Burnt rice tea and baked flatbread

Last updated 2026-11-13 — Burnt rice tea and baked flatbread are the most distinctive staple foods of the summer in Qianjiang. The method for making burnt rice tea involves stir-frying rice in a pot over low heat until it turns golden yellow, then setting it aside. When ready to eat, take a small amount and cook it in cold water — similar to making congee, but use more water when cooking burnt rice tea. Once the rice has bloomed (i.e., the grains have puffed up), it’s ready to eat. Burnt rice tea is generally served chilled. During the roasting process, much of the energy in the rice is consumed, so burnt rice tea is a very low-calorie food. It can relieve summer heat and quench thirst without adding extra calories to the body, making it highly effective for weight loss. Although refreshing, burnt rice tea isn’t very filling for those doing physical labor, which led to the combination of burnt rice tea with baked flatbread. To make baked flatbread, flour is kneaded and left to ferment with a bit of sugar added. Then, the fermented dough is shaped into small rounds about the size of a bowl, sprinkled with sesame seeds, and stuck to the inside of a heated pan where it is roasted over firewood from platycodon roots. It takes just over ten minutes to cook. The baked flatbread has a golden, crisp crust and a white, elastic interior. Eaten together with burnt rice tea, it both cools the body and satisfies hunger.