This second post in my series of posts introducing Chinese foods will be dedicated to Baozi (包子, pronounced “bao tze”), a type of food very popular among both locals and foreigners. Baozi are basically lumps of steamed dough with some filling - usually a combination of minced meat and vegetables:

baozi in Sichuan province

The picture is of baozi in Sichuan province. In general, the baozi in the southern areas of China are bigger than their northern counterparts and have a thicker outer layer. The typical way of making Baozi is steaming them:

xiao-long baozi being steamed

The picture above is actually not of baozi but of its smaller “cousin”, xiaolong-baozi (小笼包子). “xiaolong” means “small covering” and this baozi variant seems to be a mid-way hybrid between baozi and jiaozi (which will be covered in a different post). A few steaming containers are stacked on top of a wok with some water in it, which is placed over a fire. The steam passes upwards through all the containers, steam-cooking the food inside.

Baozi are commonly eated as a breakfast. A very typical Sichuan breakfast might consist of baozi along with rice porridge, a hard-boiled egg and maybe some pickled vegetables on the side. It is easy to find baozi on the street in the morning - many vendors and small restaurants sell them - but it is harder to find them during the evening and afternoon. This is because baozi is considered “breakfast food” and many restaurants actually have a different menu during breakfast, serving stuff like baozi or youtiao.

There are two local variants of baozi worth mentioning. The first is a sort of baozi which is sold in Xi’an, named tangbao (汤包), or “soup baozi”. These are baozi which, along with their regular filling, are also filled with some sort of scalding soup. If you bite straight into the baozi the soup will spill all over you, so you should first bite a very small hole and use it to suck out the soup, after which you can safely eat the baozi. The second sort is a trademarked baozi sold in a chain of restaraunts in Hangzhou named Yao Bu De (咬不得), or literally “cannot bite”. These are basically soup-baozi like the ones in Xi’an, the difference being that they are deep-fried instead of steamed. I believe the name “Yao Bu De” to be a spin-off on the name of a very popular baozi chain named “Gou Bu Li” (狗不理), or literally “dogs can’t handle” - the name implying that their baozi are so good that the leftovers should not be wasted on dogs.

on the left: Tang Bao (soup baozi), on the right: Yao Bu De baozi