Chen's Fried Dough Twists 陈麻花
Chen's Fried Dough Twists is featured among the local specialties of Chongqing.
Chen's Fried Dough Twists (陈麻花) are hand-made, deep-fried dough twists from Ciqikou (磁器口), the old Jialing River wharf town in Chongqing's Shapingba District (沙坪坝区), a trade the Chen family began there in 1907.
How it is made
The craft is divided into seven stages: preparing the ingredients, mixing the dough, working the dough, shaping the blanks, preparing the oil, frying and packing. These break down into eighteen hand operations, from choosing, weighing and sifting the ingredients, through kneading, beating, resting, rolling, cutting, rubbing and twisting the dough, to frying, turning, lifting out, cooling and smelling the finished twists. Chen Changyin (陈昌银) distilled this eighteen-step method from his own practice.
More than ten ingredients go in, among them wheat flour, rapeseed oil, walnut oil, peanut oil, sesame, Sichuan pepper, soybeans, brown sugar, honey and glutinous rice.
Flavour and texture
The founder's twists stood out from the start for being unusually crisp. The Chongqing Municipal Archives puts the brand's reputation down to the warmth of hand work, a clean taste that is light on oil, and a fresh, fragrant crunch. The traditional twist had a single flavour; Chen Changyin broke with that by developing numbing-and-spicy, salted and barbecue versions, and numbing-and-spicy, pepper-salt and barbecue twists are now sold alongside the traditional one.
Where it comes from
In 1907, the 33rd year of the Guangxu reign, Chen Jinghong (陈景洪) arrived in Ciqikou, then a wharf on the Jialing River thirty li from old Chongqing, and started making dough twists, selling them from a shoulder pole along the town's stone-paved lanes. His son Chen Daquan (陈达全), born in 1918, kept the craft going. Chen Changyin, born in 1955, learned from his father and a cousin at sixteen and was hawking twists in Ciqikou by 1971.
The first fixed Chen's twist shop opened in Ciqikou in 1999, and a registered business and trademarks followed in 2004. The Chongqing Commerce Commission has certified Chen Changyin twists as a Chongqing time-honoured brand. In 2016 the Ciqikou Chen's dough-twist technique (磁器口陈麻花制作技艺) entered Chongqing's municipal list of representative intangible cultural heritage items. The brand also runs a museum devoted to dough twists, described by the archives as the only one of its kind in south-west China, where visitors can try the eighteen steps.
More dishes to compare
Explore related local specialties and compare their names, preparation notes and ordering guidance.
Sichuan mixed-spice broad beans 怪味胡豆 →
Another crisp snack of the Sichuan-Chongqing region; Chen's twists are hand-twisted wheat dough fried after an eighteen-step process.
Questions before you order
What flavours do Chen's Fried Dough Twists come in?
Besides the traditional twist there are numbing-and-spicy, pepper-salt and barbecue versions, added after Chen Changyin broke with the older single flavour.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-23. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.