Kejia Xiao Chao.
Hakka Stir-Fry with Dried Squid
客家小炒 · say it: kuh-jya show chow
Kejia xiao chao is a plate of narrow strips — dried squid soaked back to life, pork belly rendered until the edges crisp, pressed tofu, celery and spring onion — stir-fried fast and hard until a glaze of soy sauce and rice wine coats every piece. The flavour is unapologetically salty, deeply savoury and slightly chewy, with the concentrated low-tide smell of dried squid running under everything. It is a rice dish in the strictest sense: intensely seasoned, served in a small pile, and meant to be eaten a few strands at a time against a large bowl of plain white rice.
- Gate
- TaiwanHsinchu and Miaoli
- Prep
- 25 min
- Cook
- 15 min
- Total time
- 4 hr 40 min incl. 4 hr rest
- Serves
- 4
- Status
- Medium
- Nutrition / serving · estimated
- Calories 430 kcal
- Protein 28 g
- Carbs 9 g
- Fat 31 g
- Fiber 2 g
- Sodium 1400 mg
Why this recipe works.
- Soaks the dried squid the way Hakka kitchens do, with a touch of alkali, so it comes out springy instead of rubbery.
- Renders the pork belly first and cooks everything else in that fat — the shortcut that gives the plate its fragrance.
- Cuts every ingredient to matching strips, which is not fussiness: it is why one chopstickful tastes complete.
- Honest about the smell and the salt level, and tells you how the dish is actually eaten so the seasoning makes sense.
Ingredients.
16 itemsTo soak ahead
For the stir-fry
For the seasoning
Equipment
- Wok or large heavy frying pan
- Large bowl for soaking
- Sharp knife
- Wok spatula or wide turner
Instructions.
Soak the squid
Put 80 g of dried squid in a large bowl with the baking soda and 1 litre of cold water, cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight. It is ready when the flesh has doubled in thickness, feels pliable like thick wet leather and no hard core remains at the centre.
Tip Change the water once halfway through if you can. It softens the smell and washes out the soda.
Trim and cut
Rinse the squid thoroughly under running water, squeeze it dry and pull off any remaining membrane or hard beak. Cut the body into strips roughly 5 mm wide and 5 cm long, matching the pork belly and tofu. Pat everything properly dry — wet strips steam instead of frying.
Render the pork belly
Put 250 g of pork belly strips into a cold wok and set it over medium heat. Cook for 6–8 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the fat has run out into a shallow pool and the meat has shrunk with crisp brown edges. Lift the pork out with a slotted spoon, leaving the fat behind.
Fry the squid in pork fat
Turn the heat to high and add the squid strips to the hot pork fat. Fry for 2 minutes without much stirring, until the edges curl, the strips take on a light golden blush and the smell turns from marine to nutty and roasted. Add the dried shrimp for the last 20 seconds.
Tip Stand back for the first few seconds — wet squid in hot fat spits hard.
Build the aromatics
Push the squid to one side, add the shallots, garlic, spring onion whites and chilli to the fat and fry for 45 seconds until the shallots are golden at the edges and the pan smells sweet. Return the pork, add the pressed tofu strips and toss everything hard for a minute so the tofu picks up colour.
Glaze and finish
Pour the rice wine down the hot side of the wok so it hisses into steam, then add the soy sauce, sugar and white pepper. Toss for 1 minute until the liquid has reduced to a dark glaze clinging to every strip with no puddle left in the pan. Throw in the celery and spring onion greens, toss 30 seconds more so they stay bright and squeaky, finish with sesame oil and serve at once with plain rice.
Tips from our kitchen.
- Start the squid soak the night before. Four hours gets it usable; twelve hours in cold water in the fridge gets it plump and evenly tender.
- Cut everything the same width, about 5 mm, and the same length, about 5 cm. Mismatched pieces cook unevenly and the plate loses its whole character.
- Render the pork belly slowly from a cold pan until the strips shrink and the edges go crisp and brown. Rushing it leaves the fat soft and the wok short of oil.
- Chinese celery is thinner and far more aromatic than Western celery. If using Western stalks, halve them lengthwise and use fewer, or the plate turns grassy.
- Pour the rice wine down the hot side of the wok, not into the middle. It flashes into steam and perfumes the whole pan instead of stewing the ingredients.
- This is seasoned to be eaten with plain rice, so taste it against a spoonful of rice, not on its own — by itself it will always seem too salty.
Substitutions.
- Dried squid → Dried cuttlefish, or fresh squid scored and briefly fried
- Fresh squid works texturally but delivers none of the concentrated flavour that defines the dish — it becomes a decent stir-fry rather than kejia xiao chao. Dried cuttlefish is the closer swap.
- Pressed tofu (dougan) → Extra-firm tofu, pressed under a weight for 30 minutes and pan-fried until golden
- Pressed tofu is denser and slightly smoky. Plain firm tofu will break up in the wok unless you fry the strips first to build a skin.
