Fried Flour Power
If it wasn’t for a trashy Wechat account’s slow news day that somehow got this story to the top slot, I would have forgotten all about this tasty treat from my childhood. The gossip piece was about how a grandmother in a small village would cut baby formula for her grandkid with fried flour to save money. While fried flour won’t hurt babies, it doesn’t have the nutritional benefits of formula.
But that’s not to say it’s not delicious. So, what is fried flour?
If you do a quick Google search, you’d be surprised at how little information there is about it. It’s not like it’s a delicacy or anything. It’s a common snack, especially among our grandparents’ generation.
Fried flour (chaomianfen), is exactly that. It’s everyday flour used for making dumplings, noodles, or whatever, slowly fried in oil over low heat until it turns golden. It’s a dish that was created out of necessity. While there’s very little nutritional value, it keeps you from going hungry. It’s only in the recent years that people have started adding oils, sugar and nuts for flavor.
I have so many memories from when I was little of my grandmother cooking up batches of fried flour in her kitchen. No one ever requested fried flour from her, and truth be told, it doesn’t come close to making the list of tastiest things to leave her kitchen. But she’d make it occasionally and keep it around for whenever someone needed a quick snack to tackle the hangry monster before it got out of control, so to speak.
Nowadays, fried flour can still be found in certain restaurants specialising in classic Beijing food and, of course, in grandmas’ kitchens.
It takes a lot of patience to make fried flour. It involves constant stirring to keep clumps from forming and to make sure every bit gets thoroughly cooked.
To eat fried flour, you need just one more step. After fried flour has finished cooking, you stir in hot water until you get a smooth, paste-like consistency. Sounds a bit like baby food, doesn’t it? Now you get why that grandmother gave it to her young grandkid?
While this humble snack isn’t impressive in appearance, it’s certainly is good comfort food, especially when your stomach needs some settling. The nutty aromatic flavors of the roasted nuts and flour make it a perfect snack for a cold winter day. When you’re super hungry or not feeling so great, a bowl of hot fried flour feels like the warm hug that helps you settle back down and feel like yourself again.