Can’t Quit High Sugar and Oil? Then Hand-Make Healthy Snacks | Grandma Kouzi

I headed to the town market and, within three paces, came across two snack stalls.

One was a local elderly woman. She has a fixed spot in the market—perched on a small stool, keeping watch over a pot of hot oil, frying and selling Dengzhan Gao fresh off the pan. The instant I raised my phone to snap a photo, she asked how many I would like to buy, and I hurriedly stowed the phone and fled the scene.

Beside the Dengzhan Gao stall was an itinerant peddler. This middle-aged man, who fairs from market to market, pushed a specially modified cart selling ready-made “Jin Bao Yin”—a golden-fried glutinous rice cake sandwiching a sesame-and-white-sugar glutinous rice cake. Not wanting the embarrassment of being pitched another sale, I simply took a photo from a distance.

Stepping out of the market, the most prominent spot around the corner was taken by a snack shop called “Tang Chao”. You don’t even need to go in, let alone pore over the ingredient list—the name alone tells you the sugar content.

These days, snacks are either high in sugar or high in oil, and some are both. For people living with the “three highs”—high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and high cholesterol—they are deadly.

What has become of our snacks?

The Han People’s Harvest Festival

The two local snacks I barely escaped earlier are both traditional delicacies with deep roots.

As for why it is called Dengzhan Gao, one account says the finished product resembles an ancient soybean-oil lamp dish, while another holds that the small iron pan used to fry it looks like a lamp dish from the oil-lamp era.

A local Fujianese friend, younger than me, told me that when he was a child, the once-a-year batch of Dengzhan Gao was something children kept thinking about for a whole year. Back then, everyday fare was plain soup and water, with no fat to be seen. You had to wait until spring, when the rapeseed oil was pressed, before anyone would fry a batch of Dengzhan Gao. The ratio was three parts rice to one part soybean, soaked the night before. The next day, the mixture had to be ground into a fine paste on a stone mill, then seasoned with salt, chopped scallion, or chopped green garlic. The fire was lit, the oil heated, and the small iron pan set in to preheat. Once it was properly hot, the pan was lifted, the rice-and-soybean batter poured in, and the whole thing dipped back into the oil. The children stood by, eyes wide, waiting for the batter to swell with heat and rise as a Dengzhan Gao bobbing on the surface. Fresh from the oil, it was fragrant, shatteringly crisp, and still steaming.

Jin Bao Yin was added to the local intangible cultural heritage list in 2018. Both the “gold” and the “silver” use glutinous rice as their main ingredient. The “gold” is a mixture of glutinous rice flour and wheat starch or tapioca flour, kneaded until smooth, flattened, and fried until it puffs into a golden ball that floats to the surface. The “silver” can be prepared in a manner similar to ciba (a pounded sticky rice cake): first steam the glutinous rice, then pound it and add sugar; alternatively, mix glutinous rice flour with water and sugar and steam until cooked. If glutinous rice flour is used, it must be of extremely fine quality—the so-called water-milled rice flour.

Most families could make Dengzhan Gao, but Jin Bao Yin takes considerably longer, is more exhausting, and is all the rarer for it. It is not hard to imagine how wonderful a memory Dengzhan Gao and Jin Bao Yin must have been for children decades ago.

My childhood had its own similar sweet memories. The difference is this: in Fujian, the delicacy was rice; in Shandong, it was wheat.

Before I was old enough for school, I lived with my mother, who was a teacher, at a middle school in the countryside. The children in the village had virtually no snacks. The most wonderful memory I have involving food came every year after the wheat harvest, when my maternal grandmother would roast the new wheat in an iron wok until it was cooked through, then take it to the grinding mill to be pressed into flour, sieve it, mix in a little brown sugar, and knead it into a ball with cooled boiled water. I treasured that egg-sized brown ball of dough, cradling it in the palm of my hand. Each time I would take just a tiny bite, slowly sipping and savouring it in my mouth for ages before swallowing.

Every time the wheat ripened, I counted the days for that one mouthful. From the moment my maternal grandmother started sorting the wheat, washing it, and roasting the kernels, I stayed glued to her side. The roasted wheat had to be ground for a very long time; the finer the grind, the tastier the sifted roasted flour. I could never keep my cravings in check and kept nudging her, while my bound-foot grandmother pushed the mill round and round, soothing me and telling me to hang in there. That was the only snack I had before moving to the city at seven. Those sweet, beautiful, yet agonisingly long spring days are the most wonderful memory of my childhood.

Later, when I was filming a documentary, I experienced some of the festival celebrations of ethnic minority groups. The Han people are not known for singing-and-dancing ceremonies, but that ball of sweet, wheat-scented roasted flour—well, that was my harvest festival.

