Yunnan Cuisine is a blend of long and diverse food and ethnic culture. It is delicious and fresh with a fragrance or pure beauty and boasts a unique lasting appeal.
The cuisine in northeast Yunnan similar in cooking methods and flavours as the Sichuan style. The cuisine of ethnic minorities constitutes the principal part of dishes in western and southwest Yunnan. While the food in the south typifies the essence of Yunnan cuisine.
Features of Yunnan cuisine: a wide range of raw ingredients and flavours, with distinctive characteristics coming from the mountains and waters.
The flavours are fresh and tender, with a delicate fragrance, a sour and hot balance. They preserve the original characteristics of the source ingredients.
Yunnan cuisine has been growing in popularity in recent years. It has a long history, with multi-ethnic characteristics, a wide range of raw ingredients, unique and diversified cooking methods. It represents the past and the present, offering various tastes with broad and rich contents.
These features are formed through thousands of years of history, originating from the ancient Yunnan State between the Spring and Autumn Warring States Period and the Western and Eastern Han Dynasties and the Dali State in the Tang and Song Dynasties. It went through the big change and development during the Yuan and Ming Dynasties and formed in the middle Qing Dynasty.
The cuisine has the bright features of ethnic minorities, combining the traditions of 25 of them with that of the Han ethnic group.
Representative cuisine in each region:
Kunming
Steam pot chicken, small pot rice noodle, stewed waterless rice noodle, sit kuil, Guandu rice cake, Niliang roast duck, Kunyang pot-stewed duck, Chenggong pea flour, tofu pudding rice noodle and flower cake.
Qujing
Xuanwei ham, Zhanyi chilli chicken, steamed waterless rice noodle and fried potato.
Yuxi
Jiangchuan three dishes, Chengjiang lotus root flour, schizothorax taliensis, copper pot fish, big head carp, cold rice noodle, eel rice noodle, waxgourd candied fruit, oil spiced sauce, bean foam sugar, oil termitornyces albuminosus heim and papaya juice.
Zhaotong
Gastrodia elata stewed chicken and Zhaotong sauce.
Baoshan
Tengchong fried rice cake, Tengchong waterless rice noodle, Baoshan mung bean and steamed rice flour roll.
Lincang
Chicken rice, rice cake roll, thin beam flour and Yunnan black tea.
Pu'er
Edible wild herbs, white noodle, ethnic dishes.
Lijiang
Lijiang rice cake, Yongsheng golden tea, Naxi roast fish, preserved spareribs, spirulina, sit zond, yellow bean noodle, Lijiang salmon, Pipa meat and Jidou pea jelly salad.
Chuxiong
Wild fungus and Yi ethnic dishes.
Dali
Bai style three-course tea, milk fan, river water boiled fish, Erhai lake seaweed, steak waterless rice noodle, sit kuil, Midu bundled pork and silver fish.
Nujiang
Nujiang fish, pomegranate, chestnut, flagstone soba cake and liquor stewed egg.
Diqing
Buttered tea, barley wine, Tibetan bacon meat and milk dry food.
Honghe
Mengzi cross bridge rice noodle, Jianshui burnt tofu, Kaiyuan mini rice flour roll, Mengzi sweet pomegranate, Hekou mini rice flour roll and Shiping tofu.
Wenshan
Pseudo-ginseng stewed chicken and other pseudo-ginseng dish series, sour soup chicken, sour soup beef, wild fungus, sit kuil and coloured sticky rice.
Dehong
Dai style dishes, Dai style bamboo rice, pineapple rice, boiled beef, milk-rice juice, Mangshi fruit and tropical fruit.
Xishuangbanna
Dai style bamboo rice, pineapple rice, fresh bamboo shoots, ant eggs, wild fungus and tropical fruit.
