What delicious food can you taste in Rizhao?

This soup is cooked with fresh sliced cuttlefish, specially brewed vinegar and clear broth. It tastes sour, spicy and delicious, and helps improve digestion.

Ingredients: jellyfish heads, Chinese cabbage leaves, dried chili peppers, coriander stalks, salt and monosodium glutamate. Carve a watermelon into a melon bowl as the container. Soak the jellyfish heads in clean water to remove excess salt and cut them into pieces; tear the cabbage leaves into chunks. Stir-fry the cabbage leaves in a wok until soft, add blanched jellyfish heads and quickly toss them together. Transfer the dish into the watermelon bowl. The jellyfish heads are crisp and the cabbage remains tender and fresh.

Wenxin Steamed Buns are stuffed with streaky pork and seasonal vegetables, seasoned with sweet flour paste, five-spice powder, stock, peanut oil, salt and MSG. They feature thin wrappers, generous fillings and wonderful flavour.

The wrappers are made from wheat starch, cornstarch, lard, salt and boiling water. They are filled with three fresh ingredients and steamed until done. The dumplings are translucent, smooth and tasty.

Taoluo Mutton Noodles carry a distinctive local flavour. Wheat grains are ground manually on a stone mill into standard 75% extraction flour. For every 100 jin of flour, add 0.5 jin of alkali powder, 0.5 jin of salt and 30 jin of water, then knead thoroughly by hand. The more times the dough is kneaded, the whiter and more elastic the noodles become. Roll out the dough manually until the wrappers are paper-thin and translucent, then cut them into diamond-shaped strips.

Sea cucumbers are braised in oyster sauce and fresh soup, then served with baby bok choy over steamed rice. It is a high-grade dish with balanced nutrition and attractive colours.

Rizhao pancakes are a staple folk food. They are made from wheat flour, sweet potato flour, millet flour and cornmeal. The batter is spread thinly on a hot griddle and baked. The pancakes are paper-thin, pale yellow, fine-textured, sweet and soft. Wheat pancakes paired with tender tofu and chili peppers taste especially marvellous.

Prawns are a famous seafood treasure of Rizhao. They have elongated flat bodies with plump, tender meat, delicious taste and rich nutrition, essential for grand banquets. Besides being eaten fresh, prawns can be processed into headless prawns and peeled shrimp, all top-grade seafood.

Local people in Rizhao also eat insect snacks such as pine caterpillar pupae, cicada nymphs, scorpions and grasshoppers, as well as wild vegetables including sow thistle, cephalanoplos, orach and summer cypress. In the old days when the area was extremely poor, people had to eat whatever was available. They used to eat these foods secretly out of embarrassment. Today, they have become popular delicacies openly served on dining tables.