Breakfast is best served fried

We’re all in search of good food when we travel. It’s an essential part of our experience, to sample and savour, to appreciate a cuisine and culture in the most natural way we can—through our tastebuds. And oftentimes we find that the simplest food is the most satisfactory. This may well be the case for the youtiao, a snack made of flour, salt and leavening agents, fried till it is crispy on the outside yet delectably soft on the inside.
Having tasted the youtiao while visiting Kolkata, I remember its particular taste and texture, the hint of salt and the spongy recoil of dough, the chewiness that left me feeling full; an easy consumption that struck me as authentic Chinese fare the moment it touched my tongue. The ones I had were sold on the street by Chinese immigrants from Meixian. The origin of the snack is street-based, and so it made a strange kind of sense to avail of them in a similar fashion, albeit in a different country. As the story goes, a Chinese official, Qin Hi, along with his wife, were blamed for plotting the death of the general Yue Fei, to which the owner of a fried-goods shop responded by throwing two pieces of dough, representing the official and his wife, into some hot oil, proclaiming that it was ‘youtiao gui’ or literally, oil-fried devil.
Despite its morbid origins, the youtiao remains to date a popular breakfast item. With its basic ingredients, straightforward method of cooking, and cheap and easy accessibility—it almost seems to be the original grab-and-go meal, long before fast food made itself known. One can find versions of the youtiao all over Asia, often eaten with accompaniments like soya milk, noodles, bread or soup.
Perhaps the ‘Asian’ nature of the youtiao is its classification as plain fare that one can eat daily, much like rice noodles or baozi; which can be combined with other items and be made more complex. It is that uncomplicated taste and versatility that gives one a sense of its unique place in Asian cuisine.