Taste Taiwan
台灣
An island whose night markets, breakfast shops and noodle stalls turned Fujianese home cooking, Japanese habits and mainland migration into one of Asia's great snack cultures.
Taiwanese food is small plates and single-dish bowls: braised pork over rice, beef noodle soup, oyster omelettes, scallion pancakes, soup dumplings, folded pork buns and a drink culture that gave the world bubble tea. Soy, rice wine, fried shallots, white pepper and Thai basil are the pantry. Night markets open at dusk and run past midnight; breakfast shops sell soy milk and fried dough sticks from five in the morning. Seafood from the surrounding straits is everywhere. The food is rarely spicy, often slightly sweet, and precise about texture, especially chewiness, which Taiwanese call Q.
6 recipes · 1 cuisine
All dishes 6
- 2 hr 55 min
Taiwanese beef noodle soup
牛肉麵
Taiwan's red-braised beef noodle soup: shin simmered with doubanjiang, soy, tomato and spice over chewy wheat noodles and greens.
Medium
- 2 hr
Lu rou fan
滷肉飯
Taiwan's braised pork belly rice: finely chopped belly simmered in soy, fried shallots and five-spice until sticky, spooned over hot rice.
Easy
- 3 hr 35 min
Gua bao
刈包
Taiwanese steamed folded buns stuffed with soy-braised pork belly, pickled greens, sugared peanuts and coriander.
Medium
- 45 min
Three-cup chicken
三杯雞
Taiwanese three-cup chicken: chicken braised in sesame oil, soy and rice wine with whole garlic, thick ginger and a mound of Thai basil.
Easy
- 1 hr 25 min
Scallion pancake
蔥油餅
Taiwanese scallion pancakes: a hot-water dough rolled, oiled, scattered with spring onion, coiled and pan-fried into flaky layers.
Medium
- 50 min
Bubble milk tea
珍珠奶茶
Taiwanese pearl milk tea: strong black tea shaken with milk and ice over chewy brown-sugar tapioca pearls.
Easy
Regional cuisines
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Take the Taiwan food quizFood history
Hokkien and Hakka settlers from Fujian and Guangdong brought braising in soy, rice cakes and oyster dishes from the seventeenth century. Fifty years of Japanese rule to 1945 left bento boxes, sashimi, tempura and a taste for tidy presentation. In 1949 the Nationalist retreat brought cooks and soldiers from every mainland province, and dishes like red-braised beef noodle soup were invented in their military villages. Economic growth from the 1970s produced the night market snack culture and, in the 1980s, pearl milk tea.
Common ingredients
Techniques
- red-braising in soy and rice wine
- steaming buns and dumplings
- pan-frying laminated doughs
- clay-pot cooking
- deep-frying night market snacks