Must try “Bread Bowl (Coffin Bowl)” in Taiwan

When you are traveling in Taiwan, you have to try various snacks. The Night Market in Taiwan is undoubtable the best place to try featured snacks. In all these different types of delicious snacks in the night market, “Bread Bowl” should not be missed.

Bread Bowl is the classic snacks in Taiwan, which originated from Tainan. The traditional “Bread Bowl” fries a round loaf of bread that has a large portion of the middle cut out to create a bowl. Then, it cooks the chicken guts with the western cuisine, putting them in the cooked bread. Finally, cover the bowl with the thin slices of bread. The fillings have fish, shrimp, chicken meat, cuttlefish, peas, carrots. Eating with thick sauces, it has very rich flavor.

Originally, the bread bowl is not called this name. Because it filled the bread with chicken livers and other Chinese ingredients, thus it was called “Chicken Liver Bowl”. There is another saying, that 30 or 40 years ago, there is a chef Xu in Taiwan tried something called “Jiguan Bowl”. He thinks the taste is very special. So when he returned home, he did some improvement and developed this snack. But he had trouble with the name of the snack. One day, he suddenly realized the shape and the color of the snack looks like the pine coffin in South Taiwan. Then, he decided to call the snack “Coffin Bowl”. Might because the special making process and the taste, plus the “weird name”, the popularity of this new snack is way exceeded “Jiguan bowl”. And become the featured snacks of Taiwan. In some stores, they seek for luck, so they have changed the name to “Wealthy Bowl”.

There are many tourism shows in Taiwan have introduced such featured snack. Many tourism brochures have picture of the “Bread Bowl”. Some of the food shows even invited chef from Tainan to teach audience how to make the “Bread Bowl” at home. The steps are not very complicated. First, you cut the middle of the squared bread. Don’t break the bottom and the sides of the bread. Fried the bread in the oil until it changed color. Then wash and slice the chicken meat, pig liver, onion, carrots and different sauces. Then fired them together. Next, put them in the bread bowl and covered with bread slice. Now, this dish has added fusion into it. Beside the traditional flavor, you can fry the fresh fruits and cheese together and put them in the bread box. Then add a little bit sugar powder, or a little bit salad sauce. Now, you have the new snack mixed with Chinese and Western flavor. It is worth mentioning that the “Bread Bowl” is better ate when it’s still hot. Because the fillings inside the bread will taste sour after sitting there for too long. That’s why the food stalls that sell “Bread Bowl” are selling only freshly made “Bread Bowl”.