Zhao Yu was not surprised that this army likes pasta, and he also showed his understanding. After the battle of Ezhou to recover the south of the Yangtze River, the Song army captured more than 20,000 Mengyuan and Han troops, and no one was willing to accept these prisoners at that time. In addition, most of these Han soldiers were Han people from the Central Plains, and in the eyes of the Song people, they were almost no different from the barbarians, so it was recommended that they be executed.

However, Zhao Yu thought differently from them, he felt that after the Northern Expedition, these Han troops were not only familiar with the situation, but also good at horse archery, and after training, they were a usable army. So they were brought back to Jiangdong, and after selection, the old and weak were eliminated, the young and strong were left to be trained, and the officers were supplemented, and part of the new army was reorganized, and two brigades were reorganized, numbered the Fourth Brigade and the Fifth Brigade of the Guardian Army.

However, in view of the special nature of this unit, the two new brigades were not stationed in Gyeonggi like other armies, but were stationed in Shaoxing and Jiaxing. In this expedition, Zhao Yu led a regiment, a brigade, a cavalry brigade, a fourth brigade, a fifth brigade, and a baggage brigade of the Guardian Guard's Brigade, while the second and third brigades and the artillery brigade as the main force were assigned to the Jiangdong Division to command and deal with the enemy who invaded the south.

Everyone knows that northerners are good at pasta, and southerners like rice, and as an army mainly composed of northerners, it is not surprising that they do not like to eat rice and prefer to drink noodle soup. And wouldn't it be possible to fully equip the troops with this instant noodle-like instant food? Zhao Hao can only say sorry, I really can't do it at the moment!

When someone asks, what did the ancient armies generally eat? How was the military rations made in the ancient army? Are there any other similar inventions? To answer these questions, first ask what grows in the ground!

To put it simply, before the Qin and Han dynasties, drought-tolerant millet, that is, millet, was the staple food in the north; In the Han Dynasty, the cultivation of wheat and barley gradually expanded, but ordinary people could only eat wheat rice cooked directly from wheat grains, and various pasta made of flour such as cakes and steamed buns, which could only be enjoyed by the upper class; At this time, rice was only cultivated in the south, and the yield was far less than it is now; As for high-yielding crops such as corn, sweet potatoes, and peanuts, they were all in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, what to eat has a strong regional color in ancient times, and there is a saying that millet rice is popular in the north and rice is popular in the south. At present, the Great Song Dynasty lost Jiangbei, and at the same time lost the wheat and millet production areas, although rice and wheat rotation were realized in some areas of the south of the Yangtze River, it was impossible to eat white noodles every day. In the early days, the yield per mu was low, and people ate wheat without deep processing, and cooked it directly into wheat rice like rice. This type of wheat rice has a poor taste and is often regarded as coarse, so flour is still relatively scarce at this time.

War is an extremely resource-consuming activity, and the army naturally has a lot of money, and it is cheap to eat. From the Qin and Han dynasties to the Sui and Tang dynasties, China's political center has always been in the Guanzhong and Luoyang areas, and millet is the main staple food in the army. Jiangnan is the main rice-producing area, so the army naturally uses rice as the main food.

The next thing to solve is the problem of how to eat, after all, food cannot be eaten raw, of course, it is also discharged from hunger and hard to eat, but constipation or diarrhea is certain. In addition, military rations should also take into account the particularity of the army, and it is estimated that it is impossible to study cooking skills as calmly as at home, so it is necessary to pursue convenience, speed, and storage resistance. The ideal thing is, of course, to be able to carry it with you, take it out and eat it, and replenish energy at any time between battles.

On the basis of convenience and speed, military rations should also give due consideration to taste, that is, to change from being full to eating well. After all, soldiers are also human beings, and they can't stand eating coarse grains every day, and there have indeed been examples of winning battles after improving food during the Northern and Southern Dynasties in history. The Great Song Dynasty that Zhao Yu also remembered also had an extreme incident of 'abandoning the mountains of corn, and the Song army was mostly from Fujian, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, and could not eat corn, so there were dead people every day'.

Eating is also combat effectiveness, this is not only in ancient times, but even in modern times, there is a consensus, and Zhao Yu heard more about this, and practiced it as the truth. After surviving the initial financial difficulties of the Shuaifu army, his army also bid farewell to the days of dried fish for rice every day, and with the improvement of the economic situation, it also continued to increase the army's meal expenses and set strict food standards.

Everyone knows that the army is stationed in the camp on weekdays, and it is not difficult to open fire and cook, but eating in wartime is a troublesome matter, and Zhao Yu also put this issue on the agenda. But he soon realized that in ancient times, which lacked modern preservation and production technology, it was really not a simple matter to solve the problem of eating in a field state.

