Youtiao (油条, yóu tiáo) is a length of wheat dough deep-fried until it puffs hollow, eaten hot at breakfast, usually with soy milk or rice porridge. In English it is called Chinese fried dough, a Chinese cruller, a fried dough stick, or a Chinese donut. The name itself is plain: 油 is oil, 条 is a strip.
It is sold in pairs joined down the middle, because the two pieces are pressed together before they go into the oil and puff apart as they fry.
The Other Names
In Cantonese-speaking places youtiao is often called yau ja gwai, written 油炸鬼, “oil-fried ghost.” A variant spelling, 油炸桧, points at the origin story further down this page.
In much of northern China the everyday word is simply 果子, guozi — in the north, guozi means youtiao. That is why the Tianjin breakfast wrap is called jianbing guozi: the fried piece inside it is the guozi.
The Older Fried Dough Is a Different Food
Fried dough is very old in China, but the food the old books describe in detail is not youtiao.
馓子 sanzi — called 寒具 hanju and 环饼 huanbing in early texts — is fine strands of dough coiled and fried until they are brittle. The sixth-century agricultural manual Qimin yaoshu gives a method for it; the Southern Song account of Hangzhou’s streets, the Meng liang lu, has it sold from stalls at first light, which is about as clear a picture of street food as a medieval text gives. Sanzi is still made and sold today. It is dry and crisp, a snack, sold beside youtiao rather than as youtiao.
Sanzi is a subject of its own, and we are not going to work through it here. It matters on this page for one reason: in the earliest list where the word youtiao appears, the two are named separately, on the same line.
How It Is Made, and Why It Comes in Pairs
Nothing about youtiao waits on yeast. The rise is chemical: salt and alkali are dissolved in warm water first, along with a raising agent — alum in the older shop formulas, a commercial baking powder in most stalls now — and the flour goes in afterwards. The dough is then worked hard, kneaded and lifted and slapped back down into the basin, until it blisters, turns springy and stops sticking to the hands. It rests in stages: about an hour, then folded in from the sides and pressed flat again, then a further two hours or so, longer in cold weather. What comes out is slack and wet rather than stiff. It is never rolled thin or shaped by pressure; it is cut into strips and pulled.
The pair is made at the last moment. Two strips are laid back to back with their ends level, and a thin stick is pressed down the middle to join them. The two ends are pinched so they will not come apart in the oil. Then the joined pair is lifted, drawn out to length between two hands, and dropped in.
The oil runs hotter than most frying, and the window is narrow. Too hot and the outside colours before the inside is cooked, and the piece never swells properly; too cool and it does not swell either, and comes out hard. In the pan each pair is turned four or five times with long chopsticks, which are also used to pinch a piece back into shape if it twists in the oil, or to tease the two halves apart if they have stuck together flat.
Everything in that sequence — slack dough, a long rest, the hard pull to length, very hot oil — is arranged to make the piece inflate within seconds and set before it can fall back. That is where the hollow comes from, and why a youtiao that arrives heavy and solid was almost certainly fried in oil that was not hot enough.
When “Youtiao” Appears
The word itself shows up late in anything we have been able to check.
The earliest occurrence we can put our hands on is in a 1909 survey of Chengdu, in the entry for fried cakes sold in the street:
油糕 一早方出，有铺售者、提篮售者，三文、四文。其品目有馓子、合糖油糕、灯笼窝、油条、糍粑、果子、麻花等名目。
“Yougao: out first thing in the morning, sold both from shops and from baskets, three or four cash. The kinds include sanzi, sugar-mixed yougao, denglongwo, youtiao, ciba, guozi and mahua.”
Two things are worth noticing. Youtiao is listed as one item among several, not as the name of the category. And sanzi is on the same line, as its own entry — the clearest evidence we have that the two were understood as different things.
For Beijing there is a writer’s list rather than a survey. Tang Lusun, recalling the city he grew up in, writes that what people ate with a shaobing came in many forms:
北平油条分长套环（脆麻花儿）、圆套环、糖饼儿、甜糖果子、薄脆、锅篦儿，种类繁多，甜咸焦脆，各尽其妙。
“Beiping youtiao came as long loops (crisp mahua), round loops, sugar cakes, sweet sugar guozi, thin crisps, and pot-scrapers — many kinds, sweet and salty, crisp and brittle, each with its own merit.”
(Beiping was the name Beijing went by for part of the twentieth century. This is a recollection, written down decades later.) The editor of this site knows the fourth of those, tian tang guozi, from experience rather than from a text: the same dough as youtiao, rolled out flat into a round, with a layer of sugar spread over it before it goes into the oil.
That name needs one caution. 糖果子 in Song-dynasty Kaifeng meant something else entirely — a sugared sweet sold at markets and at festivals, not fried dough at all. That is a separate subject; here we only note that the same three characters have covered two different foods.
The Qin Hui Story
The best-known story about youtiao is that it began as an insult. The Southern Song minister Qin Hui, blamed for the death of the general Yue Fei, is said to have been mocked by a street vendor who shaped two pieces of dough into a man and a woman, pressed them together and threw them into hot oil — hence 油炸桧, “oil-fried Hui,” later heard as 油炸鬼, “oil-fried ghost.” The story is repeated everywhere, in Chinese and in English, and it explains the joined pair neatly.
