15 Traditional Chinese New Year Foods to Ring in the Year of the Snake

• Time Commitment: 20 minutes
• Why I Love It: special occasion-worthy, high protein, beginner-friendly
• Serves: 2 to 4

Whole fish (yú, 鱼) is often served steamed at the unity dinner (though it can also be boiled or braised), due to the Chinese belief that it will bring prosperity. It’s crucial that the fish be served with its head and tail to represent both a good beginning and end to the year; in fact, half the fish is saved to eat the following day to ensure long-lasting future prosperity.

When served, the head of the fish should face distinguished or elderly guests, who must eat the fish before others at the table. It’s also considered lucky for the people facing the head and tail to drink together during the meal. This recipe calls for steaming bream or snapper fish in a bamboo steamer, but Crucian carp, Chinese mud carp and Chinese catfish are three other traditional options.

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• Time Commitment: 55 minutes
• Why I Love It: crowd-pleaser, make ahead, kid-friendly
• Serves: 30 pieces

Legend has it that the more dumplings (jiǎozi, 饺子) you eat during Spring Festival, the more money you can make in the new year. (Challenge accepted.) The Chinese word for them represents the exchange between the old and new year, as it’s a combination of the words for “exchange” and “midnight.” It’s thought that eating dumplings during Lunar New Year ushers in the new and banishes the old.

Their shape (like that of wontons) is modeled off the Chinese silver ingot, a currency used in Imperial China. The dumplings symbolize wealth, so make sure they have plenty of pleats, as flat dumplings are believed to purport the opposite. To serve, arrange them in lines rather than a circle to represent forward movement. This recipe calls for frying the dumplings, but feel free to stick to tradition and steam them instead.

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• Time Commitment: 30 minutes
• Why I Love It: crowd-pleaser, make ahead, beginner-friendly
• Serves: 15 to 20 rolls

Especially popular in Eastern China for Lunar New Year, these handhelds (chūnjuǎn, 春卷) symbolize wealth and are named spring rolls because they’re eaten during Spring Festival. A Cantonese dish, spring rolls are a type of dim sum made of thin dough wrappers stuffed with vegetables or meat.

The rolls are fried until golden brown. This inspired the lucky Chinese saying for "a ton of gold," which is colloquially used as a wish for prosperity while eating spring rolls, since they look like gold bars. "There's really no definitive rules about what goes inside spring rolls," recipe developer and blogger at RecipeTin Eats Nagi Maehashi writes, "but typically, you'll find a mix of some kind of meat (usually ground pork) with finely chopped or shredded vegetables, plus seasoning. I like to add chopped mushrooms, which adds extra umami to the filling."

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• Time Commitment: 1 hour
• Why I Love It: special occasion-worthy, make ahead, crowd-pleaser
• Serves: 16 balls

Rice balls are basically chewy balls made from water and glutinous rice flour, served either deep-fried or in hot broth or syrup. They can be stuffed with savory or sweet fillings alike. Popular options include sesame paste, red bean paste, chopped peanuts or preserves.

While these are popular for China’s Lantern Festival at the end of Lunar New Year, they’re also commonly enjoyed during Spring Festival in South China. Due to their round, cohesive shape and the fact that they’re most often served at family gatherings, sweet rice balls (tāngyuán, 汤圆) have come to symbolize unity and family togetherness.

• Time Commitment: 35 minutes
• Why I Love It: beginner-friendly, one pan, high protein
• Serves: 2

If you’ve ever dug into a bowl of lo mein, you know how much slurping noodles can require. Longevity noodles (cháng shòu miàn, 长寿面), which are eaten for luck and a long life, take it to a whole other level. In Northern China, these noodles can be up to two feet long (!!!). Legend has it that the longer your noodle, the longer your life—just don’t bite it or break it while it’s cooking, since that signifies a life cut short.

They can be served fried or boiled in broth, along with various meats and add-ins that have their own symbolic meanings. This alternative Sichuan-inspired recipe (which uses shirataki noodles in place of tough-to-find longevity noodles) includes ground pork, fresh ginger, bok choy and scallions.

