Steam-Pot Chicken 汽锅鸡
Steam-Pot Chicken is featured among the local specialties of Yunnan.
Photo adjustments
Full frame retained; proportionally resized and converted to WebP. No retouching or changes to the photographed subject. Card displays may crop the view.
Steam-Pot Chicken (汽锅鸡) is a Yunnan (云南) dish originating in Jianshui (建水). Its distinctive cooking vessel is a local purple-clay steam pot: steam enters through a vent and condenses around the chicken, forming broth without water being poured directly over the meat.
Broth formed by steam
Water boils in a lower pot, sending steam through the upper vessel’s vent. The steam cooks the chicken while condensation gradually supplies its cooking liquid. The resulting soup is small in quantity and concentrated in flavour.
Chicken and aromatics
The chicken is cut into pieces and briefly blanched to remove scum and bone fragments. It is then placed in the steam pot with salt and pepper, followed by scallions, ginger, goji berries and sanqi (三七). Chinese Wikipedia describes setting the vessel over a clay stove used for simmering meat bones and steaming it for at least three and a half hours.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-27. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.