East River Salt-Baked Chicken 东江盐焗鸡
East River Salt-Baked Chicken is featured among the local specialties of Guangdong.
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East River Salt-Baked Chicken (东江盐焗鸡) is a whole chicken cooked buried in hot salt, a traditional dish of the Hakka East River (东江) region that is eaten in Heyuan (河源), Huizhou (惠州), Meizhou (梅州) and Shenzhen (深圳). In 2025 Heyuan's Yuancheng District (源城区) added the East River salt-baked chicken technique to its second list of district-level intangible heritage.
How it is made
Methods vary. Commonly the chicken is gutted and dried, the cavity is rubbed with salt and sand ginger (沙姜), and the bird is wrapped tightly in paper and buried in salt that has been heated in a wok. It then bakes slowly for around half an hour until cooked. Some cooks tear the meat into shreds for serving.
Flavour and texture
The Wanlü Lake (万绿湖) scenic area in Heyuan describes the finished chicken as pale yellow, with crisp skin, tender meat, and meat and bones that are fresh and fragrant. It is eaten with a dip of sand ginger, oil and salt, and is a common banquet dish.
Where it comes from
The story told in Heyuan places its beginnings more than 300 years ago at salt works in the East River area, where cooked chickens were wrapped in paper and stored in heaps of salt. Later, as the salt trade grew, restaurants in the region's prefectural seat competed to feed guests and began baking fresh chickens in hot salt to order, which gave the dish its East River name.
Heyuan's cooking belongs to the East River style, which leans towards rich, salty and well-cooked food. A local saying holds that there is no banquet without chicken, because 'ji' (鸡, chicken) sounds like 'ji' (吉, good fortune), and East River salt-baked chicken is counted among Heyuan's ten famous Hakka dishes. A 2024 selection under Heyuan's 'Cantonese cuisine master' (粤菜师傅) programme, announced on the city government portal in March 2025, named it among the ten best dishes. In Huizhou the salt-baked chicken cooking technique entered the sixth municipal heritage list in 2015.
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.