• Time Commitment: 9 hours and 10 minutes (includes marinating time)
• Why I Love It: crowd-pleaser, high protein, special occasion-worthy
• Serves: 5

Much like whole fish, a whole chicken symbolizes unity and family. Authentic steamed chicken (zhēng jī, 蒸鸡) is served whole—head and feet included—to further drive home the concept of reunion and rebirth. (FYI, the breadwinner of the family should eat the chicken feet, as it just might help them “grab” onto wealth.) When chicken is cooked during Spring Festival, it’s traditionally first offered to one’s ancestors for blessings and protection.

Finding a beak-to-feet whole bird to steam can be tough in the U.S., so feel free to substitute a roast chicken for convenience. This Chinese citrus-roasted orange chicken is brined in star anise, fresh ginger and Chinese red dates.

• Time Commitment: 25 minutes
• Why I Love It: crowd-pleaser, vegan, one pan, <30 minutes
• Serves: 6

The Spring Festival is historically the time to finish all the vegetables left over from winter in order to plant new ones. Commonly called “countryside vegetarian stir fry” (tián yuán sù xiǎo chǎo, 田园素小炒), this simple mix of produce often includes mushrooms (the poria variety are believed to bring good fortune), Chinese red dates (aka jujube) and Chinese cabbage, along with other symbolic ingredients like bamboo shoots, which represent longevity and upward momentum, seaweed for wealth and leeks (the Chinese word for them sounds similar to the word for “long and everlasting”). This Chinese cabbage stir fry includes savoy cabbage, carrots, scallions and sesame oil.

• Time Commitment: 15 minutes
• Why I Love It: special occasion-worthy, one pot, crowd-pleaser
• Serves: 4

Maybe you’ve had Korean jeongol or Vietnamese lẩu, but hot pot (huǒ guō, 火锅) is widely considered to have been invented by the Chinese. “There are many types of hot pot, but generally it’s an interactive meal where you have a pot of simmering [seasoned] broth at the center of the table with raw meats, seafood, vegetables, tofu, starches and other ingredients cut into small pieces for fast cooking,” Sarah Leung, one of the four multigenerational food bloggers behind The Woks of Life, told PureWow.

Needless to say, it’s super customizable. You choose the broth, ingredients and hot pot sauces for dipping—all you need to pull it off is a small burner and a pot (ideally, a split pot that can separately hold multiple types of liquid at once). A few must-haves are thin-sliced rib eye, pork belly or jowl, shrimp or fish, mushrooms, daikon and lotus root.

• Time Commitment: 1 hour and 30 minutes
• Why I Love It: crowd-pleaser, <10 ingredients, vegetarian, special occasion-worthy
• Serves: 16

For a pay raise, promotion or general good luck in the new year, look no further than this rice cake treat (nián gāo, 年糕). Its name has the same pronunciation as the Chinese word for “tall” or “high,” hence its purpose being to improve the eater’s life.

While there are countless variations across regions of China (it’s been around for thousands of years), the rice cakes eaten for Lunar New Year in the South are typically sweet. They’re primarily made from either sticky glutinous rice or sweet rice flour, but can also include chestnuts, jujube, lotus leaves or sesame seeds. Some regions of China fry the batter or fill the cakes with red bean paste or mashed jujube, while others steam the cakes with red beans and jujube instead.

• Time Commitment: 30 minutes
• Why I Love It: keto-friendly, high protein, beginner-friendly, one pan
• Serves: 3

Shrimp (xiā, 虾) and lobster (lóngxiā, 龙虾) are both revered as symbols of happiness and energy, so they make a great addition to your Lunar New Year menu. The Cantonese word for shrimp (“ha”) sounds like laughter, so it’s come to signify happiness over time. Serve them diced in lettuce wraps, minced in dumplings or whole in this rendition of Chinese kung pao shrimp. It’s a 30-minute recipe starring dried Chinese red chilis, Sichuan peppercorns, cashews and Sichuan chili oil.

• Time Commitment: 1 hour and 20 minutes
• Why I Love It: kid-friendly, beginner-friendly, special occasion-worthy
• Serves: 4

Odds are you're no stranger to scallion pancakes (cōng yóu bǐng, 蔥油餅), a savory, chewy-yet-crisp, unleavened bread that's folded with minced scallions and fried in oil. Unlike the pancakes you eat for breakfast, these are made with dough instead of batter. Also called green onion pancakes, they're commonly sold as a street food snack in places like Shanghai and Taiwan; they're also commonly eaten for breakfast with an egg. Not only would I suggest putting these on your Lunar New Year menu because they're decidedly delicious and easy to make, but because scallions are a symbol of spring. In fact, some families hang a single scallion over their front door before the New Year begins.

