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I live in China but I learned to cook Chinese food in America on American stoves. I'm used to the heat being way too low and as a result everything I cook here I keep the burner on the lower half of the dial. Even when I'm cooking fairly fast I don't even turn it up to halfway. How can I learn to cook like a real Chinese guy without burning everything in like half a second? Full Disclosure: The most I cook right now is fried rice. I live right on the 3rd ring road in Chengdu and there's no good place to buy real meat, which means I don't have everyday use for the "coronal mass ejection" setting on the range. But I do feel like I should be cooking fried rice hotter than I am. It never develops the kind of smokey chewey fried-ness that I get in restaurants.
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Sep 30, 2012 19:16
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OnceIWasAnOstrich posted:vvvv Yeah I thought that was weird Honestly your nose is a pretty good indicator of when things have gone wrong. Vacuum packaging should be safe but it isn't always done properly or perfectly. If you have smelled the same food before and suddenly a new example smells all kind of wrong and different you should probably just toss it.
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Oct 2, 2012 08:04
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Magna Kaser posted:Stir stir stir stir. Never stop. It was written in the OP, but when you do any sort of stir fry like that you gotta have everything cut up and ready to go before you do any cooking. If you have to stop for more than a second, poo poo WILL burn. Thanks for the advice. I live on the east side in the boonies so Red Flag is the best I can do without a long trip on the bus. I actually took your advice and although there was a lot of swearing and scraping of stuck food my rice got that chewy texture that I was looking for. (New wok is not seasoned at all.) Unfortunately I burned the poo poo out of my garlic so the meat ended up nicely seared but tasting like not much. How can I cook on very high heat without burning my garlic and ginger? Do I have to add it later in the process so it doesn't immediately burn with just it and the meat in the wok? Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Oct 3, 2012 |
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Oct 3, 2012 11:36
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Grand Fromage posted:I don't know what it does in the marinade. Ooh ooh I know the answer to this. Corn starch in the marinade draws water out of the meat so that the marinade can penetrate. It speeds up osmosis. And yes, too much cornstarch can give foods a slimy texture. Always remember that cornstarch continues to thicken the food for several minutes, so if you add enough that it looks right immediately you've probably added too much. Just add a little and let it set up. Using corn starch well takes practice. Still looking for advice on how not to burn my garlic when stir-frying.
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Oct 12, 2012 11:39
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Magna Kaser posted:The banana variety is far and away my favorite. Try it with pineapple and your tongue will explode with joy. Had it in a nice restaurant in Shanghai and I'm never going back to banana. Never! That first tarot recipe looks great and I think I'll try it out, but I can just hear the Sichuan natives immediately objecting that you can't make it without peppercorns ever, ever, ever.
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Oct 20, 2012 05:58
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I think I saw that once and it was pretty awesome. Is it then one where they show where the food comes from and the communities that produce it? I had no idea lotus root was such an incredible pain in the rear end to farm.
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Oct 24, 2012 12:59
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Magna Kaser posted:Man I need an oven. It really is the single biggest obstacle to cooking at home in China.  (I don't know about the rest of Asia.)
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Nov 15, 2012 14:38
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Grand Fromage posted:rubbery skin poo poo Koreans like Eeew, really?
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Nov 16, 2012 10:15
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Maybe I'm just a cultural imperialist, but I have yet to see a southerner eat shellfish without being disgusting.
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Nov 24, 2012 05:33
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Hong Shao Rou was also Mao's favorite. Fun story: I got the worst 红烧肉 I have ever been served in Shaoshan, Mao's birthplace. Josie: China has a couple hundred braised pork dishes. Without more information everyone here is just making random guesses! Please tell us more so we can salivate.
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Dec 5, 2012 14:52
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Pre-cooking fillings has always ended in disaster for me. loving food safety regulations.
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Jan 17, 2013 03:12
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I'm going to be home in a few days and I'd like to make beef and tomato dumplings for my family. I can make my own dumpling skins, but I'm not sure about what's in the dumplings, beyond the obvious. I've never seen this filling in the U.S. before. Anyone know a beef and tomato dumpling recipe?
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Jan 29, 2013 17:49
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Beef and tomato dumplings have become my favorite frozen dumplings. Not exactly gourmet food but I have so many cheap options around where I live that it's hard to justify the time and expense of cooking and cleaning up at home. So I keep some frozen dumplings on hand for when I don't feel like walking two minutes. From what I can tell the core ingredients are ground beef, sliced wood ear mushrooms, diced (stewed?) tomatoes and the omnipresent scallions. Maybe some bits of garlic? I was wondering if anyone ha a recipe so I don't have to recreate it from scratch for my family, because making dumplings for four is a fairly large undertaking. Maybe I'll make the usual batches of pork/cabbage and pork/shrimp dumplings and make a small batch of beef&tomato filling to try it out.
