Chinese Cuisine

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Chinese cuisine is distinctive in the very same manner in which the people of China are.

The Chinese are a very ritualistic people, by ancient tradition, and their eating mannerisms follow suit as such. There are forms and patterns to respect and follow when preparing, serving, and taking tea and the same goes for meals.

Take something as simple (for most of the world anyway) as serving tea, for instance.

chinese tea served

You don’t just boil some water, plop in a tea bag or two, wait a few minutes, and then take your tea.

No.

You carefully and mindfully go through precise steps, repeated the same way by Chinese tea servers dating back into ancient antiquity, and when the tea ritual is finished, you serve your guests the tea with mindful, careful attention.

More on tea later, but it’s time to get into a typical traditional day of dining, the Chinese way. First up, let’s “break the fast” after a good night’s sleep and a morning wake-up cup of tea.

Now, if you are an American, who usually reaches for eggs, bacon, coffee and toast for breakfast, visiting China as a guest, you will have to acquire a new taste for their first morning meal preferences.

The Chinese (almost all Asian peoples, actually) traditionally eat quite differently than Westerners for breakfast, and the hands down most common meal in China is a fairly simple porridge, called “Jook”.

In Northern China, where soybeans are prevalent, the porridge will be soy-based, and in Southern China, where most of the rice paddies are, the porridge base will be of course, rice.

Typically a huge serving bowl is placed in the center of the table, and everyone uses chopsticks to pick out yummy morsels and spoons to scoop portions of the porridge into their personal eating bowls.

People enjoying Chinese Cuisin: Jook

Now this Jook porridge, as far as what goes into it with the soybean or rice, can consist of a wide array of many possible ingredients, so your Jook could be sweet, or pungent, or sweet and sour, or hot-spicy, just about anything goes.

For our journey into the world of traditional Chinese food recipes, the Jook we are serving is a nicely spiced, but not hot spicy, warm bowl of rice porridge with chicken and shitake mushrooms.

Let’s get cooking – just reading this recipe is making me hungry!

Help yourself to some authentic and incredibly delicious Chinese Cuisine.

Please note: For your convenience, you can click on the recipes listed below and be taken directly to a page with just that one recipe on it, in printer-friendly format.

You are certainly welcomed to read through this whole page, all the recipes are here as well, and there are some videos and pertinent information on background, history, customs, special notes, etc., so it is well worth the read.

Here is the list, in alphabetical order:

Chinese Steamed Fish

Chive and Prawn Dumplings

Crispy Skinned Steamed Duck

Hot and Sour Soup

Jook (Chinese Breakfast Porridge)

Spicy Mongolian Beef

Szechuan Chicken Vegetable Stir Fry

Szechuan Crispy Orange Beef

Jook

(Chinese Breakfast Porridge)

jook

 

Ingredients:
Directions:
  1. Take your green onions and cut the green parts away from the white parts. Finely dice the greens and leave the white parts whole.
  2. Rough chop one inch of your ginger root, and finely dice the other inch of ginger root.
  3. Place the chopped ginger, dried shitake mushrooms, a handful of the cilantro and the white ends of the scallion in the cheesecloth; tie the ingredients up tight with your cooking string. You will already be getting hungry, because this is a delightfully aromatic little bundle you are holding.
  4. Take your chicken and wash it thoroughly, inside and out.
  5. Next, place the bundled ingredients and the whole chicken into a large pot filled with water, and bring the water to boiling. As soon as a furious boil is achieved, turn the heat down to a simmer, cover the pot with a tight lid, and let the chicken cook for about 40 to 45 minutes.
  6. Now take the flavoring bundle and the chicken out of the pot and put the rice in the water, still maintaining a simmer. Keep water at a simmer, but now leave the lid off and cook for another 40 to 45 minutes. To ensure the rice will not get stuck on the pot’s bottom, stir the rice often.
  7. Now remove the chicken meat from the bones with a sharp knife and chop all the meat into bite-sized pieces.
  8. Open your flavoring bundle and take the shitake mushrooms out, then slice them into thin strips. You will not need the rest of the bundle ingredients, so you can simply toss them into the garbage.
  9. Heat you best fry pan with some sesame oil in it and get the oil sizzling hot. When a few droplets of water are tossed into the pan and they pop, snap and sizzle, it is ready. Now take your diced up ginger root and fry it until it is browned and crunchy. You will use this as a garnish.
  10. Your Jook is ready to eat once the rice grains are very plump and the overall texture is nice and thickened as a porridge.
  11. Once the Jook is done, remove it from the burner and add in the chicken pieces and sliced mushrooms. Stir well, until the pieces are fully blended and incorporated into the mixture.
  12. It’s time to serve your Jook! Place the rice porridge into a large serving bowl and garnish the top with the chopped cilantro, fried ginger, and diced scallions.

