Zòngzi

It is a few days away from our Dragon Boat Festival. Zòngzi is the food that we have on this particular day.

What's in it?

There are different kinds of fillings throughout Asia, but we will focus on different kinds of fillings in Taiwan. In Taiwan, they are made of sticky rice and numerous fillings.

1) Savoury

In our tradition, different parts of Taiwan offer different kinds of zongzi fillings. However, most of the zongzi will have salted duck egg and mushrooms.

Nowadays, people will have any kinds of meat fillings they like. There can be pork, chicken, seafood, or just add whatever they want.

I was having a pork zongzi, the fillings are mushrooms and dried bamboo shoots. The yellow bit is the salted duck egg.

2) Sweet

The sweet kind can be served as desserts. Often paired with mashed red bean or peanut sugar. There is a rhyme that describes how traditionally the zongzi is consumed. It said that the zongzi paired with powder sugar is the best.

Here, I'm having the plain sweet zongzi with honey.

3) Vegetarian

Of course, there are the vegetarian versions of zongzi. Are you interested in trying a vegetarian zongzi, but you can't read Mandarin? If the answer is "Yes", Please check out my last blog on vegetarianism in Taiwan, where I will be giving you a crash course on reading the signs in Mandarin.

Even though we love our tradition, we do not recommend excess consumption of zongzi. For having too much sticky rice will burden our digestive system, it would be safe to have them in moderation.

If you are interested in the history of Duānwǔ Jié (Dragon Boat Festival), then please subscribe, I will be sharing the story of Duānwǔ Jié leading up to May 30th.

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