It has been nearly three years since the Spring Festival in 2020. Time flies and time flies. Due to the epidemic, there is less time to go out and no gathering activities. With a long time at home, there are more opportunities to cook. Three meals a day has become a necessity for my wife and me. Except Saturday, when the son and daughter-in-law come back, they have to cook more dishes, that is, just one meal. The basic menu is as follows, which will not change greatly, but it can reflect some situations of condiments used at home. It can be used by condiment manufacturers to analyze, study and judge, understand some experience and truth, and get what they need.

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The meal list of three meals a day is basically as follows:

Boiled white eggs dipped in soy sauce (fresh soy sauce) in the morning; 1-2 slices of toast per person. Drink coffee and soy milk. Everyone chooses.

At noon, I choose rice with fried vegetables and meat and vegetables. But it is inseparable from soy sauce, salt, cooking wine, chicken powder and other basic condiments.

In the evening, have more opportunities to eat noodles, or cook millet porridge. But we can't live without pickled vegetables and pickled mustard. Eating noodles looks simple, but the sauce is important. If you only cook noodles with water, it's not delicious. Maybe you don't like it once. But staying at home for a long time can't solve the problem by eating once or twice. But to eat every day for several months and have an appetite, which will test the chef's soup making level and ability. But cooking soup at home is not a simple thing. From raw materials to finished products, it is not only a waste of time, but also can't do just a little. So storage becomes a big problem. It is not only afraid of deterioration, but also difficult to preserve. Therefore, in this case, it is the turn to play the role of condiment industry. There is a condiment factory in Fujian, which produces two kinds of concentrated condiment juice, one is high soup chicken juice, the other is concentrated bone soup. These two kinds of soup meet our long-term home dinner needs: boiled water with a small spoonful of soup, optional vegetables, a little soy sauce, sesame oil and vinegar, cooked noodles (slices) can be put in, and a bowl of meat and vegetable soup noodles has both thick taste and refreshing taste. Among them, noodles are noodles bought. They have flour, but they are too lazy to make them. It can be seen that compound seasoning plays a very important role.

In addition to the three meals a day for my wife and I, a meal on Saturday will take some trouble. Although there are only four or five dishes with a bowl of rice, it takes a long time to prepare. For example, to make an oil fried shrimp, in addition to cleaning up the sea shrimp, the deployment of sauce is very important, because it is the key to do a good job of oil fried shrimp: soy sauce, cooking wine, sugar, salt, edible starch, ginger, onion, garlic and a dry pepper. The sauce should not be too thick (not open) or too thin (not hanging). It can be seen that the skill and importance of using condiments. Similarly, to make a diced chicken and persimmon pepper, you should first cut the chicken breast meat into small pieces, marinate the diced chicken with soy sauce, cooking wine, sugar, edible salt and other condiments for a period of time, then fry the pickled diced chicken and persimmon pepper separately, and then add cashew nuts and other auxiliary materials to make it delicious and good-looking. If you want to add a meat dish, the preparation time will not only be longer, but also use different condiments. For example, to make a braised pork, in addition to choosing streaky pork, we should also prepare two kinds of soy sauce: old soy sauce and raw soy sauce. Old soy sauce is used for stewing and raw soy sauce is poured with brine. Of course, other condiments used above cannot be absent.

The above is my life practice of using condiments at home under the epidemic situation. We can see the importance and indispensability of condiments in three meals a day. We can also get some evidence that the decline in the catering industry under the epidemic has led to the decline in the demand for condiments. However, it can also provide some enlightenment for the production development and industry management of condiments.

First, the function and application of condiments have a very broad application space. Condiments used in catering industry and at home have different use requirements and characteristics, which needs to be seriously studied and treated by manufacturers in the production of traditional condiments and the development of new composite condiments.

Second, under the epidemic situation, it is a fact that the sales of condiments have declined due to the reduction of population mobility and the number of meals, but the personalized demand will increase. Among them, there is the possibility of rebound in the post epidemic period.

Third, the production and sales of condiment listed enterprises are the wind vane of the industry to a certain extent. Different production enterprises may adopt different production and sales strategies. I personally believe that listed enterprises focusing on soy sauce production should focus on the long-term development strategy, not only care about the growth indicators in a short time, but also put the quality and safety work in the first place. Listed enterprises focusing on vinegar production should put their main strategy on the development of other condiment functions, so as to form a certain production scale, so as to have the possibility of long-term development. Because, in terms of using condiments at home, the use amount and opportunity of vinegar are relatively small.

Fourth, the condiment industry is still very important. Under the epidemic situation, the exchange activities between condiment production enterprises and member enterprises have decreased. Some experiences and lessons can only be exchanged and used for reference through the network and in writing, but their importance still exists. For example, the group standard setting activity frequently carried out by China condiment association is an important industry management work to guide production and consumption. For the newly developed condiments, relevant manufacturers can promote the quality stability of new products and improve the market share by formulating group standards.