Yunnan Cuisine, a blend of the long history and diversified food culture, ethnic culture and regional feature of Yunnan, being special and fresh with fragrance or pure beauty, contains a unique lasting appeal.

The cuisine in northeast Yunnan has a similar cooking method and flavor with that of Sichuan cuisine. The cuisine of ethnic minorities constitutes the principal part of the cuisine in western and southwest Yunnan. While the cuisine in south Yunnan is the essence of Yunnan cuisine.

Features of Yunnan cuisine include a wide range of raw material and flavor with particular advantage in cooking delicacies from the mountains and waters. The flavor is featured by fresh and tender taste, delicate fragrance, sour and hot balance, with particular flavor-consciousness on the original taste and flavor of food material. Crispy, glutinous, well-cooked with heavy cooking oil, proper ornament and vivid modeling.

Although not being listed in the top eight cuisine series of China, Yunnan cuisine has always popular in China. Main features of Yunnan cuisine are long history, multi-ethnic presentation, wide range of raw materials, unique and diversified cooking methods, combination of the past and the present, various tastes with broad and rich contents. These features are formed through thousands of years of history, originating from the ancient Yunnan State between the Spring and Autumn Warring States Period and the Western and Eastern Han Dynasties and the Dali State in the Tang and Song Dynasties, going through the big change and development in Yuan and Ming Dynasties, and being formed in the middle Qing Dynasty. It is a series of cuisine with bright feature of ethnic minorities among the Chinese cuisine, a product combined the food tradition of 25 ethnic minorities with that of Han ethnic group.

 

Some representative cuisine in each region:

 

• Kunming

Steam pot chicken, small pot rice noodle, stewed waterless rice noodle, roast rice cake, Guandu rice cake, Yiliang roast duck, Kunyang pot-stewed duck, Chenggong pea flour, rice noodle with tofu pudding, flower cake, etc.

• Qujing

Xuanwei ham, Zhanyi spicy chicken, steamed shredded rice cake, fried potato.

• Yuxi

The Three Dishes from Jiangchuan,  Chengjiang lotus root flour, Kanglang fish, copper pot fish, big head carp, cold rice noodle, waxgourd candied fruit, oil and spicy preserved tofu, bean foam sugar, fried termitornyces albuminosus heim, cold porridge.   

• Zhaotong

Gastrodia elata stewed chicken, Zhaotong paste.

 

• Baoshan

Tengchong fried rice cake, Baoshan mung bean, rice flour roll.

 

• Lincang

Chicken rice, rice cake roll, thin bean flour, Yunnan black tea.

 

• Pu'er

Edible wild herbs, rice noodle, dishes featuring ethnic minority specialty.  

 

• Lijiang

Lijiang baba (rice cake), Yongsheng buttered tea, Naxi roast fish, preserved spareribs, spirulina, Lijiang sausage, yellow bean noodle, Lijiang salmon, Pipa meat, Jidou pea jelly salad.

• Chuxiong

Wild fungus, Yi ethnic dishes.

• Dali

Bai style three-course tea, Yunnan goat cheese, river water boiled fish, Erhai lake seaweed, rice noodle with pork, roast rice cake, Midu pork tenderloin, silver fish.

• Nujiang

Nujiang fish, pomegranate, chestnut, flagstone soba cake, liquor stewed egg.

 

• Diqing

Buttered tea, barley wine, Tibetan bacon meat, dried dairy products.

• Honghe

Mengzi crossings bridge rice noodle, Jianshui roast tofu, Kaiyuan mini rice flour roll, Mengzi sweet pomegranate, Hekou mini rice flour roll, Shiping tofu.

• Wenshan

Pseudo-ginseng stewed chicken and other pseudo-ginseng dish series, sour soup with chicken, sour soup with beef, wild fungus, roast rice cake, colored sticky rice.

• Dehong

Dai-style dishes, Dai-style bamboo rice, pineapple rice, cold beef with rice noodle, milk-rice juice, Mangshi reserved vegetable and fruit, tropical fruit.

• Xishuangbanna

Dai-style bamboo rice, pineapple rice, fresh bamboo shoots, ant eggs, wild fungus and tropical fruit.