How to prepare a Chinese dish using common ingredients?

If you have been wanting to try Chinese cuisine for a long time but haven’t had the opportunity to visit a new restaurant in your neighborhood, we recommend trying to cook something yourself. In fact, Chinese cuisine is quite simple to prepare. Chicken feet in chocolate and fish head soup are rather the exception; you can prepare your daily diet yourself, just remember a few basic nuances.

The subtleties of Chinese cuisine

The main approach of Chinese chefs is efficiency. The less time it takes to cook, the better. The ingredients undergo minimal heat treatment, but always at high temperatures. Most dishes are cooked in a special pan. Visually, it resembles a cauldron, but its walls are much thinner and lower. This feature allows you to quickly fry meat, vegetables, and fish while preserving maximum nutrients. At the same time, the ingredients themselves have time to cook and retain all the necessary juiciness, so you don’t have to worry about eating half-raw food.

An additional secret to the appeal of Chinese dishes is the harmony of texture, color, and taste. Each ingredient in a dish complements the next, and nothing stands out from the overall background. A striking example is the well-known sweet and sour pork. The bright flavors of the sour and sweet sauce complement each other perfectly, and the pineapple and green pepper used serve not as a contrast but as an attractive addition. As a result, the pork is as tender, bright, and delicious as possible.

Even cooking simple rice will allow you to take a fresh look at the cooking process. All you need to do is fry the rice in oil for a few minutes, pour water over it, and then cook until done. Pour a few chicken eggs into the pan, stir thoroughly, and add the canned corn. All the ingredients are familiar to you, but the result is a new dish that could become a new favorite side dish for the whole family.

The cooking processes are generally no different from those that any housewife is used to—frying, deep-frying, steaming. All of this is quite easy to do at home. You can use a saucepan, a multicooker, all the items that you use every day anyway.

A couple of simple recipes for every day

You can already prepare several Chinese recipes without even having to visit specialty stores. The simplest recipe is sour and spicy potatoes. Just grate the potatoes on a special grater, fry them in oil for a few minutes, and mix with sauce and chili. The result is a hearty snack or appetizing side dish. Even when cold, this dish does not lose its appeal.

Baozhi are also very easy to prepare. They are the Chinese equivalent of the dumplings we are so familiar with. The same stiff dough made with water is used, and you can use not only minced meat as a filling, but also shrimp, mushrooms, vegetables, and much more. The most important thing is that baozi should be steamed. You can use a regular steamer, and the taste of the dish will not suffer.

And to add an unforgettable touch, use sauces. They are what give food that unforgettable aroma.