Sesame Oil Chicken appears as a signature dish in 1 Taiwan cities. See each city's local variant and where to eat it.
Sesame oil chicken soup · Taipei
Ma you ji is the winter Taiwanese tonic soup: chicken pieces fried in toasted sesame oil with ginger and rice wine, simmered into a deep amber broth.
Sesame oil chicken is a Hokkien postpartum confinement food (yue zi), traditionally given to mothers in the month after childbirth. Black sesame oil is heated until smoking, the deep ginger fried in it gives the soup its characteristic warmth. Now eaten across Taipei in winter (November to March), often at night markets and home kitchens. Shin Yeh and Mountain and Sea House both run the dish on their winter menus.
Where to eat in Taipei:
- Shin Yeh Shuanglian
- Mountain and Sea House