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Feb 3, 2013 02:02
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Nobody puts hoisin sauce in mapo dofu.  Mapodofu is douban sauce (chili bean garlic sauce), chilies, tofu, scallions, and pork. Huajiao if you're into it. Cloves if you want to get crazy. Hoisin is for like... duck and cucumbers. No idea why mapodofu should turn out bitter. Get yourself a nice chunky red douban sauce (often sold in the U.S. as bean sauce or chili garlic sauce) and add it after browning the pork but before adding the tofu. It will take care of 90% of the flavor. Wok seasoning the "right way" might require a video, I dunno. Wok seasoning the easy way is pour some oil in there and put it on hot-rear end heat for like ten minutes, swishing occasionally. It's not perfect but it works. Cooking with oil improves the seasoning unless you cook acidic stuff. And if you do it the easy way enough, it's about as good as the right way. Food doesn't stick to my wok anymore at least. Don't overthink it, is what I'm saying.
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Apr 17, 2013 04:30
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Shadowhand00 posted:If you're ever in the area and you like Szechuan food, check it out. Their recipe looks good but I doubt I'll swing by for their mapodofu any time soon because I live in Sichuan. v  v It's not too hard to get here. That recipe is the epitome of Sichuan cooking, all the recipes here are like: 1. get three things 2. chop the poo poo out of them 3. add 20 different spices and oils 4. wok Once I asked a friend's mother for her ginger frog recipe. Her ingredient list for the solids was two things: frog and a kind of green called asparagus celery in English. Her ingredient list for the sauce was: fresh ginger, pickled ginger, a different kind of pickled ginger, sesame oil, chili oil, light soy sauce, mushroom soy sauce, and on and on. I can't remember the rest. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 09:40 on Apr 17, 2013 |
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Apr 17, 2013 09:36
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Bollock Monkey posted:I have some of this: Hey that's pixian doujiang, my favorite kind! It's already a fermented food so you should probably be good. e:fb
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Apr 19, 2013 12:21
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Hmmm I have to go around looking for a realtor anyway, and I have seen those on the menu at a pulled noodle place I go to sometimes, perhaps I will go on an investigative reporting mission for you!
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May 28, 2013 14:01
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Beef in oyster sauce is the easiest thing in the world and it's soooo good.
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Jun 8, 2013 02:51
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Adding corn starch at the beginning of cooking is a recipe for disaster in my experience.
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Jun 12, 2013 03:10
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Just go with the carbon steel, it is really easy to season and food stops sticking when it is seasoned. With all the bickering about the best way to season things in this forum I thought it would be hard but its really not. Swirl some oil around, high heat for 5~10 minutes, let it rest, do it again in a day or two. Food stops sticking! Cooking non-acidic things just makes the seasoning stronger. Make sure you just clean it with a good scrub and water though, no soap. We've been conditioned to think soap=clean but soap isn't a disinfectant anyway and scrubbing+water will do the job just fine.
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Jun 19, 2013 03:51
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Grand Fromage posted:Marinading gets different flavors into the tofu. It's how you make all those Chinese flavored tofu snacks. All those Chinese flavored tofu snacks are usually aged/dried/fermented tofu.
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Jul 3, 2013 03:35
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caberham posted:Thought hong shao rou is from Hunan It is but for some reason it's not very good. It's super fatty and not sweet at all and the sauce is quite thin. Maybe it's like the prototype that got worked into something better by later adopters. Really if you bite into something and it's the least bit sweet you can be sure it's not from Hunan province. They love it hot and sour.
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Jul 9, 2013 14:43
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I live in China and I have never seen one of those. You don't need a "wok spatula" just get yourself a wooden spatula.
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Jul 21, 2013 03:59
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I turned on auto-captions for that video by accident and it is way too entertaining. "Panic attacks and track quite intrigued, the airline is safe. Projects: strategy man dot com."
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Jul 29, 2013 08:26
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Inspector 34 posted:Does a carbon steel wok ever get that kind of non-stick seasoning that a cast iron skillet does? Yeah it should, but I don't know why yours doesn't. What I do is season the wok once when you get it by just wiping oil around it and leaving it on a hot stove for a while. Regular use should be seasoning the wok. What are you cooking in it? Foods high in acid will ruin the seasoning. Also soap. Don't clean it with soap. You probably know that already though.