- Shaoxing rice wine → Dry sherry, or Taiwanese michiu
- Michiu is what most Taiwanese kitchens actually reach for and is a little cleaner. Avoid cooking wines sold pre-salted, which push an already salty dish over the edge.
Variations.
- With dried shrimp
- A generous spoonful of dried shrimp fried with the shallots, common in southern Hakka kitchens. It doubles down on the marine note and makes the plate saltier still.
- With garlic chives
- Some cooks swap half the celery for garlic chives, added in the last twenty seconds. Sweeter and more perfumed, less crunch.
- Squid-free everyday version
- Pork belly, pressed tofu, celery and a handful of dried mushrooms. Not the banquet dish, but what a Hakka family might actually cook on a Tuesday.
Storage & reheating.
Keeps 3 days refrigerated in a sealed container. Reheat in a dry hot pan rather than a microwave: a minute of high heat re-crisps the pork and drives off the moisture the fridge put into the squid, while microwaving turns the squid tough and the celery limp. It does not freeze well — the squid loses its spring and the celery collapses on thawing. The soaked squid itself can be drained, bagged and refrigerated for 2 days before cooking.
Serve with
A big bowl of plain white rice per person — the dish is engineered as a rice companion and does not work as a standalone plate. A clear soup such as pork and pickled mustard green, to cut the salt between mouthfuls.
The story behind Kejia Xiao Chao.
The Hakka are a migrant people — the name means guest families — who moved south through China over many centuries and reached Taiwan largely in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, settling the hills and river terraces that better-connected arrivals had passed over. Farming that land was hard work in poor soil, and the cooking that came out of it is described by Hakka cooks themselves with three words: salty, fragrant, fatty. Salt because field labour sweats it out and because salting preserved food through the year; fat because it delivered calories; fragrance because dried and cured ingredients, not fresh ones, carried the flavour.
This particular plate is said to have started as a way of using ritual leftovers. Ancestral offerings called for whole boiled pork and for dried squid rehydrated specially for the occasion, both expensive and both left over once the ceremony ended. The next day the pork was sliced thin, the squid cut into strips, and everything was fried up with whatever pressed tofu and celery was to hand — a small stir-fry, which is exactly what the name says. Whether or not every family told it that way, the logic of the dish is unmistakably frugal-festive: luxury ingredients stretched with cheap ones and seasoned hard enough to feed a table.
Today it is the dish Hakka restaurants in Hsinchu, Miaoli and the Liudui townships of the south are judged on, and the test is the squid. Traditionally the dried squid is plumped in alkaline water, which gives it a springy, almost translucent bite that plain soaking never quite reaches. Home cooks can get close with a long cold soak and a pinch of baking soda, and this recipe does that. Be warned about the smell: dried squid soaking in your kitchen is pungent in a way that alarms first-timers. That aroma is the dish, and it turns sweet and roasted the moment it hits hot oil.
Questions, answered.
Why does the dried squid need alkaline water?
Alkali swells the squid protein and loosens its structure, so the flesh rehydrates plump and springy rather than tough and leathery. Restaurants use food-grade lye water for this. At home, half a teaspoon of baking soda per litre of cold soaking water does a milder version of the same job — rinse the squid very well afterwards or it can taste faintly soapy.
My kitchen smells terrible while the squid soaks. Is that normal?
Yes. Dried squid has a strong low-tide smell that gets stronger as it rehydrates, and it will fill a small kitchen. Soaking it covered in the fridge keeps it manageable. The aroma changes completely once the strips hit hot oil, turning nutty and roasted, so it is not an indicator that anything has gone wrong.
Is this dish supposed to be this salty?
Yes. Hakka cooking is openly salty, fatty and fragrant by design, because it fed farm labour and because the dishes are portioned as small, intense accompaniments to a large bowl of plain rice. Judged on its own a forkful will taste over-seasoned; eaten with rice the balance is right. If you plan to serve it without rice, cut the soy sauce by a third.
Can I make it without a wok?
A large carbon-steel or cast-iron frying pan works fine as long as you do not crowd it. The requirement is high, sustained heat and enough surface area for the strips to sit in contact with the metal. If your pan is small, cook the pork and squid in one batch and the vegetables in another, then combine them for the final glaze.
What makes a stir-fry Hakka rather than just Taiwanese?
Hakka cooking leans on preserved ingredients — dried squid, dried shrimp, pressed tofu, pickled mustard greens — rather than fresh seafood or delicate vegetables, and it seasons much harder than typical Taiwanese home cooking. Pork belly is the usual fat, rice wine and soy the usual liquids, and there is rarely any sugar-forward sweetness of the kind you find in Tainan.
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Recipe by The DishRoute Kitchen · published August 21, 2026 · updated August 21, 2026