Steamed Glutinous Rice 糯米饭

How it is made

Jin Hui describes the method he watched his grandparents use for the breakfast shop they ran in a small town in Rui'an (瑞安). The glutinous rice is soaked well ahead so that it softens fully and steams into separate grains rather than a sticky mass; the key point, he writes, is the heat during steaming.

The gravy is made separately. Dried shiitake mushrooms are washed and soaked in hot water for several hours, the soaking water is kept, and the mushrooms are chopped. Marinated minced pork and the chopped mushrooms are stir-fried in lard until the meat changes colour, and a few large ladles of the mushroom water are then added to bring out the savoury flavour.

How it is eaten

The rice is served hot in a bowl, covered with a layer of meat gravy and scattered with spring onion and crushed youtiao, then stirred a few times so the gravy soaks evenly into the rice. Jin Hui's own order asks for extra youtiao crumbs and spring onion and another half-ladle of the mushroom-and-pork broth, with a bowl of salty soy milk (咸豆浆) alongside; when he meets fellow Wenzhou people for it in Beijing, each also has a freshly fried youtiao for dipping. Once a breakfast food, it is now sold all day in Wenzhou.

Where it comes from

According to Jin Hui, records trace Wenzhou glutinous rice back to the Song dynasty, when local people found that steaming glutinous rice together with other ingredients gave a fragrant rice dish. In December 2024 the Wenzhou municipal Party publicity department reported that the dish was leading the snack list, with more than 60,000 votes, in an online vote on 'Zhejiang foods university students love' run by the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism.