Julu Braised Pancake Strips 巨鹿焖饼

How it is made

The pancake is unleavened (死面饼), so it needs no rising time. The dough is kneaded until it is smooth and the bowl and the hands are clean, rested for more than 20 minutes, and the pancake baked until it shows scorched "tiger-skin" spots. It is then cut by hand into strips one and a half cun (about 5 cm) long. Yun Guobiao (云国彪), who opened a shop called Da Julu Menbing (大巨鹿焖饼), told Guangming Daily that this is the old rule: longer strips are awkward to pick up, shorter ones take up the flavour unevenly, and the rough edges of hand-cut strips soak up the juices in a way machine-cut strips cannot.

The mix is one part pancake to one and a half parts vegetables, mostly whatever is in season, with a little lean meat or egg. The braising step is held to two minutes: longer and the strips go mushy, shorter and they stay hard.

How it is eaten

In Julu's restaurants in the evening the dish comes to the table steaming, smelling of wheat, vegetables and meat. It is eaten with bites of raw garlic, soft but not sticky and savoury without being greasy, followed by a bowl of laver and egg soup. A local saying runs "巨鹿健儿，三日不食焖饼则气短": the lads of Julu lose their breath if they go three days without braised pancake.

Where it comes from

One legend credits Yuan Shao (袁绍), campaigning around Julu and Jizhou in the Three Kingdoms period, with having his cooks braise the soldiers' dry pancakes with vegetables. Yun Guobiao describes a humbler origin: in lean years a village family would bake enough unleavened pancake for two meals, then cut the leftovers into strips and braise them with garden cabbage and a little shredded meat, which saved fuel and fed everyone. In November 2025 Xingtai started a braised-pancake competition that drew more than a hundred cooks.

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