Flatbreads · FFET10273
Xie ke huang (crab-shell yellow baked pastry)
Xie ke huang is a round Shanghai pastry of layered dough around a filling, coated in sesame and baked golden against the oven wall.
A white porcelain plate holds round golden pastries coated with white sesame, layers showing lean ground pork, bamboo shoot, dried shrimp, chopped scallion and minced ginger, with wooden chopsticks resting beside the plate.
Shaobing, griddle bread, guokui, naan, spring pancakes and other wheat flatbreads.
Xie ke huang is a round baked snack of Shanghai and the Jiangsu-Zhejiang area: an oil dough and a leavened dough enclose a filling, the outside is coated in sesame, and it is baked golden against the wall of an oven. Its name comes from its shape like a cooked crab shell and its color like crab roe. A 2020 article lists it as a Shanghai local snack. Fillings include scallion oil, fresh pork, crab roe, shrimp and sweet fillings. Teahouses and hot-water shops often sold it alongside pan-fried buns. Huizhou in Anhui has a separate baked cake of the same name, made another way.
What
Xie ke huang is a small, round, flaky baked cake with a sesame-coated shell baked golden. The name comes from its resemblance to a cooked crab shell and its crab-roe color. Fillings include scallion oil, fresh pork, crab roe and shrimp, as well as sweet fillings.1,2,3
When
The dates—an appearance in the early 1920s and dedicated shops only in the late 1930s—come from a Shanghai food account's 2020 article; no dated primary record was found.2,3
Where
Shanghai and the Jiangsu-Zhejiang area. Huizhou (Tunxi) in Anhui has a separate baked cake of the same name. The Shanghai kind is a local snack, with Su, Hui and Shanghai styles. The method described here is the Shanghai one.1,2,3
How
Oil dough and leavened dough are rolled and folded into layers, wrapped around a filling and pressed flat, coated in sesame on one side, and baked against a hot oven wall. 2 home recipes set the oven to 190 degrees Celsius, with baking times of 20 to 22 minutes and 25 minutes.1,4,5
Impact and influence
Its designation as one of Shanghai's 10 top snacks is a single English-language recipe's assessment. A 2020 article dates the first dedicated shops to the late 1930s.2,3,5
No tale about this food has been found.
Grandma Li
This is a simplified home version, not the traditional restaurant method.
This is how I make xie ke huang at home, with a fresh pork filling. The amounts and method follow the pork-filled version on a recipe blog by a named author, making 10 pieces; I did the conversions from cups to grams and milliliters. A second recipe comes from a recipe collection that names no individual author and makes a red bean paste version; I put its baking in the tips. Plan on about 1 hour of preparation and about 2 hours of standing.
Ingredients
- Dough: all-purpose flour 280 g
- Lukewarm water 200 ml
- Sugar 1 teaspoon
- Fast-rising yeast 1 1/4 teaspoons
- Flour (to start the yeast) 2 teaspoons
- Corn oil (for the dough) 1 teaspoon, plus a little for hands and board
- Oil paste: all-purpose flour 110 g
- Corn oil (for the oil paste) about 67 g (5 tablespoons)
- White sesame seeds about 1/2 cup (120 ml)
- Filling: lean ground pork 225 g
- Bamboo shoot 50 g, blanched 3 minutes, rinsed and diced
- Dried shrimp 10, soaked in cold water for several hours, then diced
- Chopped scallion 2 tablespoons
- Minced ginger 1 teaspoon
- Cornstarch 1 tablespoon
- Light soy sauce 1 tablespoon
- Premium soy sauce 1 tablespoon
- Sesame oil 1 tablespoon
- White pepper 1/6 teaspoon
- Sugar 1/4 teaspoon
- Salt 2/3 teaspoon
Steps
- Mix the yeast, lukewarm water, sugar and 2 teaspoons of flour and leave it for 10 minutes. Stir it into the 280 g flour to make a dough, add the 1 teaspoon corn oil and knead for about 1 minute. Cover with a damp cloth and let it rise in a warm place until doubled.
- Mix the 110 g flour and about 67 g corn oil into a smooth oil paste, cover and set aside.
- Put all the filling ingredients together and stir in one direction with chopsticks for about 3 minutes, until sticky. Set aside.
- Oil your hands and board, knead the risen dough briefly and divide it into 10 pieces. Roll each into an oval about 10 cm long, spread on one tenth of the oil paste and roll it up into a cylinder. Turn it 90 degrees, press and roll it into a rectangle about 4 by 12 cm and fold the bottom third up and the top third down. Turn it 90 degrees again, roll it into a rectangle about 12 by 20 cm, roll one end over into a short cylinder and then into a small ball. Keep covered so it does not dry out.
- Flatten a ball into a round about 12 cm across, put 2 tablespoons of filling in the middle and pinch the edges closed. Dip the sealed side in the sesame seeds, turn it over so the sesame side faces up, and press and roll it into an oval about 10 cm long. Do the same with the rest.
- Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius and line a baking sheet with parchment. Arrange the pastries on it and bake for 20 to 22 minutes, until golden. Cut one open to check that the pork is cooked through with no pink left, and eat them warm.
Tips
- Stirring the filling in one direction until it turns sticky is how this recipe does it, and I follow it.
- The other recipe makes a red bean paste version, also at 190 degrees Celsius, baked for 25 minutes with about 25 g of paste in each. Its ingredient list is incomplete, with yeast and egg appearing just in the steps, so I borrowed just the baking and did not follow its dough.
Allergens: wheat, sesame, soy, shellfish