I suppose that for the elderly woman selling Dengzhan Gao at the market, it must be much the same.

From a Symbol of Abundance to a Killer of Health

I was born in hunger, raised in hunger. The Three-Year Famine had passed by then, but our family was large. My parents raised five of us siblings, and with Grandma and Grandpa in the mix, they also had to look after aunts and uncles out in the countryside. Of this whole household, only four people held urban household registration and a guaranteed grain supply; day to day, the rest of us ran on “premium-price grain.” I remember that for many years, at every meal we would first drink a large bowl of hybrid sorghum porridge before the actual food, so we could manage with fewer steamed buns. Hybrid sorghum is a wretched coarse grain—you cannot steam it into buns or spread it into pancakes. Only families with neither grain coupons nor money would have it.

In those hungry years, many things were pressed into service as both food and medicine. When I was small, a child suffering from diarrhoea would be given a “roasted-flour drink.” The flour was first dry-roasted in an iron wok over low heat, pushed from a faint yellow to a shade deeper—yellowish-brown, the colour of something just about to scorch but not quite—then mixed with boiling water into a paste. Drunk down, it would settle the diarrhoea. For indigestion, a sheet of dough was rolled out as thin as a cicada’s wing and baked in a flat pan over low heat until it was bone-dry and shatteringly crisp, the surface faintly charred. The result was called a “charred crisp.”

Using scorched flour to stop diarrhoea works on a principle close to that of montmorillonite powder. For resolving digestive stagnation, as the charred crisp does, there is also burnt steamed bun crumbs soaked in water. When I became a farmer in the south, I found that rice is what takes on a similar role there. Roasted rice tea, made from scorched brown rice, is also used to regulate the stomach and spleen.

In the agricultural age, rice and wheat were both the staple grains that sustained basic survival and a source of precious, rare enjoyment—hard-won snacks. Making your own snacks first and foremost meant planning within your means; nobody just improvised. You had to set aside the grain for the whole family’s meals before anything else. In times when the harvest was relatively plentiful, eating a little extra refined, high-calorie food that your body would convert into stored fat meant that, when the old grain ran out and the new harvest was still to come, you had a lifeline. That is an instinct inherited through the millennia. Humanity has evolved to this day through long ages of regularly having nothing to eat, or not enough to eat. The ones who survived carry in their genes a love of higher-energy food.

By the late 1970s, our household no longer had to drink sorghum porridge. That was when my uncle brought back “Eight Treasures Tangshang” from Tianjin. The main ingredient was also roasted flour—flour roasted in oil—plus a range of add-ins: sesame and walnut kernels, candied green-and-red shreds, candied osmanthus, and raisins, along with sugar. Very, very sweet. By today’s standards, a drink like that would be, without a doubt, a sugar-and-oil bomb for your health.

Even if my maternal grandmother had added sugar sweet enough to her homemade roasted flour, it would have been a completely different thing from Eight Treasures Tangshang—the difference between “food of the agricultural era” and “foodstuffs of the commercial era.” That bowl of exquisitely delicious Eight Treasures Tangshang was the product of nationwide, industrialised food production and distribution. The raisins came from Xinjiang, the sesame and walnuts from the northwest, the candied osmanthus from the Jiangnan region, the candied green-and-red shreds from northern China, the sugar from the south, and the flour from the north.

That was still in the planned-economy era. Today, supermarket shelves are stuffed with all manner of constantly reinvented, high-sugar, high-fat snacks. In an age when widespread hunger was the norm, these delicious, high-calorie treasures, once they entered the body, were immediately converted into energy to make up the body’s deficit; only if there was a surplus was there any chance of it being converted into fat. Things are different now. The fat stored in a modern person’s body simply won’t budge. What were once rare, hard-won delicacies have thus become modern people’s health killers.

  Can We Still Eat Snacks?

So—snacks, can we still eat them? Yes.

The pleasure that good food brings is something no human being can resist, and doesn’t need to. I am writing this article while munching through snacks: dried pumpkin, high in sugar; roasted peanuts, high in fat.

At Eren Valley, whether it is a proper meal or a snack, it all comes down to asking the land for your food—eat what you have, grow what you want. But you cannot carry the land on your back wherever you go. When I went back to the old hometown to look after my parents while they were still with us, I had to fall back on buying, buying, buying—including buying snacks.

Buying is not the problem; not knowing how to buy is. Healthy snacks do exist—you just need a discerning eye to pick out the gems from the thicket of additives.

