Lunar New Year Food From Traditional to Playful
Will it be time-honored mandarins or modern air-fried duck? For a writer and her immigrant family, part of being American is about making the holiday their own.
Air Fryer Chinese Style Duck Breast with Crispy Skin by Tiffy Cooks. Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, meaning if you follow the link and make a purchase, Yummly makes a commission.
The Lunar New Year is honored by many Asian cultures, a welcome restart for those who recognize both the January 1 New Year's Day of the Gregorian calendar and the older calendar that measures time by the ebb of the moon. In China, where my parents were born, the Lunar New Year is a monster celebration of grand proportions. The Spring Festival, as it’s also called, marks the end of the cruelest days of winter … and that’s something worth roaring about, particularly for Lunar New Year 2023, the Year of the Rabbit!
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Traditional Chinese New Year >>
Our Chinese New Year food traditions >>
Food to bring you luck on Lunar New Year >>
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Traditional Chinese New Year
The Year of the Rabbit officially begins January 22, 2023, and its arrival will be marked by a traditional shutdown across China for seven whole days. Manufacturing comes to a standstill. TVs are tuned to the annual gala variety show, with acts ranging from time-honored acrobatics and Beijing opera to contemporary singers and comics. Towns are painted an auspicious red, with decorations of scarlet paper lanterns, couplets written in elaborate Chinese cursive, and upside-down “Fu” signs. Families fill metallic gold-printed red envelopes with money to be given to the youngest members.
Images of the year’s new zodiac sign start to appear, but the whimsical dragon and lion dance performers, warding off evil spirits to the beat of drums and cymbals, are timeless. Firecrackers and fireworks add to the bad luck-deflecting ruckus, as do the happy sounds of loved ones gathering through the end of the week.
Poetic, homophone-driven interpretations of good luck, good fortune, and good health are assigned to every little action, every little bite until the cap of the Chinese New Year celebrations, the Lantern Festival.
Our Chinese New Year food traditions
Here in the States, celebration of my culture’s most important holiday has always been different. For my restaurateur parents, both of whom immigrated from Fuzhou, China and met here in New York, it was truncated to a couple of hours of indulgent eating with close family members and a few fortunate friends.
Preparations would start a day in advance, as my father would shop, marinate, and fabricate. Cooking for my family’s meal began in earnest on New Year’s Eve after the dinner rush was over at our Chinese takeout restaurant. Anywhere between 9 and 10 PM, dishes would start appearing on the steam table, aluminum foil tented over the trays to protect them from blasts of wintry air that would bully their way in as the last customers left for the night through the storefront doors. We’d push all four of the Formica tables together in the waiting area in excited anticipation of the wealth of food sure to come, since an overflowing table hints that plenty and prosperity will be on the menu for the coming year.
It’d be a mix of customary holiday dishes and personal favorites that were laborious to make, or items considered delicacies — too pricey for everyday consumption. We made our own traditions here in America, mixing our Fujianese regional and family recipes with Cantonese classics, Mandarin manners, and Spring Festival specialties from other areas of China.
This year, I invite you to join me in making the Chinese culture’s New Year your own, too.
Food for Lunar New Year
Lunar New Year food ideas run the gamut from traditional Chinese recipes (including ones for good luck) to ones that are simply in the spirit of the celebration.
Bubble Tea (Boba Tea)
This may not technically be traditional, but we could all use a treat, right? The round tapioca pearls in this drink from Taiwan fit the bill for lucky spherical foods, which represent family togetherness. Thanks to milk, condensed milk, and sugar, the tea has plenty of sweetness – just what we’re hoping for in the coming days.
Pork and Mushroom Dumplings (Potstickers)
In Northern China where wheat is grown instead of rice, dumplings are a traditional food for Chinese New Year feasts. Not only do they resemble Chinese gold ingots, they also create a chance for quality time. Families often spend hours making them, wrapping piquant meat into soft wrappers, showing off folding techniques in the hours ahead of the Reunion Dinner. In my family, we leave that to the master: my father, whose uniform pleats and plump-bottomed crescents would inspire envy from a machine.
Chinese Marbled Tea Egg
Whole eggs — not fried, not scrambled, nor broken in any way — are an important part of the Chinese New Year’s Eve meal. Various regions execute this differently, but every Reunion Dinner should feature some form of hard-boiled egg. They symbolize togetherness and the blessing of a big, healthy family. My dad has always fried the shelled eggs whole and put them in a soup — but far more popular are these dramatic crackled eggs, whose lines are dyed with tea.
Chinese Steamed Fish with Ginger and Scallions
Though some may balk at the Asian and Mediterranean customs of serving fish with the head, it’s actually a highlight of big Chinese dinners. For the Lunar New Year, providing a whole fish is especially significant since it’s a call for wealth and surplus — things especially important to Chinese people who came to the States for the dream of just that. This preparation is minimal yet delicious. Serve it with the head facing your most important diner to flatter them; or add red peppers for business success as they do in Hunan.
