Street Snack · Roasted Chestnuts

Tangchao Lizi (糖炒栗子) — Sugar-Roasted Chestnuts

📷 Closely related photo — Photo: Alice Qu / Unsplash · Unsplash License

Although sugar-roasted chestnuts are a Beijing street icon, many of the nuts come from the hills of northeastern Hebei and are sold as 'Jingdong' chestnuts, meaning 'east of the capital.'

Chestnuts are tumbled in a huge wok with hot sand, a little maltose syrup, and oil, roasted low and slow until the shells split and the nut inside turns soft and faintly sweet. Vendors scoop them hot into paper cones straight from the wok.

Why it's made this way: Hebei's Qianxi County has long grown small, dense, naturally sweet chestnuts, and roasting them in hot sand cooks them evenly while keeping shells easy to crack.