Formation & Promotion of Hakka Stir-fry in Taiwan

Hakka stir-fry is the best-known Hakka dish in Taiwan now. Before 1980s, there were hardly any report on Hakka dishes in Taiwanese mass media. Since the mid-1980s, Taiwan Hakka diet started to commercialize. The appearance of the term Hakka Dish and its rapid popularity are significant embodiment of Taiwan Hakka diet’s entry into commercialization.

Since the mid-1990s, Hakka stir-fry (stir-fry meat) gradually became a widely known and popular Hakka dish in Taiwan. Hakka stir-fry first appeared in Taiwanese mass media in around 1993, mainly involving Hakka districts (Taiwan villages and towns populated by the Hakka) in central and north Taiwan. About a decade later, discussions on Hakka stir-fry appeared in the reports in Hakka districts in south Taiwan as well. In 1996, a detailed report states as follows:

Hakka stir-fry... is almost indispensable in the weddings, funerals and celebration events of the Hakka... The unique Hakka stir-fry is a revised version since the popularity of Hakka dishes in recent years. The Hakka call the dish stir-fry meat all along. There’s almost no Hakka who hasn’t tried this dish, and almost no Hakka family unaware of the recipe. Known as stir-fry meat, it contains not only streaky pork, but also squid.

(United Daily News, 41^st Edition, Family Life Weekly, Mar. 31^st, 1996)

Stir-fry Meat is a popular name of Hakka stir-fry by residents in Hakka districts before 1990s. Among various Hakka dishes, it’s the first to renamed with the term Hakka through the presentation and promotion of mass media. And the name Hakka Stir-fry was widely acknowledged and used in the Taiwan society later. What’s more, the high profile and widespread circulation of Hakka stir-fry became a milestone in the development of Taiwan Hakka cuisine.

The basic ingredients of Hakka stir-fry include streaky pork, calamari and bean curd. Celery, garlic and soy sauce are added to season. As time goes by, the dish varies in flavor preference. Sometimes spring onion segments, pepper, dried shrimp or bean curd sheets are added. Also, calamari may be replaced by squid. Authentic Hakka stir-fry adopts streaky pork. Yet as streaky pork is fatty and greasy, it needs to be stir-fried dry to taste rich without being greasy.

Streaky pork, a core ingredient of Hakka stir-fry, is from pig. In Taiwanese traditional Hakka dishes, pig-related ingredients play a major role. (Among the eight dishes comprising four simmered ones and four stir-fried ones, six dishes are made of pig-related ingredients.) By contrast, in Southeast Asia, the traditional Hakka dish stir-fry meat may use beef in place of pork, when pork is unavailable due to religious (e.g. Indonesia is dominated by Islam) or other factors.

In the early 2010s, Hakka Committee invited scholars and experts to discuss, defined the four simmered and four stir-fried dishes as the representative Hakka dishes, and listed Hakka stir-fry (stir-fry meat) in the officially identified classic Hakka dishes. Since the first Hakka Stir-fry National Competition organized by Hakka Committee in 2020, the further promotion from official competitions, keeps and enhances Hakka stir-fry’s leading and symbolic role as a classic Taiwan Hakka dish.

Reference

Book

周錦宏、賴守誠、江俊龍、丘尚英：《台灣客家飲食文化的區域發展與變遷》（臺北：國史館臺灣文獻館，2018年）。