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Aug 10, 2013 05:55
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bottles and cans posted:Funny timing. I thought for about 6 months that my wok was properly seasoned, but really I just had a gross carbon steel pan covered in sticky oil residue and burnt food that wouldn't come off. What do you think people are actually using in China? 
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Aug 10, 2013 08:39
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Steve Yun posted:Hey I got a question. Someone Chinese is telling me that you have to boil your meat, then change the water to get the "dirty blood" out. She acted surprised that I don't do this to all my meat. Is there any reason why I shouldn't blow this off (other than that it kinda acts as a way to skim fat)? Where is she from in China? It has a huge range of cultural diversity that sadly most Chinese aren't really aware of beyond regional stereotypes. It's very Chinese of her to be surprised that not everyone does what she does. I've lived in a few different regions of China and I've never seen anyone do this. But yes blow this off.
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Aug 18, 2013 06:30
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North Chinese tribes/pre-assimilation cultures had a variety of blood taboos. Maybe they shared it with Koreans? 
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Aug 18, 2013 08:33
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Especially in China they don't trust Chinese products.
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Aug 25, 2013 02:21
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The biggest thing about making friend rice is to use leftover rice that has been left to dry in the fridge, open, for at least one day. It helps to break up the rice occasionally while it dries to expose the wet parts. Using fresh rice results in a gooey mess because with the water content of fresh rice you can't really fry it, it just boils in the pan. So you end up with overcooked rice with a little seasoning and it's glop. How to fried rice: 1. cook fresh rice at least one day before; enjoy with stir-fried main dish (wash rice before cooking, death to non-washers) 2. refrigerate rice in open container for 1-2 days, breaking up wet clumps once or twice 3. dice your fried rice fixins and get them ready, make sure you chop so the fixin will all cook at about the same time 4. lightly oil pan and heat 5. stir fry any meat with diced garlic, ginger and scallions, then reserve 6. scramble egg if you're using it and reserve when still runny 7. oil pan more liberally, heat to as hot as possible 8. stir fry the poo poo out of that rice until it starts to brown 9. reduce heat to normal high, toss in fixins and stir fry 10. toss in egg and meat, stir 11. remove from heat, stir in pepper, light soy sauce and sesame oil to taste. sugar if you're from the nancypants southeast easy on the sesame oil, you only need a few drops 12. serve. good fried rice shouldn't need garnish with the bright colors of the rice, egg, scallion, and veg bits Really my biggest problem with fried rice is getting the oil:rice ratio correct. Mine can come out oily sometimes. I never measure so it's 100% my fault. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 05:51
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I'm pretty sure the chicken bouillon goes in at the fresh rice step when you boil/steam it.
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Aug 26, 2013 15:55
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Yup the whole menu is pretty authentic. The shredded tripe with ground chili pepper is way better than it sounds, give it a try. This 62.鱼香肉丝 Shredded Pork with Spicy Garlic Sauce sounds generic but it's also really authentic and if you've never tried it you should.
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Aug 28, 2013 03:23
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caberham posted:Chinese ham  What kind of ham or pork shoulder has guts in it?
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Sep 18, 2013 16:57
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Be aware that caberham is from Hong Kong. They have all sorts of crazy southern Chinese sauces and ingredients that don't exist in other parts of China, and vice versa. China has huge culinary diversity.
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Sep 18, 2013 17:48
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I had an orange jelly one. It was good and conventional.
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Sep 20, 2013 05:08
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So I hear spam is one of the most popular food products in Korea. I swear, every time I hear about that country it's something weirder. Can anyone confirm or deny?
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Sep 20, 2013 06:22
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But ~Black Label~ spam that costs $100 per can? Seriously?
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Sep 20, 2013 08:27
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Casull posted:What am I doing something wrong if hot oil starts flying everywhere when I initially start cooking? According to the state of my kitchen counters/walls/floors/appliances/fixtures, you are doing everything right. (Moved into a new apartment in China recently.)
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Sep 23, 2013 10:28
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Is there any kind of vinegar that needs refrigeration?
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Oct 16, 2013 04:17
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| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 22:39 |
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Ha I know what you mean. My dad puts oil in the fridge sometimes. I guess it's better than the alternative of leaving perishable things out.
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Oct 17, 2013 04:07
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