“It’s one of those popular treats that people get into arguments about because there are so many versions," cookbook author and recipe developer Betty Liu says. “This my favorite scallion pancake, modeled on the street-style ones I’ve had in Shanghai.” The secret to their flavor is the you su, or oil paste, which starts with scallion oil. I’ll take mine doused in chile crisp, please.

• Time Commitment: 35 minutes
• Why I Love It: vegan, beginner-friendly, special occasion-worthy
• Serves: 4

Unlike the bulky, bulbous eggplant (qié zi, 茄子) you're used to, Chinese eggplant is long and thin. In addition to being associated with the word "extraordinary," it's also often considered a symbol for Chinese government officials, since its stem fits the purple part of the veggie like a hat an official may wear. When given as a gift, eggplant represents the gifter's wish for the giftee to receive a high position in an official post.

It's often eaten on the first day of Chinese New Year in a Hainanese (meaning from the southern Chinese island province of Hainan) stir fry with garlic. But I also love this Shanghai-style recipe for liáng bàn qié zi, or seasoned steamed eggplant. "Eggplant is often fried with a lot of oil and ends up being too heavy for my tastes, but steamed eggplant is light and a wonderful vessel to soak up sauce," Liu explains. "[Steaming] a fast way to cook eggplant, and even more important, the texture transforms and becomes silky soft, tender and creamy.” Soaking it in vinegar water first also helps it retain its gorgeous purple hue.

• Time Commitment: 50 minutes
• Why I Love It: high protein, crowd-pleaser, special occasion-worthy
• Serves: 6 meatballs

Pork (zhūròu, 猪肉) is a staple protein throughout much of China, and there are many more ways to enjoy it than in a dumpling. In northern China, it's often served double-cooked and sliced. In Beijing, braised pork balls in gravy are more popular. In Shanghai, braised pork belly or spare ribs are common, while steamed or barbecue pork is the go-to in southern China. In rural areas of China, slaughtering a pig for the Spring Festival is a popular tradition and a reward for a year of hard work. In more metropolitan areas, pork is representative of a prosperous life, wealth, strength and abundant blessings.

A favorite pork recipe for Lunar New Year is lion's head meatballs, a dish from Shanghai starring oversized pork meatballs with bok choy "manes." Lions represent strength in Chinese culture, while meatballs signify family unity. These are tweaked a bit, recipe developer and blogger at I Heart Umami ChihYu Smith explains. "I use a combination of ground chicken and ground pork to keep the dish lighter. I found that the meatballs also taste less dense because ground chicken contains more water."

• Time Commitment: 35 minutes
• Why I Love It: kid-friendly, crowd-pleaser, make ahead, high protein
• Serves: 50 wontons

Wontons (wantan, 雲吞) are believed to bring wealth and treasure to those who eat them. Their shape is based on that of the Chinese silver ingot, an imperial currency used as early as third century B.C. Like dumplings, the pleats in their wrappers represent wealth, so it's no surprise that they're equally as popular come Chinese New Year. (The Chinese word for wonton is similar to the word for "beginning.")

Traditionally, wontons are boiled in broth or served in soup, but you can also fry them if you'd prefer. Make them extra lucky by stuffing them with ingredients like pork and shrimp. "Don’t get too hung up about how neat your wontons are," Maehashi advises. "Once cooked, they mostly lose their shape, so just make sure that your filling is well sealed inside. And even if the filling falls out, you still get the same flavor."

The tangerine (chéng, 橙) is one of the luckiest fruits in Chinese tradition, but you’ll likely also see oranges, pomelos and other citrus fruit on the table. Its name sounds similar to the Chinese words for “luck” and “success,” so they’re often served at the end of a meal or given as gifts to relatives during visits year-round. But during Chinese New Year, they’re everywhere. Their roundness and golden color signify fullness and wealth. It’s believed that the more of them you eat during Lunar New Year, the more wealth they’ll bring, so you might want to get peeling…