After investigation and research, Zhao Yu found that there was no field food in ancient times. If the noodles are similar to the current instant noodles, then the duck meat rice is very close to the current box lunch, which is the invention of Emperor Chen Wen in the fifth dynasty, on the eve of the attack on the Northern Qi, he cooked the duck with rice, and then wrapped the rice in lotus leaves, put the duck meat on it, and distributed it to each soldier as breakfast.

In addition, the famous military food related to Zhuge Liang has Zhuge Liang's steamed bun (with filling), pot helmet, which is very common in Sichuan and Shaanxi, and the taste is naturally not to be discussed, but it is indeed convenient to carry and store-resistant, and it can be regarded as a very practical invention; Qi Jiguang's "light cake" is more portable, roll out the mixed dough into a cake shape, then bake it in the charcoal oven, and finally perforate it in the middle, hang it directly on the soldier's body, and tear it down in two pieces when he is hungry. It can also be added with different ingredients according to different tastes, in short, it is a very reliable field ration. And steamed bread, a national-level food, and its origin are basically known to women and children.

However, these are temporary meals, and in most cases the army still cooks rice or corn into rice or porridge to eat. As for the improvement of military rations in later generations, most of them revolved around pasta. The reason why Zhao Yuji's rice is difficult to make field rations is because the drying technology has not been up to standard, resulting in a lack of nutrition and a very poor taste, and it can be solved only when the 21st century quick-freeze drying technology is mature.

However, Zhao Yu knew that there was a matter of using rice as a quick ration in the army of the Ming Dynasty, that is, the cooked rice was dried and then stored as military rations. In short, the direction of the ancient army's efforts was to squeeze the link of cooking from the battlefield as much as possible.

As for non-staple foods, it was extremely difficult to eat fresh meat and vegetables on the battlefield, not to mention in ancient times, even in the case of the diversification of modern supply methods, and the solution at this time was to salt them. About cured meat, related to the army and the most famous is naturally Jinhua ham, meat can also be made into a variety of sauces, and plays a very important role in the daily life of soldiers, fresh vegetables and meat are out of reach, in the time of the war with salt flavored various sauces are also the only meals and condiments.

Therefore, in the improvement of field food, Zhao Yu can be said to have spent a lot of thought, he knows that if you want soldiers to ensure physical strength in wartime, it is not only as simple as eating enough, but also supplementing nutrition and various vitamins, so as to reduce the occurrence of diseases and combat effectiveness. And in the case of technical problems that are difficult to solve, he can only do his best.

In the past, military rations were generally supplied with rice and wheat grains in the shell, which were transported to the barracks and then reprocessed, which was due to the consideration of ease of preservation. But Zhao Yu thought that it was okay on weekdays, but there were great drawbacks in wartime, first of all, it wasted valuable transportation capacity, and it could not be used directly after transportation, and it was still necessary to transfer people to rush it, which was time-consuming and a waste of time, so the military rations he ordered to supply must be processed before they can be transported to the army, especially in wartime.

Geographical and planting habits make it difficult to change the fact that the wheat planting area is small, so Zhao Yu not only uses flour as a strategic reserve, but also focuses on rice. He remembered that the rice noodles of later generations were not only easy to make, but also resistant to storage and transportation after drying, and when eating, they only needed to be cooked in boiling water and seasoned with sauce, similar to the somen noodles commonly eaten in the north. After trial production, it became one of the wartime supplies in the army.

Another use of rice, Zhao Yu is modeled after the method of making fried noodles, the rice is fried and ground into powder, adding oil, salt, soybean flour and sesame seeds and other seasonings, and eating it dry, or brewed with hot water, but don't think about the taste. Later, he further improved the fried rice, compressing and solidifying the fried noodles to become compressed biscuits, which can be made into a variety of flavors.

As for non-staple food, in addition to using the old pickled dried meat and dried fish, Zhao Yu also used the smoking method to make bacon and sausage that are easy to preserve. In addition, in order to solve the problem of lack of vegetables, in addition to pickled vegetables, dehydrated vegetables became the first choice, and he took advantage of the abundance of vegetables in spring and summer to dry and dehydrate seasonal vegetables to make dried vegetables, which could be eaten not only in wartime, but also as a supplement in winter when there was a shortage of vegetables.

In addition, Zhao Yu also took advantage of the abundant production of various fruits in the south of the Yangtze River to make preserved fruits. The beginning of the fashion was in Qiongzhou, because the navy often needed to go to sea for a long time, and he knew that if the vitamins could not be replenished for a long time at sea, it was very easy to cause sepsis, which was also one of the deadly killers of sailors in ancient times. But at this time, China did not have potatoes and onions that could not be stored in storage, but he knew that fruits were rich in vitamins, but they were not suitable for keeping fresh, so he thought that if the preserved fruits were made after a series of processing, they would not only preserve the nutrients, but also use storage and transportation, and have more appetizing effects......