Wok-Braised Chicken with Flatbreads 地锅鸡
Wok-Braised Chicken with Flatbreads is featured among the local specialties of Shandong.
Wok-Braised Chicken with Flatbreads (地锅鸡) is a one-pot meal: chicken stews in an iron wok while rounds of dough stuck to the side of the pot bake at the same time, and diners eat both from the same pot. Chinese Wikipedia traces the dish to the Weishan Lake (微山湖) area on the border of northern Jiangsu and southern Shandong, and says it later spread to northern Anhui and eastern Henan.
How it is made
Cooks usually take a farm-raised rooster, chop it into pieces and blanch it, then stir-fry it hard with spring onion, ginger, chilli, star anise and sweet bean sauce (甜面酱) before adding water and stewing it slowly. Dried bamboo shoots, dried long beans or shiitake mushrooms can go in too. When the chicken is about 70 to 80 percent cooked, rolled-out dough is pressed onto the side of the wok so that half of each round sits in the broth. The pot keeps stewing until the liquid thickens, and green and red peppers and sliced garlic go in just before serving to reduce the sauce.
Flavour and texture
The chicken comes out firm to the bite and well seasoned, and the underside of each flatbread turns crisp. The bread soaks up the flavour of the stew while the stew picks up the smell of the bread. Cooks have since applied the same pot-and-flatbread method to fish, beef and tofu.
Where it comes from
One account links Wok-Braised Chicken with Flatbreads to the fishing families of Weishan Lake, who cooked on their boats over a small clay stove with an iron pot, using whatever was at hand and slapping dough on the rim so that food and bread were made together. A second legend, recorded in local literature, ties it to the family of Hou Fangyu (侯方域), a writer of the late Ming and early Qing from an official family of Shangqiu (商丘); his father Hou Xun (侯恂) is said to have named it 'first-rank chicken' (一品鸡).
In southern Shandong, Weishan Lake lies along the western side of Tengzhou (滕州), where the Weishan Lake Red Lotus Wetland (微山湖红荷湿地) is visited for boating on the lake, lotus viewing and a taste of fishing-family life.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.
Image credits & notes (1)
- Di guo ji: chicken stewed in a metal pot with flatbread wedges pressed around the rim · 一盘地锅鸡，锅边贴饼Photo: Yangchengu · CC BY 4.0 · taken 2026-07-04Resized for the web; the photo itself has not been edited. Thumbnails may show a cropped view.