Remember, this is just one way, out of an infinitely long list of possibilities, to prepare this authentic Chinese food recipe. You could garnish with chili oil, tofu cubes, water chestnuts; you could use prawns or other seafood for the meat, and you can vary the spice/flavoring bundle more ways than you can shake a soup spoon at.

So try this recipe first, and then let your adventurous ethnic food loving mind wander off to all the many yummy places this basic Jook recipe can take you!

Now that we’ve had our Chinese breakfast, in a few hours it will be time to move on to the mid-day meal, and we have just the perfect idea for you, including one of the best Chinese food recipes you’ll ever come across.

For a formal lunchtime meal, the Chinese prepare and serve tea following a precise ritual, the most famous of which is the special lunchtime tea and treat snack occasion, called “Yum Cha” (also sometimes referred to as “Yam Cha”). During Yum Cha you will be served an aromatic, pungent, and marvelously flavorful tea, and a tasty snack, the latter of which is called the Dim Sum.

There are many kinds of delectable snacks that can be served as the Dim Sum during Yum Cha. Nowadays Yum Cha is usually participated in on special occasions and Sundays. More often than not, a family will go out on such occasions, and be served for their Yum Cha at a nice restaurant.

dim sum restaurant

To kick off our journey into the wonderful world of traditional Chinese food recipes, we will get into a Yum Cha of our own, beginning with one of the truly authentic Chinese food recipes, a particularly fine choice for the Dim Sum.

Chive and Prawn Dumplings

Shrimp_dumplings

One of the favorite snacks served as Dim Sum during Yum Cha Delicate is this delectable morsel.

Delicate in texture, aromatic, and full of complex and exquisite flavor, this is one you will want to treat you and your family and friends to often.

Ingredients:
For the dipping sauce-
For the filling–
For the Wrapper–

(makes more than enough, but you can store the extra for future use in the refrigerator, cutting down on prep-cook time)

