Scrambled Eggs with Sand Onion 沙葱炒蛋
Scrambled Eggs with Sand Onion is featured among the local specialties of Inner Mongolia.
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Scrambled Eggs with Sand Onion (沙葱炒蛋) is a quick stir-fry of eggs and sand onion (沙葱), a wild desert allium also called Mongolian chive (蒙古韭, Allium mongolicum). In Alxa League (阿拉善盟), where the wild plant has been domesticated and is now grown in greenhouses, it is one of the local dishes cooked for visitors at desert camps.
Ingredients
Sand onion grows on sand, desert and dry hillsides between 800 and 2,800 metres in Mongolia and northern China, Inner Mongolia included, and its leaves and flowers are eaten. It stands up to wind, frost and cold and grows in saline soil and sandy gobi; China National Radio notes that Mongolian medical texts call it 'desert ginseng'.
In Bayanhot (巴彦浩特) in Alxa Left Banner (阿拉善左旗), the grower Xie Ping (谢平) worked out how to domesticate the wild plant and grow it out of season. The company he manages runs 134 sun-heated greenhouses and ships fresh sand onion to Hohhot, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai and the Beijing region, and the local crop is now available all year. The local crop is in China's national catalogue of distinctive, high-quality agricultural products and holds national agricultural geographical-indication certification.
How it is made
The eggs and the sand onion are fried separately. The sand onion goes into the wok over high heat and is tossed only a few times, just long enough to bring out its aroma, so that it keeps its fresh taste.
Flavour and texture
Sand onion leaves look like spring onion leaves but are thinner and solid rather than hollow. They taste of both onion and garlic chive but are milder than spring onion, and their high water content makes them crisp, tender and faintly sweet. In the Luanjingtan Ecological Migration Demonstration Area (孪井滩生态移民示范区) of Alxa, camps in the Tengger Desert (腾格里沙漠) serve the dish alongside lamb hotpot and lamb-and-sand-onion dumplings.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.