The Chinese sausage that is a dried, hard sausage commonly known by its Cantonese name is lap cheong. Usually made from pork and pork fat, it is seasoned with ingredients such as sugar, salt, rice wine, soy sauce, and rose water before being stuffed into casings and air-dried or hot-air-dried.
Lap cheong is especially associated with southern China, including Guangdong, and with Cantonese cooking in Hong Kong and overseas Chinese communities. Its flavor is typically sweet, savory, intensely aromatic, and richer than many Western cured sausages because the fat remains in the casing during drying.
The sausage is often steamed with rice, sliced into fried rice, or added to sticky rice, turnip cake, lotus-leaf rice, and steamed buns. A classic pairing is clay-pot rice, in which the sausage cooks over the rice and releases seasoned oils into the pot. Lap cheong is one variety of Chinese sausage; liver sausages and fresh regional sausages are related but not interchangeable.