Directions:
  1. 1. To make the dipping sauce, simply put all the ingredients into a properly sized bowl, and vigorously whisk them together until well blended.
  2. Dice half the prawns fine (about 1/8″ cubes), and the other half large (about 1/2″ cubes) and set aside in a mixing bowl.
  3. Cut off 2 inches of the thickest part of the garlic chives then chop into 1/2″ pieces.  Stir fry in a wok or sauté pan on medium heat until they become soft and wilted, about a minute.  Remove from heat and let them to cool to near room temperature.
  4. Now add the cooled garlic chives into the mixing bowl with the chopped prawns.
  5. Add into the bowl all the remaining filling ingredients and mix together thoroughly. Use a rubber or siliconized spatula, rather than a metal one, so as to not hinder the form of the cubed prawns.
  6. Put the filling mixture into the refrigerator.
  7. Into a new mixing bowl, sift the salt and starches. Now form a depression in the center of the powders, and add in the oil.
  8. Using a pre-heated measuring cup, pour the boiling water into the depression with the oil, and immediately stir vigorously. Be fast but also careful (that water is hot!), and be sure to scrape the sides of the bowl, ensuring that you are incorporating all the ingredients together thoroughly.
  9. As soon as the mixture is cool enough to handle, form it into a ball of dough.  Wheat starch dough is extremely malleable, but it is quite firm to the gentle touch.  Knead the dough vigorously for 3 minutes, now and then forcefully compressing it back into a ball while you are kneading.  Exuberant kneading is important: you want to insure that the water, oil, and starches are completely incorporated and very smooth.
  10. Now divide the dough into 3 parts, place in a plastic bag, and allow to for about 10 minutes.  Note: these dough prep work steps can be done ahead of time, before getting into the full dumpling recipe preparation.
  11. Now you are ready to make the dumplings. Prepare your steamer by putting water in the bottom and lining the steamer basket with parchment paper, punched randomly several times with 1/4″ holes in it. The holes will allow the steam to pass through. Another method is to oil the steamer basket with a generous amount of vegetable oil. You can also line the basket with large leafy vegetables. What you are doing is making sure the wheat starch will not stick after it has been steamed. Bring the water to a boil with the steamer basket not yet placed in the steamer.
  12. Squeeze and press each ball of starch into a round, smooth shape and then roll them on a clean, dry flat surface to form them into a rope shape, about one inch in diameter.  Place two of the ropes back into the plastic bag and store them in the refrigerator for use in the future. Take the third rope and cut it into one inch long pieces.
  13. Next make the skins out of the one inch long pieces. On a high density polyethylene cutting board (this is ideal, although you could use a wooden cutting board), place one of the wheat starch dough pieces and, over it, a piece parchment paper, cut into a four inch square. Flatten the dough with rolling pin, Chinese cleaver, or tortilla press, being sure that the skin is pressed into a thickness that is uniformly between 1/16″ and 1/8″.  Repeat this process with all the one inch long pieces of wheat starch dough. The disks will be a bit irregular in their shapes, and that is okay. Once you have made the dumplings you can cut and trim off any excess with scissors if need be, or, you could cut the skin first to about 3-3/4″ in diameter. If you have a cookie cutter, or perhaps an empty tin can or some other round object just the right size, it makes this cutting into rounds step a snap.
  14. Next you are going to stuff the dumplings. Wheat starch dough is quite delicate, hence you must take great care must to not tear or puncture or tear the skins during this procedure. Place just enough filling in each round that will allow the outer edges of the round to fold up and meet with about ¼” to ½” to spare. Once you have folded the rounds, lay them on one side, and crimp the edges together with a fork for a tight, firm seal.
  15. You are now ready to place in the lined steamer basket, but make sure they do not touch each other. Place the basket into the steamer, and steam the dumplings for 6 to 7 minutes.
  16. You are done! You can either place the steamer basket, filled with your dumplings, directly on the dinner table, or, as soon as they have cooled enough to handle, place them on a serving platter.
  17. Remember to also put the dipping sauce on the table, and don’t forget the tea!

****************

And now, before you move on to more delicious, classic and traditional Chinese food recipes, let’s take a trip to China, and stop in at a restaurant to see how a Yum Cha is partaken in, okay?

Dinner time, traditionally, for Chinese families, is at sunset, around 6 p.m. And it is a multi-course repast, a favorite time of the early evening, to share with each other what has happened during each person’s day, while partaking in a fine meal with family, friends, and loved ones.

A typical Chinese dinner will include a soup (served with the main meal, not before, like it is served in Chinese restaurants in America), a meat and/or fish dish, and a vegetable dish, and always, always, always, a lot of fresh steamed white rice.

The next several recipes will show you how to prepare one each of all the above entrees, each selected from authentic, traditional Chinese food recipes. Together, they will comprise an ethnic cuisine experience that will transport you off to Southern China and have you appreciating the marvelous foods served there at family dinner time.

Oh, before we get started. A few words about proper Chinese dining etiquette.

You will be eating with chopsticks. You may have a spoon provided, certainly with your soup, but there will not be a fork or knife at your table setting. Learn how to master eating with chopsticks.

When not using your chopsticks, do not stick them into your rice bowl. This is rude, bad manners. Either lay them neatly across the top rim of the bowl, or place them on the table beside it.

Always wait until the host sits, and initiates the eating. Limit talking, sit still, and be respectfully patient. Once the host takes a bite or passes a bowl, it is relax and enjoy time. Talk all you want, converse with everyone, eat as fast or slow or as much or as little as you want, and enjoy the meal.

Do not take from the serving platters more of any entree than you can eat. Chinese people do not like to waste food. Take a small portion at first, and see how much you like it. If you desire more, the host will be far more pleased to see you helping yourself to seconds than she (could be a he, too) will be if you leave food uneaten in on your plate or in your bowl.

