Youtiao, or you tiao, is the Mandarin name for a type of fried Chinese bread stick popular as a breakfast food in China. These bread sticks are made with yeast and are fried in pairs connected in the middle, resulting in a puffy bread with a crispy outside and soft inside. The bread sticks can be served whole, stuffed with meats, or cut up and put in soup.
When served as a breakfast food, particularly in northern China, youtiao is usually paired with hot soy milk, in which the bread stick is dipped. It is also often placed inside sesame flavored flat bread and eaten like a sandwich. Additionally, it may be included in rice porridge or spare-rib soup or filled with shrimp, pork, or beef.
Though homemade recipes for youtiao may suggest shorter bread stick lengths, traditionally these bread sticks are about 12–16 inches (30–40 cm) long and are usually around 1 inch (3 cm) wide. This bread is best served fresh because of its tendency to become tough or elastic if left out too long. Youtiao also contains flour, water, sugar, salt, baking soda, and vegetable oil.
In China, bread sticks are often sold in stalls by street vendors. Street vendors usually add alum — potassium aluminum sulfate crystals — to their recipes, however, in order to increase the puffy, crispy exterior of their bread. Alum should generally be avoided, however, since it often causes digestive troubles.
Youtiao is so popular in China that in 2008 the American fast food restaurant KFC located in Beijing included it as a breakfast option. Though the price of the bread sticks were three times that of the average street vendor price, KFC made a point of advertising that their youtiao was alum free.
The original creation of youtiao dates back to beginning of the last millennium and the Song Dynasty. The corrupt leader of China, Qin Gui, supposedly on the advice of his wife, executed a loyal general, Yue Fei, who was beloved by the people. In anger and protest, a cook created a pair of breadsticks in roughly person shapes, entwining them together and deep frying them, thus symbolically boiling the leader and his wife in oil.
This origin lore is where the Cantonese name for youtiao stems from: you zha gui, literally meaning “deep fried devils” or “deep fried ghosts.” Youtiao has less appealing literal translation, meaning “oil” or “grease stick” in Mandarin. The closest English comparison to youtiao is the doughnut-like cruller.