Youtiao
Long twisted dough sticks fried until they puff hollow, torn and dipped in hot soy milk. The Chinese breakfast, everywhere, every morning.
Photograph credit: Youtiao by chooyutshing · Public Domain Mark 1.0 · Flickr
Storing and Planning Ahead
None. Crisp for about ten minutes. Re-crisp leftovers in a hot oven.
Making Youtiao
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Mix the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt, then add the oil and warm water and bring to a shaggy, sticky dough.
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Fold the dough over on itself a few times in the bowl, cover, and leave 20 minutes. Repeat this folding three more times over 90 minutes.
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Cover the bowl tightly and refrigerate 12 hours.
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Turn the dough onto a floured surface and press it into a rectangle 1 cm thick. Do not knead it.
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Cut it into strips 2 cm wide.
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Lay one strip on top of another and press a chopstick firmly down the middle to join them.
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Heat the oil to 200°C / 390°F.
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Stretch each pair gently to about 25 cm and lower it into the oil, turning constantly with chopsticks.
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Fry 2 minutes, until puffed, hollow and deep gold.
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Drain on a rack and eat within minutes, torn and dipped in hot soy milk.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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Worth Knowing
- Never knead it. Fold, rest, and leave it overnight.
- Press two strips together with a chopstick — the seam is what makes it hollow.
- Oil at 200°C / 390°F. Cooler oil gives a greasy solid stick.
Why the Method Is What It Is
The dough is deliberately slack and is never kneaded hard — it is folded a few times over several hours and then left overnight, so the gluten relaxes completely. A tight dough cannot expand fast enough in the oil and gives a dense, solid stick instead of a hollow one. Two strips are pressed together with a chopstick before frying, and it is the seam between them, held shut, that forces the expansion outwards and sideways. The oil must be at 200°C / 390°F — cooler and they soak rather than leap.
Serving Ideas
Hot soy milk · Congee · Jianbing
Youtiao FAQ
How long does Youtiao take to make?
25 minutes of preparation and 20 minutes of cooking, plus 12 hours 20 minutes of the overnight chill that relaxes the dough, so allow 13 hours 5 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 8.
What's in a Serving
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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