts, the results showed a vast improvement. And, after experimenting and tinkering a bit with each procedure, he succeeded in finding a special roast chicken method.

The county records say that, when the Qianlong emperor was making a tour of southern China he passed through Daokou and caught a whiff of some wonderful aroma and asked his attendants to find the source. Upon hearing of this, the county official presented him with a gift of Zhang Bing's roast chicken and the emperor was so taken with the flavor that he praised it as a "gourmet dish".

So, Zhang's chicken became famous and was an imperial form of tribute after the emperor gave it his imprimatur. His business prospered. He even registered the "Yixingzhang" roast chicken later on and the brand has remained up to the present day, to the extent that the State Council, China's cabinet, orders as many as 3,500 roast chickens from Zhang Cunyou's company during the Spring Festival (Chinese lunar New Year) every year.

As always, the roast chicken's delicious secret is the sauce, which is not discarded after the roasting but retained for the next bird even though it's been boiled over and over. Zhang explains, "We call the sauce the 'old soup' since it has existed for hundreds of years and contains the nutrition of billions of chicken.

"There's a saying about the secret of a delicious chicken that goes, 'If you want the roast chicken delicious, use eight seasonings and old broth'."

The family kept tight control over the "Yixingzhang" brand until the 1950s, when the government got the family business and turned it into a State-owned company.

Zhang's father revealed the ingredients and the procedure of making roast chicken during the 1960s and the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), something that had been kept secret for generations to the public.Zhang Cunyou had some fierce competition when he established his own company in the 1980s, after China began its reform and opening-up policy that encouraged private business.

After the "Yixingzhang" brand became State property and the government began franchising its use out to many private companies, Zhang had to create his own brand of roast chicken under the "Zhang Cunyou" brand.

Zhang Yuhua, the head of the Daokou Roast Chicken Association, says that there are more than 320 shops with roast chicken in the county, but Zhang Cunyou's business is still the best since his roast chickens are "genuine".

To make his chicken stand out from the competition, Zhang Cunyou forged ahead with the traditional recipe, without adding any artificial flavors or chemicals.

The local government has also supported his effort and he has enlarged the family business so that his company covers a 2.7-hectare piece of ground in the suburbs, thanks to a government's subsidy.

His company and his brand have allowed him to sell as many as 3 million roast chickens since 2009, most of them packaged for sale as gifts and the business has brought him profits of more than 30 million yuan annually.

Still, he says he' not entirely satisfied and explains, "I have a dream to make Doukou roast chicken widely known and favored by as many foreigners as possible. I'm confident with the historical gourmet."

Contact the writers at anbaijie@chinadaily.com.cn and xiangmingchao@chinadaily.com.cn