What do you do with a Fermented Rice Soup?

Laozao, also know as juiniang, is a fermented rice soup - slightly sweet, a bit sour with a warming breath of alcohol. That description really doesn’t sell it very well. It’s an old-school Chinese food, so much so, I feel it’s fallen out of favour with the younger generation, and seen as a novelty food to try when walking down a snack street on the weekend. Something that grandparents eat, but certainly not a cool food.

But cool or not, I find it a unique combination - a pick-me-up that’s also soothing. The first time I encountered laozao was on my first Lantern Festival (yuan xiao) in early spring (always 15 days after the New Year). On Lantern Festival, it’s tradition to eat tangyuan, a kind of small sticky rice dumpling stuffed with black sesame paste, peanut paste or red bean paste. They’re just like small Japanese mochi but served warm and then added to a small bowl of the milky soup. It’s unlike anything in the West - looking into a bowl, the balls are half submerged like sea-mines as tiny translucent rice floats around them like baby fish. It could so easily have been something unpalatable, but after the first spoonful, I fell in love.

The soup is such a versatile little thing, as is often the case with Chinese ingredients. I’ve seen it cropping up in all kinds of dishes across China. A friend of mine eats it for breakfast every day with a scrambled egg dropped into the soup, a practice he swears is common in his hometown outside Wuhan. In Chongqing, I’ve tried it added to bingfen (an iced jelly dessert), in Beijing hole-in-the-walls, it’s sometimes served with honey, nuts and dried berries and in Lanzhou, the Hui minority add a sweet milk to the mix.

It’s a convenience food really: usually bought in jars at the supermarket. A super-quick Chinese desert would be a jar of laozao and a packet of sweet tangyuan from the freezer section. At home, add six or so rice dumplings to a pan and pour in enough water to cover them and boil for about five minutes. Dollop a few big tablespoons of laozao and simmer for just under a minute, it’s best not to boil the soup for long as it becomes sour and the subtle flavour is lost.