Chicken with Steamed Flour Rolls

Chicken with steamed flour rolls is a northwestern home dish: free-range chicken is cut and first stir-fried then simmered, while rolled sheets of dough are cut into small coils and laid over the chicken to cook in the same pot, so the bird turns tender and the rolls drink up the sauce, a one-pot meal of meat and staple.

This dish is popular across the Gansu Hexi Corridor, a folk wisdom of cooking meat and dough together in one pot; with fine local chicken and a deep noodle tradition, Jiayuguan keeps it as a celebratory and guest-worthy centrepiece, handed down through generations.

Brought to the table in its pot, the chicken and rolls are eaten together, each spoonful yielding tender meat, rich sauce and well-soaked rolls, often the main dish of a family meal.

The one-pot union of meat and staple, the falling-apart chicken and the sauce-soaked rolls complementing each other, is the distinctive charm of this dish.