Hakka Rice Wine Chicken 客家娘酒鸡
Hakka Rice Wine Chicken is featured among the local specialties of Guangdong.
Hakka Rice Wine Chicken (客家娘酒鸡) is chicken cooked with ginger and niangjiu (娘酒), the sweet or semi-sweet Hakka yellow wine brewed from brown glutinous rice. It is a Hakka dish, and Huizhou (惠州) is one of the main Hakka areas of Guangdong, with Hakka communities in districts such as Huiyang (惠阳). It is commonly eaten by women in the month after childbirth, and also in winter and at Hakka winter festivals.
How it is made
Minced ginger is fried in oil or sesame oil until fragrant, then the chicken, chopped into pieces, goes in and is stir-fried until the surface turns lightly golden. The wine, or water or stock, is added with goji berries, and the chicken is braised in the wok, cooked in a clay pot or steamed until very tender, then seasoned. Made with sesame oil, the dish is called sesame-oil chicken wine (麻油鸡酒). A Meizhou Daily (梅州日报) essay describes the dish as fire-heated wine, a cockerel and fried minced ginger.
Ingredients
The wine is brewed from brown glutinous rice, ideally from the late-season crop. The rice is soaked, steamed, spread to cool, mixed with crushed starter cakes (酒饼) and left to ferment in a vat; in Meizhou most brewers now add distilled spirit part-way to stop the fermentation. After about 100 days of ageing the wine is drawn off and heated in small jars buried in smouldering rice husks, sawdust or straw until it boils, which darkens it to a deep yellow; red yeast rice is sometimes added for a redder colour. Brewing usually takes place around the winter solstice.
In the same essay Qiu Guixian (丘桂贤) argues that the name niangjiu comes from brewing terms built on niang (娘), such as niangfan (娘饭) for the steamed rice and jiuniang (酒娘) for the raw wine, rather than from 'mother's wine'.
How it is eaten
The Guangxu-era gazetteer of Jiaying prefecture (嘉应州志) records that women in the month after giving birth ate rooster fried with ginger and wine, to drive out wind and invigorate the blood. The first servings for a new mother use an uncastrated cockerel; later ones use a capon. Rice wine chicken is also a prized dish at Hakka festivals and celebrations.
In Huiyang, according to the district's culture and tourism bureau, when a daughter-in-law gives birth her husband's family prepares a pot of niangjiu, a rooster and a string of firecrackers and sends them to her family to announce the birth.
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.