Hudu Porridge 糊嘟

How it is made

A 2026 People's Daily essay by a Yangquan writer gives the home method. The pot is filled about three-quarters with water and pickled cabbage or vegetables such as potato and carrot. Once the water boils and is salted, flour is scattered evenly around the edge of the pot, leaving a gap in the middle where the water can bubble, and the pot is kept on a low heat for about half an hour.

Then comes the hard part, which Yangquan people call tiao hudu (调糊嘟) or niao hudu (袅糊嘟): someone rolls up their sleeves and stirs with a rolling pin, always in one direction, until no raw lumps of flour are left and the flour and vegetables have worked into one sticky mass. The most refined version, nicknamed "gold with jade" (黄金夹翡翠), is made from cornmeal with green beans, yellow flecked with green.

How it is eaten

Diners in Yangquan used to order it with a riddle, "a smear, a dip, a gulp" (一抹一蘸，咕咚一咽): smear the sticky hudu onto the tips of the chopsticks, dip it in the chilli seasoning, and swallow. A food feature from Shanxi Institute of Applied Science and Technology (山西应用科技学院) describes the dip as chilli mixed with vinegar. In the People's Daily essay the writer's mother serves a potato and oat-flour hudu with half a pot of shredded potato and chilli as the dip.

Where it comes from

The People's Daily essayist points to an early mention of a dish called hutu (胡突) in the Tang-dynasty notebook Youyang Zazu (酉阳杂俎) by Duan Chengshi (段成式), which says that Han Yue (韩约) could make "cold hutu", and infers from it that hudu developed from a pastry.