Piglet-Shaped Sticky Rice Buns 猪儿粑

How it is made

A 2024 report from the Rongchang district agriculture commission follows a family shop on Gongyuan Road (公园路) in Rongchang that has sold the buns for more than 20 years. Work starts at about four in the morning with cutting the wrapping leaves, kneading the dough and mixing the fillings, and every bun is made and sold the same day. The buns are steamed wrapped in green leaves and come out translucent.

Wrapping is the step that decides the quality. The son of the family recalls once wrapping more than 40 buns without enough filling; the whole steamer came out lacking plumpness and poor-looking, fit only for the family to eat. His mother's buns weigh about 70 grams each and are sticky and pleasant to eat.

Fillings and flavours

The shop makes four kinds: plain (原味), dried cowpea (干豇豆), salt-and-pepper (椒盐), and peanut and sesame (花生芝麻). It also makes mugwort buns (艾粑), plain or filled. The district government says mugwort has a distinctive fresh-grass fragrance, which makes the mugwort buns aromatic and soft-sticky, and that at the Qingming festival people used to make them as offerings to their ancestors.

How it is eaten

Breakfast is the busy time: the report opens with a customer asking for five salt-and-pepper buns. The shop also posts boxes of buns to customers across China, as far as Tacheng (塔城) in Xinjiang and Mohe (漠河) in Heilongjiang, and puts a sticker on large orders explaining how to reheat them.

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