How Zongzi Became the Must-Eat Food During the Dragon Boat Festival

Pierogies, cepelinai, mandu. Most cultures have their own version of dumplings. The pillows of deliciousness are the ultimate comfort food for many people around the world.

The Chinese have many variations: steamed, fried, grilled on a hot plate and even served piping hot with soup inside. But the king of all dumplings might just be zongzi, a parcel made of sticky glutinous rice wrapped neatly in a bamboo leaf and filled with umami-rich ingredients, like marinated pork, shiitake mushrooms, peanuts and beans. Eaten any time of the day and year by the dumpling-obsessed, they are most commonly enjoyed during one of China’s biggest cultural events: the Dragon Boat Festival.

Unlike stir-fry dishes from China that come with a reputation of being fast, quick and easy, making zongzi is a very labor-intensive process. In the buildup to the Dragon Boat Festival, my Taiwanese mom would prepare all the necessary ingredients. First, she would immaculately wash the bamboo leaves, scrubbing them free from dirt and grime, and continuously rinse the glutinous rice until the water ran clear to remove unnecessary starch, which could make the dumplings claggy. The next step would involve marinating, spicing and chopping all the ingredients for the filling—a mix of fatty pork belly, shiitake mushrooms, peanuts and home-cured salted egg yolks for that extra touch of luxury. With all the ingredients laid out on a kitchen bench, my mom would then spend a couple of hours wrapping the zongzi. Sitting on a small stool with a piece of string hanging from a hook, she twisted the bamboo leaves in her nimble hands to form a pocket to hold the rice, before filling just the right portion-size of meat, peanuts and mushrooms to prevent the zongzi from bursting when steamed or boiled, and tying the bundle up with the string. The final installment of the time-consuming process was the most difficult: waiting for at least four hours for the savory pockets to cook to a tender rice dumpling.

Even today,…