Okay, now that we have the rules understood, let’s prepare the soup for our traditional Chinese dinner.

你准备好了吗？良好. 让我们现在就开始做饭！

(Are you ready? Good. Let us now get started cooking!)

Hot and Sour Soup

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It could be Wonton Soup, Egg Drop Soup, Sweet and Sour Soup, there are many fabulous and well loved Chinese soups, and we will be adding more of them soon here at Ethnic Foods R Us. But The Old Silly’s favorite is Hot and Sour Soup and, since I am your host today, I get to pick, okay?

Trust me, even if you’ve had Hot and Sour Soup before, this authentic Chinese food recipe, prepared according to the directions below and with this particular list of ingredients, will raise the bar in your culinary experience. It is perfection in a bowl.

Ingredients:

 

Directions:
  1. Boil some water. In a small bowl, place the wood ears and pour in enough boiling water to cover them. Let them reconstitute for about a half hour. Discard any tough clusters in the centers, then drain and rinse the rest of the wood ears.
  2. Over medium high heat, heat the oil in a wok or large pot. Add in the wood ears, chili paste, ginger, pork, and bamboo shoots. Infuse the flavors together by cooking and stirring for one to two minutes.
  3. In another bowl, combine the vinegar, pepper and salt, sugar, and soy sauce, then pour the mixture into the wok and mix all the ingredients together. The fragrance should by now have you delighted.
  4. Now pour the Chinese Chicken Stock in, bring the soup up to a boil, and let it simmer for 10 – 12 minutes. Then add in the tofu and cook for an additional 3 minutes.
  5. Take the cornstarch and dissolve it in the water, stirring until it is completely smooth textured. Then stir it into the soup and keep to simmering until your soup becomes nice and thick.
  6. This next step is important and needs to be done exactly this way. Take the soup off of the burner and stir it in one direction—hard and fast enough to get a strong current going, then stop. Pour the beaten eggs in, slowly, in a steady stream, so it spins and feathers out and around in the broth. The eggs will be cooked almost immediately.
  7. Before serving, garnish your hot and sour soup with the chopped cilantro and green onions.

I love eating out at a fine Chinese restaurant. And one of my favorite meals is the delectable steamed fish, Chinese style. For some time, I tried and tried, using recipes I found on the Internet, to reproduce that fresh, aromatic, tender and delicate flavor and texture I got in a good restaurant, at home in my kitchen.

But somehow, it just never turned out as good at home. Good, sure, even very good … but not on the same exquisite level as the pros.

So I got brave one day, after dining on this marvelous dish at one of my favorite Chinese restaurants, and asked the waiter if I could please have a quick word with the chef. I was granted a brief encounter with him.

He was a true, recently immigrated Chinese man, and couldn’t speak English well at all, so my waiter agreed to translate for us.

chinese-chef-379461_640

A side note, if you want to find the best Chinese restaurant in town, observe which restaurant has the most Chinese customers dining inside. The decor means nothing – it could be fancy, it could be plain, that matters not – but if you want truly authentic Chinese food, go where the Chinese go. This is true of any ethnic group and cuisine when choosing the best place to eat out at.

chinese restaurant

But back to my little story …

I asked the chef, after complimenting him profusely about his expert culinary acumen, if he would be willing to tell me his “secret”, explaining I had tried many times to reproduce the extraordinary taste and texture of his steamed fish dish, and always never quite satisfied, always not nearly as good as his.

He at first joked with me, saying that if he gave me his secret, he might lose a good customer. We laughed together as soon as I heard his chiding translated, and I assured him that his menu was so lengthy with dishes that also enjoyed, I would be a customer and fan of his for life.

Then he imparted to me the key elements of producing that professional, fine restaurant quality, Chinese Steamed Fish dish. It was simple, he said, and common sense, really.

Most recipes will tell you to serve to serve the cooked fish with its cooking juices and all the herbs that were cooked with it. The problem with that, he explained, is twofold: one, the cooking juices taste “fishy” now, rather undesirable, and two, the herbs cooked with the fish have by now lost all their flavor, and they are wilted and not as appealing to look at on the serving platter.

