Yunnan Street Food

5 dishes in China

5 street foods from Yunnan, China: Pu'er Tea, Xianhua Bing, Jianshui Kao Doufu, Shao Erkuai and Xidoufen. Each one has its own page with the story behind it and what to look for.

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Street foods of Yunnan

Aged & Fermented · Dark Tea Pu'er (普洱) Tea Unlike most teas, Pu'er improves with age — compressed cakes of it are traded and collected like fine wine, some decades old. Pu'er is a Yunnan tea made from large-leaf tea plants, often pressed into cakes and bricks, in two styles: raw (sheng), which ages slowly, and ripe (shou), which is pile-fermented to…

Pastry · Baked Xianhua Bing (Yunnan Flower Cake) The 'flower' isn't a flavoring or decoration — it's real edible rose petals, grown specifically for cooking, folded directly into the pastry filling. A flaky, layered pastry is filled with a paste made from Yunnan's edible roses, sugar, and sometimes osmanthus or red bean, then baked until golden.

Snack · Charcoal-grilled Jianshui Kao Doufu (Jianshui Grilled Tofu) Stall keepers traditionally keep count of how many pieces a customer has eaten with kernels of dried corn, moving one kernel aside for each tofu cube. Small cubes of firm tofu made with water from Jianshui's historic wells are grilled slowly over charcoal until golden and crisp outside, custardy inside, dipped in chili-salt or…

Breakfast · Kunming Grill Shao Erkuai (烧饵块, Grilled Rice Cake) Locals eat it almost every morning, making it as central to a Kunming breakfast as coffee and toast are elsewhere. A flat disc of pounded rice cake is grilled over charcoal until blistered and lightly charred, brushed with a sweet or savory sauce, then wrapped around a stick of fried dough (youtiao)… 🥣 Breakfast Bowl · Pea Xidoufen (Yellow Pea Porridge) In Tengchong it is poured over ersi rice-cake noodles and finished with sesame, garlic, chili and peanut oils. White peas are soaked, stone-ground and strained, and the liquid is simmered over a low flame, stirred constantly, into a thick golden porridge. It is eaten for breakfast with youtiao, or…

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Part of World of Street Food — 3441 dishes from 118 countries. Photo credits.