Hakka Steamed Rice Buns 客家菜包

Hakka Steamed Rice Buns (客家菜包) are a Taiwanese Hakka rice snack: a savoury radish filling wrapped in a skin of glutinous rice and steamed. Although the name contains bao (包), they are made differently from the familiar vegetable bun (菜包). In Taoyuan (桃園), Chinese Wikipedia counts Hakka caibao, with beef noodles and Yunnan-Burmese-Thai cooking, among the food specialities of Zhongli District (中壢區).

How it is made

Taiwan's Hakka farmers plant radish after the rice harvest, and the Hakka Affairs Council (客家委員會) explains that the surplus is sun-dried into dried radish or radish shreds for keeping. The filling pairs shredded radish with shiitake mushrooms and fried shallots, small dried shrimp or minced meat; it is stir-fried, wrapped in a springy glutinous rice skin and steamed. The buns' shape resembles the bamboo baskets once used to carry piglets, which gives them their older name, pig-basket rice cake (豬籠粄); ban (粄) is the Hakka name for foods made from rice ground with water into a slurry.

Where it comes from

Hakka families make caibao mainly at Lunar New Year and the Qingming festival (清明), as offerings to the gods and ancestors, asking for peace and good luck. In recent years makers have coloured the glutinous rice skin with pumpkin, Chinese yam, mugwort or beetroot juice, and the council describes caibao as a favourite snack and take-home gift in Hakka villages.