Yuquan Roast Whole Lamb 玉泉烤全羊
Yuquan Roast Whole Lamb is featured among the local specialties of Gansu.
Yuquan Roast Whole Lamb (玉泉烤全羊) is the roast whole sheep served at Yuquan Shanzhuang (玉泉山庄), a dining and snack complex in Dingyuan Town (定远镇), Yuzhong County (榆中县), Lanzhou (兰州). A 2023 feature promoting Yuzhong travel, posted by a government-affairs account on The Paper, calls roast whole lamb the calling card of Yuquan Shanzhuang.
Ingredients
According to the same account, the sheep are all farm-raised, free-range Tan sheep (滩羊) from Yanchi (盐池). It describes Tan sheep meat as fine-textured, with very little gamey smell and evenly spread fat.
Where it comes from
Yuquan Shanzhuang's dining centres on a courtyard of teahouses, taverns, butcher's and grain shops and snack stalls. A China Gansu Net Spring Festival food route published in February 2021 sent visitors there for roast whole lamb together with egg-and-milk fermented rice (鸡蛋牛奶醪糟), braised pig's trotters (酱猪蹄) and Yuquan tofu (玉泉豆腐).
It is also a festive dish: New Gansu reported that during the 2023 Spring Festival holiday, Yuquan Shanzhuang roast whole lamb, sugar-oil cakes (糖油糕) and saozi noodles (臊子面) were among the holiday foods popular with visitors to Yuzhong.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-26. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.