Shuang-Jiao – Punch in Tasty Latiao
Bitter: ⭐⭐✰✰✰
Salty: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✰
Sour/Tangy: ⭐✰✰✰✰
Sweet: ⭐⭐⭐✰✰
Umami: ⭐⭐⭐✰✰
Heat: ⭐✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰
Quick Flavor Notes: Chili oil, warming spices
Recommended: Conditional
Texture: Spongey and chewy
Ingredients: Wheat flour, drinking water, vegetable oil, edible salt, chili pepper, sesame, spice, soy, dietary fiber powder, food additives
Latiao is an authentic Chinese snack food popular in Sichuan and Hunan provinces. I’ve previously reviewed a latiao from Fantianwa Foods, their Tong Xin Bang Latiao, and enjoyed it. I mentioned the history of this snack in that review, but to recap these wheat-based snacks were born out of a major floor in Hunan province that destroyed most of their soybean crop. Instead of relying on soybeans for popular snacks they turned to wheat gluten and latiao, meaning “spicy sticks” were born and their popularity quickly spread throughout China.
Shuang-Jiao is a Chinese food company based in the capital of Hunan province Changsha as they proudly print on the front of their bags. They make a variety of snack foods including other flavors of latiao as well as sweet snacks, tofu snacks, and vegetarian faux meat products. In the case of their Punch in Tasty Latiao (I believe that’s the name of this type, my attempt at imperfect machine-translation of the label leaves me with “Corporate Vegetarianism” “Rest Assured of Quality”, “Hot Item Check-In”, and “Braised Hazelnut”) the ingredients list is cleaner than that of the Tong Xin Bang Latiao I had before. Starting with wheat flour and “drinking water” (it’s a bit funny that Chinese ingredient labels tend to feel the need to distinguish the ingredients are food-grade, even the salt is listed as “edible salt”) this continues on with oil and the seasonings. Those are chili pepper, sesame, spicy soy, fiber, and the mysterious (and slightly scary) “food additives”. In texture these are very similar to the Tong Xin Bang – chewy and oily with that oil that squishes out as you chew. The appearance of these is quite nice however with visible sesame seeds.
Similar to the flavor of Tong Xin Bang there is a mix of sweet and savory in Shuang-Jiao Punch in Tasty. The chili flavor is reminiscent of Lao Gan Ma and like that chili oil reminds me a bit of Thanksgiving dinner. These do come across as a bit sweeter than milder than Tong Xin Bang to me, with those having a building heat that these lack. There’s still that deep umami flavor however and I can pick up hints of cumin and black pepper as well as as anise-y flavor, likely star anise as it’s common in Chinese cuisine. It’s also possible there’s a little cinnamon and clove in this which would suggest Chinese five spice, again a common type of ingredient. The warming spices combined with the umami-rich chili oil and the spongey oily texture do make a little of these go quite a long way, which isn’t a criticism, they’re a snack for enjoying contemplatively instead of mindlessly shoveling in one’s mouth. The one downside is that these are quite salty, though they don’t taste quite as salty as the label indicates. They’re also quite filling with the wheat gluten and the saturating oil. In terms of heat these are very mild, there’s more of a roasted chili flavor than any kind of chili heat.
If you’ve never tried latiao before it’s something I heartily suggest you do. I do like the cleaner ingredients list in this vs the Tong Xin Bang Latiao (though that “food additives” could hide a lot) but I’d say I prefer the overall flavor of Tong Xin Bang. You won’t go wrong either way so I’ll give these a conditional recommendation.
