Roujiamo or rougamo () is a

street food Street food is ready-to-eat food or drinks sold by a hawker, or vendor, in a street or at other public places, such as markets or fairs. It is often sold from a portable food booth, food cart, or food truck and is meant for immediate consumpt ...

originating from the

cuisine A cuisine is a style of cooking characterized by distinctive ingredients, techniques and dishes, and usually associated with a specific culture or geographic region. Regional food preparation techniques, customs, and ingredients combine t ...

Shaanxi Province Shaanxi (alternatively Shensi, see § Name) is a landlocked province of China. Officially part of Northwest China, it borders the province-level divisions of Shanxi (NE, E), Henan (E), Hubei (SE), Chongqing (S), Sichuan (SW), Gansu (W), Ningxi ...

and widely consumed all over China. In the United States, it is sometimes called a Chinese hamburger.

Overview

The meat is most commonly

pork Pork is the culinary name for the meat of the domestic pig (''Sus domesticus''). It is the most commonly consumed meat worldwide, with evidence of pig husbandry dating back to 5000 BCE. Pork is eaten both freshly cooked and preserve ...

, stewed for hours in a soup containing over 20 spices and seasonings. Although it is possible to use only a few spices (which many vendors do), the resulting meat is less flavourful. Some alternatives are also available. For example, in Muslim areas in Xi'an, the meat is usually

beef Beef is the culinary name for meat from cattle (''Bos taurus''). In prehistoric times, humankind hunted aurochs and later domesticated them. Since that time, numerous breeds of cattle have been bred specifically for the quality or quantity ...

(seasoned with

cumin Cumin ( or , or Article title
) (''Cuminum cyminum'') is a

Gansu Province Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibet ...

it is often lamb. The meat is then minced or chopped and stuffed in "baijimo", a type of

flatbread A flatbread is a bread made with flour; water, milk, yogurt, or other liquid; and salt, and then thoroughly rolled into flattened dough. Many flatbreads are unleavened, although some are leavened, such as pizza and pita bread. Flatbreads range ...

. An authentic baijimo is made from a wheat flour dough with yeast and then baked in a clay oven, but now in many parts of China, baijimo is made in a frying pan, giving a taste that diverges significantly from the clay oven-baked version. Depending on the types of spices used to cook the meat and the way the bread is made, the taste of roujiamo can vary greatly from vendor to vendor. Roujiamo is not a full meal and is often sold in the form of combo with liangpi. It is found with regional modifications across China. Roujiamo is considered the Chinese equivalent to the Western

hamburger A hamburger, or simply burger, is a food consisting of fillings—usually a patty of ground meat, typically beef—placed inside a sliced bun or bread roll. Hamburgers are often served with cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, bacon, or c ...

and meat

sandwich A sandwich is a food typically consisting of vegetables, sliced cheese or meat, placed on or between slices of bread, or more generally any dish wherein bread serves as a container or wrapper for another food type. The sandwich began as a po ...

es. Roujiamo is considered to be one of the world's oldest types of hamburgers, since the bread or the "mo" dates back to the

Qin dynasty The Qin dynasty ( ; zh, c=秦朝, p=Qín cháo, w=), or Ch'in dynasty in Wade–Giles romanization ( zh, c=, p=, w=Ch'in ch'ao), was the first dynasty of Imperial China. Named for its heartland in Qin state (modern Gansu and Shaanxi), th ...

(221–206 BC) and the meat to the Zhou dynasty (1045–256 BC). However, since people have been stuffing meat inside bread all across the world for centuries, it is unknown where it was done first.

Overview

See also

References

Further reading