The secret, he continued, for preparing fine restaurant-quality, fresh-tasting steamed fish, is to serve the fish with a freshly made sauce and fresh herbs.

I was astounded. Of course, that made perfect “common sense”!

I thanked him and gave a deep bow of respect and gratitude, paid for my meal, and went straight home to modify my Chinese Steamed Fish recipe accordingly. And this is the recipe I now pass on to you.

所以有乐趣，享受，我的朋友们，这个惊人的，精致餐厅品质的菜！

(So have fun, and enjoy, my friends, this amazing, fine-restaurant-quality dish!)

Chinese Steamed Fish

steamed fish

Ingredients:

1 pound (minimum) whole fish

First Phase-
Second Phase-
Third Phase-
  • 2 green onion stalks, chopped into 3″ segments
  • 2″ length of fresh ginger root, peeled and finely sliced into the thinnest strips you can manage—ideally they should be so thin they are translucent
  • 2 tablespoons cooking oil
Directions:

Note: You will need a large pot or wok for steaming, and a shallow pan to hold the fish. Ideally you would want to use a fancy steamer with a steamer insert, but if you don’t have that equipment you can improvise. Grab a shallow bowl and turn it upside down to use for a stand. Three or four inverted shot glasses would also do the trick. Get creative, the point is, you want your fish held up and off the bottom of the wok or pot during the steaming. Some wok kits come with a steamer tray insert, if you are fortunate enough to have that, by all means use it, it’s perfect for the job.

First Phase-
  1. Thoroughly clean your fish, and pat it dry. Liberally season it inside and out with salt and pepper. Using half of First Phase ingredients, stuff the fish’s cavity
  2. Now take the other half of the First Phase ingredients, and place them it in a very shallow pan, creating a “bed” for the fish. On top of the bed, place the fish. Should your fish be too long for the pan, you can half it, and lay the two halves side by side on the pan. Now pour the Shao Xing wine all over the fish evenly.
  3. Fill the bottom of the wok or pot with about 2″ of water, put the lid on, and bring the water to a boil. Once it is at a good boil, take the lid off and wipe dry the inside of it. You don’t want the accumulated condensation dripping down on your fish during steaming—it will dilute the flavor. place your panned fish pan inside the wok or pot, making sure it is held up off the bottom with the upside down bowl (or whatever prop you are using).
  4. Steam the fish on medium heat. Avoid high heat and furiously boiling water—it will tear apart the tender flesh, and the finished dish will not have as an appealing look as when you take the time to delicately steam the fish over medium heat and mildly boiling water. Steaming time depends on how much your fish weighs. For a whole 1 pound fish, about 12 minutes. For every additional ½ pound of weight, add 2 more minutes.
  5. After the prescribed steaming time has passed, check and see if your fish is done. Do this by poking a chopstick at the flesh near the top fin. It is done if the flesh flakes easily near the top fin; if not, just steam it for one or two additional minutes. Make sure also that the steaming water isn’t all evaporated out.
Second Phase-
  1. Start preparing the aromatics that will garnish your fish for serving a few minutes before the steaming process is done. Using a microwave-safe bowl, place all the Second Phase ingredients in it, and microwave for 30 seconds, then set them aside, covered, to keep them hot.
  2. As soon as the fish is done steaming, carefully lift it out and place on a nice serving platter. All the fish juices and cooked scallions, ginger and cilantro can be discarded.
  3. Now pour the fresh hot Second Phase ingredients over fish.

 

Third Phase-
  1. You’re almost done. Take a separate wok or pan, add in the cooking oil and heat it up until it is smoking—literally—hot.
  2. Toss in the scallions and ginger, and fry for just 10 seconds. They will sizzle and pop—that’s what you want, and it is a joy to watch, hear and smell.
  3. Quickly spread the sizzle-popped herbs and hot cooking oil over the steamed fish. You will be delighted to hear more sizzling as the hot herbs and oil scald and bond with the fish flesh.

那就是它。您的中国清蒸鱼是准备发球！

(And that is it. Your Chinese Steamed Fish is ready to serve!)

Spicy Szechuan Vegetable Stir Fry with Chicken

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To balance our Chinese dinner well, let’s whip up some vegetables in a wok, stir fried together with tender, spicy seasoned chicken strips. This will go well with the other entrees, and is a typical inclusion in traditional Chinese dinners.

