Joongs vs Lo Mai Gai... what's the difference?

[otis]

Got excited about Joongs with the seasonal Dragon Boat posts, and when I was at You's on Broadway just now for baked cha shiu bao asked if they had any. The person next to me in line pointed to the wrapped up rolls in the window. I had assumed they were lo mai gai (sticky rice) since that's what they looked like. I asked him what the difference was and he couldn't tell me because he did not understand my pronunciation of LMG--not an unusual occurrence, unfortunately, with my poor linguistic skills.

Anyway, they were indeed different--made with a sweeter rice with strands of scrambled egg throughout, and a bit of chicken in the middle. Is that a standard prep? Could anyone provide a bit of etymology here... are Joongs a special subset of LMG or are they completely different and what makes them so?

P.S. The rice/savory filling was a little ungenerous to my preference, but the flavor was fine. And the big gooey CSB were great.

[capriana94555]

Joong....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zongzi

Lor Mei Gai....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lo_mai_gai

[dty]

Naw Might Ghight (rhymes with tight without the t sound @ the end in Cantonese): always with bits of chicken. Definitely a dim sum dish. In the old days, it used to be 2X to 4X the size of the modern mini-version. I remember having them with pieces of bone-in chicken when I was a kid; now it just contains chicken morsels. Squarish, wrapped in louts leaves.

Tsown (rhymes with own in Cantonese): originally for Dragon Boat Festival; now it's available year-round. Most of the time wrapped in bamboo leaves in the shape of a tamal. The meat used in the savory version is always pork, not chicken.

[Gary Soup]

Here's a nifty little zongzi tutorial:

http://tinyurl.com/25jzgm

[PorkButt]

Ai yah, all these romanizations. In the Yale system, it's loh6 mai2 gai1 - you can look it up to get the right pronunciation.

One significant difference between joong and loh mai gai that hasn't been pointed out is that for joong, the rice is soaked but still raw while typically the rice and filling in loh mai gai have already been cooked separately to some degree before wrapping. Joong requires several hours of boiling that would reduce a loh mai gai's lotus leaf to mush. All loh mai gai needs is a bit of steaming to allow the flavors to come together.

[Gary Soup]

FWIW, Googling with PinYin "nuomiji" or Jyutping "No mai gai" will yield more search results than Yale "Loh mai gai" as follows:

"Nuomiji" 752
"No mai gai" 322
"Loh mai gai" 227

[Gary Soup]

I think it's more likely that nuomiji is a subset of zongzi, as the latter have apparently been around since the Warring States period, more than 2,000 years ago.

To summarize the differences reported by various posters,

Zongzi: Usually boiled, ingredients raw, base filling pork, bamboo or reed leaf wrapper.
Nuomiji: Usually steamed, ingredients pre-cooked, base filling chicken, banana leaf wrapper.

Zongzi are usually larger. Shapes for each may vary. Zongzi are typically wrapped tighter, to compact the rice and give the unwrapped product more integrity of shape, making them easy to eat from hand

[PeterL]

Zonzi has soy beans in them, loh mai gai don't (I think).

[Gary Soup]

Ther are many varieties of zongzi, especially in South China, so there may be some that have soybeans in them, fresh or otherwise. I only indulge in the Jiaxing style, which has nothing but salty pork as a filling, but plenty of soy SAUCE. Even the rice is bathed in soy sauce before the zongzi are cooked.

[chocolatetartguy]

I've never seen them with soy beans, but often with mung beans. Is that what you meant? Or are they the same?

[Melanie Wong]

That should be lotus leaf wrapper for no mai gai.

[Gary Soup]

You are right. The lotus leaf and the flavor it imparts is almost the point of nuomiji. Banana leaves are another option for zongzi.

[Sarah]

When are ti leaves used? And what are they -- heard they were integral in one of these wrapped items, maybe the naw mai gai.

[Melanie Wong]

For joong.