Jiaoxi Hot Spring Vegetable Dishes 礁溪温泉蔬菜料理
Jiaoxi Hot Spring Vegetable Dishes is featured among the local specialties of Taiwan.
Jiaoxi Hot Spring Vegetable Dishes (礁溪温泉蔬菜料理) are dishes cooked from the vegetables that farmers in Jiaoxi Township (礁溪乡), Yilan County (宜兰县), grow with hot-spring water. The township office describes Jiaoxi as lying on a volcanic belt with colourless, odourless carbonated hot springs, and its tomatoes, water bamboo, water spinach and loofah are known as the "four hot-spring treasures" (温泉四宝).
Ingredients
Water spinach is the vegetable the Jiaoxi Township Office names as the representative hot-spring crop. It is grown with hot-spring water at around 26 to 30°C, mainly as a white-stemmed, large-leaved variety, from March to November; it grows fast, can be cut every half month and has thick stems, large leaves and a crisp, tender texture that stays green however it is cooked.
Jiaoxi's water bamboo (茭白笋) is irrigated with hot-spring water and is mostly a red-husked variety, peaking from September to November. East 122 News reports that it takes more than half a year to grow, is harvested only once a year and is nicknamed "beauty's legs" (美人腿) for its long, white shape. The tomatoes are mainly the Momotaro (桃太郎) variety, in season from January to April, and the hot-spring loofah is slightly long, with flesh that stays fine-textured and does not turn black when cooked.
How it is eaten
The township office suggests eating the tomatoes raw as fruit or cooking them with other ingredients, and dipping loofah flowers in batter and deep-frying them until crisp. At the 2025 launch of the water-bamboo season, organised by the Yilan County government with the Jiaoxi Farmers' Association (礁溪乡农会), a chef gave a stir-fry demonstration and eight water-bamboo dishes were shown, among them shaomai dumplings, stir-fried rice noodles, a thick soup (羹), a salad and a plain stir-fry. The farmers' association also sells its own brand of hot-spring rice, whose cooked grains smell of taro, and the township office lists hot-spring rice noodles made from hot-spring rice.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.