Youyang Oil Tea Soup 酉阳油茶汤
Youyang Oil Tea Soup is featured among the local specialties of Chongqing.
Youyang Oil Tea Soup (酉阳油茶汤) is a savoury tea soup from Youyang Tujia and Miao Autonomous County (酉阳土家族苗族自治县) in Chongqing, made by frying tea in lard and simmering it with spring water. Under the name Tujia oil tea soup (土家油茶汤) it is one of 37 soups in Chongqing's "渝味360碗" (Flavours of Chongqing, 360 Bowls) selection.
How it is made
The ingredients listed by the Chongqing Municipal Bureau of Planning and Natural Resources (重庆市规划和自然资源局) are old-tree tribute tea (老树贡茶), popped corn, sweet-potato starch noodles (红薯粉), shade-dried rice (阴米子), shade-dried corn (阴玉米), potato slices and peanuts. The tea is stir-fried in lard, spring water is added and the pot is simmered, and finally "泡货" (paohuo, literally "puffed things") are added before the soup is eaten. The bureau describes it as leaving a fragrance in the mouth and a long aftertaste.
Where it comes from
A local legend traces the soup to Tujia soldiers who made their midday meal by frying the tea they carried with mixed grains and turning it into a soup. Today it is a breakfast that people in Youyang commonly eat, and the bureau's soup map singles out a bowl of it early in the morning.
It also belongs to the Youyang fire-pit table (火铺菜), the cooking done in pots over the hearth set in the middle of a household's fire platform in the Wuling Mountains (武陵山). A People's Daily Overseas Edition feature lists Tujia oil tea soup among the classic dishes of a Youyang fire-pit banquet, together with mung-bean noodles (绿豆粉), the eight bowls of Youzhou (酉州八大碗), vegetable tofu (菜豆腐) and tofu fish from the You River (酉水河).
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.