🍽️ Diguozhi Chicken

Chicken stew with stuck-on flatbread, northern Jiangsu.

Ground-wok chicken is a rustic famous dish of Xuzhou in northern Jiangsu and neighboring southern Shandong, full of countryside charm. Chicken pieces are stir-fried in a large iron wok with broad bean paste, chilies and seasonings, then braised. Meanwhile, small cornmeal or wheat cakes are stuck onto the inner rim of the wok, half in the sauce, half in the steam. When done, the chicken is fall-apart tender in a glossy red sauce, while the attached cakes have a juice-soaked bottom and a fluffy, smoky top, staple and dish finished in one pan. Eaten straight from the steaming wok, it embodies the hearty, down-to-earth farmhouse cooking of the Jiangsu-Shandong border and is a favorite hard dish for visitors to Xuzhou.