Eight Treasure Rice
Eight Treasure Rice is a Chinese dish made by steaming glutinous rice with various ingredients. It is often eaten on celebratory occasions, in particular during Chinese New Year.
Significance of name
The name comes from its traditional use of eight ingredients as topping. The number of ingredients are thought to confer the dish with fortuitous meaning due to the similarity between the Mandarin word for eight and the Mandarin word for prosperity.Variations
Sweet variations
Typically glutinous rice is cooked with sugar and then mixed with a fat to add richness. A bowl or mold is lined with the eight treasures and a layer of rice is pressed in. Sweet red bean paste is added to the center before another layer of rice is pressed on top to seal it. The dish is then steamed. It is then inverted and de-molded to showcase the design.Ingredients are frequently carefully selected either for their symbolic value or for their traditional medicinal and therapeutic associations in Chinese medicine. Common dried or candied fruit include, but are not limited to: jujubes, raisins, apricots, goji berries, longans, plums, winter melon. Common nuts include: lotus seeds, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, melon seeds, Job's tears. Exact ingredients differ from family to family.
The dish is typically classified as sweet dim sum.
Savoury variations
The Cantonese and Sichuan versions of Eight Treasures Rice may be savory and contain grilled meat, bacon, sausage, peanuts, etc. Eight treasure rice, made with minced pork, ham, shiitake mushrooms, and bamboo shoots, can be stuffed into the stomach of a gutted duck or chicken and stewed in sake or soy sauce to make a dish called eight treasure duck or chicken.Folkloric history
Various other stories exist as to the origin of this dish including that it was created in honor of eight officials who helped King Wu of Zhou overthrow the previous ruler and found the Zhou dynasty in 1046.History
Eight Treasure Rice was included as one of the dishes provided on Shenzhou 5, China's first crewed spaceflight.Spellings
The name is rendered in multiple accepted forms, varying in capitalization, the use of the numeral “8” or the word “eight,” the singular or plural form of “treasure,” and the inclusion or omission of a hyphen. Most source refer to it as rice but some refer to it as a rice pudding or sticky rice. Some refer to it by its pinyin name of Ba Bao Fan.Alternative names in Chinese also include.