Chinese Drunken Soy Chicken
Who couldn’t use some prosperity in the coming year? Especially when it’s an excuse to eat more chicken! This fragrant whole chicken recipe is a Shanghai classic and usually served cold — a practical relic of the tradition of first offering it up to ancestors at the family altar. Today, that makes it an excellent Chinese New Year dish to prepare in advance as you focus on all of the other good luck goodies. Don’t forget to make the herbaceous dipping sauce!
Sticky Chinese Pork Belly
The Chinese culture adores pork. It’s the most widely consumed meat in the country that’s also the producer of half of the world’s total supply. So obviously, pork — which stands for peace when proffered during the Chinese New Year’s Eve feast — is a traditional Chinese New Year food. Decadent pork belly has become more widely available in recent years, and this recipe brings out its best traits with a candied sauce that will have you licking your fingers at the table.
Peking Pork Chops
Authentic Chinese sweet and sour flavors are a far cry from the syrupy ones westernized for American palates. The zip of black vinegar and Shaoxing wine balance the sweetness of sticky sauces like plum, hoisin, and even — surprise — ketchup that makes one of my favorite pork preparations a lucky color red. The texture and flavor of the sauce can also stand for family cohesiveness and sweet fortune. Any excuse to eat this, I’ll take.
Air Fryer Chinese-Style Duck Breast with Crispy Skin
There’s nothing like a Hong Kong soup shop roast duck, crisped to perfection in a vertical roasting oven. But if you have an air fryer at home, you might be able to get close! Try your hand at replicating this classic, using the very best part of the protein that symbolizes loyalty.
Sichuan Cumin Lamb
Duck isn’t the only way you can put your air fryer to use this Lunar New Year! Lamb is always a treat, and this simple recipe complements its gaminess with the warmth and earthiness of spices. In China, it’s a meat more common to the North than South due to a higher population of Muslims there … but as soon as dynamic Sichuan peppercorns are introduced, they tend to steal the titular role! Sub in cayenne if you don’t have the Sichuan pepper.
Chinese Hot Pot
China’s answer to fondue Bourguignonne calls for the same principle: gathering over a communal table, lingering over bite-by-bite cooking from a shared pot. The difference is that instead of hot oil, a bubbling broth cooks meats, noodles, and all manner of vegetables before diners top off their labors with self-mixed sauces. Displaying a variety of raw ingredients creates visual abundance, and thoughtfully chosen ones maximize auspiciousness.
Cantonese-Style Ginger Scallion Lobster
Just as in Western culture, lobster is an indicator of wealth. Serving it at the family Reunion Dinner the night before the Lunar New Year starts is a wish for financial fortune, and this is one of my family’s favorite ways to usher in that good juju. Chopped up into bite-sized pieces (similar to how the soy sauce chicken is butchered, as is polite in Chinese society), it’s a beautiful dish to serve, vibrant with lucky red color.
Clams in Black Bean Sauce
Lobster isn’t the only shellfish said to usher in hopes for financial success — clams will do the trick, too. You can also interpret their yawning shells as the opening of new horizons and fruitful days ahead. However you take it, this black bean preparation is an easy, low-ingredient way to will good fortune into the new year. It’s one of my dad’s go-tos for something quick and flavorful to make in between higher-maintenance dishes.
Steak and Scallion Rice Cake Stir-Fry
Rice is the South’s counter crop to the wheat of the North, and rice cakes — another form of nian gao (see the next recipe) — provide that same chewy satisfaction that dumpling dough would. Rice cakes are also treated in similarly savory applications in Southern China, like in this recipe. You can buy rice cakes in stores in a hard, dry form to reconstitute by boiling, then steam or saute them with vegetables and meat.
Chinese New Year Cake Nian Gao 年糕
One of the most iconic dishes of the Spring Festival, this interpretation of Chinese New Year rice cake made with glutinous rice flour and brown sugar (either Chinese brown sugar or the regular American white kind) is more common than the previous savory version. “Nian gao” literally means “higher year” and serves as an inspiration to do better as you enjoy the sweetness of life. You can steam the cake and then serve it with jujube dates, licorice-flavored watermelon seeds, and black sesame seeds. Or coat slices in an egg batter and then pan-fry them.
Mandarin Champagne Sorbet
Mandarins, tangerines, oranges, and grapefruit are all lucky fruit typically handed out like candy during the Spring Festival celebrations. The round shape signifies the togetherness and completion of the family unit and their hues recall gold. Turn the fruit into a refreshing dessert to bubble up your spirits with a little sparkle! Scoop the sorbet into perfect circles and we’ve made another full one as we recall where we started on this roundup.
Food to bring you luck on Lunar New Year
So get ready to bid adieu to the Year of the Tiger and welcome in the Year of the Rabbit! Usher it in watching showers of fireworks, in real life or on CCTV, and in the company of some hopping hares via a Chinese lion dance … or the bigger Chinese dragon dance if you’re lucky. But most of all, don’t forget to wish a Happy New Year to family members far and wide (perhaps with a gift of lucky money). And definitely do your part to usher in good fortune with these additional foods for your dinner table that signify luck and prosperity in the new year.