Qingtuan
| Qingtuan | |||||||||
 Qingtuan, traditional Chinese food of the Qingming festival | |||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 青團 | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 青团 | ||||||||
| Literal meaning | verdant lump | ||||||||
| |||||||||
Qīngtuán (青团) is a form of dumpling that is green, common throughout Chinese cuisine. It is made of glutinous rice mixed with Chinese mugwort or barley grass. This is then usually filled with sweet red or black bean paste. The exact technique for making qingtuan is quite complicated and the grass involved is only edible in the early spring, so it is typically only available around the time of the Qingming Festival (April 4 or 5), with which the dumpling has become associated.
Much of the qingtuan consumed in China is prepared and consumed as street food from local vendors.[1] The snack is also packaged and sold in stores but can run into quality problems such as misleading freshness dating. In 2014, an inspection of 57 batches of packaged qingtuan from stores around Shanghai found that seven had illegal additives or unacceptable levels of bacteria.[2]
See also
- Kusa mochi, the Japanese form of this dish, flavored with Jersey cudweed
- Caozai guo, the Taiwanese form of this dish, flavored with Jersey cudweed
References
- ↑ Liu, Zat. "Shanghai food tour: Quest for the best qingtuan". CNN Travel, 31 Mar 2011. Accessed 6 Apr 2014.
- ↑ Shanghai Daily. "Watchdog: Defective qingtuan sold in city Archived April 7, 2014, at the Wayback Machine.". Reprinted in Eastday on 3 Apr 2014. Accessed 6 Apr 2014.