Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi Province in North China, is legendary as “the northern capital of table delicacies” and its food culture is rich in the northwest flavor. Please do not miss Xi’an snacks when you are in Xi'an City. You would not know how delicious Xi'an featured snacks are unless you taste them.
Mutton Paomo
It is not exaggerated to say that tourists to Xi’an must do two things: one is to visit the Terracotta Warriors and Horses. The other is to taste Mutton Paomo. Mutton Paomo with a long history consists of a mutton soup and a piece of wheat flour flat bread. The mutton is usually cooked with scallion, ginger, wild pepper, aniseed, fennel, cinnamon and some of the other seasonings, and the mutton soup is retained for using.
When eating the food, the eater must tear the bread to pieces and soak the bread in the mutton soup. Then the mixture is eaten along with mutton soup, pickled garlic cloves, cabbages, cooking wine, vermicelli, and salt etc.
Roujiamo
Roujiamo is made of mincemeat wrapped by griddle steamed bread. Before the mincemeat is made, the meat(with bones) must be boiled with wine, salt, rock candies, fresh gingers, shallot stems, and then a voile bag with more than twenty flavorings such as teasel nuts, cardamom seeds, cloves, cinnamons, aniseeds, prickly ashes etc is put into the boiler to cook with the meat for about 3 or 4 hours. Then the meat is scooped up from the boiler.
When eating this food, the mincemeat is put into between two pieces of just-made (not ready-made) griddle steamed bread. It looks something like sandwich but very different from sandwich in flavor. The bread tastes tender and crisp. And the mincemeat is incarnadine, pure and savory when eating.
Qishan Noodles
Qishan Noodles originated in Qishan County and hence it is named after the county name. They have a long history and became famous as early as the Qing Dynasty. The noodles must be hand-made of fine wheat flour. The ingredients include minced pork, dried lily flowers, eggs, bean curd, garlic stems and many condiments. They are thin, pliable, smooth, hot, watery, sour, and spicy.
Cold Noodles
Cold noodles are generally made from the wheat or rice flour through steaming. Cold noodles are served after they are mixed with gluten, bean sprouts, sliced cucumber, chili oil, soy sauce, vinegar, and garlic sauce. It is usually served as cold snack. Sometimes, they can be served as a hot snack after they are stir-fried with sliced meat, sausage and greens.
Besides, there many tasty snacks in Xi’an City, such as sour cabbage and beef fried rice, beef noodles, fried persimmon cake (Shizibing), fried dumpling (Guotie), stir-fried bean jelly (Chaoliangfen), and beef and vegetable pie (Xi’anbing).