Youtiao (Fried Dough Sticks)

Variations

• Fry one strip on its own and watch. It is the fastest way to understand the dish, and it is disappointing in a way that makes the point: it hardly puffs. Deep frying describes the water flashing to steam at the surface as a defence — "that violent outward bubbling is what keeps the oil from getting in" — and in youtiao that same instant setting is the problem. Once every face has set there is nowhere left to expand. Pairing the strips is a way of deliberately exempting two faces from that mechanism.
• It goes hollow differently from chapati or an éclair. Both of those hollow out a single piece — chapati's steam forces one sheet's two skins apart, and an éclair's shell sets and then the water inside leaves. Youtiao's void is not inside one piece of dough, it is between two of them. The difference is neither the ingredients nor the technique but the count.
• Churros and doughnuts are the near relatives. All three are fried dough: churros are a solid crisp stick that does not inflate, doughnuts rise on gas the yeast made in advance, and only youtiao does its rising inside the oil.
• Bagels already tell the alkali story. Traditional youtiao used alum and sodium carbonate, and because of the aluminium in alum an alum-free formula is now standard in China too. This recipe is that formula: slightly paler, slightly quieter, and the puffing mechanism is unchanged.
• Zhaliang: in Hong Kong a hot youtiao is rolled whole inside a cheung fun sheet and dressed with soy — crisp wrapped in slippery, and one of the best things done with it.
• It has several names. Cantonese calls it yau ja gwai, the north calls it guozi. The widely told story that the two joined strips represent a traitorous official and his wife being fried is a good story rather than a documented one.
• It is all over Southeast Asia. Indonesian and Malaysian cakwe, Thai pathongko, Vietnamese quẩy, Burmese e kya kway are all this, carried by southern Chinese migration — different names, near-identical method.
• How it is eaten: dunked in warm unsweetened soy milk (doujiang youtiao) is the canonical breakfast, and it goes into plain rice congee just as often. Taiwan rolls it inside a fantuan rice roll, and hotpot uses deliberately dried lao youtiao precisely because it drinks the broth.

Tips

• Oil temperature is the whole dish. At 170C it will not inflate, it will only drink oil. Deep frying's "soggy fried food is food that absorbed too much oil" is exactly this, except that here you do not merely get a greasy stick — you do not get the shape at all.
• It is fried once. The reason for a second fry is that the inside needs time; youtiao's inside is a thin wall around a void and is cooked the moment it has inflated.
• The overnight chill is what buys the stretch. Three or four hours at room temperature works at a push, and if the dough springs back in your hands do not pull harder — rest it another ten minutes. It is a time problem, not a strength problem.
• Wet the joining face. Pressed together dry, the two strips simply come apart in the oil.
• Do not cut through with the chopstick. Press only as far as leaving a firm groove. Cut through and you have two plain sticks.
• Stretch it as it goes in, not before. Stretched early it springs back.
• Roll it without stopping. Let one side cook alone and that side sets first and the stick bends.
• Three minutes in a 200C oven brings a cooled one a long way back. A microwave does the opposite.