Boiled sliced mutton with salt or soy sauce is one of the most popular dishes in Shipu. [Photo from WeChat account kslydjq]

Winter has descended on Jiangsu province, and everywhere you go you can hear people discussing dozens of different ways to stay healthy during the cold winter months.

The most delicious of these is definitely the one cooked up by locals in the Suzhou water town Shipu: mutton, mutton and more mutton!

Goats from Shipu are famous for their tender meat and high nutritional value, and local residents have been feasting on this delicious mutton to ward off winter ailments for centuries.

Over the years, Shipu has developed a huge variety of tasty mutton-based winter delicacies, and nowadays the town is famous across Suzhou for its goat meat, alongside nearby Cangshu and Shuangfeng.

Mutton soup is a perfect accompaniment to boiled sliced mutton, as it can dispel the winter chill and warm you up during the cold winter months. [Photo from WeChat account kslydjq]

Different from mutton feasts in North China that usually feature a whole roasted lamb, Shipu mutton dishes focus more on using cooking methods that can bring out the most flavor from the meat, such as braised mutton in soy sauce, stir-fried sweetbread, roasted gigot, and steamed goat brain.

The most popular of all is the town's boiled sliced mutton, a unique local specialty. Although cooked without any seasoning, the mutton never tastes flat, instead presenting a rich and tender flavor with just a bit of salt or soy sauce.

Locals will often wash this down with a bowl of mutton soup. Usually boiled for several hours, this milk-white soup is seen as the perfect accompaniment to the sliced meat, and is excellent for dispelling the winter chills and heating up the body.