Chinese Savory Donut

hello hi everyone! Wesley here. Today we’re diving back into our series dedicated to the wonderful, weird world of Asian fusion cuisine with a shot at a the Chinese breakfast dim sum dish known as  dou jiang you tiao, or “oil stick,” “chinese donut,” or “chinese french crueller.” As you might notice, the english translations for this dish are endlessly varying and almost always problematic in some respect. For those unfamiliar though, at its core, dou jiang (referring to soy milk) and you tiao (referring to the oil stick) is a popular Chinese dim sum item featuring a butter and egg based dough that’s stretched into a long stick, then deep fried and served with a side of either savory soy milk or “xian dou jiang,” or sweet soy milk “tian dou jiang.”  

The most common english translation I’ve seen is “Chinese donut” or “Chinese Cruller,” both of which I think are poor translations, because it implies that the dish is meant for dessert, which is entirely inaccurate. because the you tiao donut itself is not actually sweet. Most often, you’ll see you tiao served in some form of savory context, today we’re going to be doing that with a salty and spicy warm soy milk done with a bit of black vinegar, soy sauce, and chile crisp oil. Finally rounding this all out as promised, we will absolutely explore some weird and surprisingly delicious ways of smashing this dish into other food cultures because after all, it is essentially just a deep fried piece of dough. So, we’ll run through some of my favorite ways to lean a bit harder into the mistranslation that a you tiao is a chinese donut, by…actually turning it into a donut…! Hope you try it.