Wuhan Fried Glutinous Rice Ball 糯米鸡

Wuhan Fried Glutinous Rice Ball (糯米鸡) is a Wuhan (武汉) breakfast snack: a fist-sized ball of seasoned glutinous rice, coated in batter and deep-fried until golden. It contains no chicken. The Wuhan Bureau of Commerce explains the name by the fried crust, which comes out golden and bumpy like chicken skin.

How it is made

Besides glutinous rice, the traditional filling is mainly ground pepper, diced pork, diced zhacai pickle and diced shiitake mushroom. The seasoned rice is steamed first each day, then wrapped in a flour batter and fried. At Jiang's (江氏糯米鸡) in Yuandong Alley (远东巷) near Liuduqiao (六渡桥) in Hankou (汉口), the Changjiang Daily saw diced pressed tofu, spring onion and sesame go in as well; the rice is rolled into balls about the size of a fist and fried for around ten minutes. Each ball is then split open with fire tongs, a style known as kaijiao (开叫), 'crowing'; a customer joked that the 'chicken' had opened its mouth to crow.

Flavour and texture

The crust is crisp and the inside soft, sticky and savoury. A customer at Jiang's described them as big, crisp outside, fragrant when bitten open and both salty and soft; the Changjiang Daily reporter found each one larger than a fist. Because it is savoury, older Wuhan people also cook it in hotpot.

Where it comes from

The Wuhan Bureau of Commerce puts its history in Wuhan at more than 100 years. Its story, told as legend, is that in the early Republican years a shopkeeper named Zhang on Hanzheng Street (汉正街) in Hankou was left with unsold steamed rice one summer evening, squeezed it into lumps and dropped them into the oil he used for fried rice-flour rings (面窝). He liked the result and began selling it as a breakfast item. The Jiang family stall has made it for more than 30 years in Yuandong Alley.