🍽️ Oil Steamed Bun

Fried millet bun, a festive snack.

Oil Steamed Bun is a traditional festive fried snack of the Yan'an area in northern Shaanxi, especially at New Year and celebrations. Soft glutinous millet (yellow millet) dough is fermented, shaped into small ring cakes with a hole in the middle — like copper coins, symbolizing abundance — and deep-fried until golden. Crisp outside and soft within, it carries the natural sweetness of yellow millet and rich oil aroma, fluffy and sweet when chewed. In Yan'an farm households, the twelfth lunar month is the season for steaming millet, milling flour and frying these buns for the New Year. Best hot from the wok, they also reheat well. One of the most festive pastries of the Loess Plateau, it shares local farmers' joy of harvest and hospitality.