Ingredients:
  • 1 tablespoon Szechuan peppercorns
  • Salt
  • 1 pound skinned, boneless chicken, pounded thin and sliced into strips 1-inch wide
  • 2 tablespoons canola oil
  • 2 tablespoons peeled and minced fresh ginger root
  • 1 tablespoon minced fresh garlic
  • 1 cup julienned onions
  • 1 cup florets of broccoli
  • 1/4 cup julienned green bell peppers
  • 1/4 cup julienned red bell peppers
  • 1/4 cup julienned yellow bell peppers
  • 1 cup shitake mushrooms, cut into ¼” thick slices (Use fresh if you can get them, but if not, you can use rehydrated dried shitake mushrooms)
  • 2 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 1/4 cup dry cooking sherry
  • 1 tablespoon Sambal Oelek red chile paste
  • 1/4 cup scallions (green onions), chopped into ¼” to ½” pieces – use all the white parts, and half the length of the green stalk parts
Directions:
  1. Place a small, dry saucepan on the burner and bring it to high heat.
  2. Once your saucepan is good and hot, add in the Szechuan peppercorns; wiggle the pan constantly, toasting the peppercorns until they are nice and fragrant. Remove from the heat.
  3. Using a spice grinder or blender, grind the peppercorns into a course grainy texture.
  4. Mix a liberal amount of salt in with the ground peppercorns and rub the combined seasoning well into all the chicken pieces.
  5. Heat a large wok (or large fry pan, if you don’t have a wok) over high heat. Add the oil when the wok is very hot.
  6. Next add in the onions, garlic, and ginger, and stir fry for one full minute no longer.
  7. Now add in the broccoli, peppers, chicken, shitake mushrooms, sherry, soy sauce, and chile paste.
  8. Continue stir frying until the chicken is well cooked and tender, and the veggies are cooked, but not mushy—you want the veggies to be still a little crunchy to the bite—about 4 maybe 5 minutes, certainly not more than 6 minutes. Fork a vegetable out and test bite it after 4 or 5 minutes and see—every burner and every wok has its own speed for cooking on high heat.
  9. One minute before you are finished stir frying the chicken and veggies, add the scallions, mix and stir fry them with everything else.

 

You are done! Place the stir fry onto a large serving platter, place on the dining table with all the other entrees, sit with your family, friends, and guests, pick up your chopsticks, and let the Chinese feast begin.

Spicy Mongolian Beef

mongolian beef

You just have to love it, when you find out one of the best Chinese recipes is also one of the most easy Chinese recipes to prepare. And Spicy Mongolian Beef is just that. For the power-packed flavor this dish delivers, it has to be among the top recipes that give you the highest rate of return at the dining table compared to the time invested in the kitchen.

Ingredients:
Directions:
  1. Make your marinade by whisking together the hoisin sauce, soy sauce, sugar, garlic, sesame oil, and red pepper flakes in a bowl.
  2. Take a resealable plastic bag, put the thinly sliced beef inside, and then pour the marinade into the bag. Seal the bag, and then turn it over front to back and side to side several times, to ensure all the slices are equally coated with the marinade. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour, longer is better, and even overnight is best. If marinating for hours and hours, about once an hour flip the bag over, keeping the marinade evenly distributed throughout the beef slices.
  3. Using a wok or a large skillet, heat peanut oil over high heat. Add in your chopped green onions, and fry for no more than 10 or 15 seconds, then take the beef slices out of the marinade bag (save the marinade ) add the beef into the wok or pan and stir well. Keep frying and stirring until the beef is browned and at the desired level of cooked you want. Six minutes will be well done, five minutes for medium well, and if you want medium rare (still pink in the middle), you should stop frying at about three minutes.
  4. Take the juices from frying the beef and add them to the reserved marinade, stir and mix well together, and put the mixture in a serving bowl on the table for a dipping sauce.
  5. Serve the beef and green onions either with or over a helping of freshly steamed yellow rice.

现在加上这美味的主菜到你的餐桌上，并享受！

(Now add this delicious entree to your dinner table, and enjoy!)

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