Beef in Chili Sauce is one of the most popular Sichuan dishes—beautiful in color, soft and tender, aromatic and spicy.
Many people used to translate this dish word for word as “Husband and wife’s lung slice,” which, unfortunately, tends to terrify diners and make this dish not so popular among foreigners. Therefore, a better translation would be “Beef in Chili Sauce”.
Beef in Chili Sauce is often served as a cold dish. It is made of thinly sliced beef, beef lung/stomach/tongue, and a generous amount of spices, including Sichuan pepper corns and Chili. Therefore, the desired taste should be both spicy and mouth-numbing. Some people refuse to eat animal viscera, either due to cultural conceptions or they think it is associated with junk food. As a result, Fuqi feipian has lost a lot of customers. But in fact, there are no lung slices in this dish at all.
History of Beef in Chili Sauce
The original meaning of Fuqi Feipian (夫妻废片) would be literally translated as “Married Couple’s Offal Slices.” The meaning of Fei in this name is not lung, but “waste parts or offal.” However, Fei or “waste parts or offal” has a negative meaning in Chinese, so the couple simply changed the character “废” to “肺” (lung) since they have the same pronunciation in Chinese. In addition, when it comes to Chinese food, lung always means pork lung. Therefore, the exact translation would be “Pork Lungs in Chili Sauce”.
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