Zongzi

Zongzi is glutinous rice packed with a savoury or sweet filling, wrapped tightly in bamboo leaves and boiled for hours. It's the Dragon Boat Festival dumpling, eaten specifically to mark that one holiday each year, much the way mooncake belongs specifically to the Mid-Autumn Festival elsewhere on the Chinese festival calendar.

What it actually is

Soaked glutinous rice packs around a filling — often diced pork, salted egg yolk or mushroom in the savoury version, sweet red bean or jujube in the sweet one — inside a folded pyramid or wedge of bamboo leaves, tied tightly with string. The wrapped bundles boil or steam for hours, long enough for the rice inside to turn fully sticky and cooked through while taking on a faint, grassy aroma from the leaves it's bound in.

The bamboo leaf is a wrapper, not an ingredient to eat. It's unwrapped and discarded before eating, but it's essential to the cooking process — it holds the rice in shape through hours of boiling and gives the finished rice its characteristic subtle fragrance, which a version steamed without leaves simply wouldn't have.

How it's served

• Unwrapped from the bamboo leaf just before eating, hot or at room temperature.
• Around the Dragon Boat Festival, though also sold and eaten outside that specific window today.
• By hand or with chopsticks, depending on the filling and occasion.

Writing it on a menu

• Say which filling is used, since savoury and sweet versions are both common and taste completely different.
• Note that it's a seasonal or festival item, since availability may be tied to the Dragon Boat Festival specifically in some kitchens.
• Mention that the bamboo leaf wrapping is discarded, not eaten, in case a guest is unfamiliar with the format.
• Flag any allergens from the specific filling, since the base rice itself carries none.