Flatbread in Toasted Flour Gruel 油茶泡馍
Flatbread in Toasted Flour Gruel is featured among the local specialties of Shaanxi.
Flatbread in Toasted Flour Gruel (油茶泡馍) is a dish from Yaozhou (耀州), a district of Tongchuan (铜川) in Shaanxi, where shops and street stalls sell it. The "youcha" (油茶, literally "oil tea") in the name is not the sesame-and-apricot-kernel kind of youcha but a gruel made from flour fried in animal fat. Pieces of flatbread are soaked in it. It is said to have been sold since the Qing dynasty.
How it is made
The base is made ahead. Rendered beef or mutton fat, with a little lard and vegetable oil added, is melted in a wok. Flour goes in and is stirred and fried until fat and flour turn into an even yellow paste. The paste is ladled into basins or bowls, where it cools and sets into blocks. The usual proportion is one jin of fat to one and a half or two jin of flour.
To serve, the stallholder chops a block into a large clay pot of boiling water, adds salt and stirs it into a thin gruel. The customer tears the bread into small pieces in a large bowl: guokui (锅盔, a thick baked flatbread), a shaobing (烧饼, baked bread) or a steamed bun all work. The stallholder pours hot gruel over the pieces two or three times until they are soaked through. The bowl is then filled with gruel and topped with a little chopped spring onion and ginger.
Flavour and texture
The dish tastes rich and well seasoned and is described as oily without being greasy. It keeps diners full for a long time. Diners can ask for an egg, which the stallholder cooks in the pot, either poached whole or beaten in.
How it is eaten
Many Yaozhou households fry a batch of the fat-and-flour base in winter. Early in the morning they simmer a few bowls of gruel over the stove and soak bread in it for a convenient breakfast.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.