🍽️ Dalian Starch Jelly

Fried starch jelly with garlic and sesame sauce.

Dalian Starch Jelly is a traditional street snack of Dalian, Liaoning, made from sweet-potato starch. The starch is cooked into a transparent paste, set into blocks, cut into squares and pan-fried until crisp on both sides. Served with garlic sauce, sesame paste, soy sauce and sesame oil, each bite has a crunchy shell over a soft, sticky, slippery interior, rich with garlic and sesame aroma. Dalian is a port city, and the dish began as cheap filling for dock workers and fishermen; today it is a local late-night snack and restaurant cold plate. Frying is the key — crisp outside, glutinous within, tossed with sauces while hot. One of Dalian's most down-to-earth snacks, it captures the street-side atmosphere of the Liaodong Peninsula.