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Ten Bamboo-related Yunnan Food

Chinese people always have a sentiment for bamboo, "Food without meat is tolerable, but living without bamboo is intolerable". And now, bamboo is not only used to build a house, but also to make food. The foodies in Yunnan especially have an enthusiasm for bamboo and they use bamboo to make various food. 

1. Bamboo baked rice 

Bamboo baked rice, a featured snack, mainly found in Simao City, Yunnan Province. The raw material of bamboo must be the Chimonocalamus from Xishuangbanna. Bamboo baked rice is a famous Dai food in Xishuangbanna, featured by its great scent and the softness of the rice. 

2. Bamboo rice

Bamboo rice is a featured food in Yunnan. It has unique shape, rice scent and bamboo scent, fresh and delicious.

3.“Bamboo weaving duck”

Bamboo weaving duck is a kind of Hui food in Luxi, of which the main material is duck. The size of the live duck is about 1 kg, and around 0.7 kg after cooked. Steps: Kill and clean the duck; put the entire duck in a bamboo-weaved basket which later put into water for boiling and to add some salt; after cooked and cooled, take out the duck from the basket and cut it into small chops; finally add some stir-fried soybean spice. 

4. Dai style barbecue 

The food material for Dai style barbecue is clamped by bamboos rather than stringed together. Unlike other barbecue, Yunnan's Dai style barbecue is featured by the use of large amount of vanilla spice, which makes the barbecue in strong fragrance. Commonly used vanilla spices: coriandrum sativum, lemongrass, galangal and hot chili. 

5. Bamboo cup steamed egg 

A bamboo cup, an egg, proper amount of salt and water, soaked Chinese matrimony vine and a few chopped green onion. Crack the egg, stir the egg in water, then pour it into the bamboo cup. Steam the bamboo cup for 15 minutes and leave a gap to prevent honeycomb formed in high temperature. Spray the Chinese matrimony vine and chopped green onion on the egg, steam for another 1 minute, then it's done. 

6. Bamboo wine 

Bamboo wine originates in the minorities who use bamboo to hold wine, thus the fragrance of wine and bamboo will blend with each other. Guests from remote places will be moved by the fragrance once they smell it. For a long time, "bamboo wine" is a necessity for events like wedding or putting up the main beam in a house. With the passage of time, the living lifestyle of the ethnic groups has changed, and tastes of "bamboo wine" differ for ethnic groups. 

7. Bamboo tea 

People of Dai, Hani and Jingpo ethnic groups who live in the southern part of Yunnan take bamboo tea as a dish. They pick fresh tea leaves and boil them in a cooking pot, thus the leaves get soft, then rub them on bamboo shade and put them into a bamboo tube, tamp them by stick, seal and let them ferment. Two or three months later, the tea leaves in the bamboo tube get yellow, cut open the bamboo tube, take out the tamped tea leaves and dry them in air, then put them into earthen jar, add sesame oil to soak them, then it is ready to be taken out as a vegetable dish at any time. 

8.  Bamboo shoot 

Bamboo shoot is regarded as the "treasure in cuisine" since ancient times in China. Bamboo shoot is a traditional Chinese cuisine, taste sweet and crispy, whose cultivation history is extremely long. Bamboo shoot even appears in sentences of "The Book of Songs", which shows that the edible bamboo shoot can be dated back to 2500, or even 3000 years ago. 

9. Bamboo chicken 

Bamboo chicken is a famous traditional dish for Yunnan's Hani people. The use of bamboo in cooking process has a long history. And to date, many ethnic minorities retain the traditional bamboo cooking method. They have bamboos all over the mountains, and the bamboo cooked food is tasty along with faint scent, while Hani people's bamboo chicken is one of the cases. Hani people's bamboo chicken combines the fresh and tasty chicken and the faint scent of bamboo, sticky and soft, unique and ancient. 

10. Bamboo worm 

Bamboo worm, also named as “bamboo maggot”, nibbles nutrients from the tender bamboo shoots. Parasitic inside bamboo tube, they will grow from the size small as a grain of rice to that of a finger. They nibble from the tip of the bamboo downwards to the root, and they will stop when they get fat and prepare to break the cocoon. 

(图片来自网络)