It is also built into the names of things people still buy. Hangzhou sells a snack called 葱包桧儿 congbao guir — a finished youtiao flattened on a griddle, rolled up in a thin pancake with scallions and pressed until the outside crisps — and the name means “Hui wrapped up with scallions.” 油炸桧 is still a live spelling for youtiao itself. That tells you how widely and how long the story has been told. It does not tell you that the thing it describes happened.
We have not found the record it rests on. Modern accounts state it as fact without saying where it comes from, and in the Song material we can read, fried dough is sold all over the streets and nobody attaches a name or a grudge to it.
So take it as a story. It is a good one and an old one, and the names it left behind are real and in daily use. What nobody seems able to produce is the page where the account was first written down.
Youtiao, Churros, and the American “Chinese Donut”
Several things get mixed up in English, and they are easy to keep apart.
| What it is | How it tastes | |
|---|---|---|
| Youtiao 油条 | Wheat dough, chemically raised, fried in a long joined pair | Salty, crisp outside and soft inside, eaten with soy milk or porridge |
| Churro | Choux-type batter piped through a star nozzle, ridged | Sweet, dense, usually sugared after frying |
| “Chinese donut” in an American Chinese restaurant | Small balls of dough fried and rolled in sugar | Sweet, a dessert, not a breakfast |
| Sanzi 馓子 | Fine strands of dough coiled and fried brittle | Dry and crisp, a snack, sold beside youtiao |
| Mahua 麻花 | Strands of dough twisted together and fried | Hard and dense, a snack, keeps for days |
A search for “Chinese donut” in the United States returns both the youtiao and the sugared dough balls, which is why the phrase is a poor guide to what will arrive at the table.
How It Is Eaten
Soy milk or rice porridge, most commonly, and it has to be hot. Straight out of the oil the outside is crisp and the inside is soft and steamy.
There is a way of doing it that is worth knowing. Dip a piece into the soy milk — quickly, a second at most — and get it into your mouth before the crisp goes. The shell still crackles, the inside is soft and warm, and the sweetness of the soy milk has gone through it. That one mouthful is the whole point of the thing.
In the north it is also pushed inside a split shaobing, the flatbread that shows up on the same Song market lists, and in Tianjin it is the crisp piece rolled into a jianbing wrap. It is breakfast food; stalls that sell it are open early and closed by mid-morning, and the stall standing next to them is often selling douhua.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is youtiao in English?
There is no settled English name. It is called Chinese fried dough, a Chinese cruller, a fried dough stick and a Chinese donut, none of which is exact. The Chinese name is a description: 油 oil, 条 strip.
Why does youtiao come in pairs?
Because it is made that way. Two strips of dough are laid back to back, joined down the middle with a thin stick, and pinched at both ends so they hold together in the oil; they puff apart as they fry and arrive joined along one seam. The best-known explanation for why anyone started doing this is the Qin Hui story above, which we cannot source.
Why is youtiao hollow?
Because the whole method aims at it: a slack dough raised chemically rather than with yeast, a long rest, a hard pull to length, and oil hotter than ordinary frying, so the piece inflates in seconds and sets before it can collapse. One that comes out heavy and solid was usually fried too cool.
Is youtiao the same as churros?
No. A churro is made from a cooked batter piped through a star nozzle and is normally sweet; youtiao is wheat dough, fried in a joined pair, and is salty. The resemblance is the shape and the oil, and nothing else.
Is youtiao the same as sanzi?
No. Sanzi is fine strands of dough coiled and fried until brittle, eaten dry as a snack. It is older in the written record than youtiao and it is still sold today, often at the same stall.
What is a Chinese donut called?
If what you mean is the long savory stick eaten at breakfast, it is youtiao, or yau ja gwai in Cantonese, or simply guozi in much of northern China. If what you mean is the sweet fried dough balls served in American Chinese restaurants, that is a different item, and the Chinese name for it varies with the restaurant.
What do you eat youtiao with?
Soy milk or rice porridge, most commonly; in the north it is also pushed inside a split shaobing, and it is the crisp piece rolled into a Tianjin breakfast wrap. It is breakfast food, and it is eaten while it is hot.
Sources
The Chinese passages above are quoted from the editions named, in the characters those editions print.
- Fu Chongju 傅崇矩, Chengdu tonglan 成都通览 (1909) — “Chengdu zhi jieshi putong shipin” 成都之街市普通食品.
- Jia Sixie 贾思勰, Qimin yaoshu 齐民要术 (sixth century) — “Bing fa” 饼法, for the sanzi method referred to above.
- Wu Zimu 吴自牧, Meng liang lu 梦梁录 (Southern Song) — the Hangzhou street sellers referred to above.
The following is a recollection, written down decades after the events it describes:
- Tang Lusun 唐鲁孙 — “Er tan Beiping de dute shipin” 二谈北平的独特食品.
The working method described above is the trade’s own, as it is set down in Chinese catering manuals; those are not quoted here.
For how we check a passage before it appears here, see our page on editorial method. The dated list of the earliest record we can check for each dish is on the earliest records page.