[Beijing] Deep Fried

The second stand sold primarily fried foods.


Not exactly fries and burgers. (Above) The two trays at the bottom are stuffed pastries. They're usually filled with some kind of ground meat and/or vegetable mix. Sitting in the strainer next to the giant wok at the back of the picture are things called You Tiao (yo tyaw).

Literally translated, this means "grease rod". Note this as a prime example of things that sound much more appetizing in native Chinese than in the corresponding English translation.

One of the cooks is frying a you tiao in the wok itself. She's turning it on all sides with a pair of chopsticks in her right hand that are made especially long for deep frying uses. Her left hand is sitting on a dirty shoe box with leaf-piles of money in it -- the cash register.

The you tiao is nothing but two wads of dough that are rolled out into two long, flimsy rods. They're lightly twisted and stuck together, then put straight into the boiling vegetable oil in the giant wok. Several of these are slid in at the same time, so the cook performs a sort of assembly line and puts more in as the earlier ones get done. They're rolled around until the entire you tiao becomes a medium golden-brown, which probably only takes around a minute. The grease strained off from the batches is collected and invariably reused. It's easily recyclable for cooking, and most people actually like the stronger flavor when they're cooked in oil that has been used before.

Taste? Once it's fried, the you tiao can be big but is rather hollow inside. Essentially, it's just another kind of bread, and it tastes like a dinner roll, only.... it's long, somewhat chewier, definitely greasier and definitely more moist. It fills me up more quickly than dinner rolls do, at least. In a nutshell, it's just a deep-fried wad of dough, stretched out a little. Sounds incredibly unhealthy. But in fact, much like bao zi, everyone in China knows what a you tiao is, and they are definitely not an uncommon food on the streets.

(So the question is, how can they all have foods like this in their cuisine and still be tiny??)