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Chinese Name: 青团
English Name: Qingtuan; Youth League
Category: Snack小吃
Main Ingredients: glutinous rice flour
Qingtuan青团 is a traditional snack that Jiangnan people eat during Qingming Festival清明节. In making green dough, the juice of wormwood is usually mixed into glutinous rice flour and then wrapped into bean paste or lotus paste. It is not sweet or greasy and has a light but long fragrance.
Qingtuan is called and eaten differently in different places. For example, it is called Youth League in Ningbo, Shanghai; the Hangzhou area is called Qingming Tuanzi清明团子. In addition to the bean paste, there are also salty fillings, including pickles, tofu, bacon, etc. In Guizhou, it is called Qingming Ba清明粑; In the Hakka area, the Youth League is called Ai She艾粄, which is the general name for all kinds of glutinous rice and sticky rice cakes in the Hakka dialect.
According to textual research, the name of the Qingtuan has a history of more than 1000 years since the Tang Dynasty唐代, and it is almost necessary to steam the Youth League during the Qingming Festival. In ancient times, people made youth leagues mainly for sacrifice. Although the Youth League has been handed down for thousands of years, its shape has not changed, but its function as a sacrificial product has been increasingly weakened, and it has become a seasonal snack.
Some people use wheat straw, some people use green wormwood juice, and some people use other green leafy vegetable juice and glutinous rice flour to pound and then use bean paste as the filling.
It is said that one Tomb Sweeping Day清明节, Li Xiucheng李秀成, the general of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, was hunted down by the Qing army. A farmer who worked in the field nearby came to help, disguised Li Xiucheng as a farmer, and cultivated the land with him. The soldiers of the Qing Dynasty清朝 did not catch Li Xiucheng, so they did not give up. So they added soldiers and set up posts in the village. Every person who left the village should be checked to prevent them from bringing food to Li Xiucheng.
When the farmer came home, thinking about what to bring Li Xiucheng to eat, he stepped on a clump of wormwood and slipped. When he got up, his hands and knees were stained with green. He immediately had a plan. He quickly picked some wormwood to go home, washed it, boiled it, squeezed juice, and kneaded it into glutinous rice flour to make rice balls.
Then he put the green regiment in the grass and cheated the sentry at the entrance of the village. Li Xiucheng ate the green rice ball and found it fragrant, glutinous, and not sticky. After dark, Li Xiucheng bypassed the Qingbing checkpoint and returned to the base camp safely. Later, Li Xiucheng ordered the Taiping Army to learn to be a youth league to defend itself against the enemy. The custom of eating youth league has spread.
Qingtuan is a food symbol of the Qingming Festival in the south of the Yangtze River. There are many improved ways to eat Qingtuan in the south. The most common way is to wrap the bean paste or egg yolk in the inner filling and make it into a small round ball. Over the years, the classic green dough has also been improving its filling, and some novel sour plum and bacon fillings have also appeared in the market.
There is also a kind of food similar to green dough in the south, which is popular among Hakka people in the south. It is also made of wormwood leaves as the basic raw material, and pressed into a thick round cake and steamed on the leaves for eating, or made into hand-sized dumplings. This type of youth league is called Ai Kui or Ai Ba by the local people. Some of them have no filling and pay more attention to the fragrance of wormwood; Some are filled with white granulated sugar and black and white sesame seeds.
How to make Qingtuan?
Ingredients：
- 300g glutinous rice flour
- 90g clear face
- 12g fine wormwood powder
- 30g lard
- 500g bean paste
- 20g fine granulated sugar
- 300g boiled water
- 80g warm water
Instruction:
- Step 1, The wormwood before Qingming Festival is used. The wormwood at this time is the most tender and very green.
- Step 2, Prepare the ingredients. Blanch the wormwood leaves and mashes them. Add the powder to mix and knead evenly.
- Step 3, Then put the green dough in a pot with cold water and steam for 15 minutes. However, it takes five more minutes to steam the green dough wrapped with meat. You can also wrap some of your favorite fillings in the green dough, such as red beans, sesame seeds, peanut meat floss, etc.
Tips:
- After the green dough is steamed, take it out. You can also wrap the endless green dough with plastic wrap to prevent it from becoming dry.
