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Popiah (, Teochew Peng'im: boh⁸ bian²) is a Fujianese/Teochew cuisine fresh spring roll filled with an assortment of fresh, dried, and cooked ingredients, eaten during the Qingming Festival and other celebratory occasions. The dish is made by the people and diaspora of Fujian province of China (in Quanzhou, Xiamen, and Zhangzhou), neighbouring Chaoshan district, and by the Teochew people and Hoklo people diaspora in various regions throughout Southeast Asia and in Taiwan (due to the majority of Taiwanese being Hoklo), The origin of popiah dates back to the 17th century.
It is eaten in accompaniment with a sweet sauce (often a bean sauce), a blended soy sauce or hoisin sauce or a shrimp paste sauce (蝦膎, hae-ko, , ), and optionally with hot chilli sauce before it is filled. The filling is mainly finely grated and steamed or stir-fried turnip, jicama (known locally as bangkuang, 芒光, Tâi-lô: bâng-kuang), which has been cooked with a combination of other ingredients such as , , and lettuce leaves, depending on the individual vendor, along with grated carrots, slices of Chinese sausage, thinly sliced fried tofu, chopped peanuts or peanut powder, fried shallots, and shredded omelette. Other common variations of popiah include pork (lightly seasoned and stir-fried), shrimp or crab meat. Seaweed is often included in the Xiamen (Amoy) versions. Some hawkers in Malaysia and Singapore, especially in non-halal settings, will add fried pork lard. As a fresh spring roll, the popiah skin itself is not fried.
Two common ways of eating this are holding them like a burrito, which some prefer, while others cut the popiah roll into slices and pick them up with chopsticks. It requires some skill to pick the pieces up with chopsticks. Spoons are seldom provided at the establishments.
The stuffing itself is quite diverse among different places. The basic stuffing includes vegetables that grow in spring, meat and thinly shredded omelette. In some places, they also add noodles, Chinese sausages, stewed vegetables instead of blanched ones, tofu, seafood, sticky rice, and so on.
Furthermore, the way of cooking the stuffing is very different as well. In northern Taiwan, the stuffing is flavoured, stir-fired, sometimes it goes with peanut powder, and the sauce is salty. In southern Taiwan, the popiah stuffing is water blanched without additional seasoning, and flavoured primarily with sugar and peanut powder. For people who live in southern Taiwan, the addition of sufficient sugar is key for popiah. Moreover, some people like to heat or steam the spring roll again after it is made.
Some food stalls serve popiah filled with ice cream. This is a sweet and savory treat - the ice cream is commonly pineapple, peanut and taro flavored, or these three flavors swirled together. The vendor will have a giant block of peanut candy nearby. They will shave this in front of you to create a bed of peanut shavings on the popiah skin. Then the three scoops of ice cream are placed on the bed. It is customary to add a piece of cilantro before the whole thing is wrapped up and handed to you. Some people have dubbed it an ice-cream burrito.
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