Toasted Rice Drink 米茶

How it is made

Rice is stir-toasted in a wok over a low flame until it turns golden, then taken out and kept. When it is wanted, the toasted rice is put in cold water and cooked much like congee, but with more water, until the grains burst open. It is usually eaten after it has cooled.

Tianmen Daily cites the Hubei Recipe Compendium (湖北食谱大全), which also calls it qu mi cha (曲米茶) or hu mi cha (糊米茶), "scorched rice tea".

How it is eaten

It is eaten in the hottest weeks of summer, several times a day, to quench thirst and stave off hunger. It does not keep a manual worker full for long, so people in Tianmen pair it with huoshao ba (火烧粑), a round of leavened dough the size of a bowl's mouth, topped with sesame and baked against the side of a wok or finished in the embers of a wood stove. The paper calls the two Tianmen's most characteristic summer staples. A Tianmen folk rhyme about hospitality in Zhanggang (张港) has the host serving a bowl of it with salted fried peas, pickled greens and a huoshao ba.

One family version is soured: the drink is cooked the night before, left in a large bowl and stirred repeatedly as it cools until it turns sour and bubbly, then drunk the next midday after work.

Where it comes from

It is the summer favourite of upper Tianmen, the towns of Duobao (多宝), Tuoshi (拖市), Zhanggang, Yuxin (渔薪), Wangchang (汪场) and Jiangchang (蒋场), while lower Tianmen tends to eat a firm-grained rice gruel instead. Restaurants in Tianmen city keep rice, that gruel and the toasted rice drink on hand for most of the year. In Wuhan and Shashi (沙市) people cook it differently, adding a little salt, sugar, ginger slices, red dates, or mung beans boiled beforehand.