From a simple bowl of rice porridge to luo buo gao, a savory steamed turnip cake served thinly sliced and fried, Chinese breakfasts are one of the most satisfying ways to start the day. Want to try your hand at making these and other dim sum favorites? Check out the recipes below!
1. Scallion Pancake - This savory pancake is crispy, chewy and layered with nuggets of green onion.
2. Congee - Simple and comforting, rice porridge is a great way to use up day-old rice and an excellent vehicle for leftover vegetables and proteins.
3. Fresh Soymilk - Freshly-made soymilk is tasty enough to eat like soup: warm in a bowl, with a big spoon.
4. Crullers (You Tiao) from Chinese Food About.com - Warm soymilk is especially good with a couple of fried crullers on the side for dipping. It's like the unsweetened, Chinese version of doughnuts and coffee.
5. Turnip Cake (Luo Buo Gao) from Epicurious - This cake made with Chinese turnip, a relative of Japanese daikon radish, is steamed, cut into thin slices and fried.
6. Pork Buns from I Made That! - Does it get any better than sweet, sticky glazed pork stuffed into soft baked buns?
7. Egg-Filled Breakfast Crepe (Jian Bing) from La Fuji Mama - Jian bing are like thin omelette-filled crepes speckled with green onions. This version also includes some chili sauce for a little heat.
8. Sesame Balls (Jin Dui) from Wok In Time - Not strictly a breakfast treat, these sweet balls of sesame-studded glutinous rice are usually stuffed with lotus paste or sweet bean paste.
Do you have any favorite Chinese breakfast items?
Related: Oranges and Dumplings: 10 Recipes for Chinese New Year
(Images: Faith Durand; Dana Velden; Anjali Prasertong; Flickr member beggs licensed under Creative Commons; Flickr member fotoosvanrobin licensed under Creative Commons; I Made That!; La Fuji Mama; Wok In Time)
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I'd love to see a few Japanese breakfast recipes . . . How about some miso soup?
several of these are transnational asian staples--the scallion pancake, congee, sesame balls, pork bun--all eaten across asia; are they specifically chinese? i don't know...
in Indonesia, you would eat no. 4 with no. 2. When you buy porridge, they load it up with some shredded chicken, the crullers, and sometimes over easy egg. YUMMY! Love having this in on a Sunday morning.
When I lived in China, I would have jidan bing (鸡蛋饼) for breakfast almost every morning. I wish I were skilled enough/had the right supplies to make it myself!
My chinese boyfriend makes me congee with pickled bamboo shoots and pork sung (a dried, almost fluffy meat product) all the time. It's very tasty, and it fills me up.
Scallion pancakes are amazing, but they're also often eaten with other meals as well.
I guess it's more of a dim sum/desserty type of thing, but I can't get enough egg custard tartlets! Those little bad boys are sweet, sexy and naughty all at the same time. Turnip cake is another fave :) Thanks for the post. My year-of-the-dragon mother will love it!
In the recipe for Crullers, I see "alum," what is that, and what can I substitute it with? Can I just use baking soda? Wiki says it's the acidic component to baking powder.
my recipe for the crullers doesn't use alum. It just uses baking powder and baking soda:
1 lbs flour
1 ¾ cups water
1 tbsp. baking powder
2 tsp. baking soda
1 ½ tsp. salt
Oil for frying
I don't know what alum is or ammonium bicarbonate or where to even find it.
i have never seen any asian person dip those "crullers" in soy milk. we've only ever put them congee. is this a common practice?
@littlepod I've never seen crullers (油条, I assume?) dipped in anything! Soy milk or zhou sounds like it would be pretty good, though.
@Smultronsoul, alum affects the texture of the cruller and I don't think there is a substitute for it, but you can find it online. Or give an alum-free recipe like picantel's a try!
@littlepod, it may be more common in Taiwan than in other parts of China. I first had the combo at a Taiwanese bakery, where everyone around me had plates of crullers and big bowls of either salty or sweet warmed soymilk.
@littlepod Yea, dipping it into soymilk is a very Taiwanese thing. I grew up eating salty and sweet soymilk (mostly as breakfast), and it's very common to dip them in the soymilk (we often also cut it into small pieces and put it into the soymilk directly, kind of like you would put croutons or bread into soup).
My other favorite thing to eat with cruller are things called "fantuan." It is a cruller that is wrapped in sticky rice. Usually the cruller is accompanied with pork sung and pickled vegetables as well.
Now I want some Taiwanese breakfast!
I made Scallion Pancake just last week. LOVE IT SOOOO MUCH!!!
I used to go to this place years ago (http://nymag.com/listings/restaurant/Roll-and-Dough/) that made delicious pastries, both sweet and savoury. The ones I liked best had either tofu or greens inside. I've never found them elsewhere since that place shut down (and I now live in Toronto). Anyone have a good recipe?
I actually don't like to eat any of these things for breakfast except on weekends as brunch. Too heavy for me. I prefer to have some Japanese or HK style breads during the week.
Although, I admit that I can't resist a really good you tiao. Unfortunately, its only good if it is fresh.
That congee (or juk) looks pretty thick in the pictures, haha.
My dad improvised you tiao at home by using premade biscuit dough; pretty decent substitute for a quick fix.
Hot soy milk (sweet or salty) is a very common breakfast for the Chinese but less so for Cantonese people.
You tiao is really good in the soy milk and is even better if they have a xiao bing (I've heard it referred to as a Chinese pancake but really more like a flatbread) wrapped around it. It's super delicious and very filling.
By the way, I've never heard of congee being made with day old rice. It's usually fresh. Day old rice is best for making fried rice.