Sticky Rice Wrapped Fried Dough Stick 糯米包油条

How it is made

At a stall on Xidajie (西大街), an old street in Hanyang (汉阳), the Changjiang Daily watched a 73-year-old vendor who has made nothing else for 33 years. She scoops two ladles of glutinous rice from a pot, flattens them with a spatula, lays half a youtiao on top, adds sugar and a ground sweet powder, then rolls it up and squeezes it hard. The roll goes into a plastic bag, and the end left showing is dipped in white sugar. Her youtiao are always freshly fried, and her rice comes from Yingcheng (应城), a city in Hubei.

At a children's cooking class held at Hubu Alley (户部巷) in Wuchang (武昌) in 2023, the kit was a board, a sheet of non-woven cloth, a bucket of just-steamed glutinous rice, a stack of hot youtiao and a few simple toppings, all worked together by hand.

Flavour and texture

The Xidajie vendor sells only two versions, sweet and savoury. Her sweet filling is white sugar with a powder ground from black sesame, peas, soybeans and peanuts; the savoury one is pickled greens with dried radish. She adds nothing else, while other sellers now put in ham sausage, shredded potato or shredded kelp. The Changjiang Daily found the fresh youtiao crisp and the rice springy without sticking to the teeth, with the natural sweetness of the grain coming through as you chew.

Where it comes from

Chinese Wikipedia describes the rice-and-youtiao roll as a traditional breakfast from the Jiangsu and Zhejiang area with sweet, savoury and half-sweet versions. In Wuhan it is a street breakfast: the Changjiang Daily found it on Xidajie among a dozen breakfast sellers within ten metres, and the Wuchang class taught it to children as a Wuhan food, alongside tangyuan, hot dry noodles (热干面), wontons and lotus-root soup.