My guidelines for buying snacks are as follows:

First, I go primarily for raw, unflavoured nuts and turn down all the pre-cooked, ready-to-eat packets, which are very likely to contain sweeteners or free sugars. I do not shop online, either. Instead, I go to a larger department store and pick only the loose, bulk items that let you sample first. If I can get to a farmers’ market, all the better—everything there can be tried before you buy.

Nuts are rich in oil, and as a rule, after about a year they go rancid and the flavour turns. Past-expiry or near-expiry nuts get extra fragrance and seasoning—cream, five-spice, málà (spicy-numbing)—the heavy flavours there to mask that rancid, off taste. Peanuts, walnuts, apricot kernels, peach kernels, almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds—I only buy them raw, then roast them at home in an air fryer or a regular oven. My usual setting is 130 °C for an hour; if I have the patience, I can drop it a further five degrees and stretch the time to two hours. Nuts roasted at low temperature for a long while come out properly crisp with a natural, faint sweetness. If the temperature is too high and they char, that sweetness is gone.

Second, for sweet snacks, jujubes are the mainstay. I look for jujubes with firm, meaty flesh—dog-head jujube or grey jujube. Dried fruit works too: raisins or dried blueberries. A lot of the dried fruit in supermarkets is a sugar-laden processed product, so you really need to check the ingredient list carefully and go for pure dried fruit. The catalogue for the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market lists plenty of sweet snacks with no added sugar. Dried figs, dried sweet potato, dried pineapple, and dried apple are all good options.

Taking a mouthful of dried jujubes with walnuts or peanuts is my all-time favourite snack pairing—it only gets more fragrant the longer you chew. Yes, the jujubes are plenty sweet, the peanuts plenty oily, and the calories are well up there. But the 100 Calories eaten this way produce a very different result from the 100 Calories in a glass of cola. The dietary fibre in the jujubes and peanuts boosts your sense of fullness, keeps blood sugar rising slowly, and delays the absorption of sugars and fats. The fibre, having given its all, is even converted into vitamins in the large intestine, and whatever is left over sweeps away any accumulated old stool on its way out before leaving the gut.

Hand-Made Healthy Snacks

Back at Eren Valley, the variety of snacks expands considerably. Making this kind of snack is a bit of a hassle, but the difficulty is not really high. Once you have done it once, you can freely improvise and let your creativity run wild.

The simplest entry point is a sugar-free sweet drink—roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa) with stevia. The difficulty is essentially zero.

Roselle, also called méiguīqié, has a thousand good qualities and one bad one—it is very tart. So many people steep roselle with sugar or honey added. But roselle paired with sugar neatly cancels out its original benefits.

My method lets you make a roselle drink that is sweet and lovely to drink, without the harm of sugar—typically four or five roselle blossoms per cup, paired with four stevia leaves. Water that is too hot makes the roselle astringent; steep it in lukewarm water and the flavour releases slowly. Not only is there no astringency, but the roselle’s gorgeous colour and the stevia’s sweetness both come through gently. If you happen to have some rose petals, a few of those work nicely too. Roselle drink is a beauty to look at—poured into a stemmed glass, it is the perfect match for a festive table. It makes a wonderful sweet-drink substitute for children, and for adults it works as a stand-in for red wine. Besides stevia, luóhanguǒ and mùjiāngyè kē also serve as sweet alternatives.

Eren Valley also makes its own yogurt. Yogurt is a good thing, but “yogurt” or “yogurt drinks” with added sugar or sweeteners are not—harmful to the liver in the same way as sweetened beverages. It is not impossible to find genuinely sugar-free yogurt in shops, but I have always been sceptical of my luck, so I chose not to take the risk. I make it myself, and luckily came across a simple method for homemade yogurt.

My starter culture was an unexpected gift. Four years ago, a friend’s family came to visit and left behind a food container with kefir grains in it. Before that, I had tried buying non-heat-treated yogurt as a starter, adding milk to keep it going, but after a few rounds the activity always declined. I had also tried buying dried lactic acid bacteria and yogurt culture in sachets—about the same result. Then I found my friend’s container, and it has been going strong ever since. The kefir grains have even come with me on flights and train rides: I spread the yogurt on a clean handkerchief, and once I have landed, a quick rinse in water yields the grains, ready to go. I make it wherever I am.

Usually at Eren Valley, I make yogurt in a dedicated glass jar. I do not use liquid milk—imported full-cream milk powder mixed with water, a touch on the thick side. I scoop out as much as I eat, the starter stays at the bottom of the jar, then I add the prepared milk powder again. An infinite loop.

There are many ways to enjoy yogurt. Extra-thick yogurt has a hint of soft, creamy cheese and a mild tang. Those who cannot stand sour need not push themselves—add some sweetness. Banana is yogurt’s best fruit companion. You can also make a homemade dried-fruit-and-nut yogurt: soak rinsed raisins or dried blueberries in advance for about half an hour; they swell as they absorb water and the texture improves. Add a little pumpkin seed, chopped almonds, and sunflower seeds, and the yogurt is elevated out of its league.

For households with children, make fruit smoothies with homemade yogurt. Put the yogurt and fruit in the high-speed blender and blend for 30 to 60 seconds. If it is too thick, add water; on hot days, add ice cubes. You can also build on the nut-yogurt recipe above with extra toppings. Homemade ice cream works too: wash and chop the fruit, freeze it, then combine with yogurt in the high-speed blender and blend until smooth. Whatever is left over goes back in the freezer.

As for Eren Valley’s signature homemade sweet snacks, the perennial champion is dried pumpkin.

Pumpkin has a high fructose content, and making it into dried pumpkin not only improves the texture but increases the sweetness, making it even more suitable as a snack—the sweetness on your tongue is comparable to candy. I have tried several methods for dried pumpkin and will go straight to the tastiest one, which is also the most labour-intensive. (For other methods, see this post: No Shivering Required: The Right Way to Hibernate in the South | Grandma Kouzi)

Choose a fairly sweet, well-ripened pumpkin. I would advise avoiding bibei pumpkin and chestnut pumpkin, which have a higher starch content. Peel it, cut into rings, and hang them somewhere well ventilated and lit by daylight for about ten days. After that, steam them in a bamboo steamer for 20 minutes once the water is boiling and the steam is up, or 25 minutes in the microwave. Every stove and pot is slightly different—judge by feel and aim for just-cooked. If they go soft and mushy, they will not hold their shape. Finish by sun-drying. Through three rounds of steaming and three of drying, you end up with finished dried pumpkin: translucent, soft and glutinous in texture, sweeter than before. One thing to note: fully dehydrated dried pumpkin will be very hard. If you want that soft, glutinous texture, do not dry it too thoroughly, or steam it before eating until it is just the right balance of soft and firm.

I have always firmly resisted store-bought candy, but the children at home love it. My solution is to make it myself.

Maltose syrup and raw peanuts, walnuts, cashews, sunflower seeds, and sesame, in the ratio 1.5: 1: 1: 1: 1: 1. The homemade nut candy made this way comes in at roughly one-sixth the sweetness of typical store-bought candy.

First, spend an hour roasting the nuts. Then measure out the proportions—you can try pairing them two at a time, or mix them all together in one batch. You can also chop in some dried jujube for good measure. Finally, melt the maltose syrup, add the prepared nuts, stir until evenly coated, pour onto an oiled board, press flat, let cool and set, then cut into slices. And there you have your homemade nut candy.

If you want to channel an over-energetic child’s excess energy, you can start from scratch with the maltose syrup: soak wheat to grow the malt, then soak glutinous rice and steam it, crush the malt and sprinkle it over the rice, strain the liquid and let it settle, simmer the syrup, and finally use it to make the nut candy. That will keep a child occupied for four or five days straight.

For homemade savoury snacks, there is dried meat. Pork or beef, both work. Choose lean cuts. If you like hand-shredded dried meat, cut with the grain; for something easier to bite into, cut across the grain, in slices about 4 mm thick. Choose a seasoning blend with no added MSG or chicken bouillon—any brand will do. I use Wang Shouyi dumpling seasoning from the supermarket; I have checked the ingredient list carefully, and it is all natural plant spices. If you do not mind the extra effort, you can grind your own. Seasoning + salt + cooking wine: mix well, refrigerate, and marinate overnight. Lay the meat slices flat in an air fryer or oven at 120 °C for one hour, and the slices become dried meat.

If you want a better texture and more layered flavour, you can add a glaze and continue roasting. Mix a small amount of sugar or honey with water to make a thin starch glaze. Flip the dried meat, brush on a thin layer, and roast at 170 °C for five minutes. The colour will deepen slightly, and the sugar adds richness to each bite. The Maillard reaction between sugar and starch at high heat makes the dried meat even tastier. As a rule, for about 500 g of meat, use roughly 2 g of sugar and 5 g of starch.

In the end, we have not suddenly become undisciplined, nor have we suddenly developed a sweet tooth. The pleasure that sugar and fat bring has been written into our genes by evolution. The problem is that the industrialised production and globalised distribution of modern foodstuffs have filled delicious snacks with health-damaging free sugars and refined seed oils, so that before we know it, we have eaten far more sugar and oil than our bodies can handle.

So I prefer to bring snacks back to the kitchen, back to the land, and use my hands to have both flavour and health at the same time.

– This is Foodthink’s No. 805 original –

Editor: Xiaodan

Layout: Minglin

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