

11 Traditional Lunar New Year Foods to Eat in 2021

Celebrate the Year of the Ox with these delicious dishes.

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The Lunar New Year—celebrated in several Asian countries, and best known for the Chinese New Year celebration that's also called Spring Festival—is a time to bring families together. That's one reason why the "reunion dinner," eaten by Chinese and Vietnamese families on the night before, is such an important New Year's tradition. Putting an ample variety of food on the table is a must, too.

"The idea of an elaborate reunion dinner is that you have to include all sorts of stuff," says Kian Lam Kho, private chef and author of Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees: Essential Techniques of Authentic Chinese Cooking. "You have to have fish, you have to have chicken or duck, or pork. It's to indicate that you're so successful during the year—that you can afford all of this, and carry it over to the new year." As with holidays like Three Kings Day, Easter Sunday, and Diwali, the foods traditionally eaten during Chinese New Year hold a symbolic (not to mention delicious) place within the festivities. Foods like fish, fruit, and dumplings are more than mere snacks; they're symbols of luck and prosperity, and eating them is thought to invite both into your life in the days to come.

There's actually several layers of symbolism at play when it comes to "lucky" Lunar New Year dishes: what the food's name sounds like when said aloud, how it's prepared, and the way it's served can imbue a meal with extra meaning, making it all the more special. It's also important to know that because China is one of the largest countries in the world, the ingredients and preparation of any given dish is native to a specific region, even if Chinatowns across the United States have popularized them through what Americans think of as Chinese food. "Every area of China has different customs," says Kho. That means that a unified tradition that everyone celebrates is rare, Kho says, but "there are exceptions." And just as Christmas traditions vary by each family who celebrates, every Lunar New Year celebration is unique—which means you may not all of these dishes represented on every family or restaurant's table, but you'll likely encounter several. Here are 11 examples of traditional Lunar New Year food for 2021, and what they represent.

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1 Sweet glutinous rice cake (nian gao)
Nian Gao, Chinese cake
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Sometimes translated as a "new year cake" or just "year cake," nian gao is made of glutinous rice flour and/or sweet glutinous rice flour, and can be either sweet or savory depending on region. "It's really sticky and dense," Kho says. He explains that "nian" translates to "year," which is a homophone for the word for "sticky." "They're two different characters, but they're pronounced exactly the same," he says. Gao loosely means "higher up," so when said aloud, nian gao is meant to signal higher success in the new year.

Often wrapped in paper and commonly eaten on Chinese New Year's eve, the sweet variety of year cake that's more native to southern China is made with sugar, and can be given as a gift for good fortune for the new year. The savory version is typically stir fried in dishes in Shanghainese and northern Chinese restaurants, according to Kho.

2 Whole Fish
steamed fish with soy sauce
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"Fish is one of the most important symbolic dishes for Chinese New Year," Kho says, adding that you'll see fish at most every meal on the holiday served various ways. This is an instance in which two words have two different characters, but are pronounced the same way.

"The pronunciation for 'fish' in Mandarin and many other dialects is 'yú', which is the same pronunciation as 'leftover'," Kho continues. "The idea is that every year, you want an abundance of food or wealth, so that you have it left over for the next year."

3 Whole Chicken
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Togetherness is an overarching theme of the Lunar New Year, and a whole chicken is another visual signifier of that unity. "Serving a whole peace of meat symbolizes the reunion of the whole family," says Kho.

4 Dumplings (Jiaozi)
chinese dumplingjiaozi
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"Dumplings are supposed to look like the ingot, the gold and silver pieces used as money in ancient times," Kho explains. "It represents being prosperous—you have all of this money you're eating," he adds, laughing. The white dumpling wrapper most people are accustomed to seeing is associated with the silver ingot. But the rarer egg wrapper dumpling, which Kho says is essentially an omelet with the filling inside, signifies gold (here's a recipe from Kho).

According to tourism organization China Highlights, some believe that the fillings have certain lucky connotations themselves; cabbage and radish eaten on New Year's Eve bodes well for skin and mood, while you shouldn't eat Chinese sauerkraut dumplings "because it implies a poor and difficult future."

5 Sweet Rice Balls (Tangyuan)
sweet dumplings in bowl on table, ang pow or red packet and gold ingots chinese characters means luck,wealth
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Kho says that tangyuan is commonly served on the fifteenth and final day of the Chinese New Year celebration, which is also the Lantern Festival. Also made from glutinous rice flour—Kho likens the consistency to mochi, another kind of rice cake popular in Japan—tangyuan is served in a thin broth or deep fried.

The balls are filled with anything sweet from red bean to peanut to taro, though Kho's personal favorite filling is sesame.

6 Braised Shiitake Mushrooms
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Braised shiitake mushrooms with bok choy (a type of Chinese cabbage) is a vegetable dish that some families of Chinese heritage traditionally eat during Lunar New Year among other special occasions, and Shanghainese families in particular. Simmered in an oyster sauce mixture, the mushrooms are a great option for those who don't eat meat—just make it with vegetarian oyster sauce.

7 Tangerines and Oranges
oranges overhead on table
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Tangerines are the most traditional fruit to grace the table, says Kho, though you'll likely see oranges and other citrus fruits. Originally a Cantonese tradition, this is another instance of a homonym associated with luck: The word for tangerine is 橙 (chéng /chnng/), which sounds the same as a word that means good fortune. "They're served at the end of the meal, and also exchanged when you go visit relatives."

8 Longevity Noodles
close up of hand holding noodles with chopsticks against white background
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Mostly served in southern China, longevity noodles are traditionally prepared as one very long, thin single strand. "Nowadays, when you serve longevity noodles, it's really just very long noodles," Kho says. "It's not a single strand." They're often combined with a broth, or with an almost gravy-like sauce.

9 Candy and Other Sweets
closeup chinese sweetmeat or asian chinese candy is a traditional
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"Anything sweet, like dried fruit or candy, is very common as a snack food during Chinese New Year," Kho says, "because it symbolizes a sweet life."

10 Jujube
bowl of red dates or jujube
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Another common ingredient in Asian food, Kho says that jujube is "traditional at Chinese New Year because it's red, and red is the color of prosperity and happiness." That's why red is a recurring color in the decorations and even the food of the holiday.

11 Spring Rolls
spring rolls on a marble background
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While you might eat these savory fried rolls year round, they're a Chinese New Year favorite because they symbolize wealth. Per China Highlights, the lucky saying associated with eating spring rolls is "黄金万两 (hwung-jin wan-lyang), meaning "a ton of gold," suggesting that the spring